Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.
Welcome to Reyna Retirement. Reyna Reyes has dedicated her career to helping people make smarter financial decisions. Reyna Retirement is all about breaking down complex financial concepts into language you can actually understand.
Now here's the co founder of American Federal Benefits Consultants, Reyna Reyes.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Well, there's the one song that says the more money we come across, the more problems we see. But I would say that's not necessarily the case. I would say the more money we come across by saving it will prevent some problems or avoid them. Right. And you know, the beauty with avoiding things is that you never knew that you avoid them. So you don't necessarily know to be grateful. So that ends up in us taking advantage of it or maybe taking it for granted. So let's just assume that we've been avoiding bad things and we should be grateful for that. So having said that, I was able to attend a strong women's conference this past week and they went over some budget ideas and I wanted to share some of those with you. Because whether you're retiring or just working or preparing to retire or already did retire, you want to start looking at how you can save money on normal stuff so you can use the saved money on the abnormal. No, you know what I mean. The ultra normal, extra normal, extracurricular fun things. You want to save the money so you can cruise. Like, you know, decrease the mundane to increase the, the exciting.
So number one, they said if you're going to drink coffee, do it at home.
How much money do you think you spend going to pick the name of any corner coffee shop and how much do you spend there? Right? What are some ways we can decrease it? Maybe instead of doing it every day, you do it twice a week or once a week or only, you know, you never make the trip to go to the coffee shop. You only go to the coffee shop if it's on your way. Heaven forbid if you drive past one on the way to work.
But again, maybe we drink it at home. I wonder how much you would save if you invested in the disposable cups or even beyond that, you have one cup that you, you got your little thermos and you save significant money there. Just think if it's $5 a day times five work days a week, times 50 weeks average. Obviously a couple weeks of vacation, that's quite a bit of savings. Number two, make dinner at home.
Even if you did this three times a week rather than eating out five times a week, not only is it a cost savings, but imagine the ultimate cost savings, which is not having as many health challenges, things like that, that could be derived from having eaten fast food on the daily. Number three, make a list before you go shopping. Now I am the queen of the Walmart delivery shipped. I love to say I shipped my pants. That makes me laugh every time. But again, I sometimes don't make the list. I go to my favorites section and I just re, reorder, reorder, reorder. And you know, sometimes if you're going to make something, you actually have to buy the ingredients. And a lot of times I'll get the delivery order and I'm like, great, I've got groceries. What do I do now? So, so you want to make the plan, Pick a couple of items you're going to actually make and buy the items for that. That way you're ready to go. You know your purpose now. Believe me, it sounds like I'm talking to you. I am talking to my dog on self because I sometimes will think, oh, I'll make this one thing and I don't have everything for it. And then that's all she wrote and there goes that to the wayside.
Number four, buy staples in bulk.
So things that you're going to have on the regular, the dishwashing detergent, the paper towels, the toilet paper, all the things that are just got to be there, go ahead and rack them up because we have all been there where you're like, holy cow, I'm out. And that's the worst time to go shopping. We don't even need to go back and remember in our nostalgia the toilet paper craze of 2020.
Okay, number five, cancel the memberships you don't use.
So a lot of people go straight to gym memberships. But don't, don't forget, there could even be grocery memberships that you're not using. I used to be a member of three of the big box stores here and I was only frequenting one.
So that kind of thing, obviously magazine subscriptions, those have decreased in popularity, I guess, just because of paper being less of a thing. But the big thing now, sometimes it's motivation memberships, right? I've had, you know, the coach and all of those, and we pay some kind of membership so I can be mentored and my mentorship is a email that comes from AI. So again maybe you go through and double check. I think there's a few, what you call them apps and different websites that you can use to sort of go back and filter through your stuff and see what memberships you have that are frequent or recurring. I think you can even search in many bank like online banking. You can banking systems, you can search reoccurring or something like that and it'll pull up all the stuff that's on the regular and even unsubscribing from emails. That is a time suck for me. And time is what? Time is money. Number six, rethink your cell phone bill. We didn't go into too much on this. I kind of have to have the big mama jama because I used to tons of data but you know, check and see what you're doing. Do a recon. I've got, I've had some people where they were paying for four or five different kids cell bills and all kinds of stuff. So maybe double, triple check that and see what you're spending money on. Credit card balances. Number seven, try not to carry one. In fact, don't even try. There is no try. Only do don't carry a credit card balance. So that is the ultimate one step forward and two steps back where you make the minimum payment. But then the remaining balance gets sucked into some apr, some type of interest rate.
And remember, it's just not worth it. It will snowball. It will eat your lunch. I can't tell you how many times we've had the conversation of trying to reduce the balance on a credit card debt by using things like TSP 401, bank money, whatever.
And then you're like what do I have to show for this? Like what the heck did I do? Do I spend time on some shopping network, qvc, who knows?
It's not always worth it. Now obviously big purchase items, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. But again, if you can get that balance down or zero, that is a weight lifted and you can breathe again. Number eight, join the rewards program.
If you're going to a restaurant or a store all the time, even this can be compared to like hotels and airfare and things like that. If you're racking up points and you're racking up miles and you're racking up accrued value, you can get free stuff. We've all heard of fetch and rakuten and all these things. There's different places you can go to end up getting cash back or Points that turn into cash. Consider them.
You know, we're all scrolling all the time. Let's scroll a little bit of some of these other options that can help save or make us money. Believe me, again, I'm talking arena, I'm talking to myself. Number nine, eliminate bank fees. I, when I saw this, I was thinking, this is bank fees. We don't really have that, that much anymore. Oh, boy. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. There are some that if you don't carry a balance to a certain level or if there aren't, like I had one that was like a jumbo thing where you could. A jumbo account where you could get a very high interest rate. Well, when you start reading the fine print, you're only going to get this interest rate as long as you had X amount of direct deposits going in and X amount of withdrawals every month. And all of this stuff. I'm like, my goodness, it costs more inactivity for me to be in this account than it does for me to actually, you know, just not bother with it and go get my normal interest rate that I was getting anyway.
So maybe that's not a direct fee, but again, a fee comes in many forms. A fee of time, a fee of effort, a fee of energy, a fee of whatever.
And again, if you, it's a good to just check a recon, look at your bank stuff, your statements, and holy cow, if there's a fee, have the conversation about it. How did it get there? How do I avoid it? How do I get rid of it? How do you give me my money back? And do you have a recommendation for another bank? No, I'm just kidding. But again, there's usually paradigms or structure set up very clearly that the bank says, hey, if you do this, then you have a fee. If you do that, then you have a fee.
And let's be sure we're not doing overdraft fees. This is a whole different world where we want to have enough planning that we're not overdrafting our bank, if that's the kind of conversation we're having, that, I don't know that retirement, we're going to be ready for that.
So we'll handle, you know, the basics first. Right? That's why we start in kindergarten and we don't start as a high school graduate. Right? We got to learn a one plus one before we can do more advanced math and decimals, which is the beauty of money. Addition and subtraction. That's all it is in your checkbook. Addition and subtraction and number number 10, take advantage of employer benefits. Some employers offer, offer things like cell phone plans, gym memberships, tickets to sporting events, and obviously the 401k match and my federal employees, the TSP match. As long as you're putting in five, they'll put in five. So we don't want to go below 5% in TSP. Of course you know that.
So check it out.
Do a dipstick, dipstick recon and see what you're being offered and take advantage of it. Use it. Because I got all kinds of stuff that I buy and I'm using it. I had.
I can't even tell you. I get those Tommy Bahama umbrellas at Costco all the time. The big, huge beach umbrellas. And then a buddy of mine got baptized at the beach and I go out there, I didn't bring my stinking umbrella. Didn't bring the umbrella. I'm out there sweating to the oldies on the beach. It was great, awesome. But again, no umbrella. And I'm sitting here thinking the whole time, you idiot, you have this thing, why don't you use it? Take advantage of the benefit. Notice them, see them, recognize them, use them.
I have since put an umbrella in every automobile I own. And that way I have it whenever I go to whatever thing I'm going to go to. So I have the umbrella. In fact, I did use it the other day. Went to this dinner theater and had some friends and it rained. Holy cow. Like torrential hurricane rain. The whole 45 minute drive to get over there. And then we get out, it's still raining. So I had my beach umbrella. Pull it out. We could get like five people under that thing. It was awesome. So I redeemed myself in having not used it the first time. All right, number 11, you can use the library. It's this long lost building that you don't understand. It's full of these paper things with, with that open up and close with books.
There's CDs there. It's not just the book, the media of a book. You can use their CDs, DVDs, videos, audiobooks. You can go rent them there at no cost.
And holy cow, I have an overdue book. I need to go pay my overdue book. Thank you for reminding me. Don't rack up too many library fees though, when you go use the library. I think I owe a whopping $50 or something like that. But again, you can go there. You don't even understand some of the things you can do at the library, like check out the little bulletin board, there's events you can go to, a bunch of free stuff that you can see a lot of libraries have where they read to the kids. And so you can go like 10 in the morning on a Tuesday. And if you got, you know, kids under the age of 10, they will just love it. Over 10, they'll work with it too. But a lot of it's geared toward that younger, that younger group. But again, this stuff is no cost that you can use.
Number 12, pet sitting. This is talking about pet sitting with your neighbors rather than something like that. But first you gotta be friends with your neighbors. So that's a trick. Number three, give yourself a waiting period for purchases. Now this is interesting. The clickety click Amazon option, the clickety click qvc, clickety click click click, click, click, click and buy. And then it shows up on your doorstep before you're done clicking. Give yourself some time.
Almost like a cooling off period. This has been a great. This sparked a whole big conversation of how some people said no, I took all mine, my credit cards off of my stuff. So now if I want to buy something, I have to enter it in manually every time. Okay, I'm like, I'm never going to do that. That's not going to be me.
But even if you put it in the cart, you go, okay, it's in my card. I'm thinking about it. I might come back an hour, look at my cart or come back in a day, look at my cart and decide if I want that. Because we will rack up this stuff again. I have the umbrellas, they can be used, which is nice. But I also buy stuff that maybe had a use, but I've never used it. And why the heck did I buy it in the first place? We all do it. We all know number 4, 14 rather. This talks about quitting smoking. Well, we all have habits, right? So maybe yours is not smoking. Insert with whatever the vice is that you know it's costing you money. Maybe it's. I like, I personally don't partake of alcohol, but if you're a three drink a meal kind of person, maybe bring it down to two. Because if drinks are five bucks a cocktail and you're doing $15 in a setting, right. That's the same as smoking, right? $5 a pack. So maybe they're more. I don't even know. I don't smoke either. But I have other vices, right. For me, I guess I eat late at night.
Yeah, I need to chill out on that. And so if I stop Buying food that I'm going to eat late at night, I can, you know, save money. But again, whatever the vice is, maybe mine is I buy too many functional things. I love to have umbrellas and benches and chairs and all of that. I keep it in my car always because you never know, living in Florida when you're going to need it. So maybe I need to chillax on maintaining my, my setup. I don't know whether it's quitting smoking or reducing smoking, reducing drinking. I have a problem with moderation, personally. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it to the utmost and the nth degree. And sometimes all other things fall to the wayside.
So maybe, sorry, you can be my therapy today. Thank you for that. You can send me my therapy bill. But yeah, we all want to know what our stuff is. Jim Gaffigan calls it all McDonald's. He's like, oh yeah, you say you don't need McDonald's, but like you have your own version of McDonald's or something that you want to reduce that is causing you to have, that's causing you to be, it's preventing you from getting to where you want to be.
And we all have that, whatever that is, whether it's, we can name all the vices that are the usuals. But again, maybe it's a sin of omission. Maybe I'm spending time scrolling social media when all I need to do is reduce it by 10 minutes and add 10 minutes of reading an actual book I used to read all the time. I still read, but I don't read as much as I should, I need to increase it. So even if I decrease my, say scrolling, which cost me money because time is money, and increased it by reading a book, that could make me more or, you know, help me use my time more wisely.
That's something. I'm saying this because many of you on here probably think to yourself, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't have these vices that are so commonly used as, as the crutch for this concept. But again, think of whatever yours is. It's none of my business, but you want to kind of look internally, just like I'm doing here, very internally, externally and saying what makes the most sense for you to replace it may, like I said, it may be time. Because what's the non renewable resource that we have is time. You all know, maybe the story of my husband, he dealt with stage four cancer coming up on four years ago. It's like three and a half years ago.
And you get to this.
You go through these phases. Like, it's horrible. I'm sad he's in remission. I'm glad he's in remission. He deals with side effects. I'm sad again because he's not, you know, feeling good. But then he's so thankful for, like, everything, like anything we do. You're very happy that you were able to do it because you know that your time was short. This concept of borrowed time. And if time is money, we've got a whole algebra equation here.
If I borrow time and time is money, then I have a debt of time to someone. And so you end up being so much more appreciative of anything you get to do. I think that's part of.
I may be extrapolating this into a bigger scenario, but I think that gratitude and not taking anything for granted is a big deal. Something that I struggle with daily because I'm very quick to say, oh, this bad thing happened. It. It's bad. I'm mad. I'm so mad at myself because I could have prevented it. Rather than. Here it is. Michael Kane talks about use.
Use the problem or use the.
Use the.
What does he say? There's a word that he says, use the problem or use the distraction or use the difficulty. Use the difficulty. And something gets put in your way. That's the problem. There's a train in the way. You got to wait for the train.
Well, what if that train prevented you from getting into an accident a mile down the road?
It's like Back to the Future. You know, if I'd raced that car, I would have hit that Rolls Royce.
Now, I'm going off on a tangent here, but maybe somebody needed to hear this. Today the title is Quit smoking. But what is your smoking? What is your McDonald's? What is it? Is it time? Is it energy? Is it effort? Is it a sin of omission? What is it?
This all can tie in to being an employee, prepping for retirement and then retiring and then leaving all that behind because you took the time to prepare and look inside and see what it is that needs fixing in your life.
What are some of the small things we can do that add up to some big things in retirement? I'm Raina Reyes, and I look forward to chatting with you. Soon get scheduled, and we can have a conversation about anything I talked about, even in addition to stuff like your money and how to make it last and how to prepare for retirement.
Take heed. Take. Well, look look into yourself, make some decisions. I look forward to hearing back from you. We'll talk to you soon.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Reyna Retirement With a strong commitment to ethical standards, Reyna works hard to find the right solution for each individual or family who reaches out for advice. To contact rena directly, call 850-450-6500. That's 854-50-6500. Or to reach the team at American Federal Benefits Consultants, call 1-800-872-8857. That's 1-800-872- 8857. You can also go online to americanfederal.org not affiliated with the United States Government. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. These opinions are not included intended as investment advice, nor do they predict future performance of any product. All information provided is believed to be from reliable sources. However, we make no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of any statement. The information is intended to be educational in nature and does not provide a guarantee or specific result. All copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. American Federal Benefits Consultants is an independent organization, not a government agency or affiliated with the Federal Government or any state government. The terms CSRs, FERs, FELI, and FEHB are all registered trademarks of the U.S. office of Personnel Management. American Federal Benefits Consultants, Agents, Consultants, or any independent contractors do not provide tax, legal or investment advice and do not engage in the solicitation or sale of securities. Consult with your tax advisor or attorney regarding specific situations.