Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

What to Do When You Have More Bills Than Income

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It can happen to the best of us—we have more bills than income.  Every person’s situation is unique.  Maybe you lost your job, or you had a medical emergency, or you just went through a divorce.  The situation doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you find yourself in a desperate position.  Rather than panicking or ignoring the problem, know that there are strategies to implement to get yourself out of this position.

More Bills Than Income

Steps to Take When You Have More Bills Than Income

The process of getting out of this situation isn’t quick, but finding your financial footing again can be done.

Write Down Your Financials

The first step is to take an honest account of where you are.  How much money do you have coming in?  How much debt do you have?  What are your monthly payments and bills?

Cut Ruthlessly

Now that you have your financials on paper, you need to cut ruthlessly.  What do you pay for monthly that you can slash from your budget?  Start first with subscriptions like DisneyPlus, Netflix, Amazon, etc.  You can get those services back once you no longer have more bills than income.

Next, look at categories you can’t eliminate but can reduce.  We all have to eat, but we don’t have to go to a restaurant to do so.  If you’re not already cooking all of your meals at home, now is the time to start.  Also, make a plan to shift the type of food that you’re eating so you can lower your grocery bill.  Now might be the time to eat some beans and rice and vegetarian soups.

Learn how to lower your electric bill.  Turn off appliances and devices that you’re not using at night.

Consider switching cell phone providers so you don’t have a high monthly cell phone bill.  You might want to move to a lower cost provider like Ting or Tello Mobile.

In short, cut or reduce everything you can.  Then, you’re on to the next step.

Prioritize Payments

More Bills than Income
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

If there’s not enough money even after slashing your expenses, there’s not enough.  Once you write down your financials, list your bills in order of importance.  Think survival here.

Survival Expenses Should Always Be Paid First

Bills and expenses that you likely want to be sure you pay every month can include:

Food,

Clothing,

Utilities,

Housing,

Transportation

The most important goals right now are to feed and clothe yourself as well as keep the lights on (along with the heat or air conditioning) and maintain your house and car.  Without the latter two, keeping and getting yourself to work is very difficult.

Keep in mind, you’ll still want to be conservative in these categories.  You won’t be eating fancy meals and you won’t be buying designer clothes.  You’ll spend the minimum you need to get yourself fed and clothed.

Expenses to Pay with the Remaining Money

After you’ve done looking at your spending priorities, look at how much money you have left.  You may find that you have many more bills to go and only a little money left.  That’s okay.  You knew you were in this position, and now you’re writing it all out and making a plan.  This is empowering even if it feels terrifying.

Let’s say you have four debts remaining and you only have $250 leftover.  Spread that $250 between each of your remaining debts.  For instance, let’s say your four debts have these balances:

CC #1: $10,000

CC #2: $3,500

CC #3: $5,000

CC #4: $1,500

At this point, don’t pay attention to the minimum payment.  Instead, add up all the debt, in this case, $20,000, and figure out which percentage of debt each is.  For example, CC #1 represents 50% of the remaining debt, so you’ll give it 50% of your remaining money each month, $125.  CC #2 is 17.5% of your remaining debt, so it will get 17.5% of your remaining money–$43.75, and so on.

Negotiate Credit Card Rates

If you think your current financial situation is temporary, call your credit card company and ask them to reduce the amount of interest you’re paying.  By doing this, more of your monthly payment will go to principal, lowering the overall amount that you owe.  You’ll likely be successful with agents lowering your rate about 50% of the time.

Negotiate Monthly Payments

If you feel your financial situation may last longer than a few months, call your lenders and explain your situation.

Credit card companies have the power to reduce your monthly payment.  When you negotiate with them, they will ask you how much you can pay monthly.  Using the math that you did above, let them know exactly how much you can pay a month.  (You’ll tell credit card company #2 you can only pay $43.75 even if your monthly payment is $70.)  The credit card companies will likely lower your payment to what you can pay because you’re making a good faith effort to meet your obligations.

Remember to call your other lenders.  Your mortgage company may be able to work with you to reduce or temporarily suspend payments.  You can also apply for deferrals on your student loans.

The important advice is to call these companies early, before you fall significantly behind.  Call them while you still have good credit.

Find a Side Hustle

More Bills than Income
Photo by Garrhet Sampson on Unsplash

Reducing expenses is important when you have more bills than income, but the flip side is just as important.  Can you start a side hustle as a way to make extra money and boost your income?  I started freelance writing 10 years ago when our youngest was a baby.  Now, my freelance work contributes 25% of our monthly income.  Imagine adding an extra 10 or 20 percent to your current income?  How would that money help you improve your financial situation?

Final Thoughts

If you’re in the unfortunate position of having more bills than income, know that you’re not alone.  There are steps you can take to improve your financial situation and help you survive this current financial difficulty.  Most importantly, remember that this situation is temporary.  Things will get better.

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How to Combat Frugal Fatigue when Being Gazelle Intense

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My husband and I recently added up our student loan and credit card debt.  Imagine our shock when we discovered we have $58,000 in debt!  What was this debt comprised of?  It is made up of nearly $38,000 in student loans, $6,500 on a business credit card for a business that failed and $13,500 of personal credit card debt spread over two cards (the smallest balance at $1,000).  The latter debt is largely due to our current low income and some not so wise purchases.  We’ve recently become gazelle intense.  However, we’re being careful to combat frugal fatigue since we know we’ll need to live this lifestyle for quite some time.

Gazelle Intense

What a Gazelle Intense Day Looks Like for Us

At the urging of everyone around us, we began to follow Dave Ramsey.  Because we do not yet own a house but would like to in the next three to five years, we decided to become gazelle intense, as Dave Ramsey says.

What does gazelle intense look like for us?  My husband works away from the house for 10 hours a day.  After spending an hour with the kids when he comes home, he works on his dissertation and articles for publication for a few hours a night.

I stay home with the kids all day and blog, do virtual assistant work and freelance writing when the kids are napping and after they go to bed.  On the weekend, I typically leave the house for about four hours on both Saturday and Sunday to get more freelance work done.  I estimate that I am working 25 hours a week from home.  My husband is putting in another 20 hours a week at home doing work that will further his career and hopefully lead to a high paying, tenure track job in a few years.

Being Gazelle Intense Works!

Our hard work is paying off.  In just two weeks, we “found” an additional $701 to apply to our debt beyond our regular debt repayment schedule.  We found this money several ways.  First, we returned a few items we bought but hadn’t used before becoming gazelle intense.  Then, we also got an unexpected check that we put toward the debt.  We just paid off our first credit card with the lowest balance.  Next on our plan is to pay off the credit card with $6,500 within the next four weeks.

Getting Used to a New Lifestyle Takes Time

Gazelle Intense
Photo by Louis Hansel @shotsoflouis on Unsplash

As anyone who has become gazelle intense knows, there is a period of adjustment when you have to get used to the austere lifestyle that is required.  Let’s be honest—most people who have credit card debt have at least some of it because of a lack of impulse control and planning.

Was all of our credit card debt due to that?  No, we had a very low income for awhile when my husband’s graduate student teaching stipend was our only income, and we relied on credit to make ends meet.  However, we also ate out more than we needed to.  (Do you ever need to eat out?)  Our debt likely would be lower if we practiced more self-control with ourselves and our finances.  Since we weren’t stringent with ourselves then, we’re having to be now.

How to Maintain Gazelle Intensity for Months (and Years)

Gazelle intensity works with no break if you have a relatively short amount of time you must be laser focused.  If you can get your debt paid off in 12 to 18 months, you shouldn’t need a break.  However, if you’re looking at several years to pay down your debt, you will likely need to give yourself an occassional break to avoid frugal fatigue.

Take a Break After Each Debt

Because there is such an adjustment, to maintain your gazelle intensity and avoid frugal fatigue, consider rewarding yourself for each debt that you pay off or at a milestone you set.  If you have one large debt to pay off, maybe you will reward yourself for every $5,000 you pay off.

For us, since we love to eat out and now no longer eat out at all, we have decided that we will have one meal out every time we pay off a debt.  To maintain your drive, pick one thing you used to enjoy spending money on in your old, less frugal lifestyle, and commit to enjoying that activity once when you achieve your assigned goal in your debt snowball.  Keep it reasonable, less than $50, so you don’t derail your snowball, but give yourself that leeway to maintain your intensity.

Gazelle Intensity Interval Training

Another option is to do gazelle intensity interval training.  If you have a lot to pay off like we do, you may need a different strategy to keep up your motivation.  For instance, maybe you can commit to three months of intensely working and paying down your debt.  Then, you will take a break for one month.  Or, maybe you decide on an amount that you’ll pay down, and then you’ll take a break.  Maybe you decide to pay down $15,000 and then slow down in intensity for a bit. As you become invigorated again, set another goal that you’ll pay down before you rest.

Final Thoughts

Being gazelle intense definitely has rewards.  You put yourself in a painful place for an intense while until the debt is paid off.  Then, you begin to reap the rewards of all your hard work.  You can live like no one else, as Dave Ramsey says.

Yet, be careful not to become so strict with yourself that you give in to frugal fatigue and derail your debt snowball.  A small, planned out treat is often all it takes to keep you motivated and ultimately debt free.  If you’re confronting a large amount of debt, consider instead to be gazelle intense for a few months and then take a break.

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How Bulk Cooking Can Save You Money

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Have you ever had a day where everything went wrong?  The kind of day where you have a meeting at 4 p.m. and think it will end at 5 p.m., but it runs an hour late?  Then you get home, the kids are cranky and hungry.  You still have to help them do their homework, but you have nothing ready for a quick meal?  Most people accept defeat and order take out.  That’s what I used to do years ago, but then I discovered bulk cooking, and I started saving both time and money!

Bulk Cooking

How Bulk Cooking Works

There are several ways to incorporate bulk cooking into your life.  Just choose the style that you like the best.

Make Meals in Advance

One way to try bulk cooking is to make several meals on one day.  Ideally, you’ll pick four to five recipes and at least double each recipe.  Then, you’ll take the eight to ten meals that you made, put them in a freezer bag, lay them flat, and freeze them.  In the future, when you have a busy night, simply grab a meal from the freezer instead of calling for take-out.

Some people who are extremely motivated make enough meals in one day for their family to eat for a month!  However, I wouldn’t recommend this for a beginner because it can be exhausting.  You spend an entire day cutting up produce, batch cooking, and cleaning up.  The reward is that for the next 30 days, you don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner.

Prep Food for the Week

If you’re intimidated by the idea of making entire meals in advance, you can start more slowly with meal prep for the week.  Doing this on a Sunday will still save you a lot of time during the week and make your actual cooking time faster.

Bulk Cooking
Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash

When you do this type of bulk cooking, you simply prep all the ingredients that you will need for the week.  For instance, if you know you’re making chili during the week, brown the ground beef and soak and cook the beans now.  Then, on Wednesday night, chili night, just pull the precooked beef and beans from the refrigerator and combine on the stove and let simmer.  You’ll easily skim 20 to 30 minutes off your cooking time by doing this.

There is one caveat to this way of preparing food.  If you prep food on Sunday, you may need to freeze some portions that you’ll use later in the week because the food won’t stay fresh until the end of the week.  I love to take out two pounds of ground beef on the weekend, brown it down, and then store it in the freezer in smaller size portions.  Whenever I need it, I just pull it out for the recipe I’m making.

Where to Find Recipes

Not all foods freeze well, so it’s best to find recipes specifically for bulk cooking.  Simply Google “freezer cooking recipes” and you’ll find a slew of recipes, all designed with ingredients that freeze well.  Often times when I serve a meal, my husband can’t even tell that it’s been frozen before.

Advantages of Bulk Cooking

There are so many advantages to bulk cooking!

Choose the Ingredients

You get to choose the ingredients.  If you’re interested in eating clean or you have food allergies or intolerances, this way of cooking may be for you.  You choose how much fat or sugar you add.  You choose organic or non-organic ingredients.  Since you’re making the meal, you know exactly what you are putting in your body, which can’t be said if you order take out or buy frozen meals from the store.

Cook the Foods You Like

You have the ultimate say in the meals that fill your freezer.  You can make meals that the entire family enjoys, even the fussy little ones, which makes meal time much more pleasant for everyone. And you needn’t stop at meals – you can also cook your favorite sauces to use as an accompaniment for those blander mid-week meals where you don’t have the energy to make anything fancy. For example, take a look at this chinese hot mustard sauce recipe which is perfect both for freezing and for giving a kick to your dinner!

Save Time

Yes, bulk cooking requires an investment in time in the beginning, but you’ll soon find that it saves you so much time during the week.  Can you imagine the ease of just pulling a meal from the freezer, heating it, and making a salad to go with it?  Or, pulling out all of the meal components from your refrigerator and simply simmering them together?

How Bulk Cooking Can Save You Money
Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash

Plus, you make most of the mess on your bulk cooking day, so on the day when you actually eat the meal, there is very little clean up.

Save Money

This is one of the best advantages to bulk cooking.  You can save some serious money.  Let’s say you’re a busy family of four, and you grab take out costing you $40 once a week.  That’s $160 a month you could save if instead of relying on take out, you could simply have a meal defrosting in the refrigerator waiting for you to heat up on a busy night.

Plus, have you ever had weeks where you buy groceries, but then you get too busy and can’t cook as often as you had planned?  Those ingredients spoil before you can use them.  You lose $10 or $20 in ingredients you didn’t use.  With bulk cooking, that issue mostly goes away, saving you money twice.

Drawbacks of Bulk Cooking

I have been bulk cooking in some form or other for the last 15 years.  I really enjoy preparing food this way, but there are some drawbacks.

Initially Expensive

Let’s say you spend $200 a week for groceries.  If you decide at the beginning of the month that you want to make all of your dinners for the month and put them in the freezer, you may have to spend $300 or $400 to buy all of the ingredients at once.  This can be hard on your budget initially because you have to spend more upfront than you have budgeted weekly.  After that initial bulk cooking session, you’ll find that you spend less per week.

Time Consuming

When my kids were little, my husband would watch them all day so I could bulk cook for the month.  The cooking day was always exhausting, and as much as I loved having meals in the freezer for the whole month, I hated bulk cooking day.

Now that my kids are older and more self-sufficient, I bulk cook on Sunday for the upcoming week.  Rather than taking me all day, bulk cooking for the week only takes me two to three hours.

Final Thoughts

Bulk cooking is an excellent way to save money and time.  Yes, you have to initially invest money and time, but you’ll reap the rewards for days to come.

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