Imagine Yourself Podcast

Help for a High-Priced Holiday Season w/Financial Coach Kembala Evans

November 14, 2021 Imagine Yourself Podcast Season 3
Imagine Yourself Podcast
Help for a High-Priced Holiday Season w/Financial Coach Kembala Evans
Show Notes Transcript

It’s no secret that prices have gone through the roof lately. The cost of everything from filling up your gas tank to filling up your shopping cart has spiked. From cat food to cars and hamburgers to houses, we are feeling a big pain in the wallet. Not to mention, sometimes we just consider ourselves lucky to even FIND what we set out to purchase. Words that most folks don’t hear much outside of an economics class like “supply chain” and “inflation” are now common in everyday language. That’s just where we are in holiday season 2021. 

Enter financial coach and author, Kembala Evans. In last week’s chat with her on Don't Make These Money Mistakes, we got some great insight into personal finance and a ton of easy-to-implement tips. In this bonus mini-episode, we feature an additional part of our discussion with Kembala on the challenges presented by this year’s unique economic environment. Along with detailing some ideas to help us handle our money, we take a step back and look at what is truly important to keep in mind during the holiday season and beyond. 

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Sandy Kovach  [00:00:03]:

Welcome to Imagine Yourself, where we invite you to imagine the next chapter of life with grace, gratitude, courage, and faith. In this bonus episode, we feature more of our talk with money guru, Kembala Evans about the challenges we're facing in this economy heading into the holidays and what we can do about it and maybe give you a little shift in perspective about it. Who thought that outside of an economics class. People will be talking about supply chain and all this stuff, but people are. They're buzzing about it. What is the low down on that? And do you have any tips for folks who are trying to work their way around that for the holidays and beyond.

Kembala Evans [00:00:43]:

In terms of supply chain right now in the retail you guys because you're in Michigan. I know here in Georgia. You got to the grocery store. They just have apology signs. No. I'm sorry. We don't have this. Wow.

Kembala Evans [00:00:57]:

And a lot of reasons is because of supply chain. Supply chain is very much impacted, and they said the reason why is because when COVID Happened, less people were going out spending their money on restaurants, etcetera. Instead, they were actually turning to Buying stuff for their home, buying all of these things, the icicles so they can be active. And so it put an influx on the system because more people are buying all of these items versus spending money on vacations. We're having staycations, so we gotta make the best of our experience and also home improvement. So there's so many different things. There's a paint supply issue. So supply chain is really impacting us, and it's also gonna impact kids.

Kembala Evans [00:01:39]:

Because of the toy, they're anticipating a toy shortage. And I know for me, even we bought some new furniture, it took several months To get it, I bought something last year, and I bought it, like, on a Black Friday special. And I was supposed to get it in January, then it went to February, then it went to March. All of this is because they can't get it in.

Sandy Kovach  [00:01:59]:

And then that's also affecting prices. Right? Inflation. I mean

Kembala Evans [00:02:02]:

It's impacting pricing, especially in the car industry. Me. I don't know if you have been following that, but used car prices are skyrocketing because a lot of the companies have had to stop production Because they were missing this chip. And the supplier was impacted by COVID, so they they weren't producing as much, and it led to shortages. And as Sandy was talking about economics, we're getting economics less than supply and demand. So if you don't have much supply, I've gone to car dealerships, and they have not 1 car on the lot, but they have a lot of used cars that they're pricing as though they're new. Wow. And I actually was talking to someone and they said that their friend sold, like, a 7 year Porsche a 7 year Porsche and got, like, $4,000 less than what he paid.

Kembala Evans [00:02:50]:

Well, it had no miles. But Wow. How good of a a market it is. So To your point, yes. You're gonna see more inflation because I mean, I hope you don't see inflation, but it's already reared its head because of these supply chain issues. Then when this happens, you always say, well, would the prices go back down when these problems are alleviated? You know?

Lanée Blaise [00:03:11]:

I don't know. It makes me wonder if there is a way for each of us to try to hone in on the things that we can Change. Like so some of these prices, we cannot change, and some of these issues, we can't change. But it makes me wonder if I owned a 7 year Porsche. You know, but I just I might want to take advantage of some of the circumstances that are happening that could benefit me and my family. Also, I told my daughter, and she was because my kids are older, so I don't have to worry about toys. But I do have nieces and nephews. And maybe I'm just hardcore, but I told my daughter, I'm not purchasing any toys for my nieces and nephews this year.

Lanée Blaise [00:03:56]:

She's like, what? I said, I promise I'm gonna sit here and think of something, but I'm going to do it a different way this year. I'm not going to fight To try to purchase toys and get them in on time and with the higher pricing. I'm gonna do it a different way. Now Granted, I haven't figured out exactly what I'm gonna do yet, but little children tend to enjoy simple things. I I know my kids love the boxes is even more than what was inside of the boxes, but make I buy my niece and nephews boxes to climb into. But I promise you, I want to take advantage of some of the changes. As far as vacations, I think you mentioned staycations. I wanna consider some of those options, not just because of pandemic living, but because of pricing.

Lanée Blaise [00:04:41]:

There's just a way that you can try to shift some of the things in your life to make it better for your family. There's still a host of things that we can do. I believe that my nieces and nephews will still love me if I Give them a box

Kembala Evans [00:04:59]:

They'll love you more.

Lanée Blaise [00:05:02]:

Like, this is the best gift ever. We can climb inside of it and climb out. We're like but I just encourage people to instead of total despair, because there is a lot to be unhappy about. But don't throw in the towel. Don't just say, oh, well, forget it. I may as well just blow my whole budget, blow my whole credit score anyway. Don't Do that. Think about some other things.

Kembala Evans [00:05:26]:

I think, Lanee, in terms of being creative about some different types of gifts that you could Come up with. Some people are baking cookies, and they're learning for different ways to package the cookies. Though in terms of the economic environment, My neighbor had an extra car that she was she wanted to sell, but she wasn't really selling it. But she saw how used prices are being over Price right now. And so she ended up selling it on Carvana for a great she couldn't believe it. It was, like, $2,000 under what she paid for the car. So you can take advantage of that. Also, some people that may be living in a bigger house and they plan to sell the house and downsize, This has been a great opportunity.

Kembala Evans [00:06:09]:

But on the flip side, you gotta be looking at where are you moving to because those are high prices too. Are you gonna get in a bid war? I've seen places in California that they did a bid where they paid a 100% more than what the house is worth because so many people are trying to buy. And people are paying cash for houses to get the deal done, if you will. But I think being creative, also appreciating the simple things in life. The best gifts, I think, really, you can't buy at a store, which is the person, showing you care, thinking of different gifts that you can make or making memories. So appreciating the moments. Just coming together, enjoying a great meal, and sharing family time. Because I think what's more valuable than money that a lot of people probably take for granted and don't understand is time.

Kembala Evans [00:06:59]:

You can have all the money in the bank, But when it's your time's up, your time's up. If you had a bankruptcy or whatever, you can rebuild the money, but you can't get back time.

Lanée Blaise [00:07:08]:

We got really deep on that one, and you are telling the truth. I, I do believe that, like you said, as far as spending that quality time together, and it doesn't have to be time at a Five star resort. It doesn't have to be at a 5 star restaurant. It can be as simple, like you said, as baking cookies. It can be as simple as Sharing a home cooked meal together with family members when you do see them. We really might need to, as a nation, Reconsider what we value as important and worthy and Take some of these price tags and some of this pressure off of us.

Sandy Kovach  [00:07:48]:

Absolutely. If you found this helpful and you wanna hear more on the subject, if you haven't listened to it, go back to the episode before this, where Kembala talked about savings, debt, credit scores, and other personal finance issues. You can also pick up both her books, Get Your Money Right, and Drop the Debt Wait for a special holiday price, and we'll have the link to that in the show notes. You will also find a link to our website, imagine yourself podcast dot com as well as our social media. We hope you'll connect with us because we'd love to hear from you. Until next time when we have something new to imagine. Take care.