Thursday, September 19, 2013

Telling the Truth: Is It an Emergency?



Or is it a predictable expense? Have you ever pulled out a credit card to pay for a brake job on your car and thought “this is an emergency?” Or called your parents to borrow money because your plumbing went out and you couldn’t pay for it? Or considered borrowing money from your 401k to attend the “destination wedding” of your best friend from college because it was an “emergency?”

Can we all agree? None of those things are emergencies! They are all predictable expenses. 

If you own a car, it will need brakes. If you own a home, you will have to hire a plumber. If you have friends, they’ll get married. (In fact, if you’re of “that age range” you might as well weave $500/month into your budget.) When we save for those things that we can predict, we can limit the emotional and financial upset that happens in our lives from “emergencies” to those things that are true emergencies.

And then there’s the life events we didn’t predict: you lost your job, you discover your plumbing problem wasn’t just a pipe, but your entire plumbing system needs to be replaced, your mom that lives alone across the country falls and breaks her hip and you have to go help, or you’re on vacation when a hurricane hits and you have to stay in a high-priced hotel for an extra 3 days. Those are all examples of true emergencies. They are all things that aren’t expected or predictable. And they are all things that could cost a significant amount of money.

What over the past 5 years have you unexpectedly had to pay more than 25% of your monthly income on? Was it an expense you could have predicted? Or was it truly an emergency? When we begin telling ourselves the truth about the difference between emergencies and all of those other “little” expenses that pop up and annoy us, but we know we’ll have, we can do a much better job of building our financial foundation.


-Stacey Powell

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups. 
Are you ready to reach your financial goals? Get motivated. Get support. Get results!

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Lessons Learned from Riding my Bicycle to Costco


1st time: Starting is the Hardest Part
  • Summer in Sacramento (high 90's), car-less and we're completely out of our Costco favorites. There was a lot of groaning and moaning (mostly from my husband because he thought I was crazy) and then we got on our bikes and rode 10 miles to Costco.

2nd: Challenge Further
  • Still hot outside, but now we know that 10 miles is nothing. My husband suggests we go the long way, it's prettier and only 16 miles. It's nice, but the load is heavier, because we need to carry more ice to keep the food cold the extra miles. 
3rd: Maximize Enjoyment and Time
  • We take the long, pretty way there and the short, shady way back. Very pleasant! 
4th: Completely Familiar and Easy

Every Time Since: Routine 
  • We fit more food in our bike bags than we ever imagined possible.
  • Each Costco run used to cost us around $200, now it's only $60-80. 
  • I've even made the run by myself and just took an extra bag. 
  • You don't know if something is possible, till you try it. 
  • What once seemed impossible, is no longer even a challenge. 
-Leah Schonlank

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups. 
Are you ready to reach your financial goals? Get motivated. Get support. Get results!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

We Don't Know What We Don't Know



I’m stubborn and I can say with 100% certainty that I never would have joined one of our finance boot camps if I didn't work here. But I do, I'm in a boot camp and it's phenomenal!

A summary of how I got here:
  • I’ve managed my money just fine all of these years by myself.
  • I freely discuss money with my husband, friends, family and sometimes even with strangers.
  • All things considered, my finances are good. But I know they can always be better.
  • I participated in one of our free sample boot camp calls as part of my interviewing process, because the best way to understand, is to experience it. I realized that this is cool and got a peek into how this helps people.
  • I read, think and talk about personal finance all day, every day now. And that should be enough, except it's so easy to just focus on the things that I want to focus on.
  • I joined a boot camp and my blinders came off. Every session opened my eyes more and more.
  • Last week was my hot seat, which means we talked all about me and my money for an hour and a half. Honestly, I was dreading this for a variety of reasons. Turns out that it’s amazing! Inspirational even. And I now see the light. Oh yeah!

I wrote an entire blog about the details, but this isn’t about the details. This is about not knowing what you don’t know and doing something out of your comfort zone because it may be the one thing that changes your life for the better. 

No matter how you're doing financially, right now, you could be doing better.

-Leah Schonlank

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups. 


Are you ready to reach your financial goals? Get motivated. Get support. Get results!
 

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Our Numerical Identities


I received a replacement debit card in the mail yesterday and the envelope was open. Not just the edges, not like the glue had come unstuck, but intentionally and completely opened. I immediately called the bank to have them reissue a replacement for my replacement.

I’m imagining a thief sitting in a dark room, twiddling their fingers, while watching late night infomercials, just waiting for me to activate my new debit card, and at that very moment, they break out a pristine piece of paper with all of my card information written neatly. And poof. My life is destroyed.

Maybe I’m exaggerating…but maybe not…We are our money. We are our credit. We’re just numbers to the big bad world. And our numerical identities are so vulnerable.

A credit card sitting in the mailbox all day. A receipt left in a gas pump or ATM. Unsecured WiFi  Unsecured websites. Phone and email scams galore. Using the last four of our social security numbers for verification. From where I’m sitting, it all seems a little too easy for a thief to become me if I just drop my guard for a moment.

When it comes to what’s in my control, I shred important documents and receipts, I log out of online accounts and close the tabs afterwards, I don’t give out sensitive information unless I’m 100% sure it’s not a scam; basically, I consider myself careful, without being overly obsessive.

On the other hand, most of it isn’t in our control. We give our numbers to so many different companies. And we just have to trust that they are following all of the rules and regulations to protect our information. In these situations, I’ll admit to being a bit of a naive optimist so that I can sleep at night. But it’s hard when I’ve been given someone’s account information as the plate of my street food in an Indian metropolis…

Back to yesterday’s mail: Right when I'm feeling very proud of myself for thwarting the thief's evil plans, there's a knock on the front door. It's my neighbor. She just wanted to let me know that the mailman accidentally delivered my debit card to her house and she didn't realize it wasn’t hers till after she opened it. And the world is a safe and beautiful place again. 

So, what’s a person to do? Personally, I’m going to stick my head back in the sand, do what I can, hope for the best, and plan for the worst. My plan? Have you seen the movie “Identity Thief”? Close enough. 

What would you do if someone stole your identity? 


-Leah Schonlank

Finance Gym offers personal finance coaching in professionally facilitated peer-advisory groups. 
Are you ready to reach your financial goals? Get motivated. Get support. Get results!