Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl, and you are tuned in to Tweed Trends. It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today.
This coming Saturday is National Financial Awareness Day. So let's get started. This coming Saturday is National Financial Awareness Day. Well, what is that?
It's a day dedicated to preparing for your financial future and building financial stability. Now, you may be telling yourself, I'm too old, or you might be on the flipside of that coin saying, I'm too young, like I don't even make that much money. So do I really need to be financially aware at this point in time? Can I just have fun?
Well, no, you can't. You can't afford to do that. It doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter what type of poor financial decisions you've made in the past.
This is your opportunity to start fresh and start making some better decisions because financial stability, that is key. It is crucial to take the time to review your finances because sound monetary decisions can make a significant impact not only in the long run, but in the here and now, in the present today. So with Saturday being National Financial Awareness Day, let's start making plans now so that Saturday can be the jump off. Saturday is going to be the day that we're going to take all the plans that we've made, all the things that we've thought of, all the ways that we can do better and then just go for it because the goal is to take control of our finances and not for our finances to take control of us.
Good morning. All right, so before I go any further, let me clear up something because I hear you talking. I heard what you said. You weren't whispering.
When I said that you need to take control of your finances before your finances take control of you, you sat there and I was like, no, it makes sense. How come my finances take control of me? Well, let's put it this way. If the amount of money that you have is dictating whether you can come and go as you please, whether you can buy things when you want to, or whether you can do things when you want to, that's a sign that you're financially taking over your life and you need to take it back.
Because let's think about it this way. Here's the situation. Let's say it's Wednesday and all your coworkers are going out and they want you to come out with them. And you know that when they go out, they go to Ritzy places and spend lots of money and you don't want to look bad in front of them, so you're going to want to do the same thing.
So you're contemplating, should I, should I, well, you know you don't have it, but you're banking on the fact that Friday is payday. Well, hey, I can use my card today. And then just cover it all with Friday's payday. So you go, you have a blast, Thursday, y'all all laugh and giggling, talking about the great time y'all had on Wednesday.
And it's time to leave work and guess what? Your engine is blown. Your car will not start and will not take you anywhere. What now?
That's when you start calling on God's name because you're sitting there like, what am I going to do? Well, you know what, God be looking at you like you shouldn't have done what you did yesterday. That's what you shouldn't have done. And now all of a sudden you want to know what you should do?
But anyway, let me not bring God into this. But the fact is, you already spent money from your paycheck on Friday to have a good time on Wednesday. Now on Thursday, this is a major thing. You've got to have transportation.
So now what? Well, guess what? In this situation, your finances have taken over your life. They've taken control because now you're going to have to find a way to cover the repairs for your car or to get another car and still pay your normal bills like you would.
You're going to be hitting up some friends. They're not going to be happy because nine times out of ten, this isn't your first time doing this. So they're like, oh, what happened now? And you're like, no, no, but really, this time it was really an emergency.
My car broke down. The engine blew. I got nothing. You know?
And the sad thing though is if you haven't been taking care of those friends by paying them back, they may decide that, you know what? Not this time. I don't have it to give to you this time because you always say this. You always say you're going to pay me back and I've yet to be paying back.
So I'm sorry, sweetheart. You don't have to go someplace else. That's when your life starts to get hectic. So to try not to have that happen in our lives, even though bad stuff happens to good people, we all know this.
But there are some things that you can do to show that you are financially aware of what your personal situation is and where you want to be in the future. Here's some things. Let's start by checking your savings. Make sure that you have one.
If you don't have an emergency fund already in place, get one because emergencies happen all day every day. Don't act like you don't know that Murphy's law exists. If something bad can happen, it will and it will happen at the worst possible time. So make sure you've got that emergency fund somewhere and do not touch it.
Leave it alone. You need to be able to get to it whenever you need it, right? Another thing you can do is to reevaluate your budget. And if you don't have a budget, then you might need to make one.
Yeah, you probably need to go ahead and start with a budget. But you know what? Let me go back to the banking thing. Not only check your savings, but check your accounts.
Because that's one thing I didn't do. And I regret it because then it caused me seven years of pain and agony whenever I wanted to do something because I had a flag on my credit because someone stole my identity. Yes, it was a friend that stole my identity as a matter of fact. I'm not going to get into that story, but long story short, because I knew I had a job and I had direct deposit.
I really didn't even worry about the money that was going in there because I knew I had money. Little did I know this person had gotten a credit card through my credit by way of me attached to my accounts and they were buying stuff. They were even sharing this card with other people and buying stuff for other people. I had no idea.
So going back to that banking thing, don't just make sure that you have a little something set aside for emergencies, but just check your account, check it every payday to make sure that money hit and that there's nothing funny going on. There's not extra charges coming out. All those things because the bank will try to get you to. Don't sleep on the bank.
The bank will try to get you for your paper. Any little possibly any little possible fee that they can charge you, they will. So keep an eye on them as well. Good morning.
Okay, so two more things that you can do. One would be to brush up on your financial literacy. There are dozens of free tools out there that can help you and they give free financial literacy information on various topics and they might have videos, whatever, but look for the one that speaks to you and your situation because you definitely want to get to hear in now, straightened out, but then you also want to make sure they have stuff for your future as well. So if you're older, then playing for retirement may be one of those things that's forefront in your mind right now because you know you only have a little bit of time left before you retire or you're wondering, can I even retire?
Whereas if you're younger, you may be looking into maybe wanting to buy a house or start a family or whatever and you're wondering, well, what steps should I take in order to make sure that my household is financially sound? And then also another one of those little key points in there that you're going to want this program to touch on is improving your credit because if you have credit, then you have power and we all need power in this world. So make sure your credit is good. And if you've never seen your credit report, make sure you order one.
But as far as the credit goes, you may have to do some extra stuff. Like you may have to write letters to your credit card companies or you may have to do other things. It's not as simple as, well, let me just give them as money and we call it a day. You may have to do some extra work, but it's going to be worth it.
Case in point, I have a friend who had some trouble with credit cards and on as no fault of their own, they weren't able to pay it due to something going on the phone. And what ended up happening is they made arrangements, made payments, but the thing that nobody told them about was keep the account open. They cut the account, they shut the account down, and that then made what the amount of money that they had access to drop drastically. And that became a problem.
They had no idea. They thought they were doing the right thing saying, well, let me just go ahead and cancel this card, shut it down and work at Chippin' Away of getting it paid off. But in all actuality, it would have been best if they left the account open because then they still had that credit availability, which once they shut it down, then their credit availability was a lot smaller, and therefore people kind of were like, eh, yeah, higher interest rate because you don't have that much credit. So there's so much to know, so much to learn, start small, work your way up.
I promise you, it'll be great. The other thing is get a start on your taxes. I don't know if you're like me, but whenever tax time rolls around, that's when I start running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, where are my tax forms?
Where's this receipt? Where's that receipt? How is the system in place? And I'm a work in progress when it comes to this because I feel like each year, I get a little bit better.
This year was the first year that we got to the tax office early. And the joke is that's why there was a pandemic. Not this year. That was last year.
Last year was the first time. And that was the joke. We got our stuff together and then a pandemic happened because the world just could not handle us having our taxes done ahead of time. Good morning.
Thank you so very much for joining me on today's episode. You know, because money is important to our overall peace of mind, financial awareness day is a great time to review where you are now, but not just where you are now, where you hope to be in the future. Life is already short as it is, so don't let bad financial decisions ruin the little bit of time you have here on this earth. So here's my ask for today's episode.
If you never share any episodes that I've made, I ask that this one be the one that you say, you know what? I want to tell everybody about this. I want everyone to get on a better track and to be financially aware and to get started as soon as possible. So in that ask, please share at HeThat That's at H-E-Y-E-V-E-T-E or just look for the hashtag tweet trends.
Yes, you know how to find me, but put it out there for your friends. Share the link for this episode on your social media, whatever it is, however it is that you get in contact with your people. Do that and just ask them, you know, take a listen. Yes, this episode is longer than what my normal episodes are, but I feel like financial awareness is a big deal.
And so sure, if it's going to take me a few extra minutes to get across what it is that I want to say, then I ask for your grace and your, you know, beg for forgiveness, but I feel like this is important and it's necessary. So have a great weekend. Once again, Saturday is National Financial Awareness Day. Do something, make that your jump off day.
Do something that day that is going to put you in a better position tomorrow financially and continue to do those little things. And I'll be putting some information out here and there about various places and things that you can look to like there's this one organization called Achieve. I'll put the link for Achieve out there and some other things, but we got to do better. So why not start sooner than later?
All right. Thanks for joining me again and have a great weekend.