George Kamel - The Financial Detox You Need in 2024

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Americans’ top New Year’s resolutions usually involve health and money. So, in addition to P90x, Whole 30 or whatever weird cleanse you’re planning on attempting, try my new “financial detox�� to get your finances back into shape! In today’s video, I’ll share five things that can help you get your financial act together if you’re coming off a year full of money mistakes and financial fails. Links: Free Annual Credit Report   Budgeting Video: The Only Budgeting Method You Need To Worry About! Debt Snowball Video: Best Way to Pay Off Debt Fast (That Actually Works) Debt Trackers and Free Tools Preorder George Kamel’s new book, Breaking Free From Broke, and get more than $100 in FREE bonus items.  EveryDollar budget deal: I love a good deal, and when you sign up using this link, I’ll hook you up with a 14-day free trial and $15 off your first year of the premium version of EveryDollar.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Five, four, three, two, one. Happy New Year! Old acquaintance be forgot. All right, enough of that. It's time to get your crap together, people. It's 2024. Get a clue. Boy, that escalated quickly.

What's up, guys? I'm George Campbell, and welcome to 2024. It's January, and you know what that means. It's time for us to optimistically make some ambitious resolutions, fully knowing that by mid-March, we'll be right back to our rate. regularly scheduled double-stuff Oreos. According to a survey from Statista, Americans' top New Year's resolutions for 2023

were to exercise more, to eat healthier, to lose weight, and to save more money. Now, despite popular belief, I'm not a bodybuilding fitness or nutrition expert, unless you count avoiding gluten, because I'm real good at that. Shout out to my gluten-free gladiators.

It's like CrossFit, but for my lower intestine. Sorry, I'm allergic to gluten, gluten, gluten. But I can't help with the money thing. So here's the deal. I've created my own financial detox. That's right. Move over P90X, whole 30 and 75 hard. There's a new cleanse in town, and it's called FinFit 5. What?

Okay, maybe not. But I do have five things I want to share with you today that can help you get your financial act together if you're coming off a full year of money mistakes and financial ragrats. These things will help you get on a path to having more money and more margin, and we could all use more of those things. But before we jump in, I can't think of a better way to kick off the new year then for you to subscribe to this channel, like this video,

and share it with all of your friends who wore adult diapers so they can stand in Times Square for hours to watch the ball drop. Seriously, people do that. Google it. Actually, don't. Don't Google that. Just take my word for it. Okay, let's get into it.

Step one is to assess the damage. This is the financial equivalent of stepping on the scale. Let's start with figuring out exactly how much cash you have to work with. So check to see how much money you have in your checking account, savings account, and any other places where money might be high. like HSA, your Venmo, or under the couch cushions. Once you know how much money you have, let's move on to how much you owe.

We're gonna gather all the information we can about your debt, including who you owe money to and how much money you owe them. Even the 850 you barred from your cousin Ron for that foot-long seafood sensation from subway. It's disgusting. Stop. Eat fresh. So if you've got student loans, for example,

find out how much you have left to pay on those. Then do the same for any other debt you might have, like credit card debt or auto loans. Now, this debt is the stuff you want to get out of your system. And to make sure we've got all our bases covered, I want you to pull your credit report. Now, federal law requires each of the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies to give you a free credit report every 12 months if you ask for it nicely. Pretty pleased with sugar on top.

Don't use a site that makes you pay for it. That's a borderline scam. The official site authorized by federal law is annual credit report.com. I'll link it below if you want to check that out. Once you've got your report, check to make sure there's no errors and all the information. they have is accurate. This could be important if you moved or got married or bought some lizards. Okay, the lizards are irrelevant unless you somehow went into debt for lizards by spending hundreds of dollars at Gary's Pet World, but I hope that's not you. All this information we've just

collected is like a mirror to show you the reality of where you're at with money. Think of it as your financial before picture. Okay, now it's time to move to step two, which is set a goal. This is kind of like your target weight or ideal half marathon time. And it might be tempting to skip this one, but don't underestimate how important it is to have a clear target to aim at and a timeline for accomplishing it. Zig Ziglar once said, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. And if you've ever seen the floor of a men's bathroom, you know that's true. It's disgusting. You're disgusting, men.

Do not go in there. Woo! So ask yourself, what do my finances look like now and what do I want my finances to look like in a month or in a year? So let's say you have $20,000 in student loan debt, and $5,000 of credit card debt, and you want to be completely debt-free as soon as possible. That's a pretty good goal, but we can make it even better

by getting specific with a timeline. As soon as possible is a little squishy. So let's say you want to be debt-free in one year, much better. So then your goal becomes, I want to pay off $25,000 in consumer debt in 12 months. Now that's a good goal. It's specific, it's measurable, and has a time limit. And now that you have that goal,

it's time to figure out how we're going to get there. And that brings us to step three, make a plan. Think of this as your financial workout routine. This is the action you're going to take to actually reach your goal. So we're going to start by creating a simple budget. This is going to give us a clear picture of how much money we've got coming in every month and how much we've got going out every month. And if you want to make this easy, use the every dollar budgeting app.

You can go download it in the app store for free or go to every dollar.com. First, you're going to list your monthly take-home pay under the income section. Then list all of your expenses for the month, things like food, you take care, rent, gas, giving, and the Paramount Plus subscription you have so you can watch CSI, Boise. Biggest crime committed on that show so far? Ice cream potato. It's disgusting. Boise, you got to stop it.

Back to something way less offensive, a budget. When you subtract all of your expenses from your income, it should equal zero. This is what we call a zero-based budget. And it doesn't mean you're spending every drop of your paycheck. It just means every dollar has a specific job. Make them work as hard as the 14-year-olds drop in soft. in your Chick-fil-A bag? Did I just invent the new Gen Z phrase?

Dropping sauce? Forget spilling the tea kids in 2024. We're dropping the sauce. Sauce. Sauce. If you want more info on how to make a zero-based budget, check out the video I made called Budgeting for Beginners. I'll drop a link to that below.

And if you're paying off debt, I recommend using the debt snowball method, where you lay out your debt smallest to largest in your budget, making minimum payments on all of them except for that smallest one. and you attack that little one with a vengeance, just like the bullies of my youth. Okay, so if your goal is to pay off 25,000 in one year, you'll need to be throwing a little over $2,000 a month at your debt. Now you might be asking,

okay, George, where am I going to find an extra $2,000 a month? Well, that brings us to the next step, which is spend less and make more. This is like when you cut the bad foods out of your diet and bring in some healthy stuff. There are all kinds of things you can do to cut back on spending. You could start meal planning or packing your lunch to cut back on grocery costs, and maybe start buying some store brand products.

Hey, those great value twist and shouts aren't half bad. But I guess half good is still kind of bad. Here's some other things you can do. Cancel subscriptions or memberships, switch your insurance for a cheaper rate, or even DIY some home projects. And if you're pretty handy, you could even attempt to fix that leak under your sink yourself.

Maybe, you know what, maybe save that one for the handyman. You could also stop eating out as much. I know. Controversial take. But I dare you to go add up how much you've actually spent on restaurants, and Uber eats in the last 30 days. If you know your DoorDash driver by name, you got a problem.

On top of spending less, there's also a ton of ways to make some extra income. We live in the convenience age, and people will pay good money for you to do things like drive them to the T-Swift concert or bring them a bag of chalupas. And all you need is a driver's license and a reliable car, and you can deliver people, food, groceries, and packages

in exchange for this thing called money. It's amazing. So go check out delivery apps like Amazon Flex, Uber, Lyft, Uber, Eats, DoorDash, Grub, Hub, shipped, Instacart, or whatever ones are popular by the time you see this video. Now, these are generally super flexible, so you get to choose when you work and how much. You can make anywhere from 15 to 30 bucks per hour depending on your location and peak hours, just by doing things like picking out appropriately ripe avocados for people.

How nice. You can also do some freelancing, consulting work, or tutoring if you have knowledge in those areas. And if you've got skills like graphic design, writing, editing, coding, IT, marketing, SEO, photography, virtual assisting, bookkeeping, you can make some great side money many times from home. Now, I'm curious. I know a lot of you have side hustles, so let me know in the comments which one you guys do and how much you make doing it. And side note, this is not your chance to pitch me your essential oils.

No offense, I just don't find them to be all that essential. How dare you? And remember, a side hustle is not forever. It can just be for a season. It's all about speeding up your progress and reaching your goal faster. Once you're out of debt and have that emergency fund, you can drop the side hustle and use that time as you'd like. It's your life. All right, last step in your financial detox is track your progress.

Just like with your fitness goals, if you're not stepping on the scales or paying attention to how far you're running, you're way less likely to hit your goal. Now, I like to make it visual and keep it somewhere you're going to see it often, like your phone background, your bathroom mirror, or tape to the pantry shelf where you keep your great value twisting shelves. Now, a lot of people like to print out a debt tracker that they can fill in as they pay off their debt. And we've got some of those printable debt trackers, as well as financial calculators, a bunch of other free tools you can use to help you reach your money goals. I'm going to drop a link to those below as well.

A lot of hot links in the description below in today's episode. Another way to stay motivated on the way to your goal is to make sure you've got some community to encourage you and keep you accountable. So tell your friends and family what you're doing, invite them to walk with you on this journey. I guarantee that you've got some friends who also have some financial goals this year. And it's much easier to reach your goal when you've got a team cheering you on and celebrating your wins.

So there it is. That's my financial detox for you. Do those things and you'll be setting yourself up for a year with more money and less stress. Where have I heard that phrase before? Oh yeah, that's the subtitle of my new book. It's called Breaking Free from Broke, the ultimate guide to more money and less stress. And you can get a copy right now with the link in the description below. And when you do, you'll get the audiobook and e-book and so much more for free.

As always, don't forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, and share this video with all of your friends who could use a detox, whether it's financial or twist-and-shout related. Thanks for watching. See you next time.