2 Effective Strategies to Reduce Financial Stress

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Ep. 185 – 2 Effective Strategies to Reduce Financial Stress

We’re talking more about strategic ways to manage financial stress. Building from last week’s conversation, I’ll share two actionable steps from my Reducing Financial Stress guide. First, I’ll emphasize getting clear on your numbers to reduce fear and uncertainty surrounding finances. Second, I’ll talk about establishing a consistent money routine to manage and plan your finances better.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, we’ll explore practical steps and resources, including booking a call with me for personalized support. Tune in for tips to take control of your money and reduce financial worry.

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Resources:

• Reducing Financial Stress: https://aimeecerka.com/reducestress
• Discovery Call: https://aimeecerka.com/discovery
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/aimeecerka
• Cashflow Calculator: https://aimeecerka.com/cashflow

Podcast Key Points

• 0:00 – Episode Overview
• 1:34 – Getting Clear on Your Numbers
• 4:49 – Taking a Financial Snapshot
• 7:08 – Establishing a Money Routine

2 Effective Strategies to Reduce Financial Stress

We talked a little bit about financial stress last week. Peek behind the scenes on some of the things that I was using tactics, strategies in the moment. But we’re back today talking about financial stress again with a little bit more of a different, more tactical approach to it. And I’ve got two key things for you that we’re going to dive into today. So let’s get to it.

Talking About Financial Stress Again

Welcome. I’m so glad you’re welcome back to the Your Money, Your Life podcast. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. We are talking today about financial stress. So today I’ve got two more tactical strategies that we’re going to pull out from the Reducing Financial Stress guide that I put together. Seven simple ways, seven simple steps to take control of your money.

How to Get the Full Guide

So we’re going to pull two of them out today and dive into those. If you want to grab all seven, that link is amycirca.com/reducestress. The link will be in the show notes for you as well if you are driving right now.

Step One: Get Clear on Your Numbers

But first things first, getting clear on your numbers. Often a lot of the financial stress occurs, or part of it even occurs from the unknown. We fear the unknown, right? And when we focus on what we know and what we can control, we remove some of that stress. Because it’s like the fear of we don’t really know where things are at and if things are tight and you’re like, I know where things are at and I don’t want to see it right now.

Why Don’t We Want to Know?

We’ll get to that part in a second. But we don’t want to know our numbers. We don’t want to know where things are at and there’s a level of stress that occurs. Now, why don’t we want to know where we’re at? First thing could be because there’s not enough.

Facing the Reality

We don’t feel like there’s enough. It’s barely making ends meet. Maybe you’re not making ends meet. Whatever the case might be there, we don’t want to know. Another option would be like, we don’t want to know because we don’t want to have to take responsibility for it.

No Guilt or Shame in Numbers

And that is just, we’ve added meaning to whatever the choices are because the numbers are what the numbers are. And if it could just be that black and white and simple like life would be great, right? But the problem is, the problem lies in the fact that it’s not. While money is this logical thing, we add all the emotion into it and that’s why we focus on both. That’s like what we do here. Because I can give you all the step-by-step strategy.

Tools Coming Soon

We’ve got it all. We’re going to talk. I don’t know if we’re going to talk about that on the podcast yet or not, but I’ve got something coming that we’re going. It’s not only like a twelve days of Christmas because we’re going to kick off the New Year with it, but we’re going to highlight some of those step-by-step strategy programs that I have, like Budgeting, Simplified, Prosperity, Simplified, some of the smaller workshops that are pieces of that. All of those things.

More than Just Strategy

Like I can give you that, give you the step-by-step strategy. It’s all there. You probably even piece together enough from the podcast. But the issue with that is it’s not the strategy that you’re missing. There’s tons of strategies out there, right?

Facing the Meaning

Like Google. There’s so much information even on the podcast here. Like, there’s so much information and this is just one podcast. The information isn’t the problem because we have all the step-by-step strategy, right? The thing that becomes the problem is when we avoid it, we add meaning.

Step Two: Take a Financial Snapshot

We avoid things because of the meaning that we’re going to assign. The guilt, the stress, whatever it might be, shows up. And when we let that meaning show up and we give meaning to those numbers, that’s when we bring in the fear, right? So when we decide we’ll take a financial snapshot of your finances. That’s the simplest thing to do.

No Emotion, Just Numbers

Like right now, just take a financial snapshot. What that means current monthly obligations, what you owe income. If you have a budgeting Track. I’m sorry, an expense tracking app set up. That’s a great thing to know.

Checking Expenses

Expenses, what are your debts are at Again? Not out of like any emotion there. We’re just looking at the numbers or removing the meaning and just bringing awareness to where things are at. Maybe you’ve got multiple subscriptions for the same thing and then we can cut something out. Maybe you have a subscription billing that you completely forgot about.

Use Tools to Track Expenses

Again, you can cut that out. You don’t have to cut anything out, though. This is about just knowing where you’re at. The pro step here is having an expense tracking app spreadsheet combination. I’d recommend both have something there to help systematize the process because we don’t need to do this manually every single time.

Budgeting Worksheets Available

So we’ve got all of the budgeting for success worksheets that are plug and play. On the business side, we’ve got Prosperity Simplified and the Simple Biz Workshop. We’ll get into some of those resources later because right now we need to be able to get clear on your numbers. So monthly obligations, what are the expenses that you have income coming in, what are your debts at? Just taking that financial snapshot and seeing where they’re at.

Remember, No Meaning Attached

No meaning aside to it. There’s no guilt, there’s no shame. We’re not creating any stress. We’re just looking at the numbers. And I know that is so much easier said than done.

Need Help? Book a Call

I really need that resource ready. Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Because the new roadmap video is not ready. That’s going to have all of the resources broken down for you. If you’re like, okay, yeah, you’re right, Amy, I need to work on this and I need to work on it sooner rather than later. But I need help.

Weekly Money Check-Ins

I’ll put a link below in the description to book a call with me. We’ll see what availability is on. Because I know we’re in the middle of the holidays if you’re watching this live, but we’ll open it up so then you can even book a couple weeks out if your life is crazy busy too. But we’re going to take the step to move forward and to prioritize it. All right?

Friday is My Money Day

Okay. First thing, getting clear on your numbers. The second thing is going to help, like, after you’ve gotten clear on your numbers, establish a money routine. So when do you check in with your money? For me, it’s been Friday.

Snooze Emails until Friday

Friday is the day for my weekly check-in. We do this every Friday. I spend time, I sit down like if we get. I get emails throughout the week where something needs to be taken care of with the money, it’s snoozed until Friday. I know that is my designated time to sit there and look at the money, take care of the money on Friday.

Don’t Worry All Week

So if anything comes in during the week, again, we snooze it until Friday. But I don’t have to spend the full week worrying about it. Really, you don’t have to spend the time worrying about it at all.

Schedule Your Worry Time

But it’s almost like scheduling it, okay? You’re scheduling the time that you can worry and stress about your money if you want and where things are at, which we’re going to talk in the next couple weeks about. Hopefully not doing that as much. But hey, if you’re going to do it, at least schedule it. You’ve got it scheduled in your calendar here. This is when you’re going to do it.

Look Ahead Two Weeks

And on your weekly check-in, we take the time to make sure bills, everything, expenses, it’s all taken care of for at least the next week. I like to look two weeks out because if something happens, life happens, right? Things go crazy and I miss a weekly check-in or I’m a couple days late, I don’t want to feel that pressure that I’m behind. So when you look two weeks ahead, you know you’re covered, you’re good, not a problem.

Schedule Daily Check-Ins if Needed

But scheduling that time, designating it, we’re going to eliminate some of the stress that shows up on other days, right? Like again, we’re just scheduling it into your calendar. Hey, this is when you get to do that. Spend your 30 minutes looking at it, you can stress over it, then all those things and then like, let’s get on, let’s keep going, do something else. We don’t have to sit in this place all the time.

Daily Check-In for High Stress

So if you are stressed about your finances and it is just, you feel like you are up to here and you just can’t take it anymore. I know that can feel like a struggle. So maybe just even schedule it every day. If you need to schedule it every day, here’s your 10 minutes.

You can stress about money and then we’re going to move on. Find the action, find the things, find again. We’re going to get into this more in the next couple of weeks about some of the strategies, some of the things that we do to help eliminate this from a holistic perspective, almost like the whole picture as opposed to just the tactical. But hey, we had to work on the tactics as well.

Grab the Full Guide

So we had two tactics. Today, again, if you want to grab all seven simple ways to reduce financial stress, because we are not covering all of them on the podcast, that link will be amycirca.com forward/reducestress also in the show notes and then we’ll put the link to Book a call with me if you’re like, I need to figure something out. Something needs to change and I’m ready for it to change. I just don’t know what I want to talk through, what my next step should be and what kind of support I could have.

Getting Support

That’s like the thing of what I do. Right? Again, I can give you all the strategy, even with the bookkeeping. We talk about this all the time. Like I can show you what to do. I’ve taken courses, we’ve done the training. Like I have those things and we can teach you all of that. But there’s an aspect there that when we add in the coaching, you add in the support, you add in the things that you need to actually make the progress that you want to make because you’ve got somebody in your corner who gets it. That’s just where it becomes game-changing.

Links in the Show Notes

All right, links will be in the show notes for you. That’s what I’ve got for now. We’ll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Your Money, Your Life podcast.

Special Gift for You

I’ve got a special gift for you for sticking around to the end. And if you’re tired of your finances being a mess, this is for you. What if you could take charge of your money without feeling overwhelmed? Even if you’re not a numbers person, even if you just don’t know where to begin, even if you don’t have the time, even if you failed in the past and even if you don’t want to sacrifice your lifestyle.

14-Day Money Mastery Action Plan

Take messy action and finally make progress with your finances without feeling overwhelmed, pinching pennies, or staring at a spreadsheet for hours with the 14-day money mastery action Plan. And when you use coupon code podcast, I’m going to give you 40% off.

Just visit aimeecerka.com/action and grab the 14-day action plan for less than $20. All right, talk soon.

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