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Financial Fluency Episode #4: Red Flags for Financial Abuse with Lindsay Fischer

December 4, 2015/0 Comments/in Podcast /by Jen

Hello hello, welcome to another episode of Financial Fluency, Speaking the Language of Money.

This time I’m joined by Lindsey Fischer, Lindsey is an author, speaker, advocate, copywriter, teacher and all round fabulous person!

Lindsey’s memoir is The House on Sunset. I read it and was completely blown away by it. We talked through how finances can be used as a form of control in an abusive relationship.

It’s one of the main reasons that I work with women. The statistics on how many women suffer domestic abuse because they feel they can’t afford to leave are just astonishing. The relationships where men control the finances are SEVEN TIMES more likely to involve domestic abuse than those with an equal share. Tweet that >>>

You can find Lindsay at her website Survivors Will Be Heard or here on her Facebook page

You can listen below and Tweet it out here >>>

If you think you know someone who would be helped by hearing Lindsay’s story please share this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, I really appreciate you being here. If you like it, please subscribe and join me every week. Thank you.

Available here on iTunes

Jen x

Lindsay Fischer, BS – Secondary Education, English, Missouri State University, is on a mission to tell others there is life after abuse.

Lindsay, a former high school teacher, survived an 18-month relationship with a sociopath. After leaving she was faced with more challenges as she found herself having to rebuild her self-esteem and overcome homelessness. With a determined heart and mind to make a difference, Lindsay embarked on the journey of spreading her message far and wide. As a powerful advocate for other survivors she’s speaking to empower women across the globe and spread her message. Lindsay knows the power in healing and living a good life after abuse. Lindsay is a published author and continues to impact others with her memoir, The House on Sunset Street. Lindsay brings knowledge, understanding and the ability to teach others that there is life after abuse.

Financial Fluency Episode #5: Making A List And Checking It Twice

December 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Podcast /by Jen

Hi and welcome to another episode of Financial Fluency. This episode I’m talking to you about holiday spending and sharing some tips on how you can keep in control of your finances during crazy season!

You can listen in below and Tweet it out here >>>

If there were ever a time of year created with the specific intention of getting us all to consume and spend more than we would at any other time of the year, it is surely the Holiday Season!.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly said,

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”

So Let’s do Some Holiday Planning!

First up I want to talk to you about presents. Now, this is something we all know that we have to buy, and some of us save up ahead of time, but often we get caught out.

I know we’re already into the holiday season, but wherever you’re at in your process of getting ready for the holidays, sit down and make a list. Make a list of who you’re buying the presents for, how much you want to spend in total, then go through the list and figure out how much you want to spend on each person.

Once you have that done, take a look at how much you’re spending on each person. Does that add up to more than the total amount you want to spend? If so, you need to adjust one of those things.

You can do it either way. You can either realize you’re going to spend more and try to budget for that with the presents, or reduce the amount you’re spending on each person. Once you have that figured out, then I would say go and look for the presents.

And Don’t Forget Those Outside the Family

Think about remembering clients, co-workers, vendors or other business associates that you might want to buy something small for.

Top Tip: I think it’s a great idea to have a sort of go to present. Not that you want to get everyone exactly the same thing but for people who don’t know each other! If there’s something small and thoughtful (and extra points for relatively inexpensive) that you can give to them – especially if they’ll think of you when they see it or open it or eat it – it can save you a ton of time.

Another thing you’ll want to put on this list is holiday tipping depending on where you live and what kind of services you get.

Think about who and how much you want to tip them for. I know in New York this is a big thing, and I’ve never lived in New York, I’ve never lived somewhere with doormen and things like that, so if you do do holiday tipping, make sure you put that into this list so you can get it budgeted in for the entire overall holiday budget.

Once you have those lists, you can start looking at the presents.

Modern Day Santa Lists

I love Amazon Wish List and in our family several of us put things that we want on Amazon Wish List. It’s just like a modern day list for Santa! It saves time and can be really helpful in making sure you’re spending on things that people actually want.

Because I’ve been doing so many audible books this year, I actually asked that people give me some audible gift certificates so I can get more audible books to listen to.

Using Pinterest boards is another great idea, and you can either make private boards where you pin things that you’re thinking about getting different people. Doing that also allows you then to look at the products that you want and then go and shop for the best online deal.

I’m a pretty big online shopper these days, and I know lots of people go in person to do Black Friday shopping and things like that, but I find the atmosphere during those big sales a little too much for me, especially when I’m trying to enjoy my time around the holidays.

If you are an online shopper that gives you more time to do the comparison shopping, and there are a lot of sites that can help you do that.

A few of the most popular comparison sites are: Google Shopping, PriceGrabber and Shopping.com so once you have that figured out, you can check it back with your list of how much you want to spend on different people and how much you want to spend overall. This will really help you get that plan and overview of how much you’re going to spend on everything.

Tis Also The Season to Party

Once we have the presents out of the way, some other things you need to think about are parties and events.

If you’re going to other people’s parties or events, what are you going to bring and what are you going to wear?

If you’re hosting the event yourself, how much are you going to spend on food, decorations and different things?

Try to plan that out, write those down, and then in order to pay for all of those things, I think it’s a great idea to go and do a bit of hunting for hidden cash in your home.

Hidden Treasure

A great way to do that is to look for gift cards. Do you have any gift cards sitting around that you never used, maybe a gift card to a store that you don’t really frequent, but you’ve kept because you thought, someday I’ll use it? Can you use that now to buy any of these gifts or to go towards food or decoration for parties?

Another thing you can do is to check your rewards points on your different cards. If you can use these towards travel – if you’re travelling – that’s probably usually the best way to do it. If not, can you use any of them towards gifts?

The rate that you get on a lot of those cards isn’t fantastic for buying gifts, but if you want to save money right now and there are some gifts that fall into the range that you want for the people that you want, that’s the way to do it without stretching your budget too far putting too much on credit cards.

Make Way for the New (and Earn from the Old)

Another thing you can do is declutter your home to make room for the tree and the new presents that are coming, and see if you can sell any of the stuff you’ve decluttered on eBay or different websites. You can check out a great guide to doing that here.

Another thing to look at is old electronics sitting around. Do you have any that you can either sell online or trade in? Some great sites are Gazelle for mobile devices and GameStop for video games.

Target and Best Buy also do trade ins nowadays, so if you kept the last phone from your most recent upgrade, you can possibly trade that in towards something else, maybe something from the electronic department, or you may be able to get gift cards.

Now it’s Up To You

These are a few ideas for first ways to plan out how much you’re going to spend, and then to try and find some hidden cash around to go towards that so it won’t stretch your budget quite as much as we’re used to having it stretched over the holidays.

I feel so bad when I talk to people about that January 1st holiday hangover in terms of their finances. When people say they look at their credit cards and see how much they put on them over the holidays. And then you’re starting out the New Year – a time for making all those resolutions, starting afresh and making new plans – but you have all this extra debt to pay off for quite a few months into the New Year.

If any of these tips help you to have less of a holiday hangover in terms of debt, I would be so pleased about that. Tweet these tips! >>>

Another thing that I think is great to do around this time of year, especially right after the holidays, is to start planning out how much you want to spend next year on the holidays.

I suggest having a savings account where you put just a little bit of money each month, however much you need to put away each month to make it come to the full amount you want by the holidays.

So maybe you want a thousand extra dollars? Divide that by 12 and put that much away each month going forward so that next year at the holidays you won’t have to put things on credit cards and it won’t feel like as big of a stretch for you.

Another way of doing this is to use something like Digit to help you save without even realising it (more about using tech to help with your finances here.)

So there you have it, that is my Make The List And Check It Twice podcast episode, I hope it was helpful to you. You can Tweet out my podcast here: and share the love!

If you liked it, please subscribe to the channel and I would love to hear more from you. You can email me at jen@jenturrell.com. I read all my emails personally and respond to as many as I possibly can.

Thank you, and happy holidays.

Also available on iTunes

Financial Fluency Episode #3: Cutting the Junk (Spending)

November 25, 2015/2 Comments/in Podcast /by Jen

Today is a solo episode, it’s just going to be me talking to you. I’m a little bit under the weather, so I’ve got a bit of a croak in my throat, but I wanted to talk to you about junk spending regardless.

You can listen in below and Tweet it out here

Today I want to talk to you about junk.

The kinds of junk I want to talk about are junk spending, junk food and physical junk. The link I see between all of these is actually the junk spending, because in order to get the other things, we need to junk spend on the junk food and the junk that we put in our homes and our lives.

What is Junk?

To me, junk is the empty calories of life. It’s the stuff that neither nourishes nor brings us true pleasure or joy. It’s the stuff we put in our mouths just to fill the emptiness in our stomachs and the stuff we put in our lives just to fill some kind of emptiness in side.

So How do You Know When You are Consuming Junk?

Well, I tend to have the sort of bloated empty feeling afterwards, tinged with a bit of regret. I think a lot of us feel that way, particularly if we eat a bunch of junk food and I also sometimes feel that way after I do some junk buying and look over what I got and think, oh god, why did I buy this? I think everyone’s had at least some experience of that in their lives, and yet a lot of us keep on doing it over and over without really being conscious of it when it’s happening.

So my challenge to you today is to look at your junk. What I would like you to do is go back, either think back through the past several days to a week, or if you have a bank app or a money tracking app on your phone like Mint or YNAB or one of those, take a look at the purchases of the past week.

I don’t want you to get judgmental, I want you to be curious, take a look at it like a scientist studying this pattern here, and check out how many things on your list you feel really nourished you in either mind, body, pocketbook or soul.

How many of these things brought you true memorable pleasure or joy, things that you really, really enjoyed and can think back to and it’s stuck in your head that yes, this was a great thing?

How many of the purchases just kind of filled the hole or filled up your time without really adding all that much to your life?

Take out a piece of paper and I want you to make a list of things that you’ve junk spent on recently. Once you have that list, take a note also of how you made each purchase.

Was it with a physical credit card that you pulled out of your wallet and either swept or handed to someone?
Was it pulling out your card to read the numbers over the phone?
Were you using actual cash?

If you tend to buy online, what kind of payment method did you use?

Did you again pull out the physical card to type in the numbers?
Does your computer remember your credit card number and autofill it for you?

Do you use PayPal or Stripe?

If you do, does your computer remember the PayPal or Stripe passwords for you
Do you have to type them in each time to get in?

If you shop on Amazon, do you have One Click buying enabled?

So all of these things that I mentioned, these are things that very, very clever marketers and vendors have come up with to take down all the barriers to junk spending and impulse buying.

One Click Amazon shopping is absolutely brilliant from the business owner perspective. However, as someone who maybe is trying to curb their spending to reach their financial goals, to pay off debt and to gain wealth, these things make all of that much harder.

What I want you to try to do is put some of those barriers back in place to make it harder for you to buy the things that you end up regretting later. Tweet that! #junkspending

OK What Now?

From your list you should be able to see what you bought, how you paid for it and using that information, we can then make it a little bit harder and put a barrier in place so that you won’t buy junk next time.

If you’re using a physical credit card, the one you pull out and either hand to someone or pull out to read the numbers or type into your computer, I would love for you to take a little post it note which I actually have on my card right now, and write the words ‘no junk’ on it, and stick it to the front of your credit card. Stick it to the front so that you have to pick it up and look under it to read the numbers.

If you go to your computer and you already have your credit card number entered in and your computer remembers it for you, I want you to disable that function. It depends how you set it up, whether it’s in your Keychain with your iOS system, or maybe you have something like PasswordBox. Whatever it is, however you set that up, go in and disable it, or the next time it comes up and tries to do it for you, you can change the password and if it asks if you want to update your password, say no. That way you have to type it in every time.

So those are a few clever ways to make it a little bit harder for you to buy.

If you mostly use PayPal, Stripe or some service like that, I would also like you to change your password and disable the memory function so you actually have to type a password in each time.

When you change the password, try changing it to something that reminds you not to buy junk. You can either take the ‘no junk’ method that we used on the credit card, not using ‘no junk’, because that’s not a very strong password, but work in something that will remind you to only buy things that you really love and need and that will make you happy, and that won’t feel like junk afterwards.

With your list I also want you to take a look at the things that you don’t consider junk spending, that really do either nourish you, sustain your life and your lifestyle or bring you real joy. I think one of the best ways to combat junk spending besides these little hacks that I just mentioned is to really take a good look at your big life goals, and not only look at them once, but actually go the route of getting an image, some kind of picture that you can identify with that big goal. Put it somewhere where you see it daily.

You don’t have to do the full on vision board if that’s not your thing, but if there’s a vacation or a house, whatever the upgrade is that you want to make, find some kind of image to look at daily, put it in your computer, put it on your phone as the wallpaper, because when you see that often, you’ll get joy anticipating it, you’ll get joy knowing you’re working towards it, and you’ll get more joy out of not spending on the junk that you don’t really want and don’t really need and doesn’t make you happy anyway.

You’ll instead be putting that money towards the thing that you really do want.

Getting In The Way Of The Good Stuff

The other issue that I see with junk spending is that it crowds out your ability to work on these bigger life goals that you want. Tweet that! #junkspending

If you’re constantly putting all these little charges on your credits – especially if you’re junk spending in a way that you get ahead of your actual money – that just seems like a kick in the butt of any big goal that you have. Let’s make sure that particularly if you are in debt, the junk spending is a lovely low hanging fruit to cut right out of your life.

Another way to do it is to quickly go into your credit card and bank statements and look for any subscriptions that you don’t use anymore, or even if you do use them, if they aren’t really worth what you’re paying for them.

If you think about it, if you’re putting those little subscriptions, even if it’s an eight dollar one here per month, a ten dollar there per month, 25 dollar there per month, you’re paying not only for that initial monthly cost, but then the interest that it accrues every month.

Even if it feels like it’s in your budget, if you have debt, that money could be going towards paying off that debt instead.

Again, I’m not asking you to give up anything that really nourishes you or brings you real joy, but most of us have some things like that, some low hanging fruit that we could just cut out.

There’s No Time Like the Present

I’d like you to start today. Every time you spend money today ask yourself, is this something that I really want, is this going to bring me joy? Is it going to sustain me and nourish me? Is it something I really need? Could I be making a better choice right now?

If the answer is yes, you really want it, you really need it, you could not be making a better choice, then totally go for it. But, if any of those answers are no, what I would suggest is if it’s in Amazon, put it in your Amazon wish list and if it’s not in Amazon, make a Pinterest board for things that you’re thinking about buying. Don’t buy it today, put it off for another day.

You can go back and look at it after you’ve had a chance to think about your big goals, after you’ve looked at your picture and made sure that it’s really something that’s not only worth the money you’re spending on it now, but if you do have debt, think of it as paying interest on that as well.

Is it really worth that? Is it worth not only the sticker price, but the interest as well? Hopefully that will help you to cut out some of that junk spending, and I am not preaching here as someone who has done this, this is something I’m working on myself. I catch myself buying things I don’t really need and sometimes don’t really want, and I look around the house and think,

gosh, how did our house get so full of stuff?

Then I have to go and de-clutter!

So I am personally working on this myself, I’m actively reining in any junk spending right now, and I would love for you to do it with me.

One other thing I want you to take note of when you’re looking at the expenditures that you would classify as junk, is what time of day did you buy them?

For a lot of people, I know that online shopping late at night is a real danger zone, especially if you consider that your unwind time. If it’s after the kids have gone to bed and the dishes have been done, and then you sit down and scroll through Pinterest, click on images and then go to the source of the image and buy the thing.

Or if you scroll through Amazon, again with Amazon One Click shopping it’s so easy just to grab a few things here and there.

Again with the One Click shopping, you don’t even have to pull it altogether into one shopping cart, you can click one thing and then keep scrolling, click another, and it’s kind of easy if you don’t want to pay attention to how much the total adds up to.

Another place I’ve seen it happen in our family is with both in-app purchases and Apple iTunes and Apple TV movie type purchases where it’s like, oh yeah, the kids really want this show, they loved this show, we’ll get that one.

Later there’s some movie or some song from a Disney movie or something that ends up being on our playlist for when we make long drives with the kids, but those things add up pretty quick, so I’m really curbing those.

If you are someone who does late night shopping, we can put a few things in place to try to curb that ahead of time before you’re already in that exhausted, I’ve had a hard day, I’ve made tons of great decisions today and now I’m in decision fatigue mode, so I’ll just buy whatever I feel like.

Here Are a Few Things You Can do

Plan not to be on your computer at night, make other plans and have no screen time after eight o’clock
Involving a spouse could make it more of a bright white line where we’re both going to stop being on our computers at a certain time of night
Put your iPhone and your computer away, which will be hard for a lot of people, but it’s something to think about

Peer Pressure is Not Just For the Playground!

For some people, junk spending is a result of peer pressure.

Perhaps it’s going out to lunch every day at work or maybe every Friday you and your friends get together for pizza or barbecue or something that isn’t as healthy as you’d like, but you like hanging out with your friends and you want to do it.

You’d rather eat something healthier and you’d rather not spend the money on barbecue or pizza, so a good thing to do is to make a suggestion: a new restaurant or barbecuing on your grill at home. Ask people to bring things so it’s not all down to you, but you can choose how you want to cook the main part of the meal, you’re more in control and you’ll probably spend less money.

Maybe you and your friends could even take turns in the summer barbecuing at each other’s houses or just changing it up in some way, go bowling, play cards, do something different instead of it always revolving around something you feel is both unhealthy and not how you want to be spending your money.

Target and the grocery store are places where I often end up buying things that aren’t on my list, so I have been trying to stick to my list religiously, and if I find something that’s not on my list, I put it on another list for the next time I come back.

If I don’t really need it right now this week, then it’s kind of junk, so I’ll put it on the list for next week. Any time you can put off making a purchase you’re better off, because we forget so many things in life, that you may just forget that you even thought about wanting that thing, and that’s usually good if it’s anywhere close to being a junk purchase.

So Those Are a Few Suggestions That I have About Junk

To recap, the main things were:

Put a post-it note on your credit card
Reset your password for PayPal and Stripe
Turn off the One Click buying in Amazon
Turn off the Keychain memory function to remember your credit cards on your computer
Look at your goals and keep those in mind to have them present in your mind so you want to spend on them and not on junk
Look at what time of day you do it and set up some barriers to make it harder for you to junk spend at those times of days
Peer pressure – suggest doing something different instead

There are a lot of different ways to tackle junk spending, but I’m tackling this in my own life right now and I would love for you to join me. Let me know in the comments below how you get on.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, I really appreciate you being here. If you like it, please subscribe and join me every week. Thank you.

Available here on iTunes