The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Overspending
Do you have budget? If you do, do you stick to it?
I'm Bradford Ferguson and I help my clients with their money by managing it, helping them save it, helping them save it, and helping them with their spending and investing. So, if you're like most of Americans, there comes a time in your life where you need to spend some money and you really don't have it, so you put it on the credit card. That's understandable, it happens.
But what we know is that the average American has about $6000 on credit cards, and probably the average person that carries debt over has at least $10,000 on credit cards, which means you're payin' at least $2000 in interest that you wouldn't have to pay if you didn't have that credit card debt.
Now, you might think that while you're working, that's manageable, to pay that $2000 in credit card interest, but it adds up. And you can't just always work and make more money, because there'll come a time when you need to retire, and you won't be able to make more money at that time.
Maybe you think you'll work forever, but the be, be a time where you don't wanna have to work for money. What you need to do is you need to get a budget and stick to it. Maybe it's just an annual amount that you stick to, and you're more conscious about your buying decisions, and you make a plan to pay down that debt. Maybe it's as simple as that. And just looking at your spending every year, and that easiest way to do that is to do it with a financial advisor.
They're gonna look at your whole situation, what you wanna spend now, but also throughout retirement. Most people don't wanna suddenly have to greatly cut their lifestyle once they retire. We don't wanna get rid of all the fun stuff and live that way for 20, 30 years.
What a financial advisor will do is have the difficult conversation with you if you spend too much. Sometimes they'll say you can spend more. But what we find is that many financial advisors aren't willing to have some of those difficult conversations.
If you know someone who's retiring or planning to retire, and is saving for retirement, tag them in this video or share this up so we can spread the word about this issue about credit card debt in our country.