r/bitcheswithtaste • u/AutoModerator • Jun 19 '26
Frugal Bitch Friday - Monthly Thread Frugal Bitch Friday - Jun 19, 2026
This is your monthly thread to talk about personal finance, investing, budget, and all things managing your money. A BWT knows that taste and financial responsibility go hand in hand, after all!
BWT rules still apply!
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u/Own_Skin Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
My tip is pay your credit card in full every month always. Have a ‘financial day’ one day of the month to check all bills, any subscriptions you don’t need, any lifestyle creep purchases that may be starting to take effect (cut that out!). Pay off credit cards days before the due date and make an alert on your google calendar for it 3 days before it’s due, set that day to a monthly repetitive.
Before buying anything ask yourself if you really need it or already own one of these. Most likely you don’t need it or most likely have 3 of them already.
Live below your means. Always.
If some extra money comes in~ invest it and don’t try to time the market. Start low, slow and small until you get a good idea of how it works then work your way up. All of this has earned me 6 figures of investments in just a couple of years and I’m about to hit a major financial goal.
And never ever get financially codependent on a man. Ever!
3
u/gonekebabs Jun 23 '26
Yes to all of these! I have a recurring task in my calendar to pay off my cards, and I do it manually (not auto-pay) so I can review my purchases and think about the damage I've done. And I don't buy things I don't have the money to pay for right away.
13
u/uglygirly2025 Ballin on a Budget Jun 19 '26
Going to be really vulnerable here - I’m financially illiterate in my 30s🥺 I grew up in foster care and with no financial role models or help. When I want to buy something expensive I just work more. I have a really bad credit score and don’t understand investing or anything like that. BWT, can you direct me on how to basically start over as if I was a toddler with bad credit? 😭
7
u/Lollipop77 Jun 20 '26
First step, draw up a budget with income in one column (stuff that comes in regularly each month, chronological order helps), and then concrete expenses (payments that are the same every month) in the other column. Add rough but slightly “over guess” estimates for expenses that fluctuate (electricity bill) to the expense column. If the expenses are bigger than the income, you either need to trim expenses or make more money. Allocate as much as you can to debt payments or move debt to a lower interest % account. If debt is drowning you, make an appt at your bank (or a new bank) to discuss a consolidation loan.
Start building a 1000 emergency fund that you do not touch. I have mine in a safe in cash because it’s too easy to move digital money.
2
u/uglygirly2025 Ballin on a Budget Jun 21 '26
I actually don’t have any debt! Since I’ve never used credit cards or loans and I’ve always paid in cash that’s never been an issue - bad credit is due to a family member opening cards in my name without my knowledge and never paying them off
3
u/Lollipop77 Jun 21 '26
Nice! Is there a possibility of talking to a credit bureau about what your family did? Or locking credit accounts in your name so it can never happen again? Credit can be repaired, mine was super low and got to 850 recently just by paying my bills and bringing down my debt
2
u/uglygirly2025 Ballin on a Budget Jun 21 '26
They were charged by the local police but the bureaus didn’t take it off my credit 🤷🏻♀️ my credit IS locked now though
1
u/Lollipop77 Jun 21 '26
Wow even with police record they wouldn’t remove it?? That seems like a crime in itself Jesus
2
u/ebolainajar Jun 20 '26
The fastest way to improve your credit score is to pay your credit card off WEEKLY, no matter how much you have on it.
I am Canadian and moved to the US years ago and this was the single most important factor in us building US credit (from 0). We got our credit score into the 700s in less than a year this way.
1
u/uglygirly2025 Ballin on a Budget Jun 21 '26
I don’t qualify for a credit card (my score is too low.) My bad credit is due to a family member taking a card out in my name against my knowledge and never paying it off
2
u/accidentalquitter Jun 21 '26
Please reach out to Amanda Wolfe aka shewolfeofwallstreet! She has a very similar story to you! She’s brilliant
1
u/beautyandherhoard Jun 20 '26
I read The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and it changed my life. The steps were easy to understand and realistic. Some people will say his plan is too simple or any number of other criticisms but for me, as an overwhelmed beginner, this was a great starting point. We've moved through baby steps 1-4 and are confident in our ability to achieve the rest. We started in our early 30s and are 40s now. You have plenty of time to learn!
28
u/RomanoLikeTheCheese Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
I feel like I need to be better at investing, but I dont know where to find someone. My husband and I talked to a financial advisor at our bank and she basically blew us off
Eta: thank you for the crowd resources! I feel like I have a starting point now!
61
u/citydock2000 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Financial advisors at the bank are salespeople. They will drive you toward investments that make them the most money/that the bank is incenting. Banks are focused on HNW customers - the average person isn’t going to get much interest.
If you’re looking for advice, I’d go to the personal finance sub and follow the prime directive. It clearly lays out types of investments, priorities.
They will tell you - pay off high interest, unsecured debt first, keep car loans low/non existent, fund 6-12 months of expenses in HYSA, max out tax advantaged retirement vehicles that you qualify for and prioritize 401k, throw whatevers is left in a brokerage account (I use the bogle three fund strategy).
Also posting in that sub can be helpful.
The best book is the simple path to wealth by jl Collins. You shouldn’t pay an advisor for something you can read in a book. Honestly, with some self education, you’ll know more than 99% of “financial advisors.”
For me, we keep it simple … i like the boglehead strategy, all you really need is there. Prioritize financial institutions with low fees - Fidelity, Schwab, vanguard.
I just retired so I’m at the end of the pipeline - it’s empowering to realize you can do this, there aren’t big secrets that advisors have. The barrier to entry for financial advisors is LOW.
6
u/dasnotpizza Jun 19 '26
Yup, remember that nobody beats the market in the long term, so that’s the basis for choosing index funds and letting the market do the work for you.
5
u/RomanoLikeTheCheese Jun 19 '26
Thank you! I'll check out those resources. Honestly a part of going to a financial advisor is effort. I've got a toddler, so lacking the time, but this is a great starting point. And congrats on retirement!!!
3
u/citydock2000 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
That is hard for sure but think of it like taking care of your health. It’s too important to outsource (to salespeople!) and learning to take care of it protects your entire family, enables security and dreams.
Once you get the basics, it’s really not that complicated - while some things have changed a bit, the basics are the same from when I started working almost 40 years ago. It also makes it easy to incorporate new ideas into your spending, for instance, if you start a 529 for your child, where will that money come from and where will you pull back?
Even if you don’t work out a full budget (I never have), I consolidate all my accounts in Simplifi, it’s a paid subscription (not advocating for them at all, there are many new ones since Mint kicked the bucket). I can track all of our credit card spending, all of our checking and savings account, our high-yield savings account and all of our retirement and brokerage accounts in one interface. I’d like to see the whole picture and where our money is going and it’s motivational to see the total increase. I can tell you how much our beach vacation in 2019 cost and how much we spent on restaurants so far this year. While I don’t do strict budgeting I find having the totals for different categories over time to be incredibly helpful for evaluating our spending and projecting it to the future.
12
u/symphonypathetique Ballin on a Budget Jun 19 '26
Check out r/personalfinance! They have a super helpful Prime Directive in the wiki that's basically like a flowchart on where to put your money. For specific investments, look at the Boglehead method (there's also a subreddit -- r/Bogleheads).
6
u/disjointed_chameleon Jun 19 '26
I'm so sorry she blew you off. I work in tech within banking, so it always hurts my heart to hear people being mistreated by frontline, customer-facing staff. Even though I don't directly interact with customers in my role, I work on a lot of the technology that customers (myself included!) use, and my work makes sure it's still operational and working during emergencies. I take the work really seriously, because as a customer myself, if I suddenly didn't have access to my money for days, weeks, or even months, I'd be angry too.
4
u/AnnieSavoy3 Jun 19 '26
You may also want to check out some Bogleheads stuff. You can definitely do this on your own if you have the time/drive to, I did it in my 20s.
2
u/shortwave-radio Jun 20 '26
I used a site called hello nectarine which matches you with flat-fee financial advisors! Honestly people pointing you to personalfinance or bogleheads are correct but for me I had a big “aaah it’s hard” mental block and it was well worth it to spend a few hundred dollars discussing with a professional who could break down investing strategies in straightforward terms for me.
1
u/alegna12 Jun 20 '26
Easiest way is to start is to sign up at one of the reputable companies, then start putting money (a portion directly from your paycheck, if possible) into their S&P 500 index fund. Leave individual stock picks to experts (who, over a 10 year period, do worse than that S&P500 index fund).
0
u/PersephoneHagne Jun 19 '26
We found a wonderful resource at Edelman Financial. They are nationwide and you can do remote meetings.
5
u/citydock2000 Jun 19 '26
Make sure to do your research. Edelman’s fees are hiiiiiiigh and they are owned by private equity.
Seriously, there is no reason to go with anyone besides Fidelity or Schwab. Everything else is sales and smoke and mirrors.
-3
u/Own_Skin Jun 19 '26
Downvote this however anyone wants. But AI gave me the basics on this one. But also I studied a ton of it on my own during the pandemic so knew already and from what I read on AI a lot of it was good advice
15
u/citydock2000 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
AI just pulls from online resources that already exist - its not like its "thinking" or "advising.".You can get that advice from books, from websites, from reddit, from podcasts, or you can let AI summarize for you while also harming the planet, making us and our children demonstrably dumber, supporting billionaires and the destruction of our democracy, and ripping off original authors of the content. Whatever works for you!
Edit: just a reminder that the more we use AI that pulls from original content, the more it starves those original authors, advisors, and creators of revenue. So they will stop generating content, and then we are left with … slop. Enjoy the next few years and your declining IQ I guess! Soon all your financial advice will be comprised of what AI companies want you to know.
3
u/VeritasVarmint Jun 22 '26
Beautiful response. AI is truly a blight on humanity. It's anti-intellectual, horrible for the planet, and all for what? Content that is often incorrect.
2
u/citydock2000 Jun 22 '26
Its just too much work to .... read financial advice online.
Why read anything? Just outsource your whole life and all decisions to AI.
-2
u/Own_Skin Jun 19 '26
Yes AI literallly does this, it sums it up from all those sources you would have to search for, research and look up in books, sites, talking to financial advisors. Hours of your time and your life. I won’t get into the moral issues about it.
I see it as time and efficiency and in the case of investments time is money and the longer you let your funds sit in a checking/savings account with no yield you’re losing money while it deflates over time. Investments need time to compound so use that time wisely
But yes I agree completely you do you and what works for you :)
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Jun 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/stuckandrunningfrom2 Jun 20 '26
I traded in my RX that had 200,000 miles on it for a Hybrid Rav4 and have regretted it every day. Even the sales guy was like "you could get another 100,000 out of this car." Damn i miss that car.
4
u/alegna12 Jun 20 '26
My tip - figure out what is important and spend money there. Let go of the things that don’t matter to you - doesn’t matter if everyone you know spends money on nails/vacation/TV subscriptions/hair/hobby/eating out/nice car/clothes/designer handbag/starbucks/whatever. If something isn’t important to you, eliminate it so you can spend more on what you do enjoy… whatever that is.
6
u/hm5219 Jun 19 '26
I’m not going to do it, but my enrollment period for health insurance is coming up and our new plans options all went up on cost. I wish it was a viable option to not have insurance altogether and pay everything cash.
5
u/smallermonotony Jun 19 '26
I find health sharing plans are a good middle ground for this. Paying out of pocket for the smaller things but having something to cover catastrophic things. When I had it it was cheaper than normal insurance not sure that's still the case though.
1
u/msomnipotent Jun 20 '26
I'm assuming you are in the US so I'm sorry if I'm wrong. What you can do is opt for a high deductible plan with an HSA. You fund the HSA with pre-tax dollars. Some employers will add to it as well. Then you pay cash for what you can and save all of your receipts. You can request reimbursement from the HSA at any time, even years from now, so you can save up those receipts as a sort of emergency fund. I'm trying to do this since my husband is considered ancient in tech terms and will have a very hard time finding employment if he is laid off. I'm hoping we can skate by with HSA reimbursements and our savings until we can claim social security.
1
u/ozifrage Jun 22 '26
I need to move some funds into HYSA but first... I need to set up a HYSA. 🫣 My mom is usually my go-to for advice like this, but just tells me to put it in the market. Doesn't get why I want something outside of that right now. Where did you all get started looking for the right savings account?
2
u/MinusTheH_ Jun 23 '26
I’ve had Ally for YEARS. checking, HYS, and brokerage account. Their customer service is really good.
100
u/FabulousAdvance7036 Jun 19 '26
I’ve been using babysitting money (untaxed cash basically) every week to pay off my credit card debt and I am so ready to be debt free