Budgeting, Saving, Hustling
I am telling you this, because I understand what it is like to live pay check to pay check. We had to make some adjustments to our way of thinking and also the way that we lived. I started reading financial books and listening to podcasts of Dave Ramsey. What I learned was how to save. Dave Ramsey suggests that you have at least $1,000 saved for a rainy day. This was a piece of advice that has helped me a lot in the last two years. I have put my own twist to it and now we save for big events that we have planned for as well. We recently purchased a house, and through the grace of God and with the help of the money we saved, we were able to make the move. Financial coaches tell you how to save. Bottom line you have to have more coming in than you have going out. Dave Ramsey suggests that you get rid of credit card debt. Order your bills from highest credit card owed to the lowest credit card owed. Pay the minimum on everything but the lowest owed. On the lowest owed credit card try to put a little more money towards it to reduce it. Then get rid of it when you have paid it off.
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"Treasure City" Waco, TX |
There is only one other way for you to bring money into your household outside of your regular job, and that is simple. You have to get a hustle. Our hustle is our Ebay business. Renardo’s mother, Alice, used to sell chitlin plates, chicken plates, and fish plates (you may need a permit for that now). My father, Charles Rogers, had a field where he grew crops to sell. (We were the free labor to harvest it. LOL). Renardo’s nephew, De’onte Edwards, has a gift for music and has a group called New Revelation. There are a lot of other options too. If you have a gift or talent think about how to turn it into a profit. If you are trained in something you can do handyman work, babysitting, becoming an Uber driver, as long as you’re working to bring more money in. The most important part is to not spend the extra cash, but to place it towards saving or paying down debt. The less debt you have, the more money you have to spend. You’ve got to budget, save, and hustle.
Earlier this month I mentioned two apps you could use to track your spending. Once you get a handle on where your money is going, the easier it is for you to make adjustments to your spending. I found that with Everydollar, Dave Ramsey’s free version of the app, you had to enter all of the information into the app and the onus was on you to track your spending. I didn’t really have time for that, so I found myself relying more on Mint. Despite the delay in getting updates with Mint, I still got the updates. It tells you where you are overspending and gives you pointers on how to improve. The free version of Everydollar does not do that. I suspect that you have to pay the $149 for the upgrade to get these features on Everydollar and I am not recommending that anyone pay that much for a single app. So. I am going to stick with Mint as my budgeting app and only listen to Dave Ramsey for financial advice. Know this though…everyday we’re hustling.
By Natricia A. Edwards
Hi, This is Natricia and I just wanted to do a follow up. I found out that some Credit Unions or banks offer budgeting apps and allow you to link your accounts. With the Dave Ramsey paid account (I was offered this for free when I took one of his classes) I noticed that some of my accounts could not be linked. Counts like car notes and mortgages did not permit me to link possibly because EveryDollar is known for the debtsnowball approach. However, check with your bank and local credit unions to see if they offer this feature. It could save you a lot and also assist with your debt snowball. It's helped me a lot already.
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