My Financial Counseling Session

My new bank, USAA, offers free financial counseling over the phone. My bank is known for it's excellent customer service, so I always thought about calling them up to see what advice they would have for little old me. Today when I was driving home from work the highway came to a total stop and I was sitting there for about 20 minutes dying in the heat. The temperature outside was about 95 degrees and my A/C needs more fluid as per my last car check up. The place I usually go to for oil changes quoted me $140 to fix my A/C. I got so frustrated because of the heat that I decided I was going to drive straight to the car shop to get my A/C fixed as soon as traffic started to move again. I looked up my checking account on my phone and saw I needed to pull from my e-fund to pay for this repair. My heart sunk it took me so much work to save up the $300 sad dollars that I currently sitting in that account, so sitting there sweating I called my bank to see if they could advise me.

I got on the phone with a super friendly lady who actually seemed like she was my age and knew exactly what I was going through. I explained to her all of my woes, my credit card balances my debt due to my dog's surgery. I vented to her about my sky high car insurance rates and my 27.63% interest rate on my used car loan, yes you read that right, 27.63%.

I told her I didn't know whether to save up $1,000 for an E-fund first because I felt suffocated by my credit card debt. I explained to her how I budget using two separate bank account, and funny enough she told me that's how she budgeted herself!

These are the steps she told me to take to better my financial life:

1. Whenever I get paid automatically save $50. The reason for this is because I told her that I am always pulling money from my savings to finish covering my variable expenses (gas & food). Only putting $50 in savings is comfortable amount for me right now.
2. Keep most of my money in my fixed expenses account and transfer $400 into my variable expenses account.
3. After two weeks everything that is left in my fixed expenses account transfer half into savings and half towards the credit cards.
4. Instead of saving $1,000 towards emergencies, she told me to save 1 month's worth of expenses which for me will come to $1,755.
5. After I have saved up one month's worth of expenses then I am to call her back and we can start to discuss retirement savings.

I am so happy with this plan. I think this will really help me now get the ball rolling. As far as the A/C for my car - I decided to wait and budget for it. I have two big purchases that I have coming up $140 for my A/C and a plane ticket to visit my boyfriend which is looking like it will cost me around $150 - $250. 

Nancy,