Ep. 25 AMA Holiday Questions: Managing Finances and More in Festive Times

[CFM COACH ASSISTANT AI ]: Foreign.

Welcome to the Money Style youe Problem podcast where every week we talk about how you can become good with money in your pocket and in your mind by using practical life coaching tools and simple and efficient ways to do money math. Are you ready to invest in yourself? Let's dive into this episode. Foreign.

[CFM COACH ASSISTANT AI ]: Welcome to another episode of the Money's not your Problem podcast where we help you become good with money in your pocket and in your mind. I'm your host Madeline and today I don't have a question that's going to guide our conversation, but I'm going to answer questions that I've received from some of my clients asking about things around the holidays and money. It is an episode of Ask Madeline Anything Holiday Edition. Let's go. Here's our first question. Hello, I am working to pay off my debt. My question is how do people pay off debt and get ready for Christmas? I plan to cash flow my Christmas purchases, but what do you do about the debt? Do you just put it on hold or what? And don't tell me not to do Christmas. I have kids and that's just not something I'm going to do. Well, fair enough. You should not not celebrate Christmas because you have debt. I appreciate that you're planning to cash flow your purchases and that's very important. Hopefully you have been doing some preparation for the past couple weeks as we talked about on our past episode, so you could have a little bit of money and be able to add to your cash flowing this Christmas. In concern to the debt, you have a few options. You're not just stuck with one. Sure, you have the option to just put the debt on hold. So how would you do that? Well, you just pay the minimum payments on your debts. If you decide to do that, just know you're going to take a little bit longer to pay off your debt. Another option that you have is continue working your system to pay off your debt and do a smaller Christmas or use some of the strategies that we talked about the last episode to be able to buy the Christmas presents the best way possible. If you did not listen to the last episode, I invite you to listen to because we do have some good strategies for you to make your Christmas well. Even if you're not prepared or if you didn't have enough money right now, you could go make some more money, go get a part time job, a seasonal job so you can have the extra money to do Christmas and still continue working on your debt snowball. Now looking at the mindset and looking at this question, I Think about when you put yourself in a situation where you think there's no other options. You sometimes feel like you're defeated or that you're being deprived. And from deprivation you don't make the best choices. Look at when you're on a diet, for example, and you decided that you cannot eat chocolate. All you want is to eat more and more chocolate. You end up eating excess amount of chocolate and you feel bad afterwards. So in this situation, if you think that you cannot do Christmas because you want to keep paying your debt, you have that conflict inside of you because you want to do Christmas and you want to provide your family a good Christmas. It is possible to have a good Christmas without spending a ton of money. There are lots of activities, outdoor activities, where you don't have to spend any money. You can sit down, watch a movie together as a family. If you guys like to do that. You can visit other people and bake some goodies and take to other people. Go see those that need help, they're less fortunate than you, and of course buy some presents. But you can tell the kids that this year is a little tighter. So you're gonna be more selective with the presents. Of course, depending on the age, they don't understand, but they also don't understand that they don't need to get thousands and thousands of presents to have a happy Christmas. It's more about the magic, especially for the little ones, for the older ones. I used to do that with my girls. I used to give them around November 1st or also a list for them to tell me what they want. So they would have three or four categories. One was something that they want, something that they need, something to read and something to wear. So they will pick for those presents. And then I had an idea, what was my budget? And then I will buy those four things within reason and within my budget. So they had an input and what they wanted, but at the same time, we kept a constraint that they didn't ask everything under the sun. They might want it, but they don't need to get it. And you're not bad parent if you don't buy everything that they want. So we talked about making extra money before the Christmas time. So my second question here, what are some tips for a successful yard sale? I'm having one with friends next week to help build my emergency fund or to build your Christmas fund. I have a lot of really nice things, clothing, home items that I don't want to just give it away to Goodwill. And I'm tired of poshmark Since I never done a yard sale before, I don't know how much to charge for things. Please help. Well, you came to the right girl. I've done lots of garage sales before. I've even done garage sale in Brazil where usually it's not normal. Of course I didn't put the things on the street, but I had people know that I was selling things so they scheduled time with me and they would come. And this was back in 1900s. Now we have social media and the Internet to take advantage of and be able to sell your things even before you open the doors on a Saturday morning. Now I've done a garage sale with a friend before and I don't think it was the best decision. I'm in favor of you doing it by yourself, but if you don't want to do it, just make sure that you separate the sides because people are gonna pick from all the sides and you guys gonna have to decide how you're gonna split up the money price. Remember, garage sale prices are really, really, really low. If you want to see what the price look like, I invite you to go out on Saturday morning and go drive to a couple nice garage sales in nice neighborhoods and see what they're charging because that's probably the price you're gonna have to put your items. If you don't want to put your clothes on the street and sell for really cheap. Because usually people sell by the bag. They sell the bag for $3 and whatever people can stuff in the bag, they pay $3. Or you sell them individually and it's going to be less than a dollar for pairs of jeans and 50 cents for T shirts. It's going to be really low. So if you don't want to do that, you can go to a consignment store and take your nice items over there. They will sell for a much higher price, but you're only going to get a percentage. So it depends on you. Now if you just want to get the things out of your house, then you're gonna have to put the price really low. Certain items, people are always looking for tools, which I don't think you have those, but if you have any kind of tools for Yard men are always looking for tools for their construction jobs. People are always looking for chairs and tables and armoires, things like that that are difficult to get at the store and have it delivered and so much more pricey. Or beds, bed frames. Sometimes they buy mattresses, but mattress complicated because you never know whoever's buying never know if there are Bed bugs or something on a mattress. Why are you getting rid of the mattress? Right. But I was able to sell mattresses using an app. I always use Nextdoor. Whatever you decide the prices are, if you have your better items, you can always take pictures of the items and post on next door. Three days, two days before the garage sale. Announced your garage sale and take lots of pictures so people know what you're selling. Last time I did the garage sale items prepared and I the entire week kept posting things on Nextdoor app. Every time, every day I would find something new that I was gonna sell. I would take pictures and post it with the price. So then on Saturday morning, even though my get right sale was supposed to start at 7:30 and I was starting to get my stuff out at 6:30, there are people outside already waiting for me to put the stuff out. I wasn't even done putting the stuff out. And people would come in and start asking to buy and. And there's things inside the garage. They're like, are you selling that too? Are you selling that too? They were buying everything. Especially if you have nice things. One thing that's also important for you to remember is to make a sign with the Venmo barcode that will make it easier for you to sell your items. Also have lots of cash. They're just small bills. A lot of people that go to garage sales, they'll bring 20s and you're going to end up with a lot of twenties in your pocket. So have lots of change available and have like a fanny pack or something where you can put your money. The money is with you and when people buy the things, you can give the change right away. Also have lots of bags, trash bags or grocery store bags so people can put their stuff inside. It makes it much easier for them. If you have items that are really big and you don't want to get out of the house, post them online so people know what they are and the price they have if they want to come inside and look what it is. You can do that if you have more people with you and then you can plan a time for them to come and pick it up after they pay. So if they pay you right away, you take it out of the market. People are going to ask about it. You just say that you sold it and then have the person come and pick it up. Why am I not encouraging? Use Facebook Marketplace. You can, but you have to post a way in advance because they need to approve that. It will take about two or three days for them to approve Your ad. Well, if you do this last minute, what's going to happen is they going to announce your garage sale the day after we have some friends that they do a vintage sale, they go and buy clothes, very nice clothes and they sell very cheaper price that people would pay at the mall or something. And when they come and buy those, they always do a Facebook marketplace ad. So they put it on the different yard sales from each neighborhood. And then I've seen that being posted two days after they already had the yard sale, the vintage sale. So that doesn't help anybody. And remember, at the end of the day you're not going to be able to sell everything. I would stay out for two or three hours maximum. And understand that whatever is left, you're going to have to bring it all inside the house or put it in the garage or put back in the storage. So if you're planning to do this, think about if you want to get rid of that stuff at the end because whatever didn't get purchased is going to stay with you. What I did, I just put back in boxes and took it to Goodwill then and then I got my receipt to use it for my taxes. Remember, every time you take anything to Goodwill di Salvation army always get a receipt so you can deduct use it as deduction on your taxes. You need to have about 12 of those receipts different months. It cannot be on the same month on the same day. They have to be in separate dates. But it's going to help you when you do your taxes. Now we talked about doing this garage sale with the friend which I don't recommend but if you're doing that, you got to be careful the relationships and there are other relationship money questions that we can think about and I have one right here. So here's our question number three. Why does money make relationships weird? Got a job offer today. Pretty big deal. After 18 years as a stay home mom. I was excited and told my sister but she wasn't thrilled, just said not like you need the money. True, my husband earns well, but it's not about the money. I miss adult conversations and using my brain, not just talking about sandwich crust with kids. Her reaction made me sad and now I don't feel like sharing this with her anymore. I feel sad now about son something I was so excited about and feel like I can even talk to her about this. I am not sure if I should say anything about my feelings or just let it go and pretend it didn't happen. Well, I am so sorry that you're going through this, but it's something that happens. Some people have different views for their money and used to be that we used to look next door and see someone with a newer car and you feel bad because you don't have the newer car. That's called jealousy. And some people have a harder time than others to deal with the success from other people. Sometimes even us do that. When we look at a celebrity or we look a friend of ours on Instagram and they go in on a nice vacation. That's normal. It's okay for you to want those things. So it seems like your sister, maybe she wanted to have another job. Maybe she wanted to be in a better financial position than she is. And it's not about you, it's about her. I'm going to tell you that the problem is not what your sister said to you. It's how you're seeing that. That and if you decided to look from this possibility that she could be disappointed with her own life instead of you, then you might be able to still talk to her. And you might know that certain conversations are not going to be okay for a while. You might decide it from your own heart in consideration of your sister that you might not want to talk about this for a while. Once she gets used to the idea and seeing you work, you may try to re engage in the conversation and you can feel how she's approaching the subject. If you decide that you don't want to talk about this because of the reaction that she has, that's okay. Remember, it's not about you, it's about her. Remember, we have to respect other people's agency. If they don't want to talk about specific subject, it's okay. You don't need to talk to them about that subject. I have a friend that she talks what I perceive as criticism of my religion. So I decided that I don't say anything else about my religion. Even if she's not, even if it's not her intention. I see it that way. Hey, it's in my head. I'm creating the problem. So to avoid that trigger for me, I don't bring the subject up anymore. And if this is something that you really want to talk to her about and clear the air like they say, then you should probably think about how you're going to engage with her and how you have this conversation. Remember, you have what it's called a crucial conversation. It's one of those that make us uncomfortable and you don't want to engage on them. But if for Some reason you do want to engage, then I recommend that you prepare. And how do you prepare for that? Well, you have to look at the facts. You can think about how many times you told your sister and what exactly she told you. And you can say, I see that you told me this. And then you're going to come up with what makes you think because of the things she said. So you told me this and it made me think that you meant this. And then you're going to make a request as a question. So let's say, for example, in this instance you came talk to your sister and then you're gonna say, hi sister, I would like to talk to you about something. Last week when I told you that I was getting a job, you told me not like you need the money. That made me think that you're upset that I'm getting this new job. I wanted to share with you because I value our relationship and I'm really happy about this opportunity that I'm having. Can you tell me if I misunderstood you? Because I really value your opinion in your relationship and I really would like to share these things that I'm going to be doing with you. So this conversation is a hard conversation because you're going to be vulnerable and you're going to be asking her to tell you the truth. And sometimes people don't want to tell the truth. It makes them uncomfortable. But at least you're trying to get that conversation going. These are a couple suggestions that you can take it or leave it. Here's a question that's very popular. When a couple start working on a plan, any plan, and one person is more committed to the plan than the other or the other one doesn't even want to be part of the plan. Does anyone have advice for getting your spouse on the same page? How hard is to follow a money plan without your spouse's buy in? We can agree and I need to get a manage on my debts. I am trying to make a budget and he wants an extra $500 purchase at Christmas time. He doesn't want to work on Dave Ramsey's plan and I believe that's the best for our family. I encourage him to try and we fail the first time. I'm wondering if I just use my income and debt debts and not worry about his. He's debt free and low income and I have all the debt and higher income. Could I make some headway? We could use his income for all food expenses and I could put more into savings. Maybe I don't want to Silo on my own. So how can I get us on the same page, working together? I'm sorry, my friend. I understand your frustration. It might be that you guys need to sit down and talk about what is the reason why you want to get out of debt. Another thing that, that it's important is you guys are doing your money separate. And as a couple, you're willing to be together in so many things. To watch each other in the sickness and health and poor and richness. Well, now it's the time. Combining your finances would make you guys get a better financial life. Yes. And it's not your debt once you guys are married, it's everybody's debt. So if he thinks that you should take care of the debt because it's your debt that you brought in into the marriage, then you need to talk to him and talk. Talk about how you guys are a couple and you are a unit and you need to work on this together. Now, is it possible for you to make a headway on your debt without his input or his income or his buy in? Yeah, it's possible. Now you see the division that you already have, he wants to spend $500 in purchase and you have the high income, then you can, using his philosophy, you can just say, no, it's my money. You cannot spend $500 more on Christmas. That is not the best way to do this. You guys are going to fight and it's going to be unnecessary fight. So how about if you guys sit down and talk about what is your dream? What is the vision for your family? Having a vision for your family that you guys both share is going to help you make other decisions. As we talked about, when we have a vision, it works as a filter. As we decide things to make decisions we think, is that going to take us closer to our vision or is that going to make us away from. Take us away from our vision? There is no talking, no strategy, no special thing that you can say that's gonna make him change his mind. But you can tell him how important this is for you and how much more you guys would make a headway with your finances. If you work together, you could put together your incomes, pay off the debt and start having money to buy those things that you guys want together. That's the only thing that you can do. Ultimately it's going to be his decision if he wants to be part of the plan or not. Then you have to make a decision if that's okay for you or if it's a deal breaker. But by Sharing your why and, and dreaming together. What do you guys want your life to look like? That could be one way that you could get his buy in and having the shared vision. And that's the only thing I can recommend to you. In my case we had different levels of commitment to the plan. So my husband didn't say that he was against the plan but definitely he didn't have the same commitment. So it took us a little longer to get out of debt because I didn't want to sacrifice a few things that would be important to him. And, and he had a credit card. So as we revised our budget for him to give away the credit card, we increased his spending money. That way he had on his debit card. He could spend all that money for him of course, within reason. And we got rid of the credit card and still to this day we have different commitments to the plan. From time to time he comes to me and says there's advantage for me as a business owner to have a credit card that I could get points and I could do this, could do that. But I find solutions with a debit card and I found the same deals with the debit card. So then, then he tries but he won't convince me. But you have to understand that both of you need to be heading in the same direction. Unfortunately, money fight and money problems is the second leading cause of divorce in America. So you want to fight against that. And if you have kids, your kids are absorbing all this, you might not fight in front of them, but they are feeling your guys anxiousness and your frustration. They feel that and sometimes they think it's their fault that you guys are having those arguments. So always be aware of how you're feeling and how you're presenting yourself in your home. Protecting the kids against unnecessary suffering that they gonna put upon themselves some kind of guilt. Alright, here's our last question. What is a gift you enjoy receiving that cost the giver little or no money? This is a great question. Especially if your budget is really tight and if your money's short then you can do several things to spread Christmas cheer and not spend a whole lot of money money. So here are the suggestions that I collected for you. It's a big list. And among moms the most desired gift that money cannot buy is service. Help someone come in and doing dishes for you. Or someone comes in and cleans the house for them. Or someone comes in and fold the laundry. Or someone just had a baby, they come in and bring food which allows the mom to have some time with the baby or just to rest as they deserve. When I had both my babies, our Relief Society presidents were amazing in dividing up who was going to bring food to us. I still remember when I had my first daughter, Annika, the president of the Relief Society came by on the same day that was arrived from the hospital and I had a C section and she brought in lasagna and salad and bread. And my mom was with me and Rob was with me and we were all in the hospital, so nobody had time to cook or do anything. So it was really helpful to have there. My second child, I also had her and it was a C section again. So it was very difficult for me to recover from the surgery and again, Relieve Society to the rescue. They came in three days in a row and brought me dinner. And that was so good for my family and for me because I was able to take care of the baby, take care of my oldest daughter that was having a little bit of a hard time. It was around Christmas time, so I still had a few things, Christmas to take care. It was such a great gift. So that's number one. If you know a mom, if you know a new mom, go do something for them. Them. Another great idea that doesn't cost a whole lot of money. If you don't print and make books. It would be a homemade recipe book, a family recipe book where someone collects the recipes from everybody in the family and puts it together. Maybe put a picture of each person on top of the page and the recipe. It is such an amazing gift. I actually received that and I did that for my family and my friends and I actually print out and have it bounded. But you don't have to, you can just give the PDF and I'm sure there's a website somewhere that you can just put the recipes and it looks like a book and you can just share that. So it might be a very minimum cost or if you just do a PDF that that is no cost at all. All you have to do is the time that you have to gather all those recipes. Also, you could offer a lesson from any kind of artwork or crochet knitting, culinary anything that you know, you could give as a voucher for the person so they can learn from you. You. That's lots of fun because you can get to learn something new and you can get to spend time with that person that's your friend. This person gave a crochet lessons along with a yarn and a crochet hook. So put a little crochet gift card with the yarn and the hook. So you could do something like that. If you're going to teach someone how to do gardening, you could give gardening gloves and a shovel and. Or a pack of seeds and then the little voucher for them to have a day, a class with with you. One of my favorites also is a basket of treats or a care package. So for example, if you have a theme like movie night, so someone get a basket and they put popcorn, hot chocolate, you could put a couple mugs in there and you could put a voucher for. Nowadays we rent all the movies online. So you can put the movie online rental code in there and you can put other things as well. That's lots of fun. And usually you have the popcorn at home, usually have hot chocolate. Or you can go to the dollar store and buy over there. Even the basket you can buy at dollar store. So it comes out as a very inexpensive gift and it's something that everybody loves. Here's another one. If you're good at canning, you could give canned goods. You can make jams, jellies, apple butter. And you could give this as a gift. We got a jar of homemade salsa that was delicious. So you could give your jar of salsa with a bag of chips. Delicioso. You also could do what is one of the favorites is a plate with cookies with baked goods. We love those homemade baked goods. If you like cookies or those wedding cookies, the ones that look like a snowball, those are really good. And you can make those things and present to people. Then you can make a big batch of those cookies or treats and take to people's house. We did that. I am not much of a baker, so we went to Costco and we bought different packets of cookies and different things that could be separated. And then we created plates of treats and. And we gave to our neighbors. It was really good and it wasn't very expensive. You can also give picture frames with the picture you took of them. I've done that a few times too, because I love to take pictures. So throughout the year I go and take pictures of everywhere. Every event, anything that I'm attending, I usually take pictures. So then I develop those pictures. I put in a picture frame and then I give to my friends. So that's also not very expensive. You can get a very good deal to develop your pictures, to get your pictures ready at CVS or Walgreens. That is usually a 50% off or 40% off coupon. And you can get the picture frames at the dollar store. So also comes out a very inexpensive gift. And it's something that shows that you remember that person. It's very personal. And that person will have a picture with you, especially if you have a picture with that with them. It is a fun gift. Another thing that I love to do, and I used to do that a lot, is a mixtape. I know that's dating me back to the 80s, but you can do a mixtape right now. It's just a playlist that you create. Create specially for your friends. I've done that once where I present it as a Christmas gift. And so I had Christmas songs and I gave to people that I work with. I burned the CDs. Burn the CDs, look at that. And I gave to them and it was super easy, it wasn't very expensive. And I picked the songs that I really liked. You can do that and create playlists for the people that you like and share with them. Another one that you could do is a book that you loved and you can give to someone else to read. Read. Sometimes I send books to my sister in Brazil, books that I've read and I didn't buy a brand new one for her, so I just send it to her, the one that I read. And she says that she likes to see where I highlighted things because usually it's like a communication with me the parts that I really like the most. So it's really meaningful to her. And I love to share what I just read and I hope, which I hope she will like it too. Another idea is for you to get a set of scriptures or a Bible and my mark the scriptures or the passages that you really like and give that to someone. You don't need to buy a very expensive Bible. You can buy a simple one and that's very meaningful. Again, it's just like the book. You have the passages that sometimes that person might not even had read that passage or it might be making a difference at this point in that person's life. So I love that idea. Also the same way with the playlist, but this time is gathering all family photos from generations and put them on a USB so you can give to everybody so they could all have different pictures of the ancestors and the siblings. Lots of fun. There's always someone who has all the pictures so you could go to that person and maybe scan the pictures, if they are photo pictures, and get the digital ones and put it all together to preserve the story of the family. Along with the service idea, there is babysitting and dog sitting. I've noticed that the dog sitting is a heaven sent when I need sometimes to work on things, do recordings. And I cannot have the dogs here. Having a dog sitter makes, makes all the difference. And if you have kids, sometimes you want to wrap presents, you have to do other things. You have to do the shopping. And it's difficult to take the kids with you one because they ask for everything and they get tired very easily. So if you have someone that you see that has little kids, you can always offer to babysit for them as your Christmas gift. So these are some of ideas of things that you can give that don't cost a whole lot of money, but it's gonna show how much you care for for those people. All right, so we got to the end of our AMA holiday edition. Remember, you do not need to go into that. You do not need to spend a ton of money to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and what this season really is all about. I'll see you guys on the next episode of the money's not your problem podcast.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode. Remember to, like, subscribe and share, share. And if you want to learn more about the attributes that make you good with money, go to my website right now, StrasbourgCoaching.com and sign up for the free 9 video series. I'll be back next week at the Brevio Brigado.