NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Your Guide to Budgeting, Credit and Debt Management Strategies

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Learn tactics to make and manage a budget, understand credit scores, and manage debt to improve your financial health. 02:02 Budgeting Basics: Personal Finance Nerd Elizabeth Ayoola discusses how you can create and stick to a budget. She explains how to use the 50-30-20 method to allocate your income, gives tips on how to adjust your budget to fit your needs, and methods for budgeting and stretching your paycheck when it arrives at different intervals, like monthly or biweekly.  13:35 Credit Scores and Credit Reports: NerdWallet writer Lauren Schwahn breaks down the basics of credit scores and credit reports. She explains how to get negative or incorrect information off of your credit report, how to get a higher credit limit, and how different sources of debt can affect your credit. She also discusses the differences between good debt and bad debt. 25:59 How to Manage Debt: Elizabeth shares strategies you can use to manage debt in order to improve your financial health. She covers debt to income ratios, snowball and avalanche methods of debt repayment, debt consolidation, how to allocate extra income from side hustles, and the legal process of bankruptcy.  If you’re looking for an app to track all your money in one place, then check out the free NerdWallet app: https://nerdwallet.com/app  In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: personal finance tips, budgeting, managing debt, credit scores, financial goals, 50-30-20 method, expense tracking, credit reports, debt-to-income ratios, snowball method, avalanche method, debt consolidation, financial health, paying bills, budgeting strategies, income tracking, variable income, saving, debt repayment, bankruptcy, debt settlement, side hustles, financial discipline, credit utilization, emergency funds, and financial planning. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.

Hey, listener, Sean here. If you are listening to this podcast, chances are that you're already pretty savvy with your finances. But sometimes you just need a refresher. And that's what this episode is. We're sharing a recent webinar from our fall webinar series about the fundamentals of personal finance. In this episode, you'll learn how credit scores work, how to manage debt, and much more. And as always, if you have any questions about how to In this episode, you'll learn how credit scores work, how to manage debt, and much more. And as always, if you have any questions about how to handle this stuff, send them our way. You can call or text the Nerd Hotline at 901-730-6373, or email your questions to podcast at nerdwallet.com. All right, here's the episode.

All right, I think we can get started. Welcome, everybody. I am Kim Palmer. I am a personal finance expert at nerdwallet.com, where we help people make smart decisions about money. One important note first, we are not financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and might not apply to your specific circumstances. If you have personal finance questions, you can drop them in the Q&A. Today is the first in our three-part webinar series, and we are so excited to talk to you about budgeting, credit, and debt today, and we think we have some helpful tips to share. You can always find more at nerdwallet.com or on the NerdWallet app. Our goal today is to kick off a helpful discussion about managing your money. You will be hearing from the three of us, Elizabeth, Lauren, and myself.

Elizabeth Viola writes about budgeting and debt, and Lauren Schwong covers credit scoring. Here's what we'll go over today. Budgeting, credit scoring, managing debt, and of course, time for questions. So let's get started with budgeting. Elizabeth, can you please introduce yourself and tell us what is a budget? Hi, everyone. Thank you for being here today. My name is Elizabeth Ayola, and I write about budgeting and debt at NerdWallet. So budgeting doesn't have to be boring, and a budget is simply a way for you to track where all your money is going. And the good thing about budgets is they're malleable. They're not set in stone. So you can change them and adjust them as your income changes or as your bills change or however you need to. So when it comes

to budgeting, a great place to start is first by tracking your spending. So first you want to calculate how much am I spending? You can use an app like NerdWallet. Yes, that is a shameless plug to see where your money is going. I don't know about you guys, but most of my biggest expenses is housing, transportation, and food. So budget would help you to manage that spending in those categories and help you know that if you're spending too much. And a good thing is if you do realize you're spending too much in any of those categories, you can look at the easiest thing to change, which may be food, for example, and you could cut out some takeaways or, you know, skip the Cheerios for a store brand instead to kind of cut down on expenses and things like that,

basically to adjust your budget. Now for myself, I started budgeting maybe in my 30s. And honestly, before I was just spending money like it was growing in my backyard. So a budget helped me to get better at spending my money. And what I do now is I automate a lot of my finances, I automate my bills, I automate my savings and my investing. And then I do now is I automate a lot of my finances. I automate my bills. I automate my savings and my investing. And then I have a nice little splurge budget that I use to buy whatever I want because I do like impulse shopping. So that's how I work my budget. I love that. And why can it be good to have a budget? So it can be good to have a budget because it helps you when you want to set goals, right? So

let's say that you want to buy a house or even something more small scale, like you want to buy yourself, I don't know, a new bag or a car, or you want to pay down your debt, whatever it is, a budget helps you to know how much money that you have and how much you need to put aside to reach that goal. So for example, maybe you want to build up an emergency fund of $200 by the end of the year. So budget will tell you how much that you need to set aside every week or every month to reach that goal. So you might need to set aside, for example, $20 a week. So by creating a budget, you can just see where that $20 can come from and also allocate how you want to set it aside,

whether that's in a savings account, using the cash envelope system, which we'll talk about later, or any other kind of means to save the money. Perfect. Thank you. Well, Elizabeth, tell us how to get started, how to start to make a budget. So I don't know about you guys, but I know when I started budgeting, I stalled a lot because I didn't want to know how much I was spending. And I just thought it would go away if I ignored it, but it doesn't go away. So the first step is to figure out what your take home pay is, which is how much you have every month after you pay your taxes. And then you can pick a budgeting method, which can be fun. A popular one that we recommend at NerdWallet is the 50,

30, 20 method. And that says that 50% of your income goes to needs, 30% goes to wants, and 20% goes to saving and paying down debt. So the good thing about the 50-30-20 budget is that it's adjustable. So I know, especially now, because we have high inflation, some people's needs may have gone up dramatically. I know my rent went up $500 in the past year. So you may need to adjust those numbers to match your budget. And maybe your needs bucket might be 60%. And you might have to adjust the other numbers, but it's flexible. You can use an online calculator to help with that, a 50-30-20 calculator, which we have on our website.

Perfect. Yeah, I agree. I like the fact that you can be flexible with those different buckets. So that is definitely my favorite place to start. Elizabeth, let's talk about other budgeting methods. If maybe people want to try something other than 50, 30, 20, what else can you recommend? Of course. So we have the cash stuffing method. That's one. And some people like to feel and see their money.

And there's this theory with the cash stuffing method that you see exactly where your money is going. Whereas if you're using credit cards, it's easy to just keep swiping and swiping and not look at how much you're spending. So with the cash stuffing method, which is also known as the envelope based method, you can take your cash and you can assign it to different categories. And you can do this by labeling envelopes. So I may have one envelope titled food for the month and one for utilities and so on and so forth. So yeah, like I said, some people like cash because it's just a way to see where your money is going versus digitally. But you should be careful because it is possible to lose your money. Maybe the dog might eat it. Maybe you forget where you

put it. And so be careful with that method. Another method you could try is the zero-based budgeting method. And this is a pretty popular one. So to do this, you account for every single dollar that you spend until there's nothing left. One of the apps that you can use to do that is you need a budget or every dollar. I think this method is pretty good for people who are very meticulous and detailed and want to know literally where every penny is going. I personally am not like that. I just like to know that I have all of my

basics covered and I'm not really concerned with where every single penny goes. And the third one I'll mention is reverse budgeting. So with this method, you pay yourself first. So this is kind of similar to what I do. So you put money into your savings account before anything else. And then from there, you handle the rest of your expenses. But the whole kind of crux of this is prioritization. So you want to ensure that you're paying your bills, putting money away for savings, and then whatever happens to the rest of the money is your business. Perfect. So what about some things we should watch out for? Are there any budgeting trends that are a little risky that you want to warn us about? Yeah. So with the rise of social media

and TikTok and trending, sometimes budgeting videos go viral on TikTok or Instagram, but it doesn't mean that they're necessarily recommended methods. So the rule of thumb is always to think about your personal finances and what is going to work best for you. And if you're not sure, speak to a professional. So an example is the cash stuffing method, which went viral, but the risks weren't kind of outlined within the viral videos. So like we said, you know, if you have too much cash sitting around in envelopes, instead of putting it into a savings account, this can mean that you're missing out on high interest. And that's really important right now, because I don't know if you guys know, but the feds have been raising the interest rates.

They raised them, I think, 11 times now. And what that means is that debt becomes more expensive, but also saving money becomes more appealing as well. So I don't know if you've gotten an email. I have. I have a savings account with American Express and they keep telling me that the interest rates are going up on my savings account, which is nice.

So the downside of the cash stuffing envelope method is you're not getting interest on the money that you're saving that you could have in an account. So similarly, a TikTok trend about girl masks suggests that everything under $5 is actually free and paying for maybe expensive hair extensions always pays off, but it's not exactly true. And I must admit that I am guilty of girl math. I have bought things and returned them. And maybe instead of saving that money, bought something else and told myself it doesn't matter because I already spent the money and so on and so forth. So be careful of things like that. For sure. I recently heard about mom math too. There's all kinds of math out there. All right. So please tell us some other resources.

Do you have any other recommendations just for budgeting resources online that maybe could help us? Yeah. So there's so many budgeting calculators online, especially on NerdWallet. And we also have the NerdWallet app, which will help you kind of input your monthly expenses and just give you an idea of how much you're spending each month and help you categorize it as well. You could also use other budgeting apps like Mint, which is a beloved app. You need a budget, good budget, and also Honeydew, which is a budgeting app for a couple. So for anybody who is budgeting, you know, with a partner or roommate or family member, anyone else, it allows you to collaborate and kind of put your finances together to see where your money is going. Perfect. And on that topic, we actually did get a question related to budgeting as a couple. Can you answer this person's question? What's

your advice for how to budget as a couple, especially if you have different incomes? So that could be a whole webinar on its own, but I'll find a way to kind of answer that shortly. I think the first thing or the most important thing is outlining what your goals are as a couple. Everyone likes to split their finances different when it comes to partnership. Some people like to bring all their money together and put it in one pot and then divide it and decide what you're going to do with your money. Other people like to keep their finances separate and say, hey, you're going to pay this bill and I'm going to pay this bill. When I was married, what we used to do is we had a household account and we both contributed an equal amount to that account every month.

And then we would use that to pay bills and just kind of do family things together. So I think, first of all, decide how you're going to manage your money. And then, as we just mentioned, you can use one of the apps like HoneyDew to kind of track your finances and see where the spending is going. Other apps that you can try as well are Dollar Bird or Home Budget as those also allow you to collaborate on your finances. But I think the main thing is just sitting down and having a goal, a joint goal in terms of how you want your money to be spent and then kind of work from there. OK, perfect. Thank you. I saw one more question maybe you can answer now. How do you budget or stretch your paycheck when you get paid once a month? And maybe you could also speak to if you get paid at a more unpredictable rate

or variable income. How can you apply a budget when your paycheck isn't so, you know, every two weeks you get that paycheck? That's really interesting because I used to live in London and I would get paid every month. And then when I moved here, I got paid biweekly and I actually preferred the monthly pay because I got my money in one sum and could divide it up, you know, how I wanted to spend it. So I think it's just, there are multiple ways to go about it. But one thing that you could do if you get paid once a month is basically rounding up all of your bills for the month and your expenses for the month. One thing that I had to do was track when all of my bills came out because some came

out at the beginning of the month, the end of the month. So see when your bills are coming out, how much your bills are each month, just as we explained earlier with the budget. And then you can put aside kind of buckets for each expenses. I also have two different accounts that I manage my money in. So I have a spending account and a bills account. So maybe if your employer lets you, you could also split it up, split up your paycheck into those two different accounts. So what happens with my bills account is that, you know, once I'm paid, half of my paycheck goes into my bills account and I don't touch

that account. So, you know, all of my bills get paid out of that and I only touch my spending account. So I think just divide up your budget and make sure that your essentials are being paid. And then kind of you have to also budget for the amount that you have left to spend for the rest of the month. Because if you're anything like me, maybe sometimes you spend your paycheck early and then you didn't have enough left over or whatever the case is. But if you divide that and say, I think a cash envelope method might be really good for this, too. So even if you said, hey, I'm going to allocate $50 a week for the entire month for, you know, spending on whatever I want and then make sure your bills are paid. That's a way to kind of manage. That's great advice. Thank you so much. We will definitely come back to more budgeting questions at the end. So thank you so much, Elizabeth, for explaining the importance of budgeting and how to

get started. Another key component to personal finance is credit. Lauren, can you please introduce yourself and give us the basics on what credit is and why your credit score matters? Yes. Hi, I'm Lauren Schwan and I cover credit scoring as a personal finance writer at NerdWallet. Lauren, maybe you can start by telling us what is credit and why is it important? Sure. So credit is money that's available for you to borrow and pay back later. And credit scores and credit reports, which we'll talk about in a little bit, are the two big elements that determine your access to credit. So credit is really important because it can be a tool to help you fund your purchases, especially those big ticket items, things like cars or a new house. And bad credit can make it really difficult for you to achieve those things or even prevent you from achieving those things altogether. So it's really important to foster good credit. Perfect. Thank you. And what are the different

types of credit? Yeah, there's a few different types. The two main ones are revolving and installment credit. So revolving credit, that's most common, like a credit card is where the borrower is given a credit limit or a certain amount that they can spend up to. And if there's any unpaid balance at the end of the billing cycle, that amount will get carried over into the next month. And installment credit, which includes things like car loans, student loans, mortgages, is where the borrower repays the loan, usually in fixed increments over a certain amount of time. Great. Thank you for explaining that. So Lauren, why don't you tell us what is a credit score? Sure. So a credit score basically is a three digit number that lenders will use to gauge your credit worthiness or how risky you're likely to be as a borrower.

The number usually falls somewhere between 300 and 850 and the higher the score, the better. So better credit scores can mean better access to certain financial products like credit cards or loans. And they can also usually give you more favorable terms when you borrow. So that might be lower interest rate or a higher credit limit. And scores can also influence how much you might pay for insurance policies, utility deposits, whether a landlord rents you an apartment, and what kind of cell phone plan you might get, as we touched on in the survey. So there's a lot of reasons that you may need a credit check. And one misconception is that people only have one credit score, but most people actually have

multiple credit scores, sometimes even hundreds of them, assuming you have credit history. And that's because there are many different credit scoring companies and different scoring models that they use. FICO and VantageScore, you may be familiar with, are the two most commonly used brands, but there's tons of them out there. And it's important to check them regularly because not only, like we said, do you have many different scores, but scores can also fluctuate. So the number you saw last month may be different than the number that you see next month. And the good news is that checking your credit score won't affect your credit score. And you also don't have to pay to check your credit score. There are a lot of ways that you can do it for free. So often you can check it through your bank or a credit card provider,

as well as reputable financial websites like NerdWallet. Perfect. Thank you. And what are the different factors that affect credit scores? Yeah, there are a lot of factors that shape your credit score. Credit scoring companies don't tell us 100% about what their algorithms take into account, though we do know what some of the biggest driving factors are. So payment history is whether you've paid your bills on time and credit utilization, which is how much you owe on your credit cards compared to your total available credit limit. Those are the two most important factors that make up usually over 50% of your score.

But how long you've had credit, what types of credit you have, whether you only have credit cards, only have loans, or if you have a mix of the two, as well as how recently you've applied for new credit, those factors all matter. Thank you. What is a credit report exactly? So a credit report is just a more detailed record of your credit history. So there are three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, and each of them will produce a credit report for you. And this is important because the data from these credit reports is what's used to generate your credit scores. So your credit report usually doesn't tell you what your credit score is. So that's something you have to check separately. But what they do contain usually is personal information. So maybe your name, your address, your employer, as well as

information about how you've used credit in the past. So you're likely to see which accounts you have open, what their balances are, if you've had any late or missed payments, and any other negative marks like foreclosure or a bankruptcy. And so this is important because it provides details about your relationship with credit, and that can determine whether or not you'll qualify for credit cards, loans, jobs, sometimes an apartment. And regularly checking is also really important because you may spot errors that could be dragging your score down. So just a little personal story. Last summer, I received a notice in the mail from the IRS that said somebody had possibly used my social security number to get a job. And so one

of the first things I did was to go online and check my credit reports because I'm thinking, oh, somebody is getting a job with my social security number. What else might somebody be doing with my information? And luckily, I didn't see any new inquiries, any account openings, I had already had a couple credit freezes in place. And if you're not familiar with a credit freeze, that's basically where you tell the bureaus not to let people access your credit report. And if a lender can't see your credit history, then they're not likely to extend a line of credit in your name. But yeah, all that's to say, it's really important to stay on top of it, because you're not always going to be alerted to a potential problem like that. So you really

want to make sure if there is an issue that you are addressing it as quickly as possible, because the longer things go unnoticed, the more damage it can do to your finances. And the good news there is that your credit reports are also free to check. So you can check weekly your three major credit bureau reports at annualcreditreport.com. I know this topic is really important to people too. When you're just starting out, how can you build your credit score? Yeah, it can be tough. I know in my early adulthood, I felt really discouraged because I would have credit card application after application rejected. And there are things I

wish I knew when I was younger. But the good news is there are ways that you can start building credit. So one is that you can get a secured credit card. And basically what that is, is a card where you're required to put down a cash deposit. And that deposit amount is usually equal to the credit limit that you'll receive. So if you put down $300, you'll get a $300 credit limit. Another option is to apply for a credit card with a cosigner. So usually that will be somebody with better credit who has a reliable income. And what they're agreeing to is to ultimately pay the bill if for some reason you're unable to. So it's really important that if you enter into a relationship like that, it's somebody that you can communicate well with

and you really want to just make sure that you're practicing good behavior with that account so that you don't ruffle any feathers. Another option is to look into what are sometimes called starter unsecured credit cards. And those are basically just regular credit cards, but that might be available to somebody with little to no credit history. For one example is there are some of these cards that are designed

for college students. So another option, you can ask to become an authorized user on somebody else's credit card. And that sort of like a co-signer, that person is ultimately responsible for paying the bill if you can't. But what's cool about that is that you don't necessarily have to use the card or even have it in your possession. But as long as the primary account holder is being active on that account, then you'll reap the benefits of their credit usage. Okay, another option, you can take out a credit builder loan. So these are loans that are usually offered through smaller credit unions and banks. And the way they work is that you'll get a loan

amount, but it's kept separate in a bank account, and you make payments toward it. And once you're finished making off payments, the amount is released to you. So it's kind of a cool way that you can build savings as you're building your credit. Another possibility is that you can maybe get credit for paying your rent or phone or utility bills. So these things normally are not reported to the credit bureaus, but there are services that may do it for you. One thing to note is that some of these services are free, but some may charge you or a landlord or potential landlord to use them. And they are not always reported to every credit bureau, so they won't be reflected in every credit score

that you have. But with most of these services, you should be able to go on their websites and see who they report to. And last but not least, just take care to nurture your credit over time. So the credit that you do have, it's really important to practice good behaviors and protect. So again, things like making your payments on time and trying to avoid closing accounts unnecessarily, things like that. Thank you. So lots of different options. That was helpful to go through. What about some other resources you can recommend for people? Yeah. So again, NerdWallet is super helpful. We have a lot of great content with articles around this topic. You can also get your free credit report and advantage score 3.0 score through

NerdWallet. As I mentioned, your three major credit reports, you can check weekly for free at annualcreditreport.com. And then you can also check with your financial institution. So your bank, your credit card provider, they may provide you a free credit score or things like credit alerts. Perfect. Thank you. We had a couple of questions come in on this topic. So let me ask you if you can answer them. First of all, how do I get negative or incorrect information off my credit report? Yeah, so there's a few ways you can go about it. If you think it's a mistake or something that's an error, if you see, for mail, sometimes by phone. Online is usually the fastest, but you'll just have to provide them information, see if you can gather any evidence that can support your case. And they will usually resolve those disputes within a few

weeks. So it can be pretty fast. But if there's a negative mark on your report that is accurate, if you did miss a payment, you know, you're carrying a lot of debt, things like that, then it depends kind of on the circumstance. There's a potential if it was a one off thing, you might be able to reach out to the lender and see if you can work out an agreement. If you arrange to make the payment and ask them if they can wipe that from the report. You may also be able to write a goodwill letter, which kind of is just stating your case, sort of explaining what happened, why it won't happen again. That could work, but it's not guaranteed in all cases. But in some instances, it's just a matter of time. So it depends on what negative mark, what the negative mark is. If it's, again, a late payment, a bankruptcy, they'll stay on your credit

report for a different number of years. So you may just kind of have to wait until those roll off, unfortunately. What about this one? How do I get a higher limit for credit? Yeah, so having your credit in good standing is the easiest way to increase your credit limit. So you want to make sure for your open accounts that you're using as little of that credit limit as possible. And it depends. Sometimes issuers will automatically raise your credit limit if you've had the account open for a certain amount of time. So you can always check online. Another good time to do it is after your income has increased. So say you get a pay raise, that may be a good time

to ask. But yeah, it just kind of depends. I would take care of the credit that you have, make sure it's in a good place because you'll be more likely to be granted that credit limit. Great advice. Thank you so much, Lauren. Budgeting and credit scoring can play a big role in debt and how to manage it. And that is the topic of our final section. Elizabeth, tell us what is debt? Right. So debt is when one party owes another party money. So an example is if you use a credit card and you don't pay it off in full, then your balance would be debt. And likewise, if you take out a loan, the balance that you owe on that loan is debt as well. So we have secure debt and we have unsecure debt. So secure debt has some kind of asset attached to it, or rather that the borrower pledges that they're going to pay back

the person they lended from if they don't pay back their loan. So the asset is only taken away if the borrower doesn't pay back their debt. An example of that is a car loan. If any of us have car loans here, if you miss more than a few payments on your car loan, then they're likely to come and get the car back. And the same with mortgage payments. Unsecured debt, on the other hand, is debt that doesn't have any collateral. Elizabeth, how would you classify good debt versus bad debt? I want to say first that having debt in itself is not a bad thing, especially when you leverage

it to improve your quality of living or use it to build wealth. So that said, good debt usually has relatively low interest rates and it can help you increase your income or grow your wealth. So examples are taking out a student loan and then being able to get a higher paid job in return, cars, which help you to get from A to B, as well as mortgages, because those can grow in value over time and help you grow wealth as well. Bad debt, on the other hand, usually has a high interest rate and it can negatively impact your finances. So for example, a credit card debt or rather credit card debt

that snowballs, payday loans can also be in a category of bad debt as well. That makes a lot of sense. And are there different sources of debt? Could you run through some of these for us? Of course. So there are many sources of debt. One of the most common ones is credit card debt. This was actually the first type of debt that I had. I think I was 17 or something. And my mom's like, hey, why don't you take out a card to start building your credit, but didn't really come with a manual beyond that. So I was buying a lot of clothes and accessories, and I wasn't paying back on time. And that basically messed up my credit. So that was one of the first types of debts that I had. Credit card debt can be really expensive as well because of the annual percentage rate.

And that is the interest that you pay for borrowing the money. And it can range from the teens to the 20s, depending on the card provider, your credit score, and whether the interest rates are rising or falling. Another common type of debt is medical debt. So that's debt that you accrue for visiting the doctor. You also have student loans, which I'm sure many of us know So that's debt that you accrue for visiting the doctor. You also have student loans, which I'm sure many of us know what that is, that you take out for education. You have buy now, pay later loans. I think sometimes people don't see these as debt because,

you know, I use them sometimes after pay and Klorna and things like that. And they tell you that you can pay in four. And usually if you pay in four, you're not charged any interest. But if you choose longer periods, then you usually are charged interest. And also if you don't pay off what you agreed to pay off, then it can affect your credits for in the long run. You also have not going to go through everything on here, but personal loans are another one sometimes people don't think about. So they're usually provided by a private lender and you can use these loans for anything that you want, including a home remodel, debt consolidation, or a large purchase. Great. Thank you. What happens if you have debt? So having debt in itself is not a bad

thing. As I said earlier, you can use debt to build wealth or to improve your standard of living. But it comes problematic when you're spending too much of your income on paying down your debt, or it starts snowballing, which means like a snowball, your debt is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It can also be problematic when it affects your credit score and limits your borrowing options. So for example, many of us know if you have a bad credit score, then it might not be possible to rent an apartment or to get a good mortgage deal if you can get one at all. So you can use debt to income ratio to decide whether your debt is problematic or not. We do have a hefty calculator on NerdWallet that you can use to calculate your debt to income ratio, but I'll just tell you manually

to calculate it, you add your monthly debt payments and you divide them by your gross monthly income. And your gross monthly income is the earnings that you have before taxes and deductions are taken out. You can usually see that on your payslip. So if your DTI or debt to income ratio is less than 36%, then your debt is probably manageable. But if it's higher than that, then you might want to start paying it down. And we'll give you some strategies for that later. I love using calculators online. So you don't have to do that manual calculation. So that's a great tip. What about managing debt? Talk to us about this. So managing your debt, first things first is keep track of how much you owe.

And depending on the type of person you are, some people like to do it manually by using a spreadsheet. But you do have to be very consistent with that because you need to put it in every time you're spending money or rather paying off your debt. And you can also use an app like the NerdWallet app to help you track your debt as well. Another thing that you want to do is monitor your credit to ensure that all your debt on the credit report is yours. So as Lauren said, sometimes people can take out debt in your name. Sometimes people can use your social security number or your details and take out loans. So you want to make sure all of the debt is yours. And then lastly, you want to trade, try to pay off your balances in full every month. I know this is not possible for everyone because maybe their paycheck is spread thin, but if you can't pay it in full, then at least pay the minimum

balance. But you know, it's not advisable that you only pay the minimal minimum balance because your debt could snowball that way. That's awesome advice. Thank you. Let's talk a little bit more about paying off debt. I know there are different methods people can use. So could you explain some of those to us? Of course. So we'll start with the snowball method, which is one of my favorites, maybe because I like snowballs. So when you pay, so snowball method, what you do is you pay off your smallest debt first, and then you gradually pay off bigger ones. This can be a great method for people who get satisfaction from seeing at least one debt paid off, and then they feel encouraged because some people have such overwhelming debt that they're like, where do I

start with this? And I'm not even making any progress. So how it works is you pay at least the minimum payments on every single one of your debts, right? Not just on one, but you take extra money and then you put that on your smallest debt until you pay that down. Then once you pay off that smallest debt, you take all the money that you were putting on the smallest debt, which includes the minimum payment and the extra money, and you put it on the next smallest debt. And you keep going until you're creating this huge snowball, and then you pay off your debt, and life is great, and you have a debt payoff party, and everything is amazing. So that's basically how the snowball method works. The debt avalanche method is a little bit similar, but you do the reverse. So you pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first,

and then you keep going and going and going that way. This can be satisfying for people who would feel more satisfaction from seeing their biggest debt paid down first. There's also debt consolidation, which you can do through a personal loan or credit card. So I have heard many people say, you know, I hate the idea of having to pay five different people that I owe debt to every month. And it's really frustrating. And I'd rather just have one lump sum payment. So debt consolidation helps you do that. So you basically take out a loan that's going to cover all of your debt amount. And then you pay off that debt with the loan and then you pay back the loan, you know, incrementally.

You can also do it with a credit card as well. Another thing, I am side hustle queen. So let's be honest, you know, you read all these budgeting things online and they're like, you know, save one cent from buying this kind of pasta versus this or cut off Netflix. But sometimes that's just not enough and you just ain't got enough money. So that's where side hustle can be extremely helpful because you have extra money that you can use to pay down your debt. So I know we've seen all the listicles of side hustles. We have a lot of those on NerdWallet in case you're stuck on ideas of ways to make extra money, but it can make paying down debt a lot faster, but it does require discipline because you might see that extra check and be like, ooh, going out to eat tonight. But you have to be disciplined enough to use that to actually pay the debt down. If things have gotten really bad in terms of your debt, then you may want to consider bankruptcy, which is a legal process to eliminate the debt altogether. So you can hit reset basically

on your finances in that way. Or you can do debt settlement, which is where you try to get your creditors to negotiate the price of your debt. So in that way, sometimes you can slash your debt in half or just end up paying a lot less. Perfect. So many good ideas. Thank you for that. Let's talk a bit about some resources. So what are some resources you recommend for people? So I'm very thankful to be part of the technology age where you can just download an app and it can help you kind of streamline the process of managing your debt. So the NerdWallet app is a great resource to help you manage your debt. You also have the

debt payoff planner that you can use as well. You have Tally. And then again, if you are more traditional kind of person, then just use a spreadsheet to kind of keep track of how much you're paying and how much you have left to pay as well. Perfect. Thank you. Now we did get some questions about debt. So first, Elizabeth, could you answer this one? When splitting paychecks for budgeting, how do you go about creating slash maintaining the bills account? Should you calculate exact amounts for every bill and put that total into the bills account? Or is it better to add a little more than expected, just in case something unexpected happens? I really, really like that question. And what I do personally is I do the

latter. So I always leave a little bit of wiggle room. But if you're a very exact person, I don't think unless you're going to have a surprise bill, I don't know the only kind of surprise bill I can think of off the top of my head, which has happened to me before I went out of town and I didn't even know what was going on with my phone plan. And I came back and my bill was like double the amount. So instead of paying what I usually would have paid, like you said, I ended up having to pay over. So I would definitely leave some wiggle room and some extra dollars in there in case one of your bills ends up being more expensive than you anticipate. Perfect. That's such good advice. Thank you so much. So we do have a bunch of other questions to get to. Let's tackle this one, Elizabeth, and Lauren can chime in too. Can I pay off debt and save at the same time? How do you juggle both priorities?

You absolutely can. And that is why I love the 50-30-20 budget. So some people feel like, oh, I have so much debt and that means that I can't save any money because I have to pay down the debt. But depending on how much debt you have, you might be paying it for a little while. So if you say, I'm not going to save any money at all until I pay off all my debts, an emergency could happen, right? Your car could break down. You have an unexpected bill you have to pay. And then that could lead you to taking out more debt to pay off those emergencies. whatever that number is for your 20%. So some goes to saving and investing and some also goes to paying down debt.

So the rule of thumb is that you pay down, again, that high interest rate debt first and you put whatever you can put towards that and that you also try to build up an emergency savings fund of at least $500. So again, that might mean putting away $50 every paycheck, $20, but every little amount counts. Good advice.

Lauren, we have some questions for you about credit. So does keeping a balance on your credit cards help your credit score? So that is actually a myth as we went over the different factors that affect your credit score. The payment history and your credit utilization are the two big ones. So if you're not making payments and you're using more of your credit limit, those are going to have pretty big impacts on your score. So ideally, you know, you want to pay at least the minimum, but ideally the full balance, and that'll have a more positive effect in the long term. Okay, perfect.

Back to budgeting for you, Elizabeth, we have a question. This is more about mindset. So do you have any advice on how to shift your mindset to stay on budget? Do I? Yes, I do. So again, Elizabeth is an impulsive spender. But what really, really was the shift for me was having goals for my money. As boring as this

sounds, or maybe even intimidating, retirement planning really helped me. So I started asking myself, what kind of retirement do I want to have? Where do I want to live? How much money do I want to have each month? And I used our retirement calculator at NerdWallet to calculate how much I would need to have saved to have that number of, and it just put me into perspective of how far away I am from my goals. So, you know, that helped me to come up with a strategy, how much I need to save each month and put towards retirement savings or just my emergency fund, and just keeping my finances in good order. So I would say, setting goals for your money, that will help you stay focused in terms of your spending.

Perfect. I think those are great words to end on. So thank you so much, both of you, Elizabeth and Lauren. And thank you everyone for being here. We hope you enjoyed this webinar. We hope you learned something today. And that's all for this episode. If you have any questions about anything we covered in this episode,

turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. Or send us a voice memo at podcast at nerdwallet.com. This episode was produced by myself and we had editing from Kevin Tidmarsh. Thanks as always to Nerd Wallet's editors for all their help. Here's our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances. And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.