Budget Girl: tackling credit card debt & budgeting woes

Hey everybody and happy Monday. I hope your weekend went well. I've got plenty of questions from you today, many of which are about credit cards, so stay tuned. Uh, Lynn Crowder says, Hey BG, I have a question about hiding money in sinking funds so my husband can't overspend. He's on board with being on a budget, but when he's with his friends, he tends to overspend on eating out. If I set up sinking funds, there won't be any extra money available. Is this mean or smart? Um, now Lynn, I don't love to answer questions about how to deal with like money within marriages because I'm not married. So I can only tell you, I have no experience trying to get a husband on board and people ask me that all the time. How do you get your spouse on board? I'm like, I don't know. Rory doesn't really put up a fight. Uh, but um, I can say if he's on board with being on a budget, it sounds like he knows that y'all are in a bit of a financial situation. He has goals for the future, just like you. It sounds like he's just kind of a little lax in the rules. He might be a little bit more of a free spirit. Now I can tell you that if I found out that my spouse or someone close to me, someone that I was involved, you know, shared money with was hiding some from me, I would be a lot more upset and I would, I would feel very violated and I would feel very distrustful of that person. If I found out they were hiding money from me, um, then I would be annoyed if, you know, I had to sit down with someone and be like, okay, we need to rein stuff in. We need to change the way we're doing things because I'm doing something that's outside the plan. So yes, that's very disrespectful that he's agreed to this system, that this budget, these goals, but he's not following through on it. But I don't think, and you asked me necessarily, that hiding money and sinking funds is something that will resolve the situation. I really think it'll probably just complicate matters. So talk to your husband. Um, maybe he just needs a little bit more wiggle room and compromise I've heard is, is excellent in relationships. Uh, maybe he can have a little bit bigger of a, of a restaurant budget, or maybe he just needs to be reminded of your goals that you have for the future. But, um, try to find some common ground there. And I believe in the relationships that I hope to have one day, my, my husband one day, I, I sincerely hope that we can operate with a extremely high level of honesty within a relationship because that would, that would really bug me if someone were hiding money from me. So, um, I, I don't think it's smart. I don't think it's mean either, but I don't think it's wise. So, uh, good luck with that, Lynn. All right. Uh, pink coffee says, hi, I'm a new subbie. Welcome. Uh, my question is how do you start a budget when there is no money? I just looked at what we have coming in and I spend the bare minimum. I don't go out or do anything extra. And I have the same amount going out as I do coming in with maybe $4 left over. And the bills that are being paid can't be lowered. Um, I only have rent car, car insurance, food, and I only spend about $200 a month on food for me and my son. Please help. Okay. Pink. Uh, I'm very glad that you're taking a look at your income and outgo. Um, I am wondering if you actually have a budget written down because, and it's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I have been, um, a giant idiot, uh, in, in my past. And I, I have many idiot friends that, uh, it seems like when you're not making a lot of money, of course, it's all going out. You can't see the leaks if you don't actually have everything written down on paper, your income and your outgo. So I would advise you to actually write down on paper a budget of exactly how much it's coming in and list out your bills one by one. Um, also if you have a car payment, perhaps you can, uh, sell that car and get a cheaper one. Perhaps you can, uh, shop for insurance around. Um, maybe you don't need full coverage if it's a beater. Um, $200 a month on food for you and your son is definitely low. I would not advise you to lower that. Um, but yeah, definitely look at all of your expenses, actually write out your budget. And what was a huge thing for me is when I actually went through my debit card statements back when I started this and I realized exactly how much I was spending when I didn't think I was spending anything. So once again, I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm just saying that when we don't actually write down every transaction that we make, we sometimes forget about them. And I guarantee you when I was reconciling my budget for this past month, I forgot that I went to Fort Smith at the beginning of last month. It was a whole month ago, completely slipped my mind. Um, now I already, I was like, how did I forget that already? It's just really easy to forget things month to month. So make your budget out, see how much you actually have, um, room to wiggle with. I really think you might be able to find just a little bit more grace there. If you, if you have every single transaction written down and if you have an exact plan at the beginning of the month for all of the money that's coming through. Other than that, if there's still no wiggle room whatsoever, you might have an income problem, which is hard, but not impossible to fix. Perhaps you can pick up a side job, doing a little horse trading, you know, buying stuff at thrift stores and then selling them on eBay or, um, picking up some hours babysitting that could help you bridge this gap, um, right now when you aren't having that much left over to do, because you want to get out of this car payment. Uh, you want to be able to pay this car off and then you'll have that money to do stuff with. Um, so I would say anything, even if you have to get really gazelle intense for a while and pick up some extra stuff to do to earn money, then you can get this car out of the way and then you'll have that little bit of bubble of money to do with while you're still working through this. So good luck and please continue to ask me any questions that you may have. I hope that helped. All right, Sarah Beetson says, I have large balances on a few credit cards and am in a bad financial situation. I can't even keep up with the minimum payments. Do you suggest I close the cards so I quit getting late fees and more interest or what would you do? Absolutely close the cards, call the companies, tell them your situation that you're in and set up some sort of payment plan. Um, these people would rather get something than nothing. And the only thing that you're doing right now is still having these cards open. And if you can't pay the minimum payments, then you're getting dinged constantly with, you know, $35 late fee, uh, you know, overbalance fees, all those other things that will just spiral this debt out of control. It's just going to get so much worse if you don't address it. Um, abs, absolutely. If you can't keep up with the minimum payments, close the cards, call the companies, tell them what's going on. Um, see if perhaps they can offer you some sort of settlement on them. Um, and if you can't do that now, you know, wait six months, do that again. Um, and try to do anything you can to raise some money to get rid of this debt. Um, especially if you're at the point where it's just up and up and up and up and up because of all these late fees, that's a, that's a really bad situation and you should treat it accordingly. Um, but yeah, call the companies, do whatever you can, ask them to waive as many fees as they possibly can, you know, tell them, you know, yeah, I just, I got out of my zone here. It's, uh, I can't handle it. What can you do to help me? And they're humans there. They're humans and they can be sympathetic. They'll help you close down the accounts. They probably won't want you to actually close the accounts. They may try to increase your limit or something like that, but be insistent. Hey, I was wondering if I could get any of these late fees waived. I would like to close my account, um, and get on some sort of payment plan because I cannot afford what I have right now. So, um, those are the first steps in getting out of this debt and then try to do whatever you can to raise the money to get these out of your life forever. And then never use credit again. You don't need it. You can save up for things and then pay for them with money. Um, credit is a, is a hassle that I, that I'm sure you wish you had never even gotten involved with at this point. And I haven't used credit in years and it's amazing. I just pay for things with money and it never comes back to bite me. So, um, yeah, never, never do this again. Um, you can do it. You can get out of it. All right. Life Path says, please talk more about canceling credit cards. In three months we will have one card paid off. We do have more cards that are currently paid off as well. It seems to me like companies make it hard to cancel the cards. I'd like to know experiences others have had with this issue. I've made some inquiries into canceling cards and it seems like I'm going to have to jump through several hoops and red tape to do so. Bottom line is getting the card is so much easier than canceling the card. Is there any way to prevent what happened to Chris and Jackie and their Wells Fargo credit card? Well, when Wells Fargo said that they owed money a year after they paid the card off, how might one deal with this and what paperwork should be kept to prove the debt has been paid in full? Chris and Jackie did do a couple of blogs about, um, they canceled their credit cards. And then like a year later, Wells Fargo decided, uh, you know, some sort of filing error or something and tried to and they were able to get that fixed because they didn't still owe money. They kept their paperwork and the emails and everything like that. Um, yeah, canceling credit cards is kind of an itch, but it's, it's something you have to do and they can't legally not let you close them. It's the thing. So you just have to be adamant when you're on the phone and it's going to get annoying. It's going to be no, no, I, I, I just want to close the account. I want to close the account. I want to close the account please. Um, so be kind, you know, these are other human beings you're talking with and you can always choose how you're treating other people, whether or not they're treating you that same way. Um, but be absolutely insistent. Talk to a manager upon manager upon manager. If you have to, until you can get these cards closed, get the, um, get them to send you a letter saying you closed the account and that it's paid in full or the email, save that for years. If you have to scan into your Gmail and save it. Um, it's, it's worth jumping through the hoops. It's worth going through the red tape. Uh, when I canceled my credit cards, it was not that hard. Actually, I had to, I had to say, yes, I absolutely have want to close the account like three or four times, but then they just closed it. It was paid in full. There's, they can't not close it. And then I, I didn't have an issue again, um, with that. Now, Chris and Jackie did. Uh, but I, to my understanding, they were able to get that fixed fairly easily. It was just a, it was just an issue of a miss miss file. And I'm very glad that they checked on that. I did not have any such issues, but yeah, keep your, keep your paperwork, absolutely close the accounts. Um, it's worth the 45 minutes on the phone. If it takes that long, which it might. Okay. Kylie Killea says, uh, ABG, thanks for answering my question. I plan on getting that emergency fund started right away. You mentioned in this video, when you lived in Louisiana, being a mystery shopper, please tell me how I can get involved in this. I live in Louisiana and would love this as an option to bring in more money. Um, and also do you have any tips on how to budget on an irregular income? I work as a waitress and my income isn't regular at all. Any tips would be appreciated. Thank you. Um, I did do a lot of mystery shopping, mostly with market force. Um, and second to none, which are companies that I can recommend. Um, when you do mystery shopping, absolutely never send any company's money, but there is a legitimate business in it. You don't make a ton of money, but I used to do, um, I I'd go to fast food restaurants and I'd time their services and evaluate their services, uh, secretly. And you send in like pictures and stuff like that. And I'd also go to, uh, gas stations and try to buy cigarettes, um, and see if they would ID me. And these were several things that I did. And I made a little bit of extra money that I was able to put towards my debt. I never did a video on that despite it being highly requested. However, I will link below a video that his and her money did. They did an absolutely fantastic video on how to earn extra money. Mystery shopping. They use at least one of the companies that I did as well. And it's just incredibly comprehensive and it's a well-informed video. And I think, you know, after they posted that, I was like, I don't even need to do one. I'll just send people to them. So I will link that video below, which can give you a little bit more info. Um, but yeah, it's totally a legitimate way to make a little bit of extra money, especially for hours are a little flexible. So, all right. And on the how to budget on an irregular income, um, the main trick to this is that you have to make more than your expenses and you have to know basically what the minimum is that you're going to make that month with your regular income. So what I did when I, um, had a regular income was I wrote out all my bills and all my expenses, and then I took all my pay stubs and I figured out what the least amount of money that I could possibly make in a set of two weeks or month was. And then I, you basically have to list in order of importance, all our bills and everything. Now, after your four walls and everything that you want to get done, you draw a line and your, the minimum that you're going to make needs to cover all of that. And then what's really cool about an irregular income is, is because it can be a little bit more motivating than if you're on salary, like I am now, because I know exactly how much I'm going to be able to contribute. But back when I was on regular income, if I had a good week or a good month, um, or if I could pick up some extra hours, I knew that that extra went immediately to the first thing on my list, which was my debt and getting rid of my debt. So anything that you make outside of your base, um, you can use to throw that at your goals, which is so cool. It's so cool to be able to see that direct correlation between how hard you work and how often you work and, um, how much debt you're able to pay off. Now it's a little, on salary, it's a little demotivating actually, because it's, you know, I make the same, no matter how hard I work that week, but it's a thing. Um, that's, that's a trade. Goodness, I wish I had hours again. Um, but yeah, uh, irregular income is not that hard. Like I said, it can actually be better for the debt-free journey because the more you work, the more you can pay off. Um, Dave Ramsey has, um, free irregular income budgeting forms. I'll do a link down below. Um, and there are lots of videos on that as well here in the financial YouTube community, if you want more, or you can ask another question if you have one. Okay. All right. Amber Jones says, I have a question, Sarah, what has been your experience with selling on eBay? And last week I've listed 10 items and two sold. Yay. But I'm struggling to sell the rest. Are there any tips you can give me to sell items faster? First of all, I'm just happy you got them up because I've got like a whole pile of stuff I need to sell on eBay and Craigslist, but I just, it's kind of a pain to put them all up there. Um, you can always lower your prices a little bit. If you have photo, it's, you know, eBay is all about the photos. You have photos of the item that you're trying to sell from every single angle, then that's the most important thing. It's more important than any of the text in there. Um, and there's always a way, I mean, you can always renew the item after the listing ends. And I've found that for some reason, things just come in waves. When I sell stuff on eBay, I can put like 15 books up, one I'll sell, and then I'll renew all of them. And, you know, nine I'll sell on the next two week period. So just, you know, don't give up on that. Now it's after two selling periods, it hasn't sold, then you either just need to take down listing and donate the item or, um, lower the price dramatically. Um, that's about it. I, yeah, selling faster on eBay is not really something that I'm an expert on. I just try to get them out of my house. And I have, like I said, I need to do that. I need to have like a, a sell stuff month and, and get into the, yeah, another sell stuff September. That's coming up, right? I've been thinking about that since like February. Uh, anyway, good job for selling stuff. Yeah, just keep trucking, man. Just keep trucking. Alrighty. Um, Kyla Clay also asked, what is this 16,000 for at the bed of the title? I noticed she has it on all her videos. That is my current debt number, uh, the day that I posted the video. So in this video, you will see that I owe 15,000 something. I have not checked it because I am filming and not editing right now. But, um, if you go back to some of my earlier videos, you can see that at one point I had $32,000 worth of debt. So every time I upload a video, I post a new debt total. And that is the most accurate debt for the day I posted it. So you can kind of see it going down. Alrighty. Annie Tasker says, hey, budget girl, I love your channel. I do have a question for you. My husband and I are debt free at separate house. We recently started budgeting with envelope system. My question is, is if there is extra money in the envelope at the end of the month, should it roll over for the next month? For example, if we don't use all of our eating out money, should we roll it over to the next month so we can maybe save up to go to a nicer restaurant? Or should we put it towards our savings mortgage and start from empty envelopes every month? I'm already putting 15% towards retirement, no kids, so no babysit six. Um, and we are currently doubling our minimum mortgage payment every month. Thanks for your advice. Sounds like you're doing so well. You are way up in the baby steps. Good job. Um, now here's the thing. Um, and this is kind of a cool thing about the envelope system. You can choose. It's completely up to you whether or not you want to take any extra money that you have in envelopes at the end of the month and put it towards your goals, or if you want to roll it and put it towards something in the future in the same envelope category. I, um, usually fly pretty close to the edge of the envelope in my budget. I have, I've figured out exactly how much I can spend every month and I spend it. However, um, I, I had, I, in my budget, I kind of have it different for different categories. Um, in restaurant, I don't roll it over. There's, there's no point, uh, for me because I, I don't eat out often enough. I just, you know, the amount that I have set for eating out every month is fine. Uh, so that just goes to debt. However, my personal money, if I don't spend all of my personal money, you better bet that I am rolling that over and I will spend that eventually because that's my money and ain't nobody taking that away, including my debt. Um, that's allocated for me. So you can choose what to do with, um, that with any of your categories. Um, if you want to save up to go eat out at a really nice restaurant, I think that's fantastic and you should totally do that because that can reward you for doing the system and keep you inspired to continue doing it. But you may not want to do that with all of your categories and some of your categories, like if in groceries, if, um, if you're pretty good on groceries, you have a higher cap, say you have $400 a month for groceries, you spend three 51 month and there's no particular reason that you need an extra $50 next month. Why not throw that $50 to the mortgage? It'll help you get your mortgage paid off faster and motivate you to be more frugal with your meals while not limiting yourself. So you can, I would, I would go per category and, uh, just be excited because you're doing great. High five. All right. Um, XX Brianna XX says, Hey, budget girl. I just graduated high school and had an amazing party with my family and friends. Congratulations. I walked away with almost $900 from all the cards and after a couple more paychecks, I will finally have my thousand dollar emergency fund. Technically I don't make enough, so it should just be 500, but I'm leaving for college in the fall and moving to a fairly large city. Do you think it's better to keep my emergency fund at a thousand dollars and take most of my next checks to pay for dorm supplies, such as bedding, hangers, et cetera? Or should I just leave $500 in my emergency fund and use the other 500 for dorm supplies? More than likely I won't need the full 500 for supplies. So my emergency fund will still probably be higher than $500. Love your videos. Thank you. Budget girl. Okay. First of all, I am so excited for you and I am so happy for you that you have your head on so straight right now going to college and that you are saving because when I was 18 and I just graduated, I could not keep a penny in my pocket without spending it and you are just so much smarter than I was and I'm so excited for your future because if this is any sort of gauge on how responsible with money you're going to be in the future, and I think it is, you are going to be amazing. So first of all, I don't think you can really go wrong here other than spending $500 on dorm supplies, which you said you probably won't. So first of all, yes, go ahead, splurge a little on dorm supplies. I would, however, since you say you're working, have $1,000 in your emergency fund because you never know what may happen. Your laptop may break or get stolen, like mine did in college, and you may need to buy a new one because you need that for class and it sucks to go to computer lab. And especially since you already have this here, this is graduation money, this is superfluous outside of your work money, I would go ahead and put that full $1,000 in an emergency fund and remember not to touch it because Taco Bell is not an emergency, unlike what my college self thought. Now, it sounds like you already know and that is absolutely amazing. I am so excited for you. So yeah, go ahead and put the $1,000 in your emergency fund, the $900 plus, you know, the next $100 you make at work, use work money for your dorm supplies, and you know what, it's okay if it takes just a little longer to get that emergency fund in place while you get set up for your dorm that you have all summer. I'm just excited for you because you have your head on straight here. It seems like you are planning on working through college, you're planning on being frugal with your money, and as long as you don't get distracted in college by other people and, you know, eating out every day and trying to keep up with the other girls as far as like jewelry and clothes and all that stuff, then I think you're going to be fantastic. I really do. I'm so excited for you. Yeah, the fact that you have an emergency fund going into college as a freshman is amazing and a little mind-blowing to me because I don't think I had $100 when I stepped on campus my freshman year. I really don't. You're going to do great, Brianna, and I'm really proud of you and I'm really excited for you and I'm so glad you watched my channel. I wish I was a smart shoe when I started college. You're going to be fantastic. Okay, that is all for today. I'm very excited with this week's questions and I will see you all next week. As always, please leave your money questions down below and share your money wins. I will see you all soon. Bye.