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Are you having a bad financial year? Here is how to rebound

Are you having a bad financial year? Here is how to rebound
  • Many people welcomed 2021 with terrible finances caused by the pandemic
  • Financial freedom can be achieved by following steps and talking to experts

Many Americans stepped into the new year with terrible finances. People lost their jobs, closed businesses, faced unexpected expenses, or experienced major losses due to the pandemic. Are you one of them? Then you need to know that you are by no means out of options.

Even more comforting, you still have the power to achieve financial freedom despite the difficulties faced last year. You can take steps to shore up your budget, reduce your expenses and get a handle on your situation.

Here is the list of actions that you can take right now to improve your financial health this year.

Accept the reality

The beginning of financial recovery is to accept the fact that you are behind your finances. Yes, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed while you deal with it but it is useless. Resisting that fact is pointless and it won’t help you in the future. The most important factor is to accept that it is gone and you can’t undo it. But prepare yourself for a better financial position.

Not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the best method to help. You can use apps that merge your entire financial life under one platform. It could be your credit cards, subscriptions, bank accounts, loans, investments, and others. You will have a picture of your spending and earnings, debts that are most serious, which expenses are taking the most out of your pocket, and changes you can make to resolve the issues. By conquering the barrier of accepting the situation, you take the first step towards changing your financial position.

Take advice from the experts

This is one of the easiest methods to save more and manage your budget. It will cost nothing but time and this method could save you a lot of money in the long run. You need to take advice from the people who know what they are talking about. That means listening to personal finance podcasts like “Afford Anything" by Paula Pant, “Women and Money” by Suze Orman, “Brown Ambition” by Mandy Woodruff along with Tiffany Aliche and various others. This will put some of the world’s leading experts on the topic within your reach and it won’t take anything out of your pocket.

Similarly, you can also watch YouTube channels dedicated to finances like "Wealth Hacker" by Jeff Rose and “Beat the Bush”. These are only a few of the options you can access.

You can expand your knowledge by doing some research. You can talk to your friends or colleagues about what they like and subscribe to various shows, podcasts and channels. You can utilize your time and spend it by listening to experts who specialize in the same field in which you are experiencing difficulty.

Think about taking a personal loan

The previous year has shrunk your finance and you need to cope. You have reached the limits on your credit cards along the way. High credit card balances have a great impact on your credit scores and once it builds up, climbing out can only get tough as time goes on.

In order to resolve this, you can consider taking a personal loan so that it is paid off all at once. With a personal loan, you will be free from paying multiple lenders and can enjoy the benefit of paying to only one creditor. You can easily track your finances and know about how many payments are left.

Paying off your credit cards at once will keep your credit score intact which will help you in the future. You can attain a personal loan from some of the best financial institutions such as HSBC, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Discover, and many others. 

Examine your auto-pay bills

Your financial position might be affected by small bills or payments that you are not even aware of or forgot about. To consider, everything ranging from apps to streaming services comes with free trials and when the trial period ends, they are charged at full costs. People mostly tend to forget that they started the trials which end up in auto-withdrawals from their personal accounts.

So you need to examine what services you are paying for and cancel the ones which aren’t utilized or required by you. This will cut down the unnecessary expenses and will save you a little more.

Reassess your subscriptions

When you examine your auto-pay bills every month, you might notice that you are signed up for more subscriptions than you knew about. And it can be costing you more than what your budget allows. To consider an example, cord-cutters might subscribe to a number of streaming services for different reasons, and having multiple subscriptions for similar services is hard to justify when times are tough.

Likewise, the overlap is common with apps, channel subscriptions, and the rest.

So when you revisit your subscriptions, you can cut some items and the savings will help you make extra payments of your debts.

Register for a balance transfer card

This might seem illogical, but you can apply for a credit card that is dedicated to balancing transfers to manage credit card debts. Balance transfer credit cards offer introductory rates with 0% interest. When you get approved for the credit card, you can transfer your existing debt (especially which doesn’t go away). However, you need to know that the debt doesn’t go away, it is only transferred to a new card and the accruing interest is stopped.

By this method, you can put that debt aside by making minimum required payments and focus on debts that are a burden to your pocket.