Inflation is happening and everyone is feeling it. That’s why Consumers @Work Manager Scott Dobson has joined Lynne for this week’s episode of Money, I’m Home to chat about the importance of budgeting and ways to make your paycheck further.

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0:00:07.1 Lynne Jarman-Johnson (LJJ): Money I’m Home, welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. From finance to fitness, we have it all. And right now, we’re all talking about the dreaded word inflation. I’ll tell you what, it is hitting our pocketbooks at home, at work. Everyone’s talking about it because it’s real, and it’s real life. Scott Dobson works on our program about financial education for our employers, our employees, and people out in the community. Scott, thank you so much. You’re our guru on financial wellness. Thanks for being with us today.

0:00:40.5 Scott Dobson (SD): My pleasure. It’s always fun to talk to you. I always come up with some interesting and good ideas.

0:00:44.4 LJJ: I’ll tell you what, I’m going to call this topic Inflation Busters, because we’re all talking about it and we’re all feeling the pinch.

0:00:51.0 SD: Yeah, my wife came home the other day and she’s like, “I just went grocery shopping and it was unbelievable.” And I was like, “yeah, yeah.” But then I went to the gas prices. I kind of get used to it, I suppose. I went to buy birdseed, which I haven’t bought for a while. And I always get the same thing at Menards. It’s always $19.99. It’s $29.99. That’s up 50% for my bird feeder for my backyard, I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, “geez O’ Pete’s, inflation is real.

0:01:15.3 LJJ: Well, and I’ll tell you what, birdseed goes fast, especially if you have squirrels.

0:01:20.9 SD: Yeah, I’m like, it’s mostly squirrel seed. I’m like, “do I feed these squirrels?”

0:01:26.1 LJJ: Well, I know that you’re out in our community and you’re talking to people about these real-life issues. Tell us what’s going on out there, Scott.

0:01:33.3 SD: Well, for those out there, Lynne does give me a little warning. She doesn’t call me up blindly and say, “we’re going to talk about inflation.” So… [laughter] I have been fortunate enough to be out in the community and talk to people all the time and get good ideas. And I write them down and I talk to the other professionals that I get to work with every day at Consumers. So, inflation is real and things have to change. And for most of us, myself included, I’m not going to get a giant pay raise or anything. I’m going to get probably my normal pay raise that we all might get at the end of the year. But on the income side, we’re probably all where we are. So, what do we do when we go to the grocery store or the gas station and everything costs a little more? And if you don’t have a lot of spare money sitting around, like most of us, you got to figure out how to still make it work. Even though things, groceries, you have to get gas, you have to get work and we fix things at.

0:02:20.0 LJJ: What is interesting to me, we spoke about this a little bit and I think it’s fascinating. We have been talking for many, many episodes, Scott, about financial wellness. And one of our most listened to podcasts is living paycheck to paycheck. And I got to believe that if our listeners have that fear, are living a life of paycheck to paycheck and inflation has to be absolutely keeping you up at night.

0:02:48.6 SD: Yeah, for sure. And about 75% of us are paycheck-to-paycheck. Meaning if our next paycheck doesn’t show up, we’re going to feel some real stress from that. So, like, all things financial, I always think of how it feels in my heart and how it feels in my head. Cut off your Netflix, cut off your Hulu and cut off all your cables, sit at home in the dark at night and turn your heat down to 65. But we live in the real world and things have to work for us. So, we want it to feel good and still be able to live life and not be stressed out when that payday comes. You know, I put on my thinking cap and really the things that I’m going to share with you right now, I’ve absolutely done this week myself. So, we’re all real people live in the real world. And there’s some things like, “no, I’m not going to get rid of that because I like it and I want to spend the money on it.” But really just to have the understanding of where your money’s going. A lot of it’s like, “all right, I know where my rent goes or my mortgage and my house payment” but then other money disappears. So how can we kind of rein that in and figure it out and be in more control of your money.

0:03:44.6 SD: So, the 1st thing that I did for myself, and the best advice I got from some of my colleagues is to pull up your bank statement online and go through it and look for two different things. Look for recurring monthly charges and spending trends. And by recurring monthly charges, I mean, just go through and say, all right, what comes out every single month? And do I want it to come out? I immediately found an Xbox live subscription for $9.99. That I remember back in early COVID times when I was bored at home that I didn’t I did sign up for it and I just completely forgot to take it off. So, I kicked myself for spending $120 last year that I didn’t need to. But there was $9.99. So we go through it and look for those monthly service charges like Xbox Live, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, all of those things take a look at them and decide if they’re important to you or if you could get rid of those.

0:04:44.8 SD: Then look for services. Services, things that come out every single month. Your cell phone contract, garbage service, auto and home insurance, things like that and say, “boy, should I be looking at this as my cell phone payment of $185 a month? Can I go get it to 99? Can I go save myself 85 bucks a month?” Same with your home and auto insurance. I know it’s no fun to shop home and auto insurance, but I’ve got motorcycles and RVs and policies all over I’m like, “Oh, man. I really need to call, and man, I need to,” I really should shop them because over the years your insurance rates tend to kind of pop up. I’ll give a quick plug to Novelty insurance because they can help with a discount for all of our members. So, I could help you save some money right there.

0:05:26.4 SD: Then spending trends. After you look at all the services that come out and say, “boy, can I get rid of this or could I reduce it or change it or make it work better for me?” How much am I spending eating out? How much am I spending like at convenience stores that are 4 bucks and 6 bucks and 9 bucks and can I understand where that’s going and can I lower that number? Can I do something to say, “I don’t really need to stop and buy something every other day. I can probably knock that one out pretty easily.” And once you do that with your bank statements, then all your other financial accounts that you might have. Credit card statements would be the main one where you might have recurring charges or spending money on that and they’re like, “oh, boy, I really don’t need to do that.” But there’s also, I have a Venmo account. I have a PayPal account money going in and out of those at times. So, I reviewed those at the same time to see if I had any of those spending trends or subscriptions or services that I can get rid of.

0:06:18.2 LJJ: You mentioned them living with your head in your heart. And I think one of the hardest… This is a hard time of year right now. You know, we’ve got thanksgiving coming up. So, there’s a lot of food buying that’s going to happen. A lot of wonderful family gathering time, which then leads to Christmas. And again, you’re now into a situation where, you know, those dollars if they’re tighter, you may feel uncomfortable, but having that open conversation with your family, how important is that when it’s gift giving time?

0:06:48.5 SD: Yeah, that’s always a tough one. You want to. I have kids. I want them to have a wonderful Christmas, but at the same time, everyone has a budget. And so maybe it’s talk early about, “man, things are tight. Christmas is going to be great, but don’t expect a new car this year because things are happening.

0:07:04.8 LJJ: What about that new iPhone. [laughter]

0:07:07.8 SD: Yeah, especially the new iPhone. Everyone seems like that’s an automatic. Like, you got to spend a 1000 bucks every time the new one comes out. So, one of those things to look at.

0:07:15.5 LJJ: Well, I’ll tell you what it sounds to me like, you’ve always preached it and I love it. A budget doesn’t have to be scary, and a budget doesn’t mean that you’re pencil-to-paper in an old fashioned way. You have lots of videos and lots of information on our blogs and podcasts on the Consumers website. So, thank you for that. And we really appreciate your time today.

0:07:40.6 SD: Oh, absolutely.

0:07:42.6 LJJ: Hey, get out there and bust those inflation numbers. If you can, get the pencil to the paper. Well, in a fun way alright? I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson. Thank you, Scott Dobson, our @Work guru. By the way, if you’re a company in Michigan and you would like financial education complimentary to your employees, please give us a shout out. We would love to come and chat with you and help your employees really have wellness in their life on the finance side. Thank you, Jake Esselink, for your production skills today. I hope everybody has a great week.

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