The #1 Thing Sabotaging Your Savings (and How to Fix It)
episodePreviously titled “Ep 126 | The #1 Thing Sabotaging Your Savings (and How to Fix It)” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
17 min
2 speakers
3 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why do surprise expenses keep derailing my retirement savings?
I don't make enough money to save very much. Every time I get some money saved up, something inevitably happens and I have to use it. Inside this episode, I will help you learn how the sinking fund approach can protect your savings and get you back on track for retirement. No more surprise expenses stealing your savings with three steps to grow your sinking funds with purpose and ease. Welcome to the Wealthy After 40 podcast, the show for Gen X women and couples who are ready to ditch financial stress and feel confident about retirement. I'm your host, Dailene Higgins, financial and retirement coach, helping Gen Xers master their money and create a personalized retirement plan so they can stop spinning their wheels and step boldly into their dream retirement.
If you're feeling behind, don't worry. Continue listening to this podcast as well as be sure to grab your free guide, Five Must Do Steps to Start Retirement Planning Now at elevatefinances.us backslash must do. And remember, let's make retirement possible together. Like just when you get a little savings going, boom, something happens and it's gone. This episode is for you. I was in a retirement forum recently. And this was a comment made. I will never be able to retire. That's just a fact. I know I talked about this a little bit last week, but this one goes on. I don't make enough money to save very much. Every time I get some money saved up, something inevitably happens and I have to use it. Frustrating, right?
I know you can relate. I hear this from many of my clients, many of the people I talk to. And I know, you know, as an individual, you're being smart with money, but you feel like life keeps interrupting your plans. Well, I have the solution for you. Okay, the solution is to build sinking funds instead of just emergency funds. This is an often overlooked strategy and is the biggest stumbling block I see for individuals. They don't know about these, they're not sure about this, or they're just trying to save a one lump emergency fund. Man, the struggle I had on my journey for that and was able to get myself through it and finally found a community where people are teaching it and talking about it in a different way.
That's what I am sharing with you today.
What is a sinking fund and how is it different from an emergency fund?
This small shift could be what finally helps you, number one, feel like you're making progress and then bolster that belief that you can retire. So maybe you've tried budgeting, cutting your spending, working overtime to help solve this problem, but you're still left feeling stuck. This was my client. She came to me and she says, I just spend too much. I'm creating so much debt. I need your help. And as we started working together, she said, you know, I understand budgeting. And she did. She had her own system, but it wasn't working. Hey, you are probably relating really well to my client here. And so working with her and teaching her that these sinking funds were the missing component to finding that stability in her money.
That that was what was missing and why number one, she felt like she was overspending, which is not necessarily true. And that, you know, she could actually get her budget to work. So here's what she said after we worked together, and then I will share with you the solution. She says, I went from paycheck to paycheck and making minimum payments on my credit cards to paying off $5,000 of debt and saving $2,500 in three months. Wow, powerful. I was so grateful I could help her. She's a hard worker. She really knows how to manage money. But this big gaping hole, that's why I call it the biggest stumbling block. I've seen it in a lot of my clients. And like I said, it's a concept that... Is new-ish. I know it's talked about a lot more on my journey.
You know, they're like emergency funds saved for three to six months just in case of job loss. Now, they're not wrong. They're not wrong. But they were skipping a whole entire other part of, you know, savings of emergency funds. It didn't make sense to me. I'm like, why am I saving for that when my situation, and I know not everybody is in this.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
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