this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Personal Finance Canada
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/694194
Steps for 🇨🇦 taken from reddit.
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People make lots of financial mistakes for psychological reasons. Keeping needless credit card debt because it “feels good” is precisely the sort of bad decision making that a finance community should discourage. I once had a friend who had $12k in her checking/savings but kept $10k of debt on her CC. Why? Because it “felt better” to see $12k than $2k. It was a small monthly bill, but over the course of a decade, she had paid almost $10k in interest.
But as I’m writing this, I think I thought of a better reason to prioritize a small emergency fund: avoid payments bouncing and overdraft fees. So maybe a small fund is justified for that separate reason.
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I am NOT saying don’t pay your bills! I am saying cancel it if it’s truly non-essential. Phone and internet are essential (that flowchart is weird for calling phones non-essential), but people can live without cable and Xbox live until they’ve paid back the worst debt.
I feel that's why the flowchart says up to $1000 (I'd personally discard one month of expenses). But you're also right that it allows you to manage your money without risking quite a bit of fees.
I also agree with you on the cancelling your bills part. I'd even push it further as a cellphone can be replaced (with free voip apps like fongo/textnow) and you can use your library/local mcdonald's internet if your really in a terrible spot.
Yes I think you’re right. I think I’ve come halfway and softened on my criticisms of this flowchart somewhat.
I suppose I also think that, from a graphic design standpoint, it’s overly visually complex. I might try my hand at something more straightforward.
Au fait, j’aime bien ton nom d’utilisateur. Il correspond bien à cette communauté.
I agree, I also find it very complicated. I'm working on an updated version for this community, but I realise it's quite hard to nail, both in term of content and of design.
Merci pour le commentaire. J'avais créé ce pseudo spécifiquement pour r/personalfinancecanada, puis c'est devenu mon identité principale sur reddit.