MSU Extension 4-H Adulting 101

Welcome to MSU Extensions Adulting 101 Program. We are glad you decided to join us for our first Adulting 101 of 2024. We'll be offering this program monthly with a new topic and a new subject each month at different times and different days to try to accommodate as many people as possible. My name is Kathy Jamieson, and I'm honored to serve as an educator for MSU Extension and the coordinator of the Adulting 101 Program. We are super excited to have Nicole Dietrich from Lake Trust Credit Union present on today's topic, the psychology of spending and saving. Nicole Dietrich is a business development manager at Lake Trust Credit Union who understands the importance of financial well being. In her role, she connects Lake Trust members with helpful resources to support their growth and meet their goals. Nicole and her team also help start ups, establish small businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers fill small gaps in funding through their small business micro loan program. You'll have an opportunity to speak with Nicole today to learn more. And her contact information is on this slide in case you want to reach out to her. So you can see that at the corner. Okay. MSU Extension programs are open to everyone. MSU Extension believes fully in the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We know that human differences enrich our lives, our work and our community, and we embrace our responsibility to be a resource for all and are committed to providing programs to all segments of our community. It is also important to understand the longstanding history and legacy of colonialism that has brought us who all reside on this land. And to seek to understand our place within that history and the land acknowledgment on the screen is just one step in that process. Before we get started, a few housekeeping, we are going to do Q and A. We're going to try to answer as many questions as we possibly can at the end of the session. So if you do have questions, please put them in the Q and A and we'll get to them as soon as we can. As I indicated earlier, we will be recording this session. The recording will be available probably a week after today. You will be getting a follow up e mail with the link to access the recording if you need to. As well as you'll get email with all these additional resources that are related to this presentation for you to preview, as well as a link to a survey for you to answer. We ask you to please take 2 minutes to answer the survey. It's three questions. Your feedback is extremely important to us. There will be some interactive activities. If you can please try to grab a piece of paper and a pen or some kind of writing utensil and just for you to take notes and to do some of the activities. Okay. I'm going to turn it over to Nicole. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kathy. Welcome everybody. Exciting to see and hear where everyone was from this evening. I thought I'd share a little bit of a roadmap of what our journey is going to look like this evening. But I wanted to say thank you so much and congratulations for choosing to invest in yourself this evening. This is really great information that I am passionate about sharing. And Lake Trust is passionate to bring to as many people as possible. For those that aren't familiar, Lake Trust is a full service financial institution. We're credit union supporting all of Michigan. Don't worry for those of you that do not reside in Michigan still reach out to me. Should you have one off question? I think we should just jump right in and talk about today's roadmap. You'll see that today we're going to reflect on your personal financial journey. We're going to ask you to have some self reflection and some thought throughout this. The word, your personal financial journey is important because we're all on different journeys. I'm on a different journey, Kathy's on a different journey. My journey today is different than my journey six months ago. So it's important to have a road map to guide us, and part of that is understanding our emotional connection to money. Towards the end of the session, we'll talk about some budgeting resources, some tools in your tool kit to help you on your journey. The first slide that we're going to look at, I think this says it all. Money impacts more than just our bank accounts. You can see finances, that overarching piece there. And it's going to feed into our emotions. Finances feed into our overall sense of well being, our overall mood. Think, if you've ever had a moment where there's been more month than money, how did that make you feel? How would you feel? It really touches all of that. And the overall stressors regarding finances can really weigh on our health. I'm going to ask you, remember, we're going to jump right into the interaction. Here we go. With either in your mind or with the writing utensil, you have, make a list of three financial decisions that you very recently made. It could be, its 6:00 this evening. Maybe you made three already today, maybe it's this week, maybe it is just in January. It could be small. A major decision, one is deciding to attend this session, but it could be something easy as maybe you decided to buy a lottery ticket on a whim or you took that sharp left turn and went to Starbucks, or maybe you've done something really big already this month and bought a condo or a car or maybe a New Years resolution was to make a budget. Just think about some things, some financial decisions you've made very recently. I'm going to ask you all, I can't see you. I'm just going to assume you're doing this and going along with me. So, close your eyes, let's get there. Close your eyes for a moment. And imagine that you just won the equivalent of six months worth of your salary. Six months. You just won six months of that salary. What's your first reaction? How do you feel? Do you feel a little less stress if you had six months worth of your salary? Imagine what you could do. Imagine! Are you excited? I am. I'm picturing all the things I could pay off by, go. It is snowy and cold here in Michigan. I'm going to the beach. Okay. Now, if you've opened your eyes, close them again. Now imagine you just lost. You just lost it. The same amount of money. How does that feel? Six months of your salary, whatever that is. We went negative. Now that much. My heart rate is starting to speed up. I'm getting some anxiety. Okay. You can open your eyes now. If you need to go back to the place where you won that money for a moment, then please do so. But I think that demonstrates how money can impact so much more than our bank accounts. It's tied to our emotions. Like we said, our sense of well being. We're going to talk about how our emotional responses that are generated by our personal finances, how they can impact the decisions that we're making. I think we're going to jump right in with our first poll. The poll is on the screen, but I'm going to make it live so you can answer it. What is the first step in managing your emotions to decrease negative financial outcomes? Is it: A. Calling a friend for advice B. Doing your taxes C. Opening a savings account D. Getting educated E. Balancing your budget. We have about 20% participated so far, and it's now 36% now 40. When it hits to about 70 or when it starts slowing down, I'll end the poll. We're at 68% I love all this participation. That's great. We're at 75. I'm going to give you about another 5 seconds. If you want to try to answer, then I'm going to end the poll and I'm going to share the results. 47% of you said getting educated, and that was the correct answer. The other ones are, of course, balancing your budget. That's always a good thing to try to do. That was 36% and then calling a friend for advice, 9% and doing your taxes 2% and opening up a savings account 7% So I'm going to stop sharing. Thank you all for participating. Okay, I think to kick off the conversation more so about our emotions, it's important to understand that it's not just us. There's actually some science behind this. Perhaps you have been exposed to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs theory before. If not, we're going to just briefly talk about it because it really drives the decisions we make when we're spending money. We know finances trigger an emotional response because personal needs are influenced by money. This is where the hierarchy of needs comes in. Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who wrote about human motivation. Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs theory, where he identified five essential needs that humans must have fulfilled, and all five of these are impacted by our finances. If you look there at the bottom in the blue with a little coffee pot, that is our physiological needs. When you think of what might that be, That would be our air, that would be access to clean water, food, shelter, being able to sleep, clothing. Those are all at the foundation of what we would need. Then we move up to safety. That is where your personal security comes in. Employment comes in here. Your health comes in here. Your property would come in here as well. So those are the two foundational needs that have to be met. And that's where when you're spending, that is typically where you're going to see the bulk of your funds. It's going to go to rent, it's going to go to food, it's your shelter, it's your vehicle, things like that. But then when we move up into the middle of the pyramid, the love and belonging, this is the spot we start to see sort of impulsive spending come into place. But it actually is a need that needs to be met within us. Love and belonging is going to be your friendships, it's going to be your family, and it's going to be our sense of connection. This impacts our spending and also will impact some of our emotions as well. Anyone out there ever lent money to a friend and never gotten it back? You can see it is on both sides. Then we're going to move up into that esteem which would be respect, maybe assumed, or maybe somebody simply respects you, you think because of the way you dress, it's your self esteem. It's going to be your status. And some people tie this to freedom as well. They think finances will give them additional freedom. Then at the very top is your self actualization. That is the desire to become all that you can be. So you can see that money would be tied to all of these. The reason we choose, or impulsively choose, to spend money. There really is some science behind it. So we need to think about this as we're moving through and pausing to make financial decisions. Kathy, if you want to move to the next slide for me. Okay, we're going to do another poll. And the poll, What you're going to see is on the slide right here. So I'm going to launch it right now. Have you ever allowed your emotions to influence a financial decision? A. Absolutely, this is a daily occurrence. B. Occasionally, my emotions get the most of me and influence my financial decisions. And C. I have not really thought about this So we are already at 64%. Those polls are moving. I know it's like it's awesome! It's past my goal which was 75. So I'm going to give you another 5 seconds to answer if you want. Then I'm going to end the poll. I'm going to end the poll and then share the results. The winner is B. Occasionally I let my emotions get the best of me. Only 17% of you said it's a daily occurrence. There was 16% of 101 of you decided that you haven't really thought about this. Hopefully this webinar will get you thinking about it now, right? I'm going to stop sharing. I have a little story to share here, depending on sometimes share this at different places. This poll always really speaks to me because, guys, know that I do this session a lot, I'm a spender, I have to really be mindful, this always really speaks to me because I'm a mom, I have two young ish kids. I find that that's where my emotions come in and there's a lot to unpack to that as to why, but I think I have a great example for those parents in the crowd or Aunts, my niece and nephew, get me on this too. Have you ever gone anywhere and set set a really strict boundary? We're going, maybe it's even the movies, like we're not buying extra things, we're not doing this, we're not doing that. We're going apple orchard, whatever it might be. So we live in the Metro Detroit area. Go Lions. My son and I, two weekends ago went to the Lions game. And I had said to him, hey, we have all things Lions like all things Detroit Lions, we're not buying souvenirs. We're, we're not doing all this. Like you can have a snack and that's it. Wouldn't, you know, like we're there, we're in the moments, we're having a good time. Everybody's like super happy. And the first thing he says, Mom, I need to have that souvenir cup. Because it was for commemorate. For those of you that aren't familiar, the Detroit Lions historically have not fared very well in postseason and this is a big deal for us. And so he had to have this commemorative cup. And I was like, you know what you do, let's go get it. That cup. And that beverage was $16. Okay. You know what, we got it. But that was just an example of me getting caught up in the moment of making those purchases. And definitely not something that I had budgeted into $16 drink for a 12 year old. Like this was soda. It was $16 soda because of that cup. And I just got caught up in the moment and really had some buyers remorse as we're walking up to our seats. So it happens. so.. ( lost sound) I think we lost her for a second ( no sound) and she went to a library to have good Internet connection. So I'm sure she'll be back. (no sound) The next section we're going to be talking about is identifying your financial behaviors. Welcome back. That was bizarre. Okay. I got so excited at telling you my story that I guess my Zoom freaked out. Yes, we're going to talk about identifying your personal financial behaviors. Then if you want.. this is one where I'm just going to read right from the slide because I think there's some good content here and I want it to sink in. Long term financial success often comes down to understanding one's emotional relationship with money and how it sways decisions. We're not all, we could all be presented with the exact same scenario. And most of us would make different decisions based on our emotional relationship with money that goes way, way, way, way back to childhood. And how we feel about money. Where we're at right now, there's a lot that feeds into that. We want to be mindful of, being mindful of, that is going to help us make positive change. What we're going to do is I just mentioned it. We're going to start by reflecting on maybe what you've learned about or been exposed to regarding money as a child. What message did you pick up from your network, your family, your guardians, your parents, your friends, families about spending, saving. How did they feel about credit? How did they talk about credit? How did they talk about financial institutions? Sometimes we receive conflicting messages depending on who we're listening to at the time or perhaps what's going on in their lives at the time. But if you just close your eyes and think back about some of your first experiences when it comes to money, there's probably some backstory as to why you make some of the financial. Not probably there is decisions that you make. Your beliefs and attitudes about money involve the way money and the role money has paid in your life, your circumstances, and the world that you exist in. Everybody, again, depending on where they're at in their journey, is probably going to have a different relationship with money. If you've gone through life and had what the industry calls like financial flashpoints or some traumatic experience that's tied to money. Maybe you were had your house foreclosed on. Maybe as a child, you went through that process or maybe you had the fear of being evicted. Different things like that. Those flash points, traumatic events will sway your relationship with money. As a kid, you heard, we don't have money for that, we can't afford that. If you hear people say, oh look at them, they have money, they're rich, they can do that. It really impacts the way that you decide to spend your money now as an adult. Again, we're bringing this up to you, can be mindful. When you're making those purchases. Kathy, do you want to switch slides for me? Yep, we have another poll. This is what the poll is going to be. And I'm going to launch it in just a second here. What emotions come up when you think of your current money situation? Let me get to it and launch Does money make you feel fearful and anxious? Do you try to avoid thinking about money altogether? Do you feel powerfully compelled to make more or get more money? Do you associate wealth with image, status and self worth or E. Does money is a sensitive topic that you don't want to discuss with others. I think. Kathy, can they pick more than one answer on this one? You can. It's a multiple choice. You could choose more than one. Thank you. That's swaying some of these answers here. We got about 60% I'm going to wait for that 75% then give you another 5 seconds. We have reached 75% participation. If you want to participate, you got few seconds. And I'm going to end the poll. Here is the results. The big one is actually it's 59% (C) I feel powerfully compelled to make more or get more money. That was the big winner here. And then 17% of you said money is a sensitive topic that you don't really want to discuss. The all else was in between. Obviously, money has different reactions to different people. That's what Nicole indicated earlier. And this poll, in a sense, verified that. I think it's important to know that it's a journey. And we showed at the very beginning like a crazy road scene. And we talked about a map depending on where you're at in your journey', with your financial well being journey, is where a lot of times you see the answers change. Again, we could ask you this a year from now and your answer, very much so, could be different. Our relationship with money ebbs and flows with what really is going on in our life. For those of you that answered, I feel compelled to make more money, while I wish I could waive a magic wand and help everybody make more money. But some of the tools we're going to give you in the next half of the session will help you maybe have the money that you need when you need it. There's some science behind it. There's a quote that I love. It's not how much money you make, but it's how much money you spend. We'll get into that as we start talking about a budget, but I really love that. And you'll probably hear me repeat it again, but it really is not how much you make, it is more, in fact how much you spend. I work with people that make 2,3,4, $500,000, that are paycheck to paycheck. I work with people that make $38,000 that are able to put a significant amount of money into their savings account because it truly is, in fact, how much you spend as we're walking through budgeting. Let's think about that. Think about some of the other things we have challenged you to be mindful of. This is a spot where this slide is pretty powerful. I read a little bit of it. Understanding how your relationship to money can influence and shape your financial behaviors and habits has multiple benefits. In fact, knowing the role money plays in your life is a primary component to financial success. And making incrementally better financial decisions. That last sentence I want you to focus on, just be incrementally better. Do a little better tomorrow than you did today, you're already off to a great start because you're joining us this evening. We're just going to look to make incremental improvements. And that's where sometimes budgets, like diets, fall off the rails because we try to do it all at once and stick to it. So we're just going to make incremental improvements when you make an effort to define how you think and feel about money, how your values influence your decision. You can identify those areas where you'd like to change. The one thing I want to highlight here is that it's important to distinguish between behaviors and outcomes. Because behaviors are things that you can control, We can't always control the outcomes. But you can make changes to your behaviors that will make your outcomes more desirable. Likely. We all know that life has obstacles. If life comes at us hard and fast, we can't always be prepared for that, but if we're making incremental changes when life is thrown at us, we're better prepared. There we go. Now that we've thought about that, what I'd like you to reflect on is think about other things that have shaped your financial knowledge and habits. We sort of alluded to this earlier. Oftentimes we hear people say that it's their family members, their friends, peers, close associates. Maybe it's a coworker. Advertising certainly influences whether we realize it or not. Now in today's world, social media is in our face. Think about Tiktok, think about Instagram. Certainly that definitely sways most people. Then society and culture. The society and culture that you live in. When I work with individuals that maybe are in a more rural culture area versus city and metro, it is different. The interactions with money can tend to be different. All of that plays into that. We'd like you just to pause for a moment. Think about today. Yesterday, when you were buying and spending. What has influenced you? What do you think? Were some things that impacted you. I can't see you and I know we can't have chat. But I always challenge people to think about who or what influenced you in your last financial decision. Now that we've talked about some of the influences, I'd like to talk about two other financial motivators that sometimes drive our spending habits. It's two sides of the same coin. Pain versus pleasure is what we're going to talk about. Humans are conditioned to move away from pain and towards pleasure naturally. But the way we decide to spend our money is tied to a little different. For example, we move towards pleasure. When we spend money to get things we enjoy, it's always easier to buy things that we really love. Again, to save, if you're me, that beach vacation. An example of pain avoidance would be the reason you pay insurance premiums and have health insurance. We know that spending money for, I always stumble on this, I'm just going to say impulse spending gives us immediate gratification. But not having enough money at some point in time to pay for food or medicine are also potential sources of pain. Let's dive into that a little bit more on the next slide. Yes, so we can look at these in greater detail here. If I can get my slides also to move, You'll see in the green we have the financial pleasure side. Those are decisions that move towards using our money to get what we want. If you're me, this slide was made for me. I think. If you take pleasure in your daily latte, I am a Starbucks person, then that is easy for me to justify spending $7 or you can see your weekly dinner out, a new pair of shoes, that all falls into that category. If your favorite place, me, is to be at the beach, it is much easier to allocate that money to save for a vacation, then it is maybe to put that towards retirement. Now on the flip side, let's look at the pain of avoidance. There's no need to raise your hand. I can't see you. This is self reflective, but how many of you have been in a car accident recently? Hopefully you weren't hurt, maybe it's a fender bender. And how many of you, maybe at one point in time along your journey, have not been sure how you're going to pay your rent this month. So if you are in some of those categories, you might in that it is easier to put money in a savings account to create that buffer. If you ever do run short of rent, then you have some money in your savings account to move over or it could be easier to adjust if you've been in a car accident, fender bender to adjust your deductibles on your insurance and maybe pay a little more every month just so you don't have such a high deductible or so you can mitigate the total cost of paying that out of pocket. We want to avoid potential future pain based on past experiences. We are more motivated to forego instant gratification. I'm going to skip that $7 latte and put that $7 Towards paying a little extra on my insurance premiums. So I don't have to deal with paying either for all out of pocket or having a large deductible. So that's how some of those purchasing decisions are made by being motivated by either financial pleasure or pain. And sometimes you fall in both buckets. Again, we just asked you early to be mindful about what's driving you to make the purchases that you are. If you just pause like, am I being motivated? Like, am I having a bad day? And I just motivated, right right now by some instant gratification or am I really making a choice because I don't want to be short on rent again. I do want to talk briefly, I know it's tax return season. Before we get to this slide, there's a piece of this pain versus pleasure that I'm going to challenge those of you that get a refund to really look into and think about what you're going to do with some of those funds. And we'll get into budgeting and savings in a moment. But as you get that, really stop and think. Am I moving towards the pleasure and instant gratification, or am I doing some things to do some pain avoidance and maybe you figure out how to do both, and we'll talk about doing that. But I always think that this is a really insightful time to be thinking about some of our drivers because some of us do see an influx of money that we might not see through the rest of the year. This is, tax time is really an interesting time to look at these two pieces here. Now we promised we are going to talk about budgeting. Turning your dreams and goals into plans. You can see here, this is the roadmap to a budget. I call a budget maybe my savings plan. You can call it your financial goal. Really the first step is that just like anything, you're going to write it down. Because when you write it down, it becomes real. Write your dreams down. Write what you're shooting for. Short term Long term goals. We're going to organize those. Think about what do you want to accomplish financially? These are your financial dreams. What would you like your financial roadmap to look like? Then you're going to organize your goals into short term and long term. And then we want you to pay special notice to that blue widget, I guess is what we're going to call it. The wording there is important and it's very intentional. It's a create a rough plan. This needs to be fluid. It needs to be agile and change with your life. Because again, that's where budget savings plans, whatever you want to call them, get derailed is because they're so structured. And even though our life changes, we think we have to fit it into this budget that we created on January 17. That's not the case. Your budget needs to move with you, it needs to change with your life. Your life might look very different in six months than it looks today. Maybe you get a raise. Maybe you have a new job. Maybe your hours got cut. You have a sick loved one that you have to take some time off to care for. Maybe you scratch off ticket that we talked about earlier. Maybe you win. That all looks very different and your budget needs to be fluid with that. Then we say review your goals often for that reason that life changes and you have to have a budget that matches that. Also I want to say like maybe your eight year goal when you're organizing those is to drive an Audi. I don't know, pick one. I don't know a ton about cars. Let's say you want an Audi. It's important to understand what that looks like. What does the payment look like on your dream car? Whatever that is. plug that in. If you're my 12 year old son, it's a green Lamborghini. Right. So what does it look like to actually own that? What is the monthly payment? What is the insurance? Understand that because that's part of your dream and you need to understand what it's going to take to either what income you're going to have to generate or where are you going to have to cut spending. But maybe today our budget supports a Ford Focus or I have a Volkswagen Jetta. Right? So maybe today our budget can only support this certain payment and we're going to work towards this higher one because I really have always wanted that car over here. That's why having a long term and a short term, maybe a long term. I'm want to retire in ten years and I have to start working towards that. I have to think of what that looks like. But yet today you may your goal, your short term is to fund your emergency savings. I think making sure you understand what it takes to fund and run each of those budgets is really, really important. Okay. If we could switch to the next slide. Definition of a budget, it's right there. But what I really want to draw your attention to is the flow. This is the flow of your money. It's money in, money out. And then you can see off to the side, we have savings. You work really hard for your money. I can't tell you how many people I talk to, myself included that has no idea where their money is going, is just running out the door with sneakers on. We have no idea. We have money coming in and we've worked really hard for that. Then we have a set amount of expenses. But remember I said it's oftentimes the small debit card swipes that get us. We need to be really mindful about that, we're going to talk about that. But also know that the flow out involves savings. We should always include saving. Saving is a muscle that we have to practice. You're going to hear me say that a couple times in the next few minutes. Maybe you have to start with pocket change. Maybe your goal is to build $200 emergency savings. Maybe then you work up to that three to six months. That is ideal, but it's your money. If you put it in a savings account, you can still use it at any time. But again, it's your money. First, figure out where it's going. Sometimes you just have to sit down and look or write out where you're spending and then understand your expenses and then where you can save. Again, I'm going to bring up the quote of the secret to financial success is not about how much you make but how much you spend. It really is more about that blue arrow. I think Kathy while you're thinking about that, we're going to do another poll. This is our last poll. Let's get there. What you're going to see is on the screen. Right now I'm launching it. Short term financial decisions affect what? A. Only short term financial situations. B. Only long term financial situations, C. Both short term and long term financial situations and D. Only mid term financial situations. We have a smart group here. Yeah, it's like they have the answer key. All right, we're at the 75 mark Another 5 seconds. I'm going to end the poll, all right? Okay, 94% They're just listening well. They're good. They are. They're listening really well. It does affect both short term and long term financial situations. Definitely, yeah. That short term, like card swipe can create such an incredible domino effect that impacts a decision you make on January 5 might end up impacting you at the end of the month. It is certainly both. Just like you were using your latte, you know, you said $7 for a coffee. I had that situation happened with Tim Hortons is my thing. And when you calculate how much money you spend on one of those items, it adds up over the course of a week, a month. A year. That, I mean, mine was like $400 because it was like a daily occurrence and it wasn't considering gas to go get it. So I use this a similar example and some of the other sessions that I facilitate is Lake Trust Credit Union. In our headquarters, we have a wonderful cafeteria that has amazing food. I am not a good cook, I am not a great preparer. In the morning, I was eating at our cafeteria almost every single day that I was in the office. I do travel across Southeast Michigan. Wasn't always there, but I ate there. It's delicious, and I was eating there several times a week. It was one of those mindless swipes. Right. I didn't think anything about it until I really sat down. I'm a pen to paper person and I literally wrote out all of my debit card swipes and looked. And when I totaled up it was seven to $10 every time I was eating there and I was eating there maybe three or four days a week. If you take that times three or four weeks and then you take that times 52 weeks, that's a lot of money. And it blew my mind once I started dialing that back and taking turkey sandwiches. Really, I did see an instant lift and tonight. I brought my own tea. I did not stop, saved myself $7 tonight. It is amazing how much those little steps can add up. This is one of the number one questions I get is like, okay, great, you're telling me all this information, the poll. But now where do I start? How do I start developing my budget? Well, we're going to give you some tools to do that. Again, the bullets here on the slide are pretty impactful. The first step, we've talked about this, understand your money. Think about that graph of money in and money out and think about how you spend it. I think we all know what our car payment is, what our rent is, what our mortgage is. Again, it's the debit card swipes that sometimes get us or those auto pays for Netflix or what it might be. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions about spending priorities. Depending on the day. Avoiding that Starbucks drive through might be a really tough decision for me. But a couple of months ago I made the decision. It was not a popular one. Remember I said I have youngish kids, we got rid of Dish network, we have Amazon Prime and all those things. But we cut out that bill because that was $75 a month. It was not a popular decision, but it was one we had to make. I felt like to do some of the things we wanted to do. Budget with a lifestyle in mind. Remember, you might really want that Audi and you will get there some day. But today might not be that day. So budget With what you're living with now, what can you afford now If you do it correctly, eventually you will be able to get to the lifestyle you want. But sometimes we simply if your hours have been cut at work, and I know that's a thing right now because this is a slow time. If you're in retail, if you're in a restaurant, maybe you're used to working 45, 50 hours, and now you're cut to 34. Well, you certainly have to make some of these choices. Again, always build a budget that allows you to save, even if it's just a little bit. This is a point in the session where I like to travel back in time. We go back and look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid, again, simply because it's important to understand. Of course, we all know the foundational needs, but it's how the needs higher up in that love and belonging. And I alluded to this earlier, love and belonging, esteem, and even your self actualization. How is that driving your spending habits and behaviors? Just pause for a moment, just a heartbeat. Think why am I purchasing this? What need is it meeting? You might certainly go ahead and buy it, and that's totally fine. Sometimes just that heartbeat of a pause can impact our decision, saying , you know what? maybe you're at the grocery store and you ran in to get three things and something catches your eye, you get paid on Friday. It's Wednesday. Maybe you can just wait and not cut yourself short, right? It's just that heartbeat that takes the impulsiveness out of it. If we think about our budgeting graphic, that one was easy, right? It was money in then out and then savings. It is there. Yeah. If you think about that, it's just really important to understand the flow of your money. It really teaches us to review our expenses. To review our spending, because again, it's the small things that sneak up on you. I gave you my cafeteria, my Starbucks example. I probably have ten more, and I bet all of you do too. Everyone's kryptonite is a little different. Kathy's is Tim Hortons. it's important to save where you can. Again, saving is a muscle that we have to work out on a regular basis. We used the word incremental earlier. It is just striving to be incrementally a little better than you were. So if you save $0.50 out of your pocket. I challenge you tomorrow to save $1 whatever it might be. Just try to do a little more than you did the day before. This content is actually some of my favorite content. I really love that quote on the side. The best day to start saving is today. Even if you can only save a little, guess what? Just like I have been going to exercise Kathy chuckled When I said this earlier, I have been going to exercise, start exercising every Monday for lots of Mondays. Guess what? I'll probably start again next Monday. We can keep trying. If you fall off that savings wagon, if your muscles get a little soft in the saving space, just start. The best day to start saving is today. Clean out your wallet, put the change away in a jar, and before you know it, you can take it to your credit union and turn that change in for either some fun money or put it in your savings account. But what I love about this visual, if you look at the bottom left, this is actually a pie chart from Nerd Wallet, which is a great resource that we'll share at the end, but they have a lot of great savings, budgeting, spending content. This is really just when we think about our money, this is how we're going to allocate. The blue and green widgets at the top, 50% of that is going to our needs. And if we think those bottom two pieces of the pyramid, that's what falls in here. This is our liabilities too. If you have credit card bills that falls in here, any liabilities need to fall in here, then savings and debt repayment is going to be at that 20% What do you notice? Again, I can't see you. This is rhetorical. I'm going to ask you to think, what is it something that you notice both in the pie chart and in the buckets? I notice the pink. The pink is important. The ones in that pie chart are 30% it's greater than savings. And you'll see that that pink bucket, it includes spend. It is important that you build that in, Nerd wallets 50, 30, 20 allocates 30% to wants. Now sometimes I think let's be real, our needs, that blue section of our pie is 90% or maybe it's all of it some month. But if our blue is 90, what we do with that other 10% is what's important. I think it's important to think some of us are familiar with the bucket filler term. Our money goes into buckets each month. You have to fill your own bucket. That's what makes a budget, a savings plan, that's what makes it sustainable and something that will actually work in your life. You have to take all these tools and make them work in your life. It isn't sustainable or practical if you don't figure in spending. If you don't figure in some fun, Kathy likes to say, pay yourself as well. That is actually very, very important. You have to fill your own bucket. And just keep in mind that you have to take care of your liabilities. That is something that you must do because it is the foundation when we think about the hierarchy of needs. But certainly the upper part, we know now that that 30% is actually really, really important. We have to save to make sure that if there's an emergency, it's there when we need it, we have to think about retirement. Those are all things that we need to do every single day. Again, the goal is to just practice your savings muscle. That is all I actually have for you. Beside I think we will send these out. Right, Kathy? Yep. I'm going to send all these links. These are some really great resources. All these link to different resources. If you want to highlight any Yeah, I do want to draw your attention to. These are all resources that Lake Trust really works with. Some of them are our partners. You can see Lake Trust is there. But the CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is a really great thing. For those of you in attendance, you're considered consumers. They're really all things consumer and finance. They work to keep you safe and protected. And there's a lot of really great content in here. A couple of things Kathy is going to send out from that first one is there's some budgeting worksheets and it has some really broken out where you can fill in your expenses, you can fill in your income. It's a really nice visual. What I also like about CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is they offer content in several different languages, which is very nice. Pocket Nest has a great blog. It is a budgeting tool. You can download their app for those Michiganders on the call. They are actually based out of Ann Arbor, which is pretty cool. You can see Lake Trust website is there. We have some great information, some blog content, and then Green Path is a very well trusted partner, I guess is what I'm trying to say of Lake Trust and several credit unions. They have some really wonderful tools, blogs, and they can be a resource should you need the extra help to get back on track. Intuit Mint life. That's great. Nerd wallet there we cited, but just some budgeting. Not all of these are going to work for everyone. We try to give you some resources that maybe would fit into your life. We have one more slide and then we can answer some questions. I just wanted to mention that MSU Extension, we do do these programs every month. Our next session will be on Fostering Happy and Healthy Relationships. So it'll be Monday, February 12, at 05:00 P.M. Eastern Time. Basically, here we have a licensed professional counselor who will explore healthy relationship models that can enhance your current and your present bonds. Tips on setting boundaries, managing conflict, navigating break ups, and practicing consent. I also want to encourage you to follow us on Facebook or Instagram. You have to do is do a search for 4-H careers and you'll find our website. Where the recording will be for this webinar is on our website. Take a look back. In about a week, we'll have the recording for this session so you can review it and so forth. I'm going to stop sharing. And then we have some questions in the chat because we have about maybe 5 or 6 minutes. If you don't mind, let's look at the chat. One of the first questions that came up. Favorite recommended reading to improve your financial status. Knowledge of investments, saving for people at all levels. Any thoughts there? Well, I think there's a lot in the in the saving, investing. That's all very different. I would start with the CFPB link. I think you will find several resources that fit all your questions there. That's where I would start. Okay, great. So Stephanie from Chicago, can you talk about people who don't overspend but who are concerned to spend on basics or fun, even if we can now, I feel like not knowing how much I can do gets me stuck. I think that that is a fair assessment. I would encourage those of you that are stuck, sometimes it's almost that paralysis, right? and you're stuck between that financial pleasure and pain avoidance that we talked about. I would encourage to sit down and figure out a budget, figure out your savings goals, what are you trying to shoot for? And allocate everything into those buckets and figure out what's left you can put into that spend bucket. Some people will adjust that pie chart and how it had 30% wants, 20% savings. Maybe your pie charts flipped. I think it's figuring out once you've allocated your funds to your goals that you've set what's left, and then you allocate that to the buckets as necessary, if that makes sense. Here's a question, What do you recommend to detoxify from negative money messages received from family? That is a hard one for certain. There's a lot to that. There are some good resources out there. I don't know, honestly, if you have the ability to work through with a counselor or a therapist, sometimes there's a lot to unpack in that. Sometimes simply just building the budget that we talked about. Again, CFPB has some of those tools, but even just understanding your money in your money out and savings gives you a sense of control that probably you haven't had before. And understanding where your money is going sometimes helps with that. It can mitigate some of the scarcity mindset. So for example, you get a tax return return and you go out and stock up a ton on groceries that you absolutely didn't need because you have money now and you're going to buy it because you might not have money later to get groceries. Somewhere along the line, That probably has come up in your journey, whereas if you just put that money in the savings account, it would be there. So again, it's just taking that heartbeat pause of thinking, why am I making this spending decision? What's feeding it? Sometimes you proceed and sometimes you shelve it and transfer that money over to your savings account. But sometimes that heartbeat pause is important if it's something you have the ability to work through. with a counselor, definitely. But I think it is just doing a budget and being in control of your money versus it controlling you. It can be freeing. Okay. I'm just trying to think, are the resources free? Yeah. Are the resources free like Nerd wallet or is there a cost to them? Those are pretty much all free. Yeah. That was important because I don't like to share resources that aren't. Now, I don't know about Nerd wallet with Pocket Nest. I think there's some payment options in there. GreenPath. All the resources are complimentary. However, if you should choose to work with them on maybe debt help or sometimes they help people arrange their payments, there might be a small cost to that. I think it's the risk reward that you need to break through. Green Path works with Credit Unions across the nation. I'm happy to put you in contact with a credit union in your area. But most of them, it was really important its complimentary. And that's why the CFPB is the number one resource that we share because they work for you as a consumer. Here's another question. Probably the last one because there's a lot of them on there. Is it useful to keep an expense journal daily? Is this feasible? If it, is it better on paper or an Excel sheet? Is there a good app? That you could recommend an app to track? I am not sure about that to highlight any. There is something powerful about going through your online banking and just writing down your expenses. Again, I probably wouldn't have noticed my cafeteria spend until I wrote down. I would do a look back maybe the first through the 17th. Again, it's the small purchases that can be shocking. I would suggest somebody to do that activate. There's a trend, this is catching a lot of momentum through social media, is that the challenge is to go one day without spending anything. And then if you can do one day, do two days. Because it is pretty eye opening to say like, wow, it's been five days and I have spent some money every single day. It is a good exercise to go through and just see pen to paper or Excel spreadsheet. I'm not an Excel person, but lots of people are. My colleague, Brian, who is on, loves Excel and that works well for him. But it is eye opening to go through that activity a couple times a year, if not monthly. There's a lot- when it comes to resources are the MSU Extension has some amazing money management resources as well, right, Kathy? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm looking at a lot of the questions. There's some on investing, there's some on taxes. Businesses. Check out our MSU Extension website and I will send a link to our My Money Health website that has a lot of information on credit, investing, all of those things that will be added as well. There's also a lot of questions, where will this information be sent? It will be sent to your Email that you used to register. All those links that we shared, that slide. All of those links will be included as well as some links from MSU. Take a look, there is an Extension in every single state. It's through the land grant university of your state. If you don't live in Michigan, check out your land grant university. Most likely they have resources on financial education. You're always welcome to attend our adulting 101 We will have additional sessions on financial topics. We have where to keep your money safe, that's going to be all about where to keep your money. Then we have one on credit unions. We do have classes on wealth building for those interested in investing and so forth. I will send those links, You can sign up, they're open to all. Thank you so much for joining us today and thank you, Nicole, for sharing all this awesome information and your expertise. I really appreciate you being here today. I'm so glad everyone joined us and I'm hoping you have something that you can take away. When the Zoom closes, you're going to get a link that is a short survey. Three questions. If you can take a moment to fill that out, we would really appreciate it. But thank you for attending. Appreciate it. Thank you everyone. Bye now. Have a great warm well, for some of you it's not going to be warm here in Michigan. Have a great, wonderful evening. Thanks. Bye now.