How to Decide the Right Level of Insurance For You & Your Family





Hi, welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life With Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell and if you're ready to not just know better but do better with your money, then you've come to the right place. 

Today we're going to talk about insurance, like oh my gosh, and all of the stuff around insurance. I'm going to show you a little visual that I have in the book of the cogs around you and all the kinds of insurance and related types of things there are. Everything from health insurance which is kind of one of those things that we should all have to auto insurance to the smaller things like flood insurance, renters insurance, dental, disability, long-term care. Oh my gosh! The list can go on and on and on. The chapter of the book that that graphic is in is called the grown-up stuff. Dealing with it sometimes is like uhhh.. it feels a little like drudgery. A few videos back, I talk about adulting. When we finish a task like making a decision about insurance it's like good job Stacey, you did it. You sat down, you read, you talked to a professional and you made a decision. You know some of those are easy, like auto insurance it's kind of illegal to not have auto insurance right. Health insurance, it's kind of illegal to not have health insurance or at least it's very costly. But how do you make decisions about all the other kinds of insurances that yea it would be great to have it when you're trying to get your budget right sized with your income and your spending and if you buy all those insurances, are you going to have enough money left over to you know put food on the table or take a vacation? Where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? And that's the cruz of what I want you to walk away from this video. I can't tell you where to draw the line. You have to do a lot of reading, a lot of studying, you have to talk to professionals and you have to follow your own intuition about where you draw that line. But here's the thing is in the book I have you respond to each one of those. Do I want it? Do I need it? If I had enough money, would I just go buy it? And at what point does it become important? Life insurance, like here's my truth about life insurance - you've all hear me talk about how much I used to struggle when my daughter was little. But the truth is like life insurance isn't even a choice because if something happened to me it WOULD NOT be okay that I didn't leave something to help her become an adult. It's not okay. And the truth is I didn't need a one million dollar policy. I brought what was for years a $25/mo policy that would have left her with enough money to at least get her through college and help her get on her feet after that. And you know I was really looking forward to being done paying for life insurance at some point I thought you know when she turned eihgteen maybe. But now I realize no no no no, it's still for me that line is still no. I need to have life insurance. I'm older so I don't get to pay $25/mo anymore but no matter how challenging our financial situation was in those years, that is a payment that I never missed. And so that's what I want YOU to think about in this conversation about insurance is what is it that you know that there's a line that you should have. Go do your homework, go see how much it costs, if you think you can't afford it an you have kids like just go find out how much it is because you can at least maybe get half way there. And half way is better than nothing. So that's what I have to say about insurance. There's a lot more in the book and the truth is theres a never ending amount of information about this. I encourage you to learn, read and seek the advice of a professional who's going to teach you and not just sell you a product. 

If you have anymore questions or what to chat about this, come over to our Facebook Page group we have called Team Do Better, sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.TheFincanceGym.com or sign up for our video series below. And have a great day going and making decisions about insurance!

Finance Gym Weekly Workout - Questions to Ask When Hiring a Financial Advisor

Welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life With Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell and if you're ready to not just know better but do better with your money, then you've come to the right place.
This little series that I'm doing right now is on Chapter 7 in the book, the grown-up stuff. I call it the grown up stuff because when you're done doing the stuff in this chapter, you're going to feel like an adult. If you want to hear more about that go listen to the first video in this little series. Today the adulating that we're going to talk about is hiring a financial planner. I get asked this question all the time and frankly this was one of the hardest parts of the book for me to write. I wanted to concisely explain to people how to make the decision of what kind of financial advisor to hire. If you've paid any attention then you know that the field is this wide. It's crazy, there's everything from somebody that works for your local bank to somebody who works at a big huge brokerage and really is just an investment advisor to brand new people who are just starting out and are calling themselves financial advisors and they're certified but they don't really have any experience yet to people who have put the time and effort in to become a certified financial planner or an equal certification. 
When people ask me, when my friends ask me who to hire, one of the first things that I always say is you want to hire somebody who is a certified financial planner. There are some other certifications that are equal but that's kind of my favorite go to. If someone has put the time and effort in to go to that level of knowledge, then they're somebody who's really committed to giving you the best financial advice possible. And i'm not saying that somebody just as a simple license or two sell you you financial products don't care I'm sure lots of them do care but if you're really kind of looking at  what is being offered out there you want somebody who has been through life cycles with their clients, emergencies and how that played out. Somebody who's walked through retirement, who have seen what financial decisions on this side of your life, how they impact that side of your life, and so you don't necessarily want somebody new out of the gate. The truth is some of you watching this video can't necessarily afford somebody who has ten years of experience. So then you're just gonna have to go with a little but of intuition. If you look int the book I have a list of eleven questions that I recommend you ask whenever you're interviewing a financial advisor. One of the base pieces of advise I give to people is interview three before you make a decision so that you kind of get a good feel for what's out there. I think my last piece of advise is you want to hire somebody who you feel like is going to be a teacher for you. You don't necessarily want to hire the person who was you know the math wiz and has a degree in business. Frankly, my go to advisor, the one that I sent my mother too and my closest friends - she was a i think anthropology major and museum studies like minor something like that. She's smart, she wasn't necessarily a numbers person, but what she really is is a teacher. She has learned everything she had to learn to become an excellent financial planner but more than anything she is patient and takes the time to teach people that i send to her what they need to learn. And so I hope for you when you go out looking to see who it is you want to hire that you find somebody like that.
So, this stuff isn't easy to do, if you want a partner in all of this, please come over to Facebook and join our private group called Team Do Better also sign up for our weekly newsletter at www.TheFinanceGym.com or subscribe to this video series. Thanks!

Adulting: Achieving Financial Security For Yourself & Your Family



Welcome to the Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell and if you're ready to now just know better but do better with your money, you've come to the right place. I'm getting ready today to film Chapter 7 which is call the "grown up stuff". When I was picking out chapter names everybody said, "you can't name it that". I actually wish that I would have used a word that my daughter uses. She's 21 and she uses the word "adulting", and I wish I would have just named the chapter adulting. Let me tell you a little secret if you're like under the age of 40, the truth is you learn this when you get to be 50 and then 60, I think that we all think that when we grow up, somehow it's going to be easier to go see a financial planner or easier to make decisions about insurance or easier to do estate planning. Maybe I just don't hang out with the right people but let me tell you, it doesn't get easier. And almost everybody that I know when they do one of those kinds of tasks that we all kind of dread and don't really want to get done, we all feel this like wow good job Stacey you got that done! And I don't care who it is that I've worked with, whether it's been somebody struggling on a $40k salary or one of my multimillionaire clients, they've all still felt the same way, the uncertainty, the dealing with professionals and you know not really feeling like ah man I don't know as much as this person and I have to trust this person, am I trusting the right person and just the general drudgery and then the complication you know. I'm a finance person but sometimes some of these conversations about insurance is complicated and somebody who's an insurance agent knows a ton more than me even though I know a lot! So I like the word adulting and in my next series I'm going to be talking about the stuff of adulting. My take away for today is, I don't care about how old you are it's alright to smile at yourself it's alright to laugh at yourself a little bit. Just roll up your sleeves and get it done be a little easy with yourself and you can give yourself a little prize at the end in whatever adulting thing you're putting off doing. As always, if you want some support come over to our Facebook and join our team Do Better Group, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.TheFinaneGym.com and subscribe to our Youtube series below. Have a great day!

Today's Second BIG Announcement!

We told you today would be BIG and we meant it! We're thrilled to be hitting the road for a 36-city Piggybanks in the Park tour, a grassroots campaign where we'll talk about the REAL stuff of money, teach how to have a better life with money, and leave you with some serious "ah-ha's about the next thing you can do right to be better with your money.

Visit www.thefinancegym.com for tour dates and information.

Why I Love My Credit Cards

A number of experts recommend that people go all cash to learn how to manage their budget. It seems to work for many, but it doesn’t work for me. Personally, I rarely keep more than $20 cash on me when running around in my daily life. I’ve found that when I have $100 in cash, it just disappears. I save all my receipts and still can’t figure out where all of it went. When I keep $20, it seems to last forever.

So, these are the reasons I love my credit cards:

Tracking

I can see every single little thing that I’ve spent my money on all in one place. I can easily see if I overspent on one category or another. I’m also reminded of purchases that may have seemed justifiable at the time, but a month later, give me reason to question my logic.

Convenience

Remember back in the day when people wrote checks at the store and the minute you saw the checkbook come out, you started looking for a new line, because you knew it was going to be a while. Now, that’s how I feel about cash. First the customer has to count it, then the cashier has to count it, then there’s change, or the dreaded “oh wait, let me give you a nickel” scenario. Credit cards are so much faster. No counting required. Swipe. Yes. Sign. Go.

Protection

If I lose my credit card, I can cancel it. If something goes wrong with a purchase, I can dispute the charge. If someone else uses it, the credit card company won’t hold me responsible. Some cards even insure the things that I buy with it.

Rewards

Cash Back. I earn 1-3% cash back on my purchases. And it may not be a lot, but it’s considerably more than 0. I pay my household bills with my credit card for the cash back every month. I even charged the down payment for our car for the cash back.

Plus, some of the sign-up rewards are incredible! My husband and I each signed up for a new credit card the other day because they were offering $200 cash once we spent $500 on the card in the first three months. So we spent $1,000 combined on things that we would’ve purchased no matter what (food, gas, bills, etc…) and they credited us $400 cash. 

It’s always important to remember that ‘they’ (the financial lending institutions) are in the business of making money. They provide these incentives to lure people in and they are betting on the majority to hold a balance so 'they' make money on the exorbitant late fees and interest. Don’t fall for it. If you don’t have the cash to pay it off, don’t use the credit card. 

Speaking of which, that’s the perfect segue into the things I don’t do to make sure my credit cards and I continue to have a healthy relationship:

• I never keep a balance on a credit card. Ever. I pay every single month’s balance in full and on time. Credit cards are a very slippery slope.
• I don’t pay annual fees. It’s not worth it.
• I never spend money that I think/plan/expect I’ll have later. I only spend what I know I have now, can afford, and will have in a month when the bill comes due.
• I don’t authorize indefinite auto-payments on my credit card. If there is something that has to be an auto-charge, I track it very carefully to ensure there aren’t any glitches in the system…Ahem…over charges, fees, or extra charges.
• I double check all return credits to ensure that the money is actually being credited back to my account. As we all know, technology isn’t perfect. So, I keep all of my receipts to remind myself when I need to check. It’s my money, it’s my responsibility.

In short, I use credit cards because they save me money and they help me track my spending. 

-Leah Schonlank

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

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