The one thing I equally love as much as fashion is personal finance. I know these two don’t seem a likely pair but somehow I’ve learned to live and love both equally, not always perfectly, but to my best ability. Fashion requires spending and personal finance advises to limit your spending. To get some clarity I reached out to personal finance guru, Tiffany Aliche aka The Budgetnista, for questions and answers to help us all learn more about balancing a love for fashion and managing our finances.
Q: What’s the biggest financial mistake most women are making?
A: Not actively managing their money. Yes, most people are paying their bills, but most don’t have an active plan set to tell their money where to go. It’s like having a ticket with no destination. You need to work on developing a game plan for your money through budgeting and saving.
Q: What do you think is your secret to success with your Live Richer Challenge (a 22 day challenge to help women achieve their savings goals)? How is it able to help so many women?
A: Intention. My intention is pure, I put all my love and transparency into my work. It’s like one of my favorite books, Like Water for Chocolate, the baker believes her baked goods taste so good because you feel the emotions and love she put into the baking while you are eating. My Live Richer Challenge does exactly that, my true intentions are there to help women achieve their financial goals.
Q: In your Live Richer Challenge, there are four categories you ask the women to use when deciding how to prioritize what to budget and save for- needs, loves, likes and wants. Where would you categorize fashion shopping for most women?
A: It’s a need to a limit. For example, if a uniform is required for work, then your clothing would be a need. But for most it’s a like or want. It can be a love but you have to really assess that for yourself since loves would require a certain amount of saving for. In my experience, most women think shopping is a love but when they look deeper they much rather have experiences such as going on vacations or buying their first home.
To help narrow down what to save for I ask to pick only two loves. I usually pose the question, if you had Oprah’s bank account what would you do? Buy a house, travel or what life experience would you want to have? If these matter more, than you need to shift your savings for this.
Q: Do you have any tips to create extra income to pay off debt so there is more money left over to save for loves?
A:
- Don’t be afraid to ask for a raise.
- Align what you are currently good at with a potential side hustle. For example, I was a teacher so tutoring on the side made sense since it already align with what I knew and was good at.
- Use your degree or certification as leverage. Many people don’t use their accomplishments to certify them as experts in their field to make extra income.
Q: Tips for shopping on a budget?
A:
- Ebates, you earn cash back on purchases simply by completing your online shopping transactions through Ebates.
- Honey, this is an extension for Google Chrome, it lets you know if there are coupons or better offers available when shopping online. I saved $150 booking a trip once!
Q: And lastly, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
A: Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it’s not working. Think of the Olympians training, there’s a lot of hard work that goes into their training but they made it to the Olympics. Hard work grows you. Don’t beat yourself up, life can get hard but it doesn’t mean you are not moving forward.
What was one piece of advice you loved from The Budgetnista? To learn more about Tiffany Aliche aka The Budgetnista and her Live Richer Challenge visit www.livericherchallenge.net.