Personal Finance Tips to Follow
The personal finance tips
you’ll want to follow in any year…
Ladies & gents, start your engines. We’re going to negotiate.
Follow These Tips & Get on a Financially Savvy Track
Let’s all agree that this has been the weirdest - ok - the crappiest year in modern history. Being financially savvy is incredible important right now, and more so than ever. Below are a couple of relatively unexpected tips to get you on your way.
Negotiate x100
Negotiations are a part of everyday life and if you’re new to it, you’ll need to learn fast. Everything is negotiable! From car payments, car insurance, bank fees, monthly cellphone bills, wifi, electricity + gas, rent, mortgage payments, clothes…you name it! The other day, I was chatting with a friend about how I negotiated my rent to be $400 less than it was before and lowered by car insurance saving $500 for the year - all in the same week. Both of these negotiations were for the most part, unrelated to COVID. While rent took some back and forth discussions with a bid strategy, the NYC rental market hadn’t really been affected yet. Similarly, my car insurance payments were very high and I go straight to the point with the company. As I poked and got myself informed, I found ways to change my file around lowering the yearly cost. With healthy, polite, and educational conversations, you can negotiate your bills. This is not something you should do only in 2020 because of the global pandemic - it’s good to put into practice and do every so often. However, given the situation from an economic standpoint isn’t too favourable for anybody, gives you the opportunity to lower your payments across the board - especially if you’re in financially difficult situation before of the coronavirus.
Seek Resources for Support
I called my Canadian bank to negotiate my monthly cost. It was as high as $10.95/month for an account that I stopped using. I was also charged the $120 yearly fee. I called the bank and asked them to cancel the card, though they mentioned I’d lose my flight points if I were to not renew (pay the yearly fee). While I got incredibly annoyed and told them that I couldn’t use those points even if I wanted to because of COVID, they mentioned the bank is helping customers who cannot pay their debt. I thought about those who’ve lost their jobs, and regardless am grateful that financial institutions, governments, investors, volunteers and many other groups are finding ways to support.
In addition to financial resources for payment (i.e. government aid, loan extensions, etc.), there are many free resources from an employment perspective. Founders, tech companies and similar have been building spreadsheet after spreadsheet with job opportunities and user generated employee databases. From Airbnb building its own website with its former employees showcased to individuals on Twitter sharing their databases available for unemployed professionals looking for work and employers searching for matches, there’s a lot out there.
Routine expenses like gym memberships come into question, as well. With many organizations like Barry’s Bootcamp, SoulCycle, SolidCore and Variis hosting free IGTV classes or virtual classes on a donation / discounted basis, it could be an opportunity to think about your health expenses and reorganize. Similarly, you can choose to support those local businesses, or individual personal trainers by donating to their practice instead.
Here are a couple to get you started:
Business & Education
Financial resources spreadsheet for business founders to get through COVID-19
450 Ivy League courses that are free right now
What happens when your internship gets cancelled
Fitness
Keep Track of Your Expenses Using Fintech Apps for Automation
There are so many of these at our disposal. Check my favourites:
Create an Investment Strategy
While tracking and understand your expenses is a great exercise, net “profit” is income minus expenses. Increasing the income part of the equation is just as important. Most will have a salary, an hourly wage and one source of income. Others will so far go to include side gigs / projects. While all of those options are fine, imagine putting your money to work. Investing in stocks, real estate, bitcoin and similar can be helpful in building wealth. It doesn’t have to be scary. With the variety of fintech apps out there and robo-investment tools (i.e. Wealthsimple, Wealthfront, Betterment, etc.), creating a simple investment strategy that works well for you is the first step. If you’re wondering how to start, pick up an investment books, reach out to young wealth managers or free resources like The Financial Diet to help you combat the fear. Downloading investment apps and adding in $50/month or similar can be a low risk way of seeing which app or investment strategy works for you.
Find a Community to Chat About Your Finances Openly
At Ladies Who Lunch From Home, we recently hosted a quarantini night dedicated to the #investing channel. On our Slack, we have a variety of channels and during quarantine, the ladies have been pretty busy chatting about investment strategies and wealth management. It’s become less rare for women to openly discuss their money with friends, and thank goodness for that! We took shots for every poor financial decision we’d made lately…and a shot for every great financial decision. I shared the “Roast Me” feature from my Cleo app and laughed about each other’s funny decisions. On a more serious note, finding a community to openly discuss investment strategies with (i.e. stock portfolios, wealth manager contacts, softwares, perspectives, etc.) is important. In stressful times like these, a supportive community can help you relieve stress and gain knowledge as to your finances. Combatting the fear…again, is key.
