Join our participants as they reduce debt and increase savings with the help of Summit financial coaches.
Jaclyn and Kiara's Journey:
Reactive or Proactive?
Reactive is defined as acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it, whereas proactive is defined as creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened.
As human beings, it is natural for us to react to things as opposed to preparing for what could actually happen, especially when it comes to financials. It’s crazy how that works! Previous to starting Project Money, we would have to react. If something went wrong with the car, we would have to just pay it and basically drain our bank account in order to take care of it and had nothing in savings. If we had to pay all of our bills and still needed groceries, we wouldn’t have enough to fully stock our kitchen and would be stuck eating things like ramen and a lot of rice, which is stressful because we are definitely meat eaters and meat can be super expensive! Reacting can cause extreme anxiety and will just keep you behind. We have been working two jobs a piece for over a year but previous to starting Project Money, we never seemed to have any extra money, so what were we doing wrong? Then all of a sudden, this program caused a light bulb moment for us.
For this next part, we have to start by giving the biggest shout out to our coach Jamie and Project Money because they have truly taught us to be proactive. By creating budgets and making plans to pay things off, we have come so far financially. By setting up our peace of mind savings budget, we have been able to prepare for things like needing new tires or a mechanical repair. By knowing how much we need to allow for bills, we are able to set up things like a grocery, entertainment and dining out budgets. Proactively planning ways to pay off debt can reduce stress and help eliminate extra interest costs in the future. We have plans set to pay off our car loan of about $2,900 and by being proactive we can then take that extra almost $200 payment and apply it towards our personal loan payments and go from paying $500 to paying $700 and be one step closer to being debt free. With that being said, we also know that if something were to come up, we are able to proactively reduce our payments for the personal loan to our actual payment of a little over $300 and still be able to live a strong financial life.
So we ask you this: do you plan to continue living reactively or do you want to take initiative and proactively get ahead of your finances? Only you have the power to make this decision.