What To Do When You Are Overwhelmed by Debt After 40
episode
Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
15 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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, money coach and retirement strategist, to help you gain clarity and confidence with your money by creating a spending plan that aligns with your financial goals and dreams so you can spend intentionally, save consistently, and feel at peace about your future. Join me every week to understand your money, simplify your decisions, and take intentional steps toward the life you want.
Welcome to the episode. I'm so excited to dive into this again, yes, but in a different way.
Why does debt feel different after 40 and is that normal?
As I've been prepping this episode, I've had some kind of some thoughts as to why individuals 40 and older are feeling overwhelmed by debt. And for the most part, actually, for a lot of it, I don't see clients being irresponsible. It's not even on that level. Now, I'm not saying that it couldn't be. That's a whole different issue. And if that is you, I do have somebody to refer you to. But let's talk about debt. Debt has played a part of our lives for so many years. In a good way, though, in a good way. If you've been a listener, I don't believe debt is bad. I believe we should have a positive relationship with debt. And that's what we've done up till now. Let's talk about that.
How has debt historically helped us become independent adults?
So as you are becoming an adult, debt helps you do those things. Move out of your parents' house. If you're buying a home, you get a mortgage, that's debt. You have to buy a car. So you hopefully aren't driving your parents' car anymore. You've got to furnish that new house. So sometimes that means going to the furniture store and maybe placing debt there or on your credit card. But as you've become an adult, debt has played a positive role, helping you be those things, helping you getting to be in that situation where you can be independent. Heck, even being able to get into your career, if you went to college, even technical college, there's a little bit of aspect of how am I gonna pay for that? And that may or may not have been with student loan or a credit card or a personal loan or whatever.
And as you've grown older, and gotten to where we are 20, 30 years later, we've got to realign our relationship with debt. We've got to start understanding how it best serves us. So as you think about that, you're not becoming an adult anymore. You are the adult.
When should you realign your relationship with debt as you get older?
You probably have your house. Now, it doesn't mean you're not going to move, but you have your home. You have your cars. You have your things. And really understanding how debt serves you now is very important. But why are you feeling overwhelmed? And again, it is partly due to that relationship. There's two things I'm going to talk about. These are the majority of the reasons why you are probably feeling overwhelmed by debt. So either one of these will help you start making that positive change into getting rid of your debt, okay? Are you a budgeter? Have you been a budgeter? And it just hasn't worked. You're doing your best.
What are the two main causes of feeling overwhelmed by debt?
Your debt feels like a roller coaster. There's some months and for several months in a row, you're able to pay it down. And you're like, this is so good. I'm getting out of the debt. And then all of a sudden you're like, I have to use my credit card. Why? This feeling and this roller coaster is very common. It's very common. I work with many individuals experiencing this. What you need to do to solve, the reason this is happening is you're not planning for those unexpected events, those unexpected expenses. So as you're budgeting, we're taught to budget paycheck to paycheck or month to month. Life is not that, okay? But yes, you need to budget that way. I still teach clients to budget that way because we only have so much money.
But what you need to do is quit thinking about about it as months. And so at the point that you're budgeting, what do you need or want in the next three to six months? You need to start including these expenses, these events in your money plan sooner than later.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–0:56
2
Why does debt feel different after 40 and is that normal?
0:56–1:53
3
How has debt historically helped us become independent adults?
1:53–3:13
4
When should you realign your relationship with debt as you get older?
3:13–4:07
5
What are the two main causes of feeling overwhelmed by debt?
4:07–7:07
6
Why does a month-to-month budget create a debt rollercoaster and how can planning ahead stop it?
7:07–15:50
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
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Why Do You Fear Retirement? The Answer Might Surprise You