9 Steps To Financial Freedom - Step 3

 

BEING HONEST WITH YOURSELF

REALITY CHECK: THROW away a four-dollar magazine you never got around to

reading—easy. Toss in the garbage five dollars’ worth of food that’s gone bad; you may reprimand yourself, but you probably do it all the time. Buy a sweater on sale for thirty dollars, then notice six months later that you wore it only once; it just didn’t fit right; you give it away. Now try to rip up and throw away a dollar bill. I have found almost no one who could do this without great discomfort. Yet everything about the way the money establishment functions is calculated to distance us from our money, to anesthetize us to its power. The plastic card that slides through the machine so smoothly when we make our purchases; the automated voice of the bank’s telephone answering system that robotically answers our money questions; the digital electronic readouts of the stock exchange language that flash on our TV screens for the privileged few who understand it; the instant up-to-the-minute online updates for all our financial transactions. All of these “conveniences” leave us many steps removed from the actual thing. Most of the money we use today is in the form of the plastic cards we use as currency or online purchases that seem to disconnect us from money even more. Isn’t that one reason it’s so easy to spend—“it’s only plastic”?

One way to get in touch with your money is to actually start touching

it again, to handle cash, to feel and respect it, to delight in spending it the way you did as a child, to enjoy choosing not to spend it, to take pleasure in putting it away now for later. The use of a debit card, while still plastic, is a step in the right direction, as it is more directly tied to the actual money we have available at the bank.

This third step toward financial freedom, then, is about getting back in touch with your money and understanding that you have the power to decide how to use it. And it’s about being honest with yourself. You have looked back to your childhood memories of money and connected them to your fears today and created new truths to keep the voice of those fears from paralyzing you against taking action. Now we are about to face your present reality. We will compare the money you have coming in with the money you have going out—real income, real expenses. With this step, by being willing to face up to what you are really doing with your money, your thoughts, actions, and words about money will begin to merge and become truthful. With this step, you begin to take control of your financial life in a concrete way.

Where Does The Money Go?

Have you ever taken a big wad of bills from an ATM machine, then found yourself, a day or two later, nearly out of cash and unable to reconstruct exactly where you spent it? And even when you retrace all your steps, you still come up $20, $40, or $60 short? It’s upsetting, but most of us feel that way most of the time: a little short, a little panicky, wondering exactly where our money is going.

 

KAREN’S STORY

 

You could tell right away that Karen was an extremely efficient woman. She produced a radio show, ran her household, organized her children’s

lives, seemed to have everything under control—your  basic superwoman. Except when it came to money.

I guess it was when Richie’s mother died that he decided we needed to do something special with that money. She left us $25,000, and that was the most we ever had in one lump sum. So Richie wanted us to figure out how to invest it right away, he wanted to keep it safe and sound but have it grow for our future. I think this money meant so much to him because it was the last thing he would get from his mom. I made an appointment with a financial planner a friend recommended, and we did go, right away. He was nice, but he wouldn’t tell us where to invest the money until we filled out a questionnaire covering all our finances, not just about the money we wanted to invest, so we took the forms home. I told Richie I’d fill it out because I handle most of the finances, but it’s still there, sitting on my desk. I get queasy every time I look at it. I have a Visa card with a pretty big balance that Richie doesn’t even know about. So I can’t fill in the part about how much we owe—if I told him, he’d really be angry. And we have a few other unpaid bills, nothing serious, just sometimes we’re a little short and I pay late. It just seems like a big tangled mess, so I keep procrastinating, and now Richie is the one who keeps asking about the forms. It’s been about six months since we got those forms and God only knows how I wish I could just fill them out and send them back, but I can’t. The money? Oh, it’s still in our joint account, except now it’s down, I think to about $22,000.

In time  that  $22,000  will  inevitably  go  down  to  $20,000,  then

$15,000, and before you know it, it will be gone. Most likely the balance on Karen’s secret credit card will be higher as well. What happened to Karen happens to most of us. We’re afraid to really look at our finances head-on, to see where everything really goes.

We all work so hard for our money, yet don’t let it work  for  us because we simply will not deal with it, will not check the amount we spend against the amount we bring in. And not dealing with money is just a different way of dealing with it—badly.

One of the first things I asked new clients to do was to write down on

a piece of paper what they thought they spent each month. If the clients were married or living together, each, without consulting the other, was to write down what they thought their combined household expenses added up to each month. A simple enough question, right? We’ll see.

Where Do You Think You Stand Today?

Think carefully, then please write down your own answer: What does it cost you to live each month?

If you are married or living with someone with whom you share expenses, please ask him or her to write down the answer to the same question.

I am willing to bet you that after we complete this chapter, you will find that you’re like most people. You’ll find that you do not know.

How is that possible?

Most of us believe, or deceive ourselves into believing, that we need about $1,000 to $1,500 a month less than we actually do need to go on living the exact same way we live right now. Surprisingly, this figure seems to vary only a little bit regardless of income levels. If a client writes down that she needs, after taxes, $3,000 a month to live, invariably the truer figure is $4,000. If the client  thinks he spends

$10,000 a month, the actual figure is closer to $11,500. Where does this month-to-month self-deception lead us? Into financial chaos.

The reason we don’t know how much it really costs us to live is this: Our planned spending doesn’t cover expenses that don’t occur every month or expenses that just crop up.

For example:

Do you belong to a gym? If so, do you consider this cost per month even if you pay to renew just once a year?

Do you wear disposable contact lenses? If so, do your monthly expenses include the $40 they actually cost you each month, or do you

let yourself be surprised each time you have to buy a new year’s batch for nearly $500?

Do you pay your insurance premiums twice or four times a year?

Do you calculate the cost of insurance in your monthly bills?

Where did you go on vacation last year? What did that onetime expense cost average over twelve months?

Do you pay someone to do your taxes every year? How much does that cost every month?

These big expenses hit once or twice a year, probably surprising you every time. And then there are seasonal expenses:

If you live in your own house, come summer do you forget about how much higher the oil bills run in the fall?

If you have a fireplace, do you buy two cords of wood a winter?

How much do they cost a month?

How about the higher electric bills you get from using air conditioners in the summer? You’re paying those bills, too, in February.

Do you have your windows washed once or twice a year?

If you have a lawn or garden that someone else helps tend, have you figured those weekly costs of the summer months into your monthly budget?

Did you send your children to summer camp last summer? Enroll them in ice-skating classes in the winter?

Do you have pets? Do you have them groomed at least once each season? Take them to the vet a couple of times a year?

Do you try to believe you spend little or nothing on clothes each year, when in fact you buy a few new things each season?

Do you get your hair cut and maybe colored every couple of months? How much, then, does it cost every single month?

Here’s another surprise. If you figure your expenses on a monthly basis, it’s easy to forget that certain expenses occur each week. Some months have four Fridays (or Mondays, Tuesdays, and so on), for example, while others have five. If you make some sort of payment every week—child care, a cleaning woman, a mortgage payment withdrawn automatically every two weeks—the extra weekly payments will take

place in four months of the year. These are exactly the sort of expenses that stay “hidden” and make you wonder why your figures aren’t adding up right.

Plus, the smallest expenses add up fast—the ones too small, you might think, to be worth figuring into your budget at all.

For instance, do you go to the movies once a week? When you do, do you buy the tickets for yourself and your partner, have popcorn and sodas, go for a simple dinner afterward, as simple as pizza or a burger and fries? That’s not so much, is it? No, it isn’t, not on any given Friday night. Maybe $20 for the tickets, $8 for the popcorn and sodas, and $30 for a simple meal. But once a week over a year, that’s $3,016. And too many of us forget to include expenses so “small.”

Other “small” expenses might come up less often—but add up just as much. Magazine subscriptions, cosmetics, supplies for the yard, oil changes for the car, batteries for the flashlight, charcoal for the grill: Do you know what it really costs you to keep your life running smoothly over a year’s time?

How about special occasions? Do you take your partner to an expensive anniversary dinner each year? How many birthday parties, housewarmings, and baby showers did you attend last year? Didn’t you bring a present to each one? When you go to a friend’s house for dinner, do you routinely bring a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine that costs, on average, $15 each time? Might you have done that twenty times or more last year? Do you know what the Christmas holiday season costs every month? Over time, and added to those other hidden expenses, these here-and-there expenses must also be considered truthfully each month.

Finally you need to allocate $100 to $200 each month for miscellaneous unpredictable expenses. You might need some dental work that’s not covered in your insurance. You might have to travel to your brother’s wedding. There’s no way to avoid some surprise costs, so you need to figure them into your cash flow.

Most people were shocked to discover by how much they had underestimated—and that’s when they had guessed as honestly as they could.

It’s a scary realization, but there’s a wonderful flip side to that fear. Once you take this step, you will feel better for knowing the truth. And

you will begin to gain power over the money that’s controlled you for so long.

 

YOUR EXERCISE: HOW MUCH IS GOING OUT?

 

I am asking you now to think about your money. Who cares more about your money than you? Shouldn’t you know where it goes? It’s one thing to say that you want to be financially powerful and responsible. To do that, you must face the truth honestly and know exactly where you stand today. This is essential.

Please get out your bank statements, ATM statements, credit card bills, whatever will tell you how you spent your money over the past two years. These papers are more revealing than a diary; they contain the key to how you live your life.

Yes, it will take you some time to do this, but think how much time it will give back to you in the future. You work forty hours a week or more to earn your money. I am asking you to take a few hours to take your money out of the darkness, to see it in the light of reality, to see where you stand. Don’t just read these pages—pick up a pen and take action.

Go through your checkbook, checking account statements, computerized statements, all your records for the past two years. Not one year, but two years. Maybe this year was an extraordinary time— you remodeled the house, bought a new car—but looking at a two-year period, you’ll get a good idea of what it costs you to live the way you are living. All your checks, cash withdrawals, money spent every month, money spent once a year, money spent once a season, holiday expenses, everything.

Make categories for each month—such as telephone, gasoline, food, utilities, vet bills, golf fees, baby-sitting.

After all the categories are complete, total each category. Divide each category by 24. This will give you how much you spend per month on average for each category. At my website, suzeorman.com, you can use my free Expense Tracker to complete this exercise.

Now add together all the averages in each category. This will tell you what it costs you to live each month. Remember, these are averages.

If your average is $3,000, most months you’ll spend less—say, $1,800 or

$2,000. But in some months you’ll spend $5,000 or $6,000. To meet your expenses, you need to bring in that average number each month.

 

YOUR EXERCISE: HOW MUCH IS COMING IN?

 

Now we have to match exactly what we have coming in after taxes with the figure we have just learned is going out. Please write down now all the income from every source that you have coming in. Only calculate an amount you are fairly certain will continue coming in for at least one more year. If you loaned someone money, for example, and she has been paying you back regularly but owes only three more payments, don’t include this figure. Or if you’re working and about to retire or be laid off, don’t count that paycheck, either. Be as realistic as possible as to how much you can really count on month in, month out. Possible sources of income:

Monthly paychecks after taxes Predictable bonuses

Social Security income Disability income Bond income

Rental income, if you have any

Gifts from your parents or children, if you can really count on them year in, year out

Loan repayments, if they will continue for more than a year Income you are taking or about to take from retirement accounts Pension income

Income from Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and 401(K)s Miscellaneous

Take this total and divide it by 12, so you can see what you have coming in after taxes on a monthly basis.

Now compare your outgoing to your incoming. Now you know exactly where you stand.

Where Do I Go From Here?

If you began this exercise knowing exactly where you stand financially, you’ll have confirmed that you do spend each month what you thought you did, and that you also earn at least as much as, if not more than, you spend. Bravo!

The chances are better, though, that if you’re like many of us, you’ve just confirmed that you spend more than you thought. Quite possibly you also spend more than you earn.

What can you do? You can do one or both of two things. Make more money and/or decide to spend less. Look at each of your categories again, and decide how much in each category you want to spend.

Notice my wording. I didn’t say how much you are allowed to spend. I did not say to spend less. I said, decide how much you want to spend in each category. If you’re spending more than you’re earning, this solution is not about creating limitations. It’s about making decisions— determining what you most want to spend your money on. If you can make more money realistically, without undue stress, in the immediate future (by changing jobs, say, or adding a second job), then you’re in a position where you may be able to earn what you spend and go on living the way you do right now, if you choose to. If you take this route, make sure that the numbers balance out.

If you’re like most of us, however, more likely you need to decide to spend your money differently. This does not mean that you have to take one drastic action that crimps your pleasures and quality of life, such as getting by with one car when your family needs two. Unrealistic budget cuts, like unrealistic diets, never work. Consider, instead, making the decision to spend $25 to $30 less per month from fifteen or twenty of your spending categories.

 

TRIMMING

There will be some categories where the amounts are fixed—rent, mortgage, taxes, and so on. There will be other categories—in fact, the majority of categories—where you can actually decide what the total spent per year will be. You can almost make a game out of it with yourself. If you cut and color your hair every eight weeks, see if you can schedule it for every nine weeks. You’ll save the cost of one  whole haircut each year and probably won’t notice. Is there one magazine subscription you can do without? Can you have three Friday movie nights a month instead of four (or five, in the months with five Fridays)? Can you have your windows cleaned every eight months instead of every six months? Keep deciding to trim, a little here, a little there, until what comes in matches what goes out. Keep your new truth with you as you begin to consider how you want to spend your money. With each

decision you make, you are gaining power over your money.

After you’ve done your mental trimming, put down in writing the yearly total you decided on for each category. Now keep track of what you spend in each category, month by month. The best way to keep track is to create a chart or system that will work for you. Each month when you pay your bills, check your spending by category. If you use up any allocation early, and want to spend more in that category, you’ll have to make new decisions about what, if anything, you want to do by seeing where you stand with the other categories. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak, except that you’re Peter—and you’re also Paul.

For instance, say you decided you wanted to spend $2,000 this year on clothes but found a $200 coat you wanted in September, after the

$2,000 was already spent. Check your other categories. Maybe you had to cut your vacation short and saved $200. Take the $200 and buy the coat. As long as the numbers always balance, you’re in the driver’s seat.

As a reminder, post the categories you’re trimming on the fridge, or on your bulletin board, or on a yellow stickie in your checkbook. Mark your three Friday movie nights in your calendar, so you’ll remember. Write down when you’re due to make your hair appointments for every nine weeks in your calendar. Note in your calendar when you’re due to have your windows washed again—in eight months instead of six. If the date is into next year, jot it down at the end of this year and transfer the dates.

You may find that you can come up with wonderfully creative ways to

 trim your spending so that you hardly notice. One family (both parents work and their teenage kids aren’t home much) had the garbage picked up every two weeks instead of every week, trimming a painless $200 a year. A single mother went to the grocery store every eight days instead of every single Saturday, simply paying more attention to the food she already had in the house. By doing so, she trimmed nearly $400 from what she allocated for food. Another woman learned to do her own manicures and doesn’t mind a bit. Savings: close to $500 a year. Another client did his taxes himself with a computer program, rather than going to his accountant. Savings: $600. But only when you see in front of you how you spend your money now will you be able to decide how you would rather be spending your money. (If you look at everything and see no possible way you can decide to spend less anywhere, just keep reading. Later on we deal with ways of freeing up your money.)

How does this differ from being on a budget? With a budget you limit what you can spend each month, and that’s that. Here, you are not limiting what you can spend each month but simply deciding how you want to spend the money you already know you have to spend. Rather than being dictated by a restriction, your actions are dictated by the choices you make. As you read further into this book, and over the years as what you choose to spend your money on changes, your allocations will change.

You have just taken the hardest step toward financial freedom. With this step you have been honest with yourself. Now you know exactly where you stand.

The next steps will take you to where you want to be.

A Note On Steps 4, 5 And 6

You have taken the first steps to financial freedom by facing the memories and fears that have kept you from dealing with your money. You have also started to recover the power and strength that enable you to be in control of your money—the money you have now  and  the money that will come to you.

But going back to the past is in itself not enough to create the future you want. Financial freedom requires not just insights but also actions, and to carry out these actions you must learn about money and how it needs to be treated. True financial freedom is not only having money, but having power over that money as well.

In these next chapters, you will learn how to manage your money and create more. In these chapters I will talk about the numbers that follow the dollar sign—facts, figures, how it all works. Don’t let the numbers scare you. There is no financial computation you’ll need to make that can’t be done on a calculator. You will soon be able to trust yourself with numbers more than you ever thought you could. You will soon see, too, that you have more than what it takes to manage your money on your own (a message, by the way, that the commissions-oriented financial industry would rather you never learn).

These three steps, as you’ll see, are “must-do’s” to ensure that the money you have now will grow, that the money you want to create will indeed come your way, and that your money will help take care of you and the people you love when you need it to.

Remember the goal you wrote down for yourself when you first picked up this book? Please pull it out now and look at it again. You are about to take the step-by-step actions to make that goal a reality.

 

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