How to 'Spring Clean' Your Finances
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
With your Money Briefing, I'm Charlie Turner in New York for The Wall Street Journal. Spring is here, and so is Ally Bank's Emily Shalal with some tips on how to spring clean your finances. That's coming up. First, here are some money headlines. A bright spot for banks has dimmed. The Wall Street Journal says high-end homebuyers are turning cautious, a blow to banks that refocused their mortgage businesses around wealthy borrowers in the years after the financial crisis. According to Inside Mortgage Finance, originations for jumbo mortgages, which are loans too big to be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, dropped 12 percent last year by dollar volume, outpacing the 7 percent decline in mortgages that meet the standards for Fannie and Freddie's government backing.
The $281 billion in jumbo originations was off 27 percent from its post-crisis peak two years earlier. Biogen shares were crushed Thursday after the company and its Japanese partners said they were ending two late-stage trials of a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. The trial failures represent the continuing difficulty drug makers have had trying to find a cure for the memory-robbing disease. It's particularly bad news for Biogen investors, according to the Wall Street Journal, since the Alzheimer's drug, Aducanumab was penciled in as a key source of growth for Biogen over the next few years.
How does spring cleaning your finances help after lower tax refunds?
Biogen has also faced competition in drugs to treat multiple sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy, two disease categories that generate the vast majority of Biogen's current sales. But the Wall Street Journal's hurt on the streets says the silver lining could be that shares of smaller biotech companies could rise as Biogen finds itself challenged for growth and is forced to address its pipeline.
What does 'pay yourself first' mean and how can you implement it?
Still ahead, J.R. Whalen talks with Emily Shalal of Ally Bank about financial spring cleaning.
Well, we made it. It's finally spring. And after many of us got a lower tax refund than we were hoping for, thanks to changes and withholding under the new tax law, this is as good a time as any to do some spring cleaning in our personal finances and maximize savings. Emily Shalal is Ally Bank's Senior Director of Customer Strategy, and she's here with some tips. So, Emily, let's start with taking care of number one, and that's you, the consumer. One of the things that you advocate is for people to be sure to pay themselves first.
How can automating savings reduce reliance on willpower?
Yeah, and we find that a lot of people think about budgeting in kind of the wrong way. A lot of people start with their income, and then they take their expenses out of that, and then they look at what's left over and think about that in terms of what they can save. And really, a consumer should take their income, think about everything that they need to save to accomplish their goals, and then figure out how much is left to pay expenses. And so, you know, it's a fundamental shift in mindset for most consumers, but something that could have huge impact for them over the course of their career.
And an important thing for folks to do, to be mindful of, is to have money put aside on a regular basis for themselves.
That's right.
How should you audit subscription and recurring payments to save money?
So the more you can automate kind of saving and create a recurring plan for yourself, the more you take willpower out of the conversation and the more it just becomes a set it and forget it and you stop thinking about it and stop worrying about it and just know that you have this kind of peace of mind that you're already allocating money towards your long-term savings goals.
Speaking of automation, lots of people have recurring payments as part of subscriptions, and it's probably a good idea to make sure you're actually using all the services and the tiers of services that you're paying for.
That's right. So we live in a world in which every company is trying to get you to buy into some sort of subscription service, whether that's for your Netflix bills or your recurring music plan or whatever. you know, an app that you've just tried out and downloaded that may offer you some sort of introductory trial period.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–1:27
2
How does spring cleaning your finances help after lower tax refunds?
1:27–1:50
3
What does 'pay yourself first' mean and how can you implement it?
1:50–2:32
4
How can automating savings reduce reliance on willpower?
2:32–3:10
5
How should you audit subscription and recurring payments to save money?
3:10–3:56
6
Why do bank fees compound and how can you avoid them?
3:56–4:47
7
How can shopping for online savings rates boost long‑term retirement savings?
4:47–6:27
Speakers
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