Financial Refresh: How to Reorganize Your Finances �������������

Financial Refresh: How to Reorganize Your Finances

ANDREA MASSOP-RAMOS

MCN

NOMINATING COMMITTEE

When was the last time you reviewed your overall household finances? How about those credit cards and the interest rates? Are they working for you?

Let’s take a deep dive into how to refresh or reorganize your finances:

1 You should be aware of your credit score (FICO Score)� Aim for a score of 750 or above, which is considered a healthy score� Check it at least once a year with each of the credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian and

TransUnion� You can get a free copy from each on Annualcreditreport� com� During Covid lockdown, I had the opportunity and time to buckle down and review my finances� My credit score was about 670 and

I knew the target number to aim for was 750 and higher� I used the method of paying off the lowest balance credit card first� I ended up paying off four credit cards and paying down two significantly to below the 30% threshold in an eight month time frame� My credit score shot up to 741, a 71 point increase with 23% credit card usage� y As a new business owner, your

FICO score is initially used as your credit worthiness, until you are able to establish business credit worthiness with your

EIN number, instead of your personal social security number�

2 Monitor how you use your credit cards by being aware of your credit utilization rate or ratio, which is the amount of revolving credit you are using divided by the total amount of your available credit� It’s always best to pay the balance off in full if you can to reduce those finance charges from accruing� Otherwise, aim to keep your balance at less than 30% usage if you must maintain a balance on your credit card at all� y After I paid off my 4 credit cards, ranging from monthly payments of $40 - $168, I was able to save approximately $290 each month�

I now use that savings to pay towards additional principal payments on other debt, continuing this process until all of the credit cards and debt is paid off� This process has saved me well over $1000 so far�

3 Paying off credit cards with balances. If you have several credit cards with balances, don’t panic� Be intentional with your goals to pay them off� There are a few ways you can do this: y You can begin with the card with the lowest balance first, by paying a much larger monthly payment than the required minimum payment and continue paying more each month until it is paid in full� While you are concentrating on this one card to pay off first, you continue to pay the minimum balance on all your other credit cards, until you have paid off the debt of the first card� Once that card is paid off (what a great feeling; you should celebrate!), the monthly payment you were paying on that card is now added to the next card you want to pay off in addition to its minimum payment amount� y Another method of paying off your credit cards is by paying off the highest interest credit card first; this way you are paying less money overall� Have you ever paid an extra $50 or $100 on a credit card, only to see the balance decreased by only a few dollars? How disheartening is that? That is due to the hefty interest rate and charges applicable to that card�

4 Call to lower interest rate. Yes, this is an option, not only during the pandemic, but any time� Call the creditor and ask to lower your interest rate; it can be that easy� It’s worth a try; the creditors want their money and they want to keep a customer�

Andrea Ramos, MCN, founder and CEO of Healthy FRIENDZ Nutrition LLC� Through interactive programs, she helps families with health concerns improve the quality of life with fresh foods, customized to ethnicity and cultural heritage� Andrea is passionate about anything pertaining to children and gets practice with her five grandchildren, anywhere from planting an organic garden from seeds, to cooking together and competing in all sorts of playful competitions, like doing pushups, bike riding and jumping rope� She is definitely a child at heart�

Revamp Your Social Media Presence with Reels

KELLY WETMORE

BS, PT

MEMBER RESOURCE MANAGER

If you have not used Instagram Reels just yet, it’s time to start� Reels is hot on Instagram and will help your business reach new customers� Reels is also a fun, fast, and creative way to express the personality behind your business� Customers relating to who you are is a great first step to that bigger connection�

Reels is something of a copycat to TikTok, launched last August and celebrating its first birthday soon� It was designed as a way to keep users engaged, as many were flocking to TikTok, one of the hottest apps at that time�

The reason TikTok does so well is because people started showing up authentically in a story-telling genre that is fun and engaging� Instagram saw less and less of the short-form story as it became tied to long-forum IG TVs, Long Captioned Posts, and fuller Stories�

If you want to quickly grab attention: be yourself, be “real” and hop on an Instagram Reel!

Take a short video (less than 15 seconds) of: y a quick nutrition tip y a moment from your hectic life y a silly thought or helpful hack that popped into your head y debunking a myth you commonly hear as a dietitian It can be anything that helps your audience to get to know the real you�

Then, like any good recipe, you can make it even better by adding ingredients everyone loves: music and comedy� Play a popular song in the background, add humorous audio or perhaps amusing captions on top of the video of your struggling to cut that summer squash or get your preschooler to “eat healthy�” Then sit back and watch your Reel reach tons of viewers� It’s been shown that the top-watched videos either tell a story, have a

controversial aspect, are funny or are super-short (less than seven

seconds)� Short videos may have a higher watch rate due to the fact that Reels will count two loops as two plays so the viewer doesn’t have enough time to swipe away!

When recording your own Reel: Use the word “you” in the first three seconds to grab the viewer’s attention; have fun with it; be yourself�

The Reels that I have made have gotten over 5k, 10k and even 100k views and I have had fun making them�

It’s common to reach about 1% of ideal clients out of your Reel views�

Of course, to make this happen don’t forget to add a valuable caption

and include your hashtags in your

caption for more reach� Nine out of ten viewers will be looking for more valuable information in the caption before they click on your profile� They want to know that you are someone who may help them in the future before they check out your profile�

Finally, I do recommend saving your drafts to your phone because Instagram has a tendency to glitch and delete when recording, so record on TikTok and then post to Instagram�

Reels can be a great tool� Remember, the key to Reels is Keeping it Real�

Kelly Wetmore, BS, PT, has a degree in health science with a nutrition concentration� She is completing her DPD requirements at University of New Haven� She aspires to be a Registered Dietitian specializing in sports dietetics� She’s a personal trainer running Kelly Fitmore LLC, an online nutrition and fitness business� Her passions include bodybuilding, lifting heavy, and sports nutrition research - basically living, eating and breathing nutrition 24/7�