Script Pipeline

The goal with this budget is to save money. She wants to know how to start building the savings up and then also how to not touch that savings once it's put away. She has a decent monthly income of $6,906. Once we take out her expenses, she has $1,782 left. Now her car loan will be paid off in February, so this would add another $352 to that. So after February, she'll have $2,134 that she can save or pay down this debt. Right now she's not concerned with her credit, she wants to pay some of these cards off and close them. She's paid by weekly, so usually that's going to be two paychecks each month and then once per month she gets survivors benefits. The paychecks are $1,500 and the benefits are $3,906. I would make it a goal to start putting up $1,000 per month and then after the car is paid off, we also should have another $1,000 that we can pay down the credit card debt. And the credit cards would be paid off very quickly because the balances on those are less than $4,000 so it would take about four months to pay them off. Then after the credit cards are paid off, we could add another $1,000 to the savings if we wanted to. With two paychecks, I would start putting up $100 every time you get paid and then with the benefits, I would put up $800 of that into a savings account. Now when you're saving, you have to pay yourself first, which means as soon as you get your paycheck, you put the money up in savings before you go in and pay anything else. Where people go wrong is they use the leftover strategy here, so they say I'm going to pay all of my bills and then at the end of the month, anything I have left over, I'm going to save. But what happens is they pay all their bills and then they do some spending and they wind up with $0 left over to put up. Then many people also struggling with transferring money back and forth into their checking account once they have it in their savings. Two things you can do here, one, open a high-yield savings account, a lot of these will take two to three days for your money to transfer in and then another two to three days for your money to transfer out, which means you can't just go in and instantly transfer money back into your checking account. You could also open a savings account at a bank that you don't have your checking account at. Don't get a card for this account so you can't use the ATM, you go to the bank, you put the money in and you go to the bank if you have to take the money out. She will be getting these benefits for the next couple of years so we really want to take advantage and put this money up in savings and pay down some of these credit cards. So remember if you want to save money, pay yourself first and put your money up somewhere where you don't have easy access to it, this is going to help.