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Hello Owen, thank you for joining us today. New Year's resolutions. Many of us make them publicly, others set our goals in our heads. We'll look at the issue from two different angles. In the second half of our show, we will focus on health related new Year's resolution, so stay tuned for that. But first, financial goals. How to set them? More importantly, how do we keep them in the new year. Let's start off our discussion by bringing in Mark Hamrick
is a senior economic analyst for Bank Rate. You could follow him on x at hamrihckisms one of my favorite handles on X Mark always good to get a few minutes of your time. Thanks for joining us.
Good to be with you, sir.
All right, let's start off with this because maybe most of us think about a healthier US physically in twenty twenty five, but eighty nine percent of America, according to your survey, say they've set financial goals for the new year as well well.
I also think many that all of these things work together. Financial well being is very much aligned with mental well being, and ultimately we know that connects to physical well being. And so this is why if one of these things is out of whack, it can have a cascading effect. And so to try to optimize our finances toward a hope for goal of better financial well being can have essentially a multiplier effect, have a number of benefits that
isn't just about the money. Yeah, so it turns out that this is a good time a year to reflect on these things. Yeah.
I don't think there's any question. Obviously, financial woes financial issues is a big stressor for many many Americans, and it also makes sense I think that people would be setting these goals even as inflation is eased, many of us are still feeling it, and mark statistics show that a lot of us have been spending beyond our means in terms of travel and holiday spending as well.
Well.
We still have essentially the same problems that we've had in our country for many, many years with respect to how we're managing our personal finances. Most Americans still live paycheck to paycheck. Most Americans feel behind on their retirement savings. And those are not just observations, those are facts that have to do with essentially getting to that notion of
financial well being and financial capability. We're not going to resolve those issues in a month, but all of us individually, whether we're living a solitary life or whether we're living a life with family or among friends, it's on all of us to try to take some ownership of these things.
Well, let's take a look at this first from a macro perspective before we get into some of the more minutia about this. I imagine the first thing people would need to do if they have a financial plan for the resolution is to make a budget.
That's a very good place to begin, because if we don't have a roadmap, or we don't even know where the roads are, it's hard to get to a destination. And so essentially a budget that you can either do electronically or on a sheet of paper, intends to capture what we know about our ongoing financial condition. Essentially, the money coming in on one side, the ledger of the money going out on the other, and somewhere in between we wedge savings and hopefully some have said, like Warren Buffet,
that we should save first and spend second. Course it's easier for Warren Buffet to do that, and it is for everyday America. But it's a good mindset. It's a good mind Yeah.
And then I also I think we need to try and find a way the works what my wife calls mad money, and there's something to just kind of enjoy the fruits of our labor as well.
Well. Ultimately we're going to probably do that whether we plan for it or not. If my argument is well, plan for right. In other words, if you have a trip, whether it's across the country, across the state, across the community, across the world, you don't want to put that on
a credit card and allow that debt to linger. Because even as we speak, with interest rates coming down courtesy of the Federal Reserve, it's still the case that the average offer for the best qualified individuals in the credit card space is still above twenty percent. And that means that if people are paying that interest on an annual basis, some are paying if they have a good credit score, Some are paying twenty, some are paying twenty five, some
are paying thirty. So that kind of debt is something to be avoided. Although I'm a fan of credit cards, there are tool and like a tool that's a hammer. You can use a hammer to either build a house or to hear your thumb. We'd prefer to something with it.
Yeah, and that's obviously one of your main points there is to target that high cost debt before you look anywhere else.
Absolutely, there are really two ways to attack credit card debt in terms of what to pay what. I would say that you know you should make it a goal to pay off your credit card debt. And there really are two main strategies that people look at. They have some nicknames. One is called the debt snowball effect. The other is called the debt avalanche method. The snowball effect meaning try to gather some momentum, is pay off the
smallest balance first. The other part is to pay off the one that has the most costly rate of interest. They probably if their credit card debts are going to have comparable rates of interest anyway, But some people like the idea of sort of checking the box off of getting one card taken care of. And it's not just the benefit of paying those things off, it's also has the promise of raising one's credit score, right, and the credit score is a little like a key in the
borrowing world. Either you possess one that's effective or not, and you know, you go to the car dealership. I would hope that if people go to a dealership or another entity that's selling cars, they will get pre qualified for a loan so they can know what that rate is. And the people with the superior credit scores qualify for the lowest rates of interest. And that's true of credit cards as well, or there are other forms to.
Borrow, so those that could least afford the higher rates are the ones that end up paying them because of that lower credit score.
It can be a negative cycle. And you know that also gets to financial know how or financial literacy. Not everybody's aware that that's essentially a part of the business, and so you know, people can get trapped in these situations. Let's say they had a catastrophic health event and all of a sudden they have a lot of medical debt, or they lose their jobs, they have an interruption and income.
That's all the more reason to prioritize another thing. And that's number two, by the way, among from our financial security poll that found that the second resolution that people essentially have for the new year is to save more for emergencies. And for years, as you know, we've surveyed on this at bank Rade, and it's still the case that only around forty percent a little north of that can pay an emergency expense of one thousand dollars or
more from savings. So we want to be in the group that can do that.
Continuing here with iHeart Communities, I'm Manny Munyos. We're speaking with Mark Hamrick, senior economic analysts for bankrate dot Com. And that's one of those things that sometimes for many of us, as you mentioned, living paycheck to paycheck is easier said than done. Mark, finding a way to have a little bit of a nest egg or at the very least saving on a monthly.
Basis, well, what I would say, absolutely, I would say that to your point earlier about having a variety of thoughts about why we're saving money. Whether it's for goal, it could be a bigger purchase down the line, it could be for a vacation fund. Most of us are thinking now past the current holiday season. Think about the fact that now you've got a year to start saving for the holiday season in twenty twenty five, because you know, just sort of letting it come at you and not
really having a plan for that. We know the holiday season is always going to roll around. However, whatever holidays you're celebrating isn't necessarily only Christmas and or Hanukkah. There are other seasonal holidays that people like to celebrate as well, including essentially another cause for celebration that's going on a vacation.
One of the things I found interesting about your bank great survey is how Americans view their personal finances generationally. Different generations look at twenty twenty five in different ways, don't they?
They sure do. And you know, we think about the fact that people who are younger have more upward mobility with respect to their personal finances and those who are
more senior. Let's just use baby boomers as an example, those sixty to seventy eight, they tend to have a more established trajectory, meaning they're not necessarily going to see a big change in the way their finances present themselves, and so members of Generation C though they age eighteen to twenty seven, Well fifty five percent of those people Gen z ers think that their finances will be better by the time they get to the end of the
coming year, and only twenty five percent of boomers have that. I'm sorry, only thirty seven percent of boomers have that upbeat view.
In a lot of ways, it is it is easier said than done, right, even for financially savvy people differentiate between something that we need and something we want. And that's part of setting a budget as well well.
Sure is, sometimes your greatest strength can also be among your weaknesses. And in the United States of America, one of our greatest strengths, among others, with respect to the economy and the dynamism and innovative nature of the economy and the greatness of innovation, and the American worker, the hard work the workers do out there. It's very much a consumer based culture, and those are the wheels that
keep the economy going. But sometimes it can be at our detriment when we're prioritizing spending at such a high level where we don't have any gas in the tank after we've sort of executed that plan. And so, you know, one of my ways of looking at that, and this is true of saving for retirement as well. If you're only focusing on today, you're really putting tomorrow at risk.
And that's true of saving for regular purposes as well as saving for retirement, and to flip it even another way, we talked about that upward mobility from the youngest adults, and for the purposes of discussion, that could even include millennials as well as members of Generation Z. These folks are in the best position to save for retirement because they have the opportunity to get that compounded return over many,
many years. And so one thousand dollars saved, you know, forty or fifty years before it's needed, has a lot more value than one thousand dollars that's saved let's say five to ten years before it's needed.
Well, let's conclude our conversation with that, because it's one of those things I think that is really imposing about saving, especially when it comes to our retirement investment strategies. Most of us, at least personally, I'm complete. I'm just a clueless putts when it comes to my investments. I know I've got my four oh one k, my ira, but how they're invested in all of those things is not
something I'm able to keep track of. If we made a resolution we want to learn to invest more more, what would be the best way to approach that.
First of all, there really are are two things, assuming we're also working on the other goals that we talked about earlier, paying down debt, saving for emergencies, and ultimately saving for retirement. And retirement savings is the primary exposure
that most Americans have to the US financial markets. Really, you start with taking advantage of an employer provided opportunities such as in a four oh one K or if you don't have that, then there's some do it yourself means, and you can find all about the variety of options out there for free at bank great dot com. But I would just say the first thing is just take advantage of an employer match. If it's up to three percent, five percent, whatever it is, that's money on the table.
If you're putting in that much money, then the employer is going to match it. And secondly, then you start to allocate it. And how you allocate it, what kinds of to begin with, mutual funds or ETFs you utilize ultimately is dependent on what your timeline is, meaning how
long you want to have the money invested. And for most of us, even myself, who is more senior, you know, I'm pretty far out on the risk spectrum, meaning I'm willing to take risks because it's not only the first day that you're retiring that you need to have that money. You need to have that money last for the rest of your life and typically typically that begins with an S and P five hundred mutual funder ETF.
So I guess the biggest rule of thumb if you are sent, if you are setting financial goals for the new year, is to create that budget and then your advice also is to check in on that budget regularly to make sure you're keeping up or you need to adjust yourself.
Yes, absolutely, and most of us have the opportunity to get some free advice out there. If you don't have free advice, whether it's from the bank you're doing business with, the people are managing your money for retirement through your employer, you can find a fee only financial planner where you have a fixed amount of money that you're going to spend on let's say an hour of a conversation, and
that's typically money while spat. Assuming the persons well qualified, is to help you get an idea of where you are, where you want to go and leader on track.
Mark Camerck, Senior Economic analyst for Bankrate Dot com. You can follow him on x at ham Rhicisms. Mark always appreciate the time. I hope you are enjoying a wonderful new year. We'll talk again soon.
Thank you so much, my friend. Happy New YEARK to everybody out there, including members of your team. I really appreciate it.
So we've looked at New Year's resolutions having to do with your budget and finances. Now is promised we take a look at how to vow a healthier you in twenty twenty five physically and mentally. And for that we're lucky to be joined by doctor Susan albers As, a well known clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic, best selling author celebrated for her innovative approach to mindful eating and stress reduction, and you can learn more about her work
at eating mindfully dot com. That's eating mindfully dot com dot com. Doctor Alberts, good to talk to you.
I appreciate time, Thank you so much.
So let's start with what I imagine is likely the number one New Year's resolution generally also probably the one most likely to fail, and that's one about losing weight.
You're absolutely right. For many years, weight loss has been the number one goal. But over the recent years, we have seen a transformation in this particular goal, particularly post pandemic. What we've seen is that weight loss doesn't always equal physical health. That we need to do some lifestyle changes that will lead sometimes leads to weight loss, but transforms our health overall, our mental health and our physical health.
So for example, something like sweep prioritizing sweep, getting seven to nine hours, research indicates can help to regulate your appetite, help you to make better choices, reduce emotional eating. So that does help with weight loss, but overall helps with your mental and your physical health for the long term.
Yeah, and I want to get into the sleeping and the importance of that in our physical and mental health in just a moment, because whether people turn to a fad diet or what's so popular the shots these days, all of the data suggests that it's a failure in the long run unless those weight loss efforts are combined with actual lifestyle changes. And I think that's the key that a lot of people miss.
Yes, year after year, people tend to make the same exact resolution around weight loss, and it really shows there's a gap between what we want and what we do. And sometimes we can fill in psychology and those lifestyle changes to make significant differences. It's really the lifestyle changes that are not the short term goals. According to research, the second Friday of January is when people tend to quit.
Or fall off.
And that's pretty quick doing those short term goals. Yeah, those bad diets and so yeah, this year, if you are going to set a goal, really make a list of some of those lifestyle changes that are going to help your mental health and your physical health that you want to do all year long.
Well, you're a psychologist, how long do lifestyle changes tend to stick?
If you?
Well, is there a rule of thumb, Like you do something differently for three weeks or three months, it becomes a routine or something like that.
If you do a behavior consistently for a month, it starts to become a habit. But what's really important is the consistency and setting it up in the right way. The reason that many people fall off or don't succeed in terms of the goals are three reasons. Number one is that they set unrealistic goals. They are too far from where they actually are. So I encourage my patients
to start with where you're at. If you are walking just to the end of the mailbox, maybe you go a little bit further for your exercise goal, start with where you're at. The second reason that people tend to struggle so much with their goals is that they don't understand the process of change is that we have to get ready for change. It's not like a light switch where we decide flip it on and we're ready to go. It's more of like a dimmer switch where we need
some time to get ready. And then the last thing that can stand in the way for many people is that they just try and use willpower and try and tell themselves just to change the behavior instead of setting up different ways of strategizing their habits. So, for example, if you want to change your social media use for the coming year, that's a great one for your mental health. Instead of just saying I'm not going to do it, you can set up some boundaries in terms of how
much time you're going to be on every day. You can use apps that limit your time, and then if you take out social media, you have to put something in its place. What are you going to do for that time? So that's going to transform that just don't do it into some structures can help you to make it happen.
One of the most difficult things I find, regardless of what your goals are, is the motivation. And a lot of us might have had the motivation leading into the new year this past week, but continuing and finding the motivation every day going forward, how is that something that we keep up.
Motivation comes from action. Often we want to relate and rely on feeling like doing it instead the action causes the motivation. One of my favorite strategies for keeping motivation going is to create a stark goal instead of a stop goal. So instead of saying stop eating sugar this year, create a start goal such as I'm going to eat two fruits and vegetables every day. And this new habit tends to move out some of those negative habits instead
of wrestling with ourselves. So when you startup behavior, it puts the you know, the gas on the pedal instead of trying to put the brakes on. So that's one thing that can help your motivation to really keep going. Whatever goal you have, if it's a stop goal, turn it into a start goal.
Doctor Susan Alberts is a well known clinical psychologist at Cleveland Clinic, best selling author, What about in terms of diet denying ourselves, whether it's we like our pizza every now and then or a burger, or we like, you know, having a grown up beverage every now and they, do you suggest people deny themselves those pleasures.
I encourage people to stop with the strict restriction the dieting. What we know from research working with patients myself is that this is one of the most ineffective strategies and move dieting aside in denial and instead focus on mindful eating and mindful consuming of anything that when we start
to slow down make conscious choices. It gets rid of a lot of the emotional eating, the over eating, because we're often eating just on autopilot, we are multitasking, we are doing many different things and just eating in a routine way. When we start to eat mindfully, we pay attention to when we're hungry, when we're full, what really gives us pleasure and what doesn't, and we just make
much more conscious choices overall. So get rid of the dieting, move that aside and really focus your energy this year on mindful eating. If you want to.
Eat healthier, and big changes, little changes rather in our diet can make a big difference. There's been so much attention, renewed attention put into some of the stuff that's in our and the harm of the process and ultra processed food. So maybe just even drinking less soda or having less box meals on a weekly basis can go a long way and make you having an effect on our health.
Now, there are studies that have come out this year that really look at the link between ultra processed food and depression and anxiety, and there is a link between the two, and so if you're somebody who's really struggling with anxiety, depression, feeling blue, we can't underestimate the impact of diet on our mood. And we're just at the tip of the iceberg of knowing how our gut health, all those foods, those processed foods impact our gut health,
and our gut health impacts our mood. So we're really just starting to learn much much more about how foods can reduce our stress level. For example, vitamin D this is also associated with feeling blue, So if you are somebody who is struggling with feeling blue, vitamin D might be something you have to ask your doctor, but is something that could be low and eating some vitamin D rich food throughout the year is one piece that can really help.
Yeah, you talk about you use the word mindful again and that your website eating mindfully. Some people in the audience might hear that word mindful and thinking, oh, this is some kind of hippie stuff, you know, a tree hugger type thing. But we really have learned over the last couple of decades the connection between our mind and our body, and they kind of work symbliotically, don't.
They They do, They impact one another. Mindfulness is sometimes just a fancy word for being more conscious, being present and aware. And what we've seen with you know, cell phones and scrolling, is that we're so disconnected from ourselves that we can be physically present and not mentally present at all. And when we become more mindful and in the moment, that's a ripple effect. I've noticed with my patients when I teach them to eat more mindfully, they
become more mindful in their relationships, in their work. It's amazing. Once you turn on that mindfulness in your life, it can make a difference.
So we talked about making those little changes in our diet and what an effect they could have. And then, of course there are different ways to go about changing your lifestyle, and one of them is bringing exercise into it. It's one thing, one thing to get on a treadmill and how that can help us get healthier. It is a very different thing to actually go outdoors and go for a walk.
It is going outside is very very Any kind of movement is going to be helpful. Going outside helps with getting vitamin D, some fresh air, and if you're somebody who's struggling with getting exercise going in your life, one or any action. One of my very favorite techniques is called habit stacking. And they have read about habit stacking. It's this very powerful technique where you take in the existing behavior and pair it with a new habit you
want to develop. So, for example, let's say every morning you drink your coffee religiously. I know I do, and you can use that particular habit to the very next behavior that you do, stack something with it. So I have We'll have a lot of clients who will drink that morning cup of coffee and the very next thing they do is yoga. Or stretching or taking the dog for a walk, and you can have it stack any kind of behavior. For example, maybe you want to do
more hydration in your life. You pair that with every time you check in with your phone or your lunch break, or in the evening time, you want to increase your reading, so you pair that with right after you brush your teeth, your next task is to read one chapter. So pairing the things that you already do and naturally rolling that over. That's a great one for exercise, because I know for many people exercise can be a tough one. I usually
reframe the word instead of exercise to say movement. You know, we hear the word exercise, we've got to be sweating and cardio. Any kind of movement can add years to your life and can be a game changer for your mental health.
Doctor Susan Alber's well known clinical psychologists at the Cleveland Clinic, bestselling author. Her website is eating mindfully dot com. Along those very lines, what you were just talking about stress and how that affects how it affects our mental health is obvious, but less so how stress can affect our physical health as well.
Stress is a direct line to health and mental health issues. What happens when we're feeling stress is that our bodies become flooded with cortisol, that stress hormone, and it causes a lot of inflammation in the body. It triggers the fight or flight response, and then we're in a constant
state of feeling revved up. And what I've noticed, particularly since the pandemic, is that people are not only prioritizing making resolutions around their finances, relationships, fitness goals, but also about their mental health, that they really have put that as a priority. Now, if there's one thing that you can do for your mental health that we know, according to recent research, limiting your social media use to thirty minutes a day can significantly reduce your anxiety, your depression,
and your loneliness. So this one action can have a really profound impact on boosting your mental health and then consequently your physical health. So I would say that would be one thing that you can do to boost your mental health. And the mental health and physical health go hand in hand. When one is impacted, so is the other.
And it's a little bit of like a chicken and any make approach, right, I knew we weren't going to have enough time when you only have about another minute ninety seconds here we mentioned it early on sleep the importance of not just sleep, but good sleep.
Good sleep is key, and if you're getting anything below seven hours or over nine, this often can be problematic. Some things that you can do to improve your sleep is to as hard as it is, avoid scrolling right before you go to sleep because of that blue light. You can also build a wind down period. We typically go from one hundred miles an hour and then think we're going to turn off and go right to sleep,
and that just isn't the case. There's also some wonderful apps that can help people to sleep and turn off their brain. Calm app, Headspace, clean Clinic has some free apps that you can download. So there's many different things that can help you to wind down before you actually get into bed. Cool room at night is also very helpful for getting your body in a state of relaxation.
Turning off the mind, and I'm going to go long here, but this is a personal one. Turning off the mind is a problem I think a lot of people have thinking about everything that's going on in the relationship, at the office, finances, whatever, what is the best way to do that as we're trying to wind down and either get to sleep or fall back asleep after we've gotten up.
It's a huge problem. Many people lay in bed at night and they just keep going over and over together to do lists, things that they could be doing throughout the day, conversations that they've had. The number one tip I have is beside your bed, write down that to do list so that you can let it go, that you can separate out a little bit. Also, doing some stretching before you go to bed helps to relax the body,
and it's difficult to turn off the brain. If you are up at night and ruminating on things, that's a clear sign that there's some anxiety in your life. And throughout the day, doing some stress management to prepare for the evening time so that you are working on releaving some stress throughout the day is going to benefit and pay off when you are trying to go to fleet.
Doctor Susan Albers, well known clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic, also a best selling author. Her website is eating mindfully dot com. Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us today.
Thank you and Happy New Year.
All right, and that will do it with this edition of iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Manny Muniell's. We'll be back with another edition, same time, same place next weekend. Be well
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