In this episode of the Live Better Podcast, Kelli sits down with Casey Messer, AVP of Training to discuss sneaky spending and back to school budgets. Tune in and learn some real world solutions to sticking to your budget all year long with the CentricCU app.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Kelli Green:
Welcome back to another episode of the Live Better Podcast brought to you by Centric. I’m your host, Kelli, and today we’ve got a very special episode lined up for you. August is here and, while the summer might be winding down, it’s actually one of the best times to hit the reset button on your finances. Each week this month, we’ve been sharing quick and practical tips to help you budget smarter, save more and reduce money stress just before the year-end rush begins. Today, we’re diving deeper into those tips with someone who knows this territory inside and out. Casey joins us to share real-world advice, simple strategies and maybe even a few personal stories to help you tackle everything from back-to-school spending to sneaky subscriptions, all the way to getting a jump on your holiday savings. Well, Casey, good morning and welcome to the Live Better podcast. It is so great to have you here.
Kelli Green:
We’re going to dive in and talk about a topic that we know you’re very familiar with, with back-to-school savings, overall expenses and how different little expenses here or there can really add up and impact your budget in a big way. So welcome and just share with our listeners. It’s been a couple months since you’ve been here with us, so tell us who you are, what you do here at Centric and a little bit about why you’re excited to talk about these tips today.
Casey Messer:
Yeah, I’m very excited. So I’m Casey.
Casey Messer:
I’ve been with credit union for for about 10 years, maybe a little more and my role right now is training. But I’ve held several different roles at the credit union , one of those being in the marketing and business development department, where I actually went out and worked with our employers in the community that partner with us and teach the financial education. So that part for me is really special, like you said, and so I’m just really excited to be here and shared some of the tips. I think just from being able to see the impact of sharing and having conversations with people about their real life situations there’s really what gets me excited to talk about it.
Kelli Green:
I love it. . We’ve it in ourselves.
Kelli Green:
going through the back to school experiences and there’s a quote and I wish I knew who actually first said this but going back to school is more costly than Christmas and the cost of gifts and so forth. And it’s true, you know I have two children and the cost to go back to school just to pay school fees, just in school fees. Those are their little clubs and everything. It’s been over $220 just to get them into school and my children go to a public school and it’s just expensive. So I know that everyday expenses. You got to account for every dollar. That’s right, yeah, so if you wouldn’t mind, you know why?
Kelli Green:
Do you really and truly think that August is such a key month for maybe revisiting our finances?
Casey Messer:
Well, we talked about the idea of the mid-year reset and I really think, just kind of looking at that through the whole year, it makes sense because starting now and really before now, we’re about to have all kinds of expenses. So you know the school fees are up front. We know about that and we can prepare if we’re ready for it. But then there’s things that continue to happen. So if you don’t take a pause and look at where you’re at, it’s just going to continue to either be catastrophic for you or it’s going to. You know it’s going to help you if you’re, if you’re prepared.
Kelli Green:
I love that. If you’re planning and if you’re prepared for this, it could be catastrophic.
Kelli Green:
That we have with our Centric Credit Union app is the ability to verify your credit score, review your credit report, which is a great way to identify if things are reporting correctly or if you might see there could be some identity issues there. But something that I love so much about this, especially when you’re thinking about a mid-year reset, is our budgeting tools that we have through Insights, and it is incredible. So kind of take us through. What does that look like? How do people set that up? You just want to maybe just share that with our listeners.
Casey Messer:
Yeah, so we’ll just kind of use this time of year as a good example that you’re getting ready to go back to school and maybe you know you’ve taken a second. You know, understood, okay, I have this much to spend on back to school, or I know it’s going to take, it’s going to cost this much, based on my school’s supply list and the things the clubs like you mentioned the school fees. So you can use the Insight to create a budget for that, and so inside of that particular area, inside the app, you can tag your transactions there. Once you’ve set up that budget, so you know let’s just label it back to school budget and you can pick the accounts that are a part of that, and so you know let’s just say it’s your pro-real or your checking account which makes the most sense. Nice, you’re using your checking account or swapping your debit card and you want to go in and just kind of label certain transactions If this you know, this transaction at Walmart was for school supplies and it will help you calculate that and it can even give you reminders on where you’re at with that budget, so it’ll help you stay on track instead of just spending. You know, however you want, hoping it all works out for the best.
Kelli Green:
That’s not a good strategy at all, no, a catastrophic path pretty quickly. So just for our listeners, I just want to kind of run this through.
Kelli Green:
But we’re specifically talking about the Centric Credit Union app. This is a free personal financial management tool that is available to every one of our members who downloads our app and as you are using your debit card and you’re making transactions, you can see exactly how that is impacting your overall budgets. You name your budget, whether it’s a grocery, auto fuel expense, you can name these anything you want. And as you tag those transactions that means every time you swipe your card, each transaction that you see, you can tag those to say, like you mentioned, back to school or groceries. I even have set it up to have notifications. It says, whenever I’ve reached about 80% of my budget. I really want to know kind of where I’m at, because it’s given me insight to say, hey, hang on a minute, you need to be aware of where your finances are. So that has been a really helpful thing for me. And just managing this Once you set it up, it only takes a few minutes Once you tag those transactions.
Kelli Green:
So, for example, if you have a particular grocery store that you go to every single month or week, once you tag that vendor, you can say Walmart, amazon, target, any of these places. Once you tag those, say, if it’s groceries or clothing or fuel, it will always tag those businesses or those different retail outlets as that particular budget. And that’s what I love about it, because you don’t have to go back in and make any changes. Right, yeah, it’s just easy. So that’s something that’s really great. It just takes one accountability for this August mid-year reset, like you’ve mentioned, and just to go ahead and say, okay, ideally, and what I liked about it.
Kelli Green:
Did you ever have an experience when you were going through setting it up just to see, because it would go ahead and kind of categorize some things for you? How was that experience for you when you first experienced Insights.
Casey Messer:
Well, it knows what are food vendors and their transactions. So it actually used the words dining out, yeah, and it was like you know all of my budget, and so it was really I mean to see how much it. It went ahead and tagged that for me. It was so nice for it to just do that on default, but it did show me how much I was spending up my budget on on eating out, and to me that wasn’t. I didn’t like what I saw. So I was able to make changes because it gave me that information.
Kelli Green:
And this is the great time to do that because even though, if you’ve not even opened up the app and checked this out, this information is still working in the background for you. So if you’re getting ready to create a budget, you can go ahead and reflect on maybe the previous month and say, oh, wow. So this is kind of where it is, because that’s a big hurdle, because you may think well, I don’t really know what my budget needs to be for fuel or what my budget needs to be for groceries. Especially as we’re getting to the holidays, our grocery budgets might increase because we’re cooking maybe a little more or more specialty items or what have you for the holidays, but it gives you a really good insight, I think, to see right away where your expenses are heading. So it’s great. It’s a good tool to get you started, for sure.
Kelli Green:
So, as we’re just kind of wrapping up, I did just want to just ask you a couple final things too. You know, is there anything in particular? You know, maybe a simple action step that our listeners can take today to get on a better financial track?
Casey Messer:
Yeah,, well, some of the words that we’ve talked about sneaky spending, just in particular, just thinking about needs versus wants. You know, it’s a basic concept that we know, we talk about Really, especially during this time and even moving forward as we move into the holidays, taking, you know, time to sit down and understand what you really do need or what your child needs for school, versus what they want or what you know you want to give them.
Casey Messer:
that doesn’t fit in the budget like your future self really is going to thank you for that in the moment it might feel like, oh, I’m not able to give them extra, or I might not, you know, be able to do this right now, but maybe you can do it later. Just thinking about that and then sneaky spending. How that fits in there too is if we aren’t already aware of what we need versus what we want. We’re just going to combine those together and our wants are going to kind of ruin our budget. Really, taking my kids with me shopping, you know I’m not aware of what I’m doing, so there’s several factors that can affect that.
Casey Messer:
But just really being aware of what you need and not just going for it,
Kelli Green:
The awareness is so important and, like I said, that’s what I love so much about the mobile app, our Insights that option. That’s right. You can choose it right from the menu when you download the Centric Credit Union app. By choosing Insights, it will go ahead and kind of give you an idea of where you are, what you’ve spent on dining out, clothing, all these different categories, and you can create those categories for yourself. But it’s a really good insight to say, okay, hang on a minute, we may be a little off track right now, but we can get it back on track once you’re made aware. And then you hold yourself accountable and setting up those automatic alerts, I think are really great in ensuring that you stay on track. That’s a good accountability piece for sure.
Kelli Green:
Well, I just want to give a big thank you to Casey again for just sharing these practical tips with us, because this has been great, and especially as we’re kind of winding out summer and getting kicked off for the final months. So I just want to tell you thank you so much for being here and sharing this with our listeners.
Casey Messer:
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Kelli Green:
You bet! I want to give a big thank you to Casey for sharing such practical, easy to use strategies. We know our listeners are walking away with ideas they can put into action right away. Remember, whether it’s resetting your budget, planning for back to school, cutting out sneaky spending or getting a head start on holiday savings, every small step makes a big difference over time. If you haven’t already download or open your Centric Credit Union app it’s your one-stop financial control center and explore the tools that we talked about today. You can find more resources, tips and inspiration at mycentric. org. Centric is federally insured by the NCUA.
This credit union is federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration.
Recent Comments