Ep 110 | How to Improve Your Finances w/a Personal Finance Audit
episode
Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
18 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
How can a personal finance audit help you feel more confident about retirement?
Are you feeling uncertain about your financial future? A personal finance audit could be the key to boosting your financial security and giving you clarity on your money. In today's episode, I'll walk you through a simple yet powerful process to assess your finances, identify gaps and create a plan for long-term stability. Whether you're preparing for retirement or just want to feel more in control of your This audit will help you take the next right step. Let's dive in and start building your financial confidence today. Welcome to wealthy after 40, where I help you turn retirement uncertainty into a clear, actionable plan. If you're thinking about retirement but feel unsure whether it's even possible, I understand.
The gap between where you are now and where you want to be can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to. Hi, I'm Daylene Higgins, founder of Elevate Finances and your personal financial coach. Having retired at the age of 50 and have enjoyed over two years of retirement bliss, I'm here to help you create your retirement dream and make it a reality. No more wondering, no more guessing, just taking action and building a future for yourself. Join me each week as I guide you through essential topics such as budgeting, cash flow, lifestyle planning, debt and savings, insurance, Medicare, and social security. Together, we'll build a strategy to help you achieve the retirement you've always desired. It's time to shift from uncertain to unstoppable and make your retirement dreams a reality.
Today's episode, I'm going to help you do your own personal financial audit. Now, for those of you that are really not numbers friendly, I'm going to make this as simple as possible, but also getting what you need out of it. I know not everybody really loves to dive in the numbers, you know, and so talking about this can kind of get the glaze over. Hopefully, you're able to understand everything I share, giving you simple action steps to do this audit on your own, and really looking In an audit, there's always a goal. There's always, why are we doing this? As you're listening to this episode and you're like, okay, she's going to tell me how to audit my numbers. Why do I want to do that? And it can be something very simple.
It does not need to be complex. And maybe you're just like, I just need to know. And that's enough of a reason to start with. All right, first step to assessing your numbers, looking at your personal finances. And this is the same exact steps within reason. I mean, we do a definitely a deep dive that I do in my VIP session, my retirement ready VIP sessions. Get out your pen and paper, be able to do this. And if at the end of it, you're like, okay, Two hours, let's dive deeper. Let's get into these numbers, look at it, dive deeper, create you a plan to make moving forward easier.
Who is Daylene Higgins and what perspective does she bring to retirement planning?
The first step you're gonna do is you're gonna assess your current spending. You're gonna start understanding where your money is going. I'm gonna leave this simple, start you out with one section and move to another one. It's not gonna be complicated. I really, I love to track numbers. Not everybody does and recognizing that There's better ways to get to this information. The first step I want you to do is I want you to write a list of your bills for the month. So anybody that you automatically or manually pay every single month should go on this list. Who it is, what it's for, and the amount. create that list, total the amount, voila, there is your bills amount. Most bills, we're in some sort of an obligation that we can't do a lot of maneuvering through.
With that being said, there is an exception to probably subscriptions and memberships. Unless you've signed up for a long-term, you know, got a deal, whatever it is, usually these bills you're committed to every single month. Recognizing that, looking at that, this is a step I have my clients do is write out a bills list. And I remember my one client, she came back and she says, well, my bills amount is lower because I did away with, I think she did away with three.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How can a personal finance audit help you feel more confident about retirement?
0:00–3:23
2
Who is Daylene Higgins and what perspective does she bring to retirement planning?
3:23–7:41
3
How do you start a simple personal finance audit without spreadsheets?
7:41–16:00
4
What monthly bills should you list first and how do subscriptions factor in?
16:00–18:29
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
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