Rebecca Walser, financial planner and wealth strategist, offers some tips on how to bring everyday spending in line with budgets by avoiding certain purchases. 

<div class="block">Rebecca Walser, financial planner and wealth strategist, offers some tips on how to bring everyday spending in line with budgets by avoiding certain purchases. </div>
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Wake Up With Cheddar

Stretching Your Dollar: What Not to Spend Your Money On 

Welcome back to wake up with, I'm do. And now to stretching your dollar setting yourself up for financial stability can be tricky if you got some bad money habits. So what are some things you shouldn't spend money on here to give us some dos and don't is certified financial planner and wealth strategist. Rebecca Walzer. Rebecca. Welcome. Thanks for having me here. We're so happy to have you. Let's start with everyday spending. What types of purchases should people avoid? Well, it's the impulse purchases, right? If you are on a budget and you know that you need to stick to the budget. Um I think, you know, Ramsey has a very good, don't go to do the, the $5.05 bucks for her coffee, make it at home. But honestly, I don't agree with any financial advice that says avoid luxury. You have to have luxury in your life. If that's what your goal setting is about. If you care about achieving certain things, don't just be like a luxury is frivolous. Therefore, I'm not going to build and, and buy luxury, but make it a part of the budget and then stick to the budget what about credit cards? People keep in mind when it comes to those interest rates. Well, first of all, a lot of people move balances for introductory offers of 0% interest, but they don't read the fine print. They don't see that it's only a six month introductory offer. And then if they transfer a balance that, that, that offer of 0% ends either six months, 12 months, 18 months. And now they have this high 24% rate that's applying to whatever balance they transferred. So if you're going to, you know, use some kind of, you know, strategy like that to sort of pay off high credit card debts faster. That's great. But make sure you're very on top of the fine print and you really do set a budget and a payment plan together when you're doing things like that. Rebecca, I do want to talk to you about emotional spending. Let's say you have a bad day at work. You fight with a loved one. We've all treated ourselves to a new outfit, maybe a night out. How can that impulse purchase affect our finances in the long run? Because we've all done it well. First of all, I'm not gonna knock retail therapy. I think we're both very much uh uh addicted to re therapy. So, no, it is a drug. It's psychological. It does help us with a pick me up and let's face it. If you're not going to be able to enjoy spending money in your life, then why are you going to continue to make it? We have to allow ourselves to have that enjoyment. That's the whole point, money in and of itself is just a means to something else. So if we sit here and degrade ourselves for allowing us to have those, those feelings, then we're, we're just not, we're missing the boat. You have to budget with that in what about when it comes to where we live, renting or buying? This is a very difficult question for a lot of people. Which one's the better one, in your opinion? Well, obviously building assets is way more superior from a financial perspective than simply, you know, throwing something away. So think about like building putting money into, let's just use insurance as an example. You could buy a house insurance policy, you never make a claim. All that money is just gone to nowhere or you could buy a different insurance policy that you're building actual value and, and that money gets stored up. So it's a preservation thing. But I would say that the market is certainly oversold right now or over bought right now. The prices are too high because rates have been too low for too long. And so we're seeing now Hanna really a pricing adjustment across with the higher interest rates. And so I think now is not the time to buy necessarily if you're gonna actually buy I wait, I have about a minute left with you. I want to ask about other investments. Are there some things we shouldn't do when we think about investing? I think that you have to have a plan first. No, I, I mean, you'd be surprised. I sit down and one of the first questions I ask is how much cash flow do we need to maintain lifestyle? What lifestyle level are we living and how much cash flow does it require to maintain that lifestyle? People can't even answer that very, very first basic question. How are we supposed to build a plan and achieve goal? If we don't even know what the goal is? Let's define the goal first and then we can reverse engineer and make it happen in about 20 seconds. I don't want to rush this question, but it's an important one we talked about. Don't what about do do, do the plan make a plan? Know that when you're 20 your life will go so much easier if you actually have created the plan fast if you start in your forties? Yeah, that's ok. Let's make a plan. I love that. Thanks to certified financial planner, Rebecca Walzer. Really great advice.