[speaker001:] you said you're are financial uh financial planner so do you work with individual um
[speaker002:] yes
[speaker001:] like companies or I mean
[speaker002:] well we work with both we work with individuals and we work with companies and executives and um we do business and personal uh financial planning and budgeting and investing for those people
[speaker001:] so how do you handle your own account
[speaker002:] how do I handle my own account
[speaker001:] your your own budget
[speaker002:] uh well the first part of being of of a good budget or a good financial planner is to uh number one don't have any debt so yes being debt free is very important and keeping a budget uh below your income is important also
[speaker001:] hm right now I think really the only debt we have is our house and
[speaker002:] oh that's great you're ahead of most of the people out there then
[speaker001:] well good but we really don't have a monthly budget that we live on but we don't spend um frivolously either
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh I mean we don't I don't we don't have anything on the computer that says oops we only have five dollars left to spend this week you know it's not that rigid um
[speaker002:] well a budget does not have to be rigid
[speaker001:] hm um I know though I'm expecting and um we're thinking about cutting down to one salary and so when it comes down to that that is going to be quite a change in our income because I not quite fifty percent but maybe forty percent of our income is based on mine um
[speaker002:] sure
[speaker001:] so I think when when it comes to that time period we are going to need to watch our our funds a little bit more um right now we're struggling with it oh the thing is that both our cars are paid off but they are the same age and his my husband's car is American mine's Japanese but his is breaking down a lot more you know I haven't had any problems and were were
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh trying to decide well do we go ahead and get another car or do we just drive this one till it breaks you know and if we do what kind of car do we want to get and if we do do we should we pay cash for it or uh try to get a low interest
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] you you know interest rate
[speaker002:] well uh one thing that really uh helps I find in budgeting and personally in budget as well as a business budget is prior planning prevents poor results and uh lot of people uh have not even considered that maybe that a car payment a monthly car payment that they put it in every month whether they have a car payment or not and therefore they would save up enough money over a couple year period to replace a vehicle when they needed it
[speaker001:] we both have done that um we both work at companies that have credit unions
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so we had direct deposit you know for our car payment anyway and when my car was paid off I never told them to you know to stop taking that money out so they've still been putting in oh I don't remember how much my payments were two hundred and fifty three hundred dollars
[speaker002:] well that is called smart budgeting
[speaker001:] oh good smart budgeting is that what you said or just smart
[speaker002:] oh it's real financial planning but we're talking about budgeting so
[speaker001:] um
[speaker002:] that is very smart to do
[speaker001:] and then my husband has done the same thing with his payments so it's just more to us not necessarily setting up for another car but just going into savings
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and I I think our thing right now is the way the interest rates are and uh well that's in our goals I guess for this year first quarter is to examine our financial standing you know and try to decide how we want to invest our money because right now the the uh interest rates on everything seems to be so low that you know I don't really see any benefit over um uh oh I can't remember what we compared it to but over putting your money in say a CD or market money account or something over just a regular savings there wasn't enough difference in the interest rate to make a different I mean to uh I mean I guess our savings account is probably a lot more liquid than CDs or or um
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] money money markets I don't know what else there I know there are a bunch of different things you can invest in but
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] right now I don't know what do you think the way things are going right now that
[speaker002:] well uh um with the economy the way it is it's very important that um we don't spend capital we don't have to because we don't know when we'll need it
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] and secondly is is that we need to make our money work for us so we don't have to work harder
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] and uh it just takes time to do that and um if a person has capital resources uh or cash on hand to take care of emergencies