Do your finances control you, or do you control your finances?
YOUR MINDSET
Let’s start right where it matters the most. Let’s evaluate it from the source, your mindset, and emotions behind your finances. Looking at my finance and debt from credit cards and student loans made me furious, embarrassed, and anxious beyond belief until I changed my mindset. If I wanted to get anywhere, I had to adopt the nursing process and apply it to my life’s financial stability. First, I assessed my finances, which was probably the most challenging part, really looking into every last aspect of my finances because I really wanted to know where my money was going. I wanted control to meet my financial goals. Yes, is it hard to look and talk about your finances, yes of course, but practically EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US are or were in the exact same boat. No shame.
ASSESSMENT
Upon assessing my income, expenses, overall spending habits, total debt (yikes), and lifestyle expenses, I saw just how broke I was at this point in my life. The assessment is a complete scan and a head-to-toe complex assessment. It has to be comprehensive enough for you to be able to identify the etiology of your diagnosis.
DIAGNOSIS
I was ONE BROKE NURSE, to put it frankly. Between the student loans, credit card debt, and spending habits, there was no way that I was going to make it out of the vicious cycle of revolving debt if I didn’t make a plan and take action.
What is the diagnosis of your own financial situation?
PLANNING
Failing to plan IS planning to fail. Everyone needs a financial plan to execute and implement the change. Without the action plan, you will not find your motivation AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, your discipline to facilitate growth. This is not a financial diet or budget. This will take a whole lifestyle change if you want to stop living paycheck to paycheck PERMANENTLY. A plan starts with a budget and sticking to those limits. A strategy involves identifying all causation for your problem, coming up with an intervention, and then executing the interventions to solve the issue at hand.
Did you realize that you spend over $100 a month at Starbucks ordering your favorite coffee? Try homebrew with a fancy creamer whip cream and your own toppings, in an ecofriendly reusable cup, SO MANY MORE WINS HERE! I mean, you don’t have to STOP going to Starbucks, but start setting parameters or critical alarms for when you have to stop your spending in specific financial categories that you seem to hemorrhage from!
IMPLEMENTATION
How to best implement? What do you tell your patients when they are hesitant to do therapies that will only benefit them in the long run? You have to be your own nurse and encourage yourself like you would a patient. Do NOT be negligent to your financial health. Suppose you are careless about your financial health. In that case, it not only affects big financial situations down the road from your credit score, interest rates, and finance-ability for the other things you are living to do. Your life does NOT have to be a cycle of only living to pay your bills and having JUST enough. You CAN have more! This will take more than motivation. I actually HATE the word motivation because motivation only works when you are in the mood to do something. Have you ever realized how motivation can fail you?
This occurs when you are excited about something or to start something, like an exercise or implement a diet change. Still, then once the time actually GETS there for you to change this something or to take action, you are no longer “motivated” or in the mood to do it? This is why motivation will NEVER get you anywhere. What WILL get you somewhere is small, consistent changes and DISCIPLINE. If you do not have self-discipline, you will never be able to stop procrastinating, will be living, and saying all the excuses and validators in the world. You don’t want to be one of those people. You want to be someone who can TAKE ACTION and do what you have to ONLY when you want to but when YOU NEED TO THE MOST.
EVALUATION AND REASSESSMENT
Once you have executed your financial plan, you have to again use the nursing process. Was it effective? If not, what do we do for our patients’ interventions? We change them until we find what does and actually lead to the overall change we are looking for and need!
Even once you meet your goals and are finally financially stable, it is not a one and done thing. Like all good things, it takes maintenance. Without maintenance, you will fall right back into the poor spending habits, credit card debt, and financial decompensation you were in, in the first place. NO one wants to ruin tons of hard work and discipline.
YOUR FINANCIAL GOALS
Besides, once you can control your finances, you can use your money to get what you want and need from life. You will be able to do so many different things, and even your everyday life will be LESS stressful if you aren’t worried about being broke. Want to go on vacation? Want to buy a newer car (side note NEVER buy a brand new vehicle… more later on this)? Want to spoil yourself with a spa day? Trying to pay for a wedding? Wanting to buy a house? Wanting to CRUSH your student loans? You need to TAKE action.
BUDGET
KEEP IT SIMPLE. Write down all your bills. Can you afford to pay for everything you are right now? Look in your subscriptions on apple. How much money are you wasting EVERY single month on apps and subscription services you don’t even use? CANCEL these! Have payments automatically coming out of PayPal. Make sure you evaluate these. Once you have identified if you can even continue to pay everything you are responsible for paying for off your income, then it’s time to set limits. SET THE LIMITS AND STICK TO THEM, no more excuses, babe. You are in control and have better things to do with your money than on groceries you throw away.
SPENDING HABITS
I have two words Target and Amazon. Does anyone else here feel personally attacked by the targeted marketing in Target? Well, you should. If you are one of the women who say, “I can’t go into Target without spending at least $100,” you too are a marketing victim of Target. Marketing works, store layouts work, evaluate why you are adding things to your cart, is it next to the register, or strategically placed like the fall-themed snacks as you are running right into the store HUNGRY? Evaluate your online shopping, which got me the most and still does if I am not being diligent about my spending. It is SO convenient to shop online and have it magically show up on your doorstep.
I CHALLENGE YOU to look at how much you have spent at amazon in the past month, and then times that by 12. What could you have done with that money? Remember the next time you wish you had the money to go on vacation or pay off your credit cards.
DEBT AND STUDENT LOANS
The average amount of credit card debt $5,700 in the United States is, and the average amount of student loan debt is $32,731. For those of you who went to a private four-year university for your nursing degree, you are probably looking at numbers well over $100,000, just for your undergraduate degree. If you are considering graduate school adds at least another $50,000 ONTOP of this number.
There are so many factors that play into your debt between small personal loans with your family members, medical bills, car loans, credit cards, student loans, and Mortgage. This affects your debt to income ratio, credit score, and so much more. When your credit score is impacted, this plays MAJORLY into the amount of money you are wasting and paying on high-interest rates.
TAXES
Did you fully understand how much money you were not going to actually see post-tax? Even as a CNA adjusting to LPN wages and an LPN adjusting to RN wages, the taxes STILL always blew me away. On average, an entry-level nurse working a .75 FTE makes $2400, and if he/she is single and has no dependents, they only take home $1500 every two weeks. I don’t have to tell you how fast your $1500 every two weeks goes considering your Mortgage is $1100, Car Payment/Insurance/Gas is at least $500 for just one vehicle (less if you are lucky), and then all the different utilities, yeah you get the picture.
Learning how to optimize your taxable income is vital here.
RETIREMENT
We all have to retire at some point, right? Do you already contribute to your retirement through your 401K, and are you optimizing the match that your corporation offers? If not, this is one of the first things you can do to maximize your financial situation in retirement. Debt and high-interest rates should always be managed first. Still, it is crucial to key your eye on the monetary prize by retiring comfortably.
MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS AND INVESTMENTS
[Insert side gig here]
Likely, you will find that only having one source of income simply isn’t cut it. You want to be able to have other streams of income in case if something happens to one. What would happen to you and your financial situation if you missed even one full paycheck? How about a month’s worth? The idea is daunting, but creating multiple income streams is crucial to conquer your debt and find your way to financial stability.
OPTIMIZE ALL OF THESE CATEGORIES AND BE A…
Rich and Financially Stable Nurse.
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