Have you taken this critical step to reducing your debt?

 

Hi, Ben Kingsley here. I hope you’ve had a great Christmas and a fabulous new year.

But now we’ve got to pay for that joy, don’t we?

Now, if we’ve put too much of that on our credit card then, ultimately, we have to be paying off that credit card. Did you know that in Australia, credit card debt sits at around $33 billion! So we do have a problem with paying with other people’s money for those short-term needs. If we’ve overspent over Christmas and the New Year, than this video is about teaching us what to do next to get on top of it.

 

The first thing we need to do is understand our ins and outs.

Okay, so this is the money we’ve got coming in — obviously our wages and potentially some investment returns, we need to factor those in — and then we’ve got the outgoings. These are called our expenditure. We have essential expenditure items, but we also have discretionary expenditure items. So, I’m going to put the asset on you to make sure that when you’re looking at those discretionary — those lifestyle —expenditures… what can go?

The critical things that don’t go are obviously shelter, food and necessary clothing; expenses for general well-being. These things should remain. It’s the discretionary items, the stuff in that living and lifestyle piece, which we have to focus in on and see whether we can shave those back. Because the fundamental thing here is we need to pay off that debt.

That one credit card may not be the only debt that we’ve got, but it’s usually the most expensive. You can potentially roll that over to an interest-free credit card period to be able to minimise it, or to give us a bigger runway to be able to pay off the debt. But let’s say assuming we don’t have these, and we’re now starting to get caught with their very, very high interest rates applicable with traditional credit cards. Well they are usually the best debts to pay off first.

 

So we focus in on paying off the highest at first.

You might hear a lot of people say, “Pay off the smaller amount so you get those incremental wins.”

I don’t agree with that.

I only agree with the idea of, “Why would I be holding on to a debt that’s costing me more, in terms of interest rate?”

We focus on the highest interest rate and we’ll pay that one off first. If we’ve got small debts over here and there’s not much interest being accrued, why would we worried about those? Just so we feel better? It’s not what we’re about. We’re about nailing those higher-cost debts, and then paying them down.

 

To help you with this process, I’m going to give you a special opportunity.

If you’re an existing client of Empower Wealth, you know all about this. We have a client portal, which has great tips around money management and how you set all it up. If you’re new to us, or if you’re watching this video for the first time, there’s a link attached to this video — and that is going to take you straight to the client portal.

Inside that, you’ll have the assets, liabilities, expenditure, and income story. Now, complete all of this information. When you hit submit, you’re going to see a dashboard of your financial story.

Inside that dashboard you’re going to see the columns of the income coming in, and also your expenditure. We keep it simple: bills, then spending, and then there’s the surplus.

It’s the surplus we need to focus in on to make those repayments.

When we start making these repayments — and we make this a habit — it changes everything. Because the reality is, once we’ve paid that debt down — if we can continue to maintain this habit where we have all this surplus cash — when we’ve got the surplus cash, it becomes all about investing that money and putting that money to work.

 

Ultimately, we don’t borrow other people’s money or use our credit cards to get the things we want. We actually make our money make money for us, and then we’re able to buy those things down the track. So it’s really important! It’s why we’re giving you free access to this client portal because we’re passionate about helping Australian’s better manage their money.

Simply click on this link and it will take you in. There’ll be steps to follow to do this.

It’ll also talk about a possible appointment — disregard this. We’ll know if you’re accessing our portal, you don’t necessarily want an appointment with us. All you want to do is get your money in order, and your financial circumstances in order. But that’s what it’ll do — so just don’t worry about anything when it says, “Book your appointment with us.” Just follow the steps, fill out the information, and that’s your exclusive private area where you can get to understand your money circumstances and better manage your money.

 

Because, ultimately, we want to get that level of credit card debt down across Australia. It’s just money for the shareholders who own the banks. We want to get away from this and put it back in our pockets. We want to be more sensible about how we spend our money in the future.

 

Thanks for watching.

 

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