ACCOUNTANT EXPLAINS: Money Habits Keeping You Poor…do this instead

out with the old money habits and with the new money habits [Music] hey y'all today we're not talking about how to make money online side hustles or how to invest we're going to be talking about eight money habits that we do consciously or subconsciously that just keep us stuck financially and hopefully today someone's gonna be set free amen can the church say Amen just because I'm the one with the camera and the microphone doesn't mean that I don't make these money mistakes as well these are eight money habits that I've had to work through myself and I'm sure even if you've been able to overcome some of these there are some of these that you still do so the way this video is laid out is we're going to talk about the money habits first and at the end of the video I'm going to tell you the one thing that you need to do to break your bad money habits and start building new ones so I recommend that you watch this video all the way to the end and by the way if you're new here I'm Vanessa a financial educator who loves to teach you all things money and I make two high quality videos about personal finance every single week so also hit the Bell so you get notified when I drop a new one okay so now let's get into the meat and potatoes of this video what is the first money habit that you need to break if you want to become financially successful it's relying on only one income stream I've talked about income streams a lot on this channel there's actually a whole playlist dedicated to giving you ideas on other ways to make money besides your regular job a lot of us were raised in households where we were taught to go to college do well and get a good job and that's it worked for 30 years and then you can retire but I want to be able to retire first of all before 30 years and secondly I want to have freedom in my life I don't want to feel like if I lose my one job then I'm stuck then my life is over beyond your regular job there's so many things you can do to make money on the side you can start a side hustle you could invest in dividend paying stocks that's a really good one and I have a video about that coming up soon I'm not saying quit your job but it's also nice to know that you don't have to work for the rest of your life 5. number two is spending money for validation a few years ago we would have called it keeping up with the Joneses but that's assuming that the Joneses are your next door neighbors or the people who live close to you the people who you go to school with but now we have thousands of Joneses on Instagram on tick tock on YouTube everyone seems to be a millionaire by 23. but here you are a regular person who feels pressure to buy the same things these people are buying just so you don't feel out of place the fact is 40 of people cannot even cover an emergency of 500 so if that's what the stats are saying where are these people getting this money most likely a lot of things that you see on social media are just a result of credit card debt so what we don't want to do is try to measure up to people who aren't even measuring up to themselves number three is paying yourself last and what do I mean by this when we get our paycheck in the middle and at the end of the month a lot of us make everyone else richer before we make ourselves richer we spend money everywhere else before putting money away to take care of our future selves by paying yourself what I mean is putting money away in your savings and your investment accounts after that the rest of it you can spend on whatever it is you want number four is treating your credit card like it's free money I love credit cards and in this video I mentioned that I no longer pay for airline tickets that's because I've been able to accumulate so many points that I can travel for free and I can pay for hotels and food for free as well because of credit card points so credit is really good but it's also tricky to handle and you have to handle it with care what I suggest is the one bill method pick one bill that you can always pay off in full so that you can build your credit score and secure the points without getting into debt number five is falling for lifestyle creep I personally fell into this ditch like I fell flat when I was a broke college student I was really fine with cooking my own meals not buying too many clothes just keeping the bare necessities but when I got my first full-time job and I started making more money than I had ever made in my life I also upgraded my lifestyle to the point that I wasn't even saving as much as I was saving in college so what's the point of making more money if at the end of every single month I don't even have more money saved or invested that's what lifestyle creep would do to you it's also sometimes called lifestyle inflation as your money increases your lifestyle increases and by the end of every single month you have less money than you had previously number six is burying your head in the sand and pretending like your problems don't exist I know they say ignorance is bliss but when it comes to your finances ignorance is dangerous you want to know exactly how much money comes in every single month and how much money goes out it's always great to know what your survival number is that's how much money it costs you every month to live the life that you want to live now when you know this it's easy for you to know how much money you need to be making in active and passive income for you to still have money left over to save and invest but if you have no clue what's going on it's almost impossible to plan for the future but what's even worse is that you could even be losing money this way when I was a freshman in college I was exactly this person I never knew how much money was in my bank account and sometimes I'll swipe my card when I didn't have enough money in it and I'll get overdraft fees and that would take me from having just ten dollars to having negative 35 dollars so you definitely do not want that for your money number seven is staying subscribed to subscriptions you no longer use y'all I can't even tell you how many times I've had to dispute charges after they've charged me multiple months for something that I probably used the free version of it two years ago and you find out that you could have even paid for the full thing because they've charged you so many times because you forgot to unsubscribe from that one thing that you don't even need so make sure you check your bank statements often to see exactly where your money is going otherwise this subscriptions would just come in and eat up all your money and number eight is saving money and I'm sure you're like hold up what how is saving money a bad thing it's great to have some money saved in an emergency fund I'm sure you guys have heard me say emergency funds so many times on this channel but an emergency fund is three to six months of your living expenses once you have that saved the rest of your money should be 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