(Guest Lecture): Budgeting Workshop Paying for the Costs of Cancer

one of my favorite things to do as still a financial professional. I know that this is a foundation for success in your finances. Finding out what your budgeting is, find out where your money is going, what money is coming in, and the best ways to efficiently work with the money you have. That includes looking at how your taxes are going to be, projecting what your expenses are going to be, and in light of what's everything's going on now with the economic situation we find ourselves in, everything being very tenuous at best, not knowing if we're going to get into a war, not with inflation, things going up. I think it's very important for everyone to sit down and take a look at their finances. What you're spending out of pocket every day, it's amazing how you can take money out at the end of the, on Friday, to go through your weekend, and you felt like you haven't walked out of the house, haven't left the house, but as of Monday morning all that money's gone. So where did that money go? And you find that money going out like a sieve, and it's very important for us to look at those things, to anticipate where our expenses are now, and go forward. What I have found out over my 20 plus years as a financial advisor, that we can have things in our mind, say we're doing things, but as to dream, unless you put them down on paper and actually see what's happening, then you cannot be effective and manage your finances. So with that, budgeting is your first step in getting control of your finances. So the next slide, please. So what we hope to accomplish, so we're going to review different types of budgets, and how implementing a budget can help you manage your finances, especially when you have an illness that can drain your savings. And we know the cost of health care, I've said this many times, it's not going to go down, it's just going to go up. And if in fact, not only that, your taxes are going to go up, because that's where the government gets their money. And we know they are really struggling right now. And so we need to be more aware of what we're doing with our money. We will actually start your budgeting strategy. We're not going to finish today. There's a lot more involved in what we're doing today. And you'll see that with a lot of the worksheets that we're going to be presenting. We'll go over the other documents that go hand in hand with the budget, and why and how they go hand in hand with your budgeting strategy. Hopefully you realize that if you don't have a visual financial budget and plan for your money, then you don't really have control of your finances. It's all a dream. Next slide. So what is a budget? A personal budget is a finance plan that allocates future income towards expenses, savings and debt repayment. And all of these can be considered in order to make accurate projections and to meet your needs and your goals. Past spending and personal debt are considered when creating a personal budget. So when you're going through these worksheets, keep in mind what you have spent, what is consistently on your expense sheet. And those would be easy to fill in. But those other things that are almost intangible are very difficult to keep in, that has a specific dollar amount, like your cost for your medications, like your cost for your treatment. Like right now, your water bill or your electric bill, it's not the same every month. So keep an idea of what you spent the last year. You can call your utility company and get that information because it's going to be really important to use that to project out your budget for the following year, for the next year. So past spending and personal debt are considered when creating a personal budget. What has changed from last year and what you expect will change in the current or coming year, including cost of health care, going to your doctor out of pockets, because when we go through this, one of the goals, our primary goal for doing this budget is to make sure that we don't end up with a problem with financial toxicity as a result of the cost of your medical care. So some of those expenses will be medical premium costs. Let's go back a little bit. Medical premium costs, taxes, food, which is going up. Everybody knows how much it is from several months ago, your prescription costs, housing and taxes. So the importance of budgeting. You know, it's really interesting when I found this survey. A 2020 survey conducted by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling found that only 47% of Americans use budgeting methods to keep a close track on their spending. 47%. And here's something that's even more astounding. 80% of all of us, everyone you come run every all of us are one paycheck away from being homeless. That's astounding. And that number has probably only gone up because of the recent problems we've had the last two years where people lose their jobs and everything with COVID. So a budget can help keep you on track of where your money is going. It also gives you more control over that process. It helps you prioritize where you're spending so you don't put yourself in the red, as well as finding unhealthy spending habits. And you can find some more discretionary income when you do this as well. It's basically a North Star for those who want to hold themselves accountable as they work toward a specific financial goal. And one of those goals may be getting out of debt, making sure you have enough money for your upcoming medical care, or you need to downsize buying a house. All of these things work hand in hand. Next slide. So a daily expense tracker. This is probably the number one thing to try to get your budget started. So what this is, it's what it does is as a line item, item for item of how you're spending your money. If you go to Starbucks every day or several times a week, that's part of your expenses. You're considering that part of your expenses is coming out of your paycheck. And one of the most difficult things is when you use a credit, a debit card. Debit card seems like, you know, you take the money out, you know, it's coming out of your checking account. But do you really know how many times you're using that debit card? Every month, I'm astounded. How many times I've used my debit card and I can tell myself in my head, I've only used it once or twice a day. And then when I get my statement or just look at my statement, I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I had no idea. I use it 30 times. Where did that go? So that's money that's going up. I think I really need to pull that in. So I'm telling you, this is from my own personal experience. And it's something that you struggle, we could struggle with all the time. But when we start being consistent about where our money is going, understanding that and being mindful of all of that, it can really protect you from having financial problems down the road. So take this sheet with you, print out a couple of them, keep one in the car. So every time you go spend something, go to the grocery store and you don't want to keep your receipts or they fade over time. Jot it down how much you're spending in gas, how much you're spending for your kids or some of those things. Make sure you keep those things. Print it down because you'll become more mindful of your spending and you'll reduce your impulse spending. Next slide. So here's that daily expense tracker. So there's no there's no categories. It's on here. It's about what you are spending your money on. I would again, I would challenge you to take this printed out several times, keep one in your house, put the dates on there. That way later on when we start looking at this, this paying bills, you'll be able to understand how all these things tie together. So you'll have a date that you have had spent something, the expense, the amount, and whether you took it out, you spent it. Your cash check or debit account, or if you use a car, a credit card, which is also one of those things very difficult sometimes to keep grasp on and then the amount of credit you might have used because when we start looking at these things, pulling all these worksheets together, you may be able to find out that your interest rates are too high. And there's a way to reduce your interest rates, therefore less money out of your pocket. Next sheet. So there are different types of personal budgets. Now, some of these go hand in hand. If you have a small business that you have to do your budget every every year, you project out what you're going to be spending next year or what you're going to be able to save if you need to get more product in. Same thing with us. A household needs to have a budget because you have things you need to manage. And so there's a line item budget. This is typically one of the most, one of the people most use. This is one of the most favorable used. Everything is listed by category on a spreadsheet. It also includes categories for a given time period, such as monthly, weekly, and you break it down to what's even as best for you after reviewing prior year spending. You can then come up with your target spending amount for each item. It can help with future projections of spending. This budgeting can be initially can be very time consuming initially, but it can really help you get a control of your spending and habits. You're going to see how many times you go to Starbucks for real. You're going to see how many times you eat out when you probably shouldn't be eating out as much. And you know, it's really interesting. One of great side effects of doing a budget, you find yourself eating more healthy. Next sheet. So there's another type. And this one, I've every time I look at this and I have people use this, I have people use this. I break out in hives a little bit and I get these these because it's scary. You know, it's a very hands on way to manage your money. So I keep thinking if you're going to use this system of budgeting, then you might not need to be budgeting anyway. Right. Okay, so you have envelopes and envelopes are targeted for spending. So the money is actually in those envelopes. So this money is set aside for your, your, your LG and E. There's a set aside for this. And I'm thinking when I have that money in an envelope, it's so easy to go in that envelope and take that money out. You know, you have a kid or something say, Mom, I need something for sports. You're like, okay, well, I'll just remember to put it back in the envelope. But does that really happen? So now you're no longer in control of that spending. So the downside is having envelopes of cash, you know, this sounds almost like some kind of gang activity, right? That can be risky, as well as having the advantage of earning interest if it were in a savings account. So you not only have money sitting aside in these envelopes, it's easy to get into. And all of a sudden you throw your best your budget up. But then it's not earning interest in a savings account. Next slide. So there's zero base budgeting. This is another area that gives me pause. Okay, so it looks at your income, your expenses equals zero, your income, your expenses at the end of that line will end up with zero. So you're finding a place to match every single dollar. That sounds tedious. And that sounds scary because I feel more comfortable if I have some money left over, not saying that all my money is going somewhere. Here's a really great way to look at your expenses and say, you know what, I want to have money left over. And that money can be directed in something that's very important. We're going to go over. I think it's on the next slide. But it's a really good way to say, where's my money actually going? And do I really need to be spending all this money on I don't know groceries? Do I really need to spend it? Because how much do we throw out in our in our fresh produce? You know, is there is there really a different way I can start sending that leftover money or making sure I have leftover money? So another way to start saying a great way to start budgeting. Then there's a 30 20 budget. This is a great one. I like this one. One of the simplest and most straightforward. For these you don't want to you don't have to keep track of your expenses. You can just say, I'm going to spend all of my money on groceries. For these you don't want to you don't have to keep track of every single line item every time you drive into Starbucks or every time you go and get a beer or something. You spend 50 percent of your after tax pay on needs. You already know what's going toward needs. That's going to be your house payment. That's going to be your car payment. That's going to be your gas, utilities, all of those things. 20 then 30 percent is going to be on your wants. Now I would always put this one third because our wants change depending on how much we've been looking at Amazon. Right. So that will screw everybody's budget up. I'm telling you it will happen. You'll say I really don't need that. But somehow you figure out a way you really need that. And those are those wants. I would put those wants at the very bottom. 20 percent on savings. I want to say that probably should go toward the first because we always spend money on our needs. We spend money on our bills because we need to have those done. We feel sometimes we feel those are the most important things. But guess what. We're a bill. We need to start putting ourselves first. You need to make yourself a bill. Pay yourself first because you know what if you run out of money how many people can you go out to and say on a consistent basis because you haven't done your budgeting haven't done your job. You know I ran short this month. Can you give me money. After a while they're going to close the doors. They're going to lock the door. They're going to pull the shades down because they're not going to answer the door. And this is where the response to self-responsibility comes. This is where you're empowering yourself to manage your finances. OK. A good format. This is a really great format for beginners to get used to budgeting is a set aside money for I know I need this for the things that have to be done. I know I need to have some money in savings for whatever that savings is going to be whether it's a goal whether it's making sure you're going to meet all your financial your medical financial needs next year because you don't know what they're going to be although they will go up. And then the other things that 30 percent on once that 30 percent is kind of high on wants. But if we redirect and understand what wants actually are you'll find out just how good a strategy this is. So so if you're coming from an economic fallout from a pandemic or for those who want economic whose economic situation is in flux like a lot of us are because we don't know what the cost of meat is going to be next week. Although I tell you it's going to be higher than we might want to not keep those numbers as strict as they are. Next. So where is your money really going. Where is money being wasted because every one of us is wasting money. Where what are you doing with your discretionary income discretionary income is that money that's left over after you've paid everything. What expenses can you get rid of like all of these subscriptions and things we have to Netflix to Hulu to all these things that we probably don't even watch and they add up. What expenses can be reduced including interest rates on cards. You'll be surprised a lot of people don't even call and ask that you can ask for your interest rate on cards to be reduced if you've got a really good payment history and what could be paid up to free cash. Excited. So household budgeting worksheet let's take 20 minutes to start filling this thing in and you're not going to get through all of this but I tell you if you don't want to fill these in just fill in some of the ones you know for sure. Here's another challenge. Print out two of these after you finish this another go back and do another one and print out what you think the numbers are. Everything you thought you think and then go back and do your daily expense sheet for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. And then fill it out and find out what your real expenses are you're going to be surprised everybody I've ever done this with. In the last 20 plus years are surprised they really did not know they thought they had a great grasp on what they're spending but they were surprised at how much they could be saving and how they can read. be redirecting some of their money for things that are more important. So if you have an expense. Spent like a water bill or garbage that isn't paid monthly maybe it's paid every two months every three months to make a note of that, so you won't be doubling up on what your expenses are on those things. If you pay some of your expenses by card make sure you are duplicating those expenses, so if you have a credit card and you say every every month i'm paying this on credit card. But you're still doing a light item for electricity utilities make sure you're not doubling that expense okay. Here it is yay we get to go with the fun meat of all of this and i'm telling you I know it's tedious. But every single person i've worked it work with in the last 20 years as a financial advisor have found this beneficial it is going to free you up. It is going to free you up it's going to really reduce a lot of the stress and anxiety that comes with paying bills and knowing what kind of money you have. But if you can start looking at this one and start filling these out we're going to give you about 20 minutes to do it if you have any questions in the meantime call me. I will tell you this is not inclusive because if you have a paycheck coming in look at that paycheck like your social security. One of your expenses is your medical your medical costs for your medicare part a that's an expense as far as coming out of your income. Your FICA taxes your any kind of things you have on your paycheck that's an expense because it comes off of your income is the employer is not paying for those things that we have that's part of your expenses that should be included as well. So let me give you guys a few minutes if anybody want to reach out if you have a question about this form, please let me know. Now we'll tell you this this is only going to be as good as you as as as honest as you are so when it comes down to vacations. Eating out. Buying gifts. Or just blurred spending you need to include it because if you don't include this you have a horrible budget is already wrong from the start. Be honest nobody's going to see this but you and your husband and I'll tell you it's really interesting between husbands and spouses when they fill them out separately. There is usually a huge gap in what you're actually seeing. People are wondering if the worksheet is available in excel to add categories, do you have a file like that that you can share. I could probably find one and we could put it on online. Yeah, we can share it, we can share that in the resources in the follow up email and we'll talk about other ways to do it as well once we get to the end of the presentation but that's a good question. Okay. Now another thing that may not be on here I think it is tithing a lot of people forget they do their tithing and that's a that could be a big chunk of some people's. Expenses and if they do charitable giving make sure you include those things. This is also a way at the end of the year for you to if you do this every year. And you you prepare this in December for the following year because you're already doing projections and you already know what your expenses for the year. it's a good way to look at where your taxes are if you need to go in and change your w fours or or change some of your exemptions, this is a great way to start those things. I can show you one area that a lot of people. Because of familiarity where you're spending a lot of money and those things go up is your cable cable business. A lot of people are getting rid of cable bills, because you can have all these other resources yet smart TVs or you have you can get a hulu or or apple and and you can put this into the because you can have all these other resources. You have smart TVs or you can get a Hulu or Apple Box or whatever those things are. And they're like $24, $34 from a Walmart or store and you can still have access to television programs. Even if you add in, ask for add in things like HBO or Showtime or some of these other things, they're still less expensive than those cable bills where you have a thousand channels and you only watch four, but you're still spending $150, $200 a month on some of these cable bills. So cable bills, I really encourage you to look at those things. If you find money running tight, that might be an area that you can reduce that cost. Additionally, I know everybody lives in different places and some places like, you know, in Utah, there's mountains and you may have problems with this. A lot of people still have landlines. Other people's in places where you have flat surfaces where they don't have the interruption, they will use their cell phones. They get rid of landlines. I haven't had a landline in my house in over 12, 13 years because you have a telephone that's just costing money that I didn't answer because it was always these solicitors, people soliciting calls. That may be another way, something you can look at to reduce some of your expenses. There was a question that came. What was that question? A couple of people are sharing their unfortunate experiences about financial toxicity due to cancer and for different reasons. And one of the things that I'm proposing is that they meet with a myeloma financial coach because it might not completely change the costs of the treatment that they're getting. So I think that's a good question. And I think that's a good question. I think it might not completely change the costs of healthcare, but there are different grants. There are different payment programs through pharma companies. There are different solutions that I think people aren't aware of at the beginning that can really be highlighted and helped through a myeloma, or not even a myeloma financial coach because I know we have some AML patients joining us here today, but we can meet with financial coaches through Health Tree, Health Tree financial coaches, and be able to help with these kind of issues because it is tragic. And like you were saying, Diana, we don't want anybody to fall into financial toxicity. Right. And just looking at these budgets, there's so many things, looking at things that you haven't even looked at that you already have that could be rearranged that could help you with your finances. One of the questions I saw, is there any way we can hold the questions on there for a second so I won't miss them? There's a question someone asked and we're gonna get to about how much we spend on housing. You can see them, Diana. Okay, I didn't know that. I learned it in technology. Okay, so we're gonna go through, determine just how much you should be spending on housing. That's gonna be one of the sheets we go through. It's very important. So hold on to that question. I didn't see the other questions. No, it's okay. So another question is, are medical insurance premiums deductible? Well, this is one we've covered and we will continue to cover because it's so important to you guys. Anything that you spend out of pocket over 7.5% is deductible on your taxes if you're itemizing. So I'll encourage you, everything, and that includes your premiums for your insurance premiums. So keep a copy of those things. So at the end of the year, if you don't have them, you can go to your pharmacy and have them print out. You can go to your doctor, have them print out. You can get on MyChart. You can look at all those things. But you keep those receipts, and anything over 7.5% will be deductible if you itemize on your taxes. Yeah, another question was, where do you put taxes on the budget sheet, federal and local property taxes? That is one of those line items I was mentioning earlier. You want to add another line item on there and look at your pay stub and pull those things out. Those things are probably very consistent unless you got bonuses and you have to include that later on. But I would put that on there as well. Just pull it off and just write your own line item. And you would include that before you do your total monthly expenses with your net income and your cash flow at the bottom. All right, do you want to move on to emergency funds? Or do you want to give them a few more minutes? Let's go on to emergency funds. And like I said, this is very time consuming. It's very tedious. And some of those things you will not have now. But we will get to some of those with some of the other sheets. So the most important thing that you can carve out of budgeting, one of the big things you can do is figure out emergency funds. Very few people have money set aside that will take care of that car that breaks down or the furnace that goes out. And there used to be a rule of thumb, three months of your total expenses set aside in a cash account that you can readily get to pay for those emergencies. Ideally, you want to have now because 2008, 2007, 2008 taught us a lot. Sometimes you need more than three months. The rule of thumb now is somewhere between nine and 12 months of expenses, monthly expenses. So that could be a lot of money. So how do you build up to that? Because somebody can't just say, God, I wouldn't need a budget if I already had whatever amount of 12 months of expenses. But you can systematically start carving that out. And that's where part of the thing is pay yourself first. You're paying yourself first. You put a savings account, and that savings account is strictly for emergencies. And once you get to a certain amount, don't stop. Because inevitably, you're going to have to go in there and pull some money out and then it'll be reduced. But keep putting money into that. But you can systematically set your emergency funds up into money goes into a cash checking account. You can have it tiered. Some goes into a savings account that maybe a little bit of interest. I don't know any savings accounts earning a whole lot now, but earn some interest. And the others for the longer term emergency things put into maybe a short term CD that may be earning even more than that savings account. So you always have tiered money that you can have access to at any time. So have an emergency fund for urgent emergencies can protect your entire financial picture. Unexpected costs related to medical needs, car repair, home repair, or immediate needs in the event of a natural disaster. And the natural disaster thing, I think, we're going to be, unfortunately, become more and more familiar with. So it's even more important for us to do these budgets, make sure we have money set aside in the event something happens. We all hear things happening, natural disasters, like in Germany last year, with all the flooding and everybody's going to the banks. There's a rush on banks and the banks do that. I'm telling you, I used to be a bank manager and 2008, 2009, everybody started panicking. I need to get my money out of the bank, need to get my money out of the bank. And we had people coming in saying, I want my cash out my savings account or cash out. And they're asking sometime for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Guess what? Banks don't have that in their safe. They don't have enough to pay out everybody they want to come in and get. So it's always a good idea to make sure that you have those emergency funds so that you need to get to it, you can get to it in a reasonable amount. OK, next next slide. So again, how much do you need if you need, let's say your monthly expenses are five thousand and you need to have you want to have three, that's fifteen thousand. Right. So we recommend nine to twelve months. So you multiply whatever your your monthly expenses are over that period of time. And that's what you need to systematically start every month saving toward your emergency funds only to be used for emergency funds. So the importance of the emergency fund is funds are to help cover expenses on a short term disability. Say you're on short term disability and you need to match because you're only getting maybe 40 or 50 percent of the income you used to have. And usually disabilities aren't aren't something you expect, but they do happen. And so it helps have money set aside so you can still beat your obligations. Cover expenses if you're laid off from work, because a lot of time you're unlike this past year, which is unusual. You're not going to have a lot more money coming in for unemployment income than you have if you were usually working and pay for unexpected expenses such as car maintenance or any other things that may come up. Next slide. So the bill paying worksheet. This is another one. It's really interesting. Use this sheet to make sure you're paying expenses on time. It helps you organize your bills, help you decide which ones you could put in order of paying. So you have four or five credit bill credit card bills and you have varying interest rates on those bills. And if everybody heard of Dave Ramsey is you take the smaller bill and you pay it off, then you can redirect that money into the other higher interest rate bills. There's different ways to look at that. But it's a way to keep up with where you're spending your money, when it needs to be done. And if you need to call a creditor in advance, say I'm really short this month, is there a way we can look at this to keep my credit open? But it doesn't hurt my credit score, which is very important. We're going to get to that as well. So in the event your medical bills excess your need to work with a health care provider to find financial assistance, you can do those things as well. So here's that bill paying worksheet. So you write down and it's a monthly sheet. So every month you'll know exactly what bills need to be paid. Some of those bills won't be consistent. You use your credit cards for different things and that for different amounts, but it gives you the due dates when they're due. So it's important to have those due dates because if you forget something, you know, and you let it go for 30 days, it's going to hit your credit. So hitting your credits can be detrimental to you if down the road you might need to take out a personal loan or you're going to buy a house, you're going to refinance your house. All of these things work together. Anything with your finances. I don't care if you're going to go and put a window in your house. It's going to affect everything. It's almost like a domino effect. So we need to be aware of all these things. So keeping up with the due dates, how much you're paying also help you next year to say I paid too much. I had too much debt on this side. I paid too much for my credit. My my interest rate is too high. Helps you to negotiate with those creditors. So these are the things you need we need to do to keep up with what we're spending. So the debt to income ratio calculator, this is really, really important. So it tells you how comfortable you are with your current debt. And, you know, some people get real comfortable with debt and they probably shouldn't. You know, it's like some people really are really comfortable with procrastinating things. And I think we all have a tendency to do that with things we really don't want to do. And debt is one of those things, you know, you have medical bills coming in and it's real easy to see those things and it's stressful to put them over in a corner and not open them up. But it can really hurt you down the road. And so it also affects your ability to apply for credit that I mentioned earlier. So how do you calculate this debt to income ratio? You add your monthly bills. So your monthly worksheet that we did, the budget we did before, divide the total by your gross monthly income and that's your income before taxes. Because remember, your income includes every expense, including taxes, including FICA, including all those things. And this will be your debt to income ratio. The lower your debt to income ratio, the lower the debt you have, the less risky you are to lenders. And here's something that a lot of people don't understand. So you can have 10 or 12 credit cards and they give you these credits, these lines of credit. Great. You know, they see you very worthy of having this. You have all of those five C's we're going to go over later, but they see that you're a good risk. But you're only a good risk if you keep those that that amount under 30 percent. So if you keep your expenses on those credit cards under 30 percent, it does not affect your credit. Once you start going over 30 percent, they're going to say, oh, you're getting riskier. You might end up having to use all of that line of credit. And all of a sudden, if you're doing that, why can't you pay it back? Now you're becoming it's becoming concerning, but it's also going to be concerning if you want to go and take out a loan on your car. If you want to buy a house, do an equity loan, equity line of credit on your home, all of those things are going to be taken into account. And so that debt to income ratio is huge. This is what the sheet looks like. So if you look at that, I'll go back, if we look at that bottom right hand side, which is how do you measure up for the creditors that I was talking about earlier? This is it. So financial community guidelines. This is goes ties hand in hand. Calculating and comparing your spending to financial community guidelines will help you find weaknesses in your financial house and make necessary changes or seek help paying down debt. What debt to pay down? How to pay it down? Where do you need to have emergency funds so you can make sure that you can take care of things where you won't have to put it on your credit card? This goes hand in hand with the worksheet accessing your credit worthiness. So all of these things you're going to see work hand in hand on your financial picture. Now, here's our financial community guidelines. This is where if you go into a bank, they're going to say, you know, let me pull up your credit, sign off on this credit thing. If you've got to go buy a car, you're going to lease a car. They're going to look at these things, compare your spending to financial community guidelines. You're going to see that there's a little bit of a lag. There's going to be a little bit of a lag. If you're not paying your mortgage, you're going to see that you're going to have too many guidelines. Housing. 35 percent mortgages or rent, taxes, repairs, improvements, insurance and utilities, not just your mortgage, should be spending no more than 35 percent of your income on these things. OK, so that can really add up depending on what your utilities and things are. insurance company to say you know my rates you know I haven't had any accidents can you pull my credit it's a soft pull which means it's not going to hurt your credit can I have my interest rates reduced more money in your pocket to direct towards something else right monthly payments like your gas oil repairs transportation parking on public transportation that should mean no more than 20 percent I know this is a huge number that can be fluctuated across the country getting an uber every day in New York when you don't have cars that could be a huge number so it's that means it's very imperative to look at everything around that because that could be more of an expense than maybe some of your housing is although in New York housing is pretty high too but it's one of those things you really really need to get a grasp on some people you know don't have to worry about transportation hardly at all because they have great transportation LA has great transportation so those are things that are going to be different for everybody so debt five percent oh my god only five percent you know that's what's scary most people have more than five percent of their income in debt and that is what's scary that makes that's that's where a lot of people are one paycheck away from being homeless so credit cards personal loans student loans and other debt payments five percent should be where you are so there's a great way to get all of these aligned items together find out where your money is coming and redirect it towards some of this debt all other expenses like your food insurance prescriptions doctor and dentist dentist bills clothing and personal should be at the 20 range investments and savings pay yourself first make sure you're protecting and protecting your retirement income retirement savings so it's something where to come up in emergencies that you don't have to go in there and get those and incur penalties and the fees associate with those things and the taxes on what you take out prior to age 59 and a half taxes always but fees prior to age 59 and a half so look at your stocks bonds cash reserves savings accounts retirement funds etc 20 minimum if you could put more in there great for you you're just protecting your future financial position next financial community guidelines again calculate and compare your spending to the financial community guidelines to calculate your recommended expenditure for each category multiply the recommended percentages by your gross income for an example your gross income let's say your gross income is three thousand dollars a month and a recommended allowance for housing is 35 percent multiply to three thousand by 0.35 the recommended housing expenditure should not exceed 1050 dollars per month and remember that includes your insurance your everything to do with your housing it's not just your mortgage your principal and interest so to calculate your true let's go back again to calculate your true monthly budget expenditure for each category divide your monthly expense by your gross income and multiply that by 100 for example if your house housing expense is 1200 divide by 3000 and multiply by 100 you're spending 40 percent of your recommended expenditure on expenditure on housing and that's 10 percent too high assessing your credit worth assessing your credit worthiness now this worksheet will help you determine your current financial health and if and how you can assess credit the ability to assess credit from a lender is based on the five c's your capacity capital collateral collateral character and condition and we're going to go through what those actually mean capacity wage salary and other income sufficient to make payments affordable current monthly payment obligations so you're not stretched thin capital is your positive net worth appropriate for life cycle changes say just like if you're an early saver you're young you don't have children or if you're now you are in a stable job you have children but you have these other expenses or if you're retired now all of those things change through your life stages collateral collateral valuable assets in addition to income like your checking savings account investment accounts or if you have insurance which a lot of people don't seem to forget insurance can be collateral as well used for collateral to take out a loan character previous experience i can't speak previous experience with credit past credit history indicates a good attitude toward paying debts if you have a huge debt to income ratio that's going to be pretty bad and if you've had things to be debt to be signed off on like medical debt credit card debt if you've filed bankruptcy a lot of things hang on for seven years and they say seven years but go into a lender and try taking things out they'll still see it and they're still in a biased way we'll still make a determination based on that because they're going to be scared that you might end up in the same situation you know you look at your history if you have no history of bankruptcy great stable employment and residency and that's why it's very difficult if you're buying a job if you've only been on a job for a few months you're going to say well how stable is that job they want to see a history of stability with the job conditions job and employer security general economic conditions are favorable so those are the five capacities of credit i'm sorry five c's of credit next slide insurance again this is one of the things people seem to forget that it could be used as collateral or could be used to help offset a lot of expenses you have depending what kind of insurance you have and you can actually change insurances or or solidify your insurance position insurance is very important part of your financial strategy is one that we often often don't look we overlook it a lot reviewing your insurance can help you determine what type of insurance you have and if you are under under or over insured insurance uses can be excess additional income to help manage health care costs or use as collateral for a loan or withdrawal or accelerated death benefits to use to offset expenses cover final expenses provide financial stability for a family payoff debt or replace income pay federal or state taxes for beneficiaries use for charitable contributions and the way you can access some of your cash benefits in a life insurance policy can be tax free to you so there's a lot of things that you can use cash benefits in a life insurance policy to actually use to increase your retirement income and a lot of it can be tax free if it's set up correctly next slide so here's a great sheet to keep up with your insurance policies and doing this you can determine if you have the right insurance for yourself the right type of insurance or if and for your other spouse a lot of times women are underinsured we underinsure our value and that is so common and and i think we need to spend more time looking at that look at not just your life insurance that you have personally but the life insurance you have for your job because some life insurance policies can decrease based on age and so you need to make sure that you have the right insurance and make sure you do that when you are insurable for all of those who have myeloma or have other illnesses we know that a lot of times those insurance policies can be too expensive to get if you can get them at all next next sheet so again look at those find out how much what your monthly benefit is disability insurance huge you are protecting your income people forget that disability insurance protects your income and for those of you all have had to go on disability social security disability short term or long term through your job it is it is a saving grace and if you don't have your own individual policy outside of your employer then i would suggest you do it because it'll cover even more your employer generally covers 40 to 50 percent of your income and then that 40 or 50 percent is taxed can you continue to meet your obligations with 40 or 50 percent of your income probably not that's why disability insurance your own policy can protect those things could fill in that gap next sheet so the net worth net worth worksheet and its purpose so you'll need to understand your financial worth at any time and where you have access to income at any time during disability and retirement it will also enable you to be proactive in estate planning and estate planning people think is only for when you're not when you're when you're passing or after you're gone it is not it protects you and your families right now the difference between your assets what you own and liabilities what you owe preparing your net worth statement the same time every year will help you see how you are progressing toward financial goals and what changes you need to make to live within your means very huge living within your means so the network worksheet purpose is a total of your liquid assets which can be quickly converted to cash and may provide information about how well prepared you are for financial emergency or loss of income it can also help you find other assets or sources of income that may help you meet your financial needs such as your medical expenses and other other things school college things like that now this is what the financial net worth worksheet looks like and i i encourage everybody to do this and and this is another offshoot of what how valuable this can be with all of the things happening in natural disasters people's flood houses flooding homes burned down you have to go back and recreate a lot of this what's at your house to file for insurance how many of us know if your house burnt down exactly what's there and what the value is these kind of sheets can be done i would encourage you to take when you get something go around take a weekend and take pictures of serial numbers of computers take pictures of your jewelry if you don't have those are are things that's very difficult to replace like art take pictures of these things go get these things appraised because at the end of the day if you haven't done a lot of this recreating this and having a true value is very difficult to do next sheet and this is this goes on about your liabilities you know that includes your debt anything that you have to pay out is something that you are responsible for next sheet so this was a lot um so in summary start your worksheet i'm telling you every person i've ever worked with in in my my years as a financial advisor found that this was very very beneficial and you can't just do it and sit in a sit in a drawer or or overlook it and just only fill a part of it out you need to see your entire picture and you will become empowered once you do this to find out gosh i'm really spending this you become more mindful of where your money's going so seek help from a financial professional should you need assistance um don't procrastinate if you find you're not able to meet your medical financial obligations again just like audrey said talk to a financial coach through health tree ask for someone we will be glad to help you and i'm still licensed as a financial advisor i work with all kinds of retirement plans any and every type of investment out there i look at insurances i'm licensed also as an insurance broker for health insurance life insurance annuities for all of these things that's why i can help you on medicare feel free to reach out i mean i can send you resources or things that you can look at that can help you pull your budgeting plan together any kind of questions we have i know it's a lot yeah and i was going to say too um i know i've gotten comments in the past oh i don't want to overwhelm diane and diane is also not the only myeloma financial coach that we have on our team um i say myeloma financial coach we're shifting towards health tree financial coach because we do have aml now as part of our organization sister organization to the myeloma crowd so if you want to reach out feel free to um don't don't feel like you're overwhelming us because we do have many financial coaches that are that are able to assist you if anyone has any questions um we you're either able to raise your hand which is an icon found at the bottom of uh the google meet if you click on the slides or you click on me talking you'll should be able to see those icons pop up at the bottom um you can also enter it into the q a into the chat so linda's wondering if there's a cost to use these health tree coaches and i'll just answer that quickly the answer is absolutely no cost to you we are a non-profit the reason we do what we do is to help you um and therefore there would be no cost if there is something that's maybe outside their expertise or outside their ability to answer they would refer you to somebody else that you probably would have to pay for but they're going to do all that they can to help you in your situation without any cost to you um verena was saying it's also important to keep cash on hand for emergencies especially considering all the natural disasters it's easy for areas to lose power and then cash is king that's interesting um kind of echoing what you were saying throughout the program diana so thank you for bringing that up and then veronica is wondering if she could apply for social security disability if she oh ssdi is that social security disability yes not currently working interesting um usually when you're doing social security disability if you're disabled you may be able to go back and get social security disability if you're not working it's based on time you spent working so um as long as you have enough time you can go back and apply for social security disability if it's been years though generally i think they look at the last five years it's been years you may have a problem um but reach out to me i can send you some resources on that yeah and the best way to apply for that thank you another question here is um it's not impossible to find life insurance if you have cancer and we actually did a whole session on finding creative ways to find life insurance even with cancer that i can include the recording and as part of our follow-up email that we will send um with the recording in the slides after this email i mean after this event excuse me so you can talk more to that diana but i did want everybody to know i'm going to include some of diana's um recordings that are amazing and she touches topics that need to be repeated so we love these questions um but yes diana if you want to talk a little bit about that okay and it's really important if if you if you have cancer or if you are on in remission been on remission for five six seven years i know a lot of people are not taking any medications um one of the things your insurance person is going to do of course they're going to do the blood work they may find something strange in your blood but if you can prove that you have not had any problems have been not on any treatment for four or five six years then you can possibly get insurance your rates will still be higher because you're still a risk and the company will be taking up that risk if you have um a spouse who's still working a lot of people seem to forget a lot of times your employers offer a spousal life insurance go on and get that and if they can get additional um um supplemental insurance on on top of that some of those policies are transferable so even if your spouse left that job you can turn that policy into your own and when you're when it's going through an employer unless you're going over a certain amount the employers as provided in their plan you may not have to do any um underwriting at all so those are great ways those are one of the first places you want to go and get your insurance because it's pennies on the dollar when it's through an employer plan yeah and there are other ways as well and i'm excited to share that um yeah she's saying um that's what i have now but it's only ten thousand dollars which is true sometimes the spousal coverage can be lower um so there are other options that again she explains steve would you like to speak you can unmute yourself good to see you you hold on okay can you hear me now yes okay hi um i went through this process 35 years ago and um it was easy to do what you said the hardest part which took real toughness was how could i earn more how could i spend less and i had to be forced into realizing that the lifestyle that i had was not paying for at all and for the first time in 10 years i had to work six days a week instead of five and i had to give them exactly what i would permanently give up i mean if i wasn't going to have starbucks every day whatever the every week um i had to promise and i had to do the other thing i just want to say is i had to hand in all my credit cards um that was the agreement if i wanted to charge something i had to get permission and i was 50 years old so that's it thank you that is it is hard yeah thank you steve for your thank you and sharing okay i'll keep quiet and then another question um diana that i had so we know that in today's uh real estate climate it that 35 percent gets harder and harder i mean we don't see minimum wage going up we don't see salaries increasing exponentially due to a pandemic unless your business did really well um but we see real estate uh prices climbing and climbing so and i'm sure you know we have somebody here from hungary we have somebody you know people in other parts of the world where really that's just not realistic where since housing is a necessity where would you give up other parts of your budget like where would you recommend that we are able to balance out if if the hot necessity necessity of housing exceeds that community guideline or do you use community guideline increasing in the future i mean it's been pretty stable um in fact when we go through situations like this you may find it changing where they're going to say even more should go towards your budget for your housing which makes it even more difficult for people in certain parts of the country certain parts of the world um like for instance i was out and when i was in utah there um for the summit i was looking at houses i was looking at property and i was astounded you know how much housing was and and i'm and i'm sure it's even more now um so some of the things that you can find to maybe get rid of and like what those things are are discretionary like like 200 dollars a month or more on a cable bill and then you may have additional subscriptions you know that could be significantly adding up over a year um uh things you don't use a lot of people have bought um subscriptions or work at go-to workout places like gyms but they don't use it and i know i surprisingly over 90 percent of people who have gym memberships do not use them after the first couple months and those gyms are making money but you are just giving it to them and you're not getting the benefit from it so look at some of those things look at going to starbucks looking at look at you know it's easier and cheaper sometimes to cook versus than to to even go to the store and pick up something or or even if something's packaged in a store if it's if it's still raw like raw meat and it's packaged and it's in the individual servings it's a lot more than buying something in bulk um consider doing those kind of things um and and and going to some of your your local in the summer especially going to some of your local um uh farmers where they have a lot of produce they're trying to get rid of especially when they're trying to change their things all right and a lot of those things can be canned canning is huge you can save a lot of money on canning and a small garden in your flower garden some people think they have to have a big garden you could do a small place in your flower garden have like i did this past year i have peppers and tomatoes or there's a lot in produce and money you can save and direct toward those other things now can you help it if you're in a place where your housing there's very little housing but there's huge demand you know in our country we have very little in low cost low low income housing that everybody's struggling um it's just looking at where we're spending our money every day realizing what really is important what your priorities are and trying to and and and find a way to prioritize those things i'm not saying don't pay for your medications don't like of course don't pay for your medications keep those things going because that's one of your priorities um but look at other ways do you really have to make they'll have those big birthday parties for family yeah they may be disappointed but they'd be even more disappointed if they didn't have food on their table you know there's a lot of things to look at that are that that i think people and kids especially teenagers who want that car and they want mom and dad to pay for their their mortgage insurance and they are i mean their insurance and and the maintenance you know you're not obligated to buy them a car you know there's there are certain things that when you're struggling take care of your bills to take care of your your necessity bills like your medicines other things are not that important and other people need to realize that that's part of being um a good steward yeah thank you very much um thank you diana for for taking the time and thank you all of you for participating in this first budgeting workshop it was so fun to do something more interactive with you guys um i saw a more casual side of diana which i love and um it was just a excellent presentation and i thank you diana for taking the time to go through with us as mentioned these documents will be sent out in the follow-up email we'll send other resources that we've mentioned throughout the meeting such as previous recordings of diana's events that she's presented and the link to sign up for a health tree coach who's willing to help you with with financial needs um thank you so much again for joining us we're going to finish with a couple of our true announcements and then we will be done for today we do appreciate your time um spending with us today our next session is going to occur on march 1st and we're going to be continuing this discussion of the true cost of cancer and how to pay for it especially what newly diagnosed patients need to know what's that really going to look like on your budget as medical expenses and what um can we do to lower this cost of cancer using the resources that are out there other upcoming events in the myeloma crowd community program you may be interested in we have the muscles for my loma fitness chapter we're going to be talking about maintaining and communicating your sexual wellness with a sexual health expert that's on the second tomorrow at 7 p.m eastern and happy february by the way thursday february 3rd at 1 p.m eastern is the stem cell transplant chapter we're going to be hearing from different patients who have been through a stem cell transplant what their experience is like with vaccinations post transplant many clinics differ on not only the timing or the order of what vaccinations are given but even which vaccinations they choose to give so i wanted you to hear from different people so that you can get an idea of what possibly it might look like for you post transplant for your vaccinations and then on the 8th at 6 30 p.m pacific is our socal myeloma community chapter um we're going to be talking with dr myo tut from city of hope and he's going to be talking about his car t trial that he has been working on and give us different updates about that the link to sign up for any of those events and even more events that i have now mentioned today is found at the bottom of this slide and will be sent out in the follow-up email another thank you to our community event sponsors bristol meyers square bamgen oncology gen and tech adaptive biotechnology sanofi jansen oncology karyo for therapeutics tuketa oncology and abby and thank you again to each of you for spending this time with us thank you to diana for your preparation we hope that you have a great rest of your day and take care happy february everyone thank you thank you steve good to see you you too