Finance Xpress

Looking for ways to make life easier?

Trying to manage your life, especially your financial life, can be challenging. In addition to your bills and raising a family, you may also be planning for retirement, emergencies, and more. 

Keeping up with all of those financial obligations can be very draining.

On top of financial stress, many of us live with a lot of disorder and chaos. These are things like filling our houses with things lots of things we don’t need or use, having spending problems, living with debt, being unsatisfied with your job, etc. 

There is also a lot of emotional stress that can come when you live with so much mental chaos and clutter. You might feel depressed, anxious, have low self-esteem, etc. And, it can be very easy to start to compare your life to others — thinking that they have it so easy and are so much happier.

When you are so focused on controlling the madness and clutter, it can be very difficult to get ahead or spend time doing what makes you happy.

If you are feeling overwhelmed with financial and life stress, one of the best ways to reach your goals while managing everything else going on in your life is to find ways to make life easier.

Learning to make life easier can free up time so that you can focus on things that matter more to you. It can help you get rid of any extra mental and physical clutter that is preventing you from achieving the things you want from life.

Thinking about making your life easier may sound difficult, but it simply starts with small changes that will improve your outlook and mindset.

By learning how to make life easier, you can be in more control of your life, waste less of your valuable time, and be more lively.

Today’s post has lots of tips for things that make life easier. You don’t need to do everything on this list. Start by looking at this list and finding one small thing that will improve your life — even if it’s something small like watching less TV.

I want you to think about your goals, what you actually appreciate in life, what makes you happy, and work towards eliminating the things you dislike and those that aren’t as essential.

As you start eliminating things that are wasting your time and causing you stress, you’ll find it much easier to work towards your goals and enjoy life more.

Related content: Setting 2020 Goals- Let’s make this year the best!

Here's how to make life easier in 2020.

 

1. Spend less time on social media.

This one is my #1 tip for 2020 because I know we are all spending too much time on social media. 

Stop and think about all of the social media sites you use throughout the day, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Then, think about when and where you’re doing it, like waiting in line somewhere, procrastinating at work, eating lunch, spending time with friends, etc. All of those little amounts of time really add up, and I’ve read many statistics that say that the average person spends over five hours a day on social media!

FIVE HOURS A DAY!

I’m completely guilty of spending too much time on social media too. I use Facebook and Instagram to connect with friends and family while I travel. It’s also how I keep in touch with my readers.

But, there are times when I find myself scrolling through my feed and just zoning out. This is completely unproductive!

Besides wasting your time, spending too much time on social media can cause you to compare yourself to others or try to keep up with someone in a different situation. Those things can lead to negative feelings about yourself.

If this sounds familiar, one of the best ways to make life easier is to shut down those sites. You can also create time blocks so that you cannot access your accounts during certain periods of the day, and so on

 

2. Organize your life this year.

This is one of the best ways to make life easier, because being unorganized can cause you to waste a significant amount of time and can lead to late fees, stress, lost items, and more.

Here are some surprising statistics I found from Simply Orderly about being unorganized:

• The average person spends 12 days per year looking for things they can’t find.
• Every day, the average office worker spends 1.5 hours looking for things.
• In a recent survey, 55% of consumers stated they would save anywhere from 16 to 60 minutes a day if they were more organized.
• 23% of people pay bills late and have to pay late fees because they are unable to find their bills.

These statistics are all nuts! I can’t believe how much time the average person wastes because they’re unorganized.

If this sounds like you, you may want to find start using a day or life planner to write out your day and stay on task. If you’re unorganized because you have too much stuff, you may want to downsize or sell some items.

Related content: Downsizing Your Home? Here’s How I Went From A 2,000 Square Foot House To An RV

 

3. Organize your finances.

Just like physical and mental clutter, many families have a lot of financial clutter too.

Most households have many different accounts that they are trying to manage on a daily or weekly basis, from checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, student loans, their mortgage, car loans, etc.

One of the most helpful things you can do to make life easier in 2020, especially your financial life, is by downloading an app like Personal Capital.

Personal Capital allows you to aggregate your financial accounts so that you can easily see your entire financial situation. You can connect accounts, such as your mortgage, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, and more. Plus, Personal Capital is FREE.

 

4. Watch less TV.

To make life easier, I am a huge advocate of simply watching less TV.

We cut out TV entirely when we were living in the RV, and while we go through short phases where we will watch a lot of TV, we have spent the last few months watching zero hours of TV.

The thing is, though, I used to watch way too much TV, and I know that cutting back on TV has made my life much easier and more productive. That’s because I’ve been able to reclaim all of those hours I was wasting.

And, the average person watches about 35 hours of TV a week. Just think about what you could do if you reclaimed just half of those hours every week!

Reclaiming that time will allow you to spend more time with your friends and family, work on side hustles, get outside and enjoy the world around you, and more. 

Spending a few hours less each week in front of the TV is one of the best ways to make life easier.

Related: 59 Things To Do Instead of Watching TV – Stop Watching TV!

 

5. Unsubscribe from useless emails.

Unsubscribing from useless emails is one of the simplest ways to make life easier. That’s because you can cut down on the time it takes you to check your email.

Subscribing to emails is really easy to do. We've all done it to get a coupon code, at the cash register to get a receipt (isn't that annoying?!), and sometimes you just mysteriously land on an email list.

Over the years, I've subscribed to plenty of different websites and companies. I got hundreds of unnecessary emails every day, and even though I set up tabs to organize my email, I was still spending so much time filtering through them.

It was tedious, and they were mostly junk. But, sometimes real emails got lost in the mix as well!

So, I unsubscribed from almost all emails, except for blogs that I enjoy and whatever is absolutely necessary.

Everything else has been removed.

If you find that you are spending a lot of time everyday checking, reading, and deleting emails, then I definitely suggest unsubscribing from the ones that aren’t meaningful to you.

You can find an unsubscribe button on the bottom of most emails, and it just takes a couple of clicks to get off an email list. This is one of the things to make your life easier that you’ll wish you did a long time ago! 

 

6. Pay off your debt to make life easier.

Life is so much easier without debt!

Paying off debt isn’t just important to me as a personal finance blogger, it’s important to me because I actually know how being debt free allows you to finally start living the life you want.

When thinking about all the mental clutter we have, debt can be a huge contributor to that clutter. Debt can cause a crazy amount of stress, and eliminating your debt as a way to make life easier has endless benefits. Paying off your debt will lead to reduced spending, and that means you can set more aside for your long-term financial goals, like through investing or saving for retirement.

Whether you have student loan debt, credit card debt, car debt, or whatever else, paying it off will make managing your finances easier — there’s just less debt to stress about.

Related article: Want To Live Your Best Life? It Starts With Saving.

 

7. Make meals easier.

Thinking about what you’re going to make for dinner every night is a small thing that causes a lot of stress for people. And, it’s too easy to go out to eat or order take-out on nights when you don’t have much time or are out of ideas — extra food spending like this really adds up!

To make weekly meals easier, you can start meal prepping in advance, do a meal share with friends, sign up for a weekly meal planner, and more.

This can help you save money, reduce dinner time stress, and make your life easier.

Note: If you’re looking for easy weeknight meals that are full of budget recipes, I recommend checking out $5 Meal Plan. $5 Meal Plan is a meal planning service that sends you a delicious meal plan and shopping list every week for just $5.

 

8. Make life easier by spending less time getting ready.

How much time do you spend getting ready each day?

Saving time on the smaller aspects of your daily life, like getting dressed in the morning, can make life a little easier for you.

There are many small things like this that are often overlooked and can add up to a lot of wasted time.

There are lots of people who spend way too much time picking out outfits and trying to get ready, and I was once one of them.

Since we had to downsize to travel full-time, I had to get rid of a lot of my clothes. It was a little hard at first because I had so many! But, by having less clothing options and/or choosing your outfit the night before, you can save valuable minutes each day and stop stressing about what you’re going to wear.

 

9. Start saying no more often.

Looking for an easy way to make your life easier?

Start saying no and stop filling up your already busy schedule.

One of the ways we add clutter to our life is by agreeing to more than we can actually handle. 

While I am a big fan of stepping outside of your box and saying yes to everything, there are some situations when you should probably say no. If you say yes to everything, but are ready to pull your hair out, then saying no is a good way to simplify your life in 2020.

Think about everything you have said yes to in the past year, and ask yourself these questions: 

• Did that bring me joy? 
• Did the benefit of the task outweigh the stress it caused? 
• Was I able to make a meaningful difference for myself or someone else? 

If you find that the answer to these questions is mostly no, then perhaps that’s the answer you should be giving in the future.

Saying no may allow you to have more time to focus on what you truly want.

 

10. Singletask more.

One of the biggest misconceptions about time management is that you save time by multi-tasking, but that’s not always the case. In fact, it actually causes many people to waste time and become unproductive.

To make life easier, you may want to try singletasking more often.

When you are switching back and forth between more than one task, it can take a lot of time and mental energy. That’s why many people cannot successfully multitask. 

Think about your strengths and weaknesses to understand whether or not multitasking actually helps you save time. It’s possible that you can multitask some things, but other tasks will need your full one-on-one attention.

For the most part, you’ll be more effective if you focus on one task at a time. This will help you get things done faster so you can spend more time doing what you love.

 

11. Start waking up a little earlier.

Waking up just 15 to 30 minutes earlier than you need to be up is a great way to make life easier. You can spend that extra time doing a little cleaning around your house, responding to emails, organizing what you’re doing for the rest of the day, etc.

Waking up a little earlier allows you to get some smaller tasks out of the way that can make the rest of your day easier. 

Sometimes it’s just really nice to sit in quiet before everyone else wakes up too. You can enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, read a book, and more. It will help you get in the right headspace to handle the rest of your day. 

 

12. Pay expenses annually or semiannually.

There are some bills that you have to pay each and every month, but paying some of them annually or semiannually, is one of the many ways to make your life easier.

You can pay bills like car and homeowners insurance every six months or once a year, and you will probably qualify for a discount if you do this as well.

If you switch from monthly payments for those two bills, that’s two less bills to worry about each month!

You will probably have to adjust your monthly and yearly budget to do so, but looking at and adjusting your budget is always a good thing to do anyway.

 

13. Have regular money talks with your partner.

One of the reasons that so many people have financial stress is that they aren’t talking to their partner about what is happening with their money. There are many couples where one partner doesn’t know how much the other makes, are unaware of how much they have invested, or have no clue how much debt they have. 

How are you ever supposed to reach your financial goals if you have no idea what’s happening with your money?

Money shouldn’t be a taboo subject, especially for couples. And, having regular money talks will start to make these conversations easier and help both parties understand what is happening with your finances.

Your money talks should include things like creating a budget, talking about short-term and long-term goals, how to adjust your budget to make those goals happen, your financial fears and successes, and more.

If you’re nervous to start talking with your partner about money, you can start with just 10-15 minute conversations. Always go in with an open mind and try not to pass judgement.

Talking about your finances will make life easier for both you and your partner because you can get on the same page and work on goals together. 

Learn more at Check In On Your Finances With Regular Money Talks

 

14. Automate your payments to make life easier.

This is one tip to make life easier that you can do in just a couple of hours. And, automating your payments will clear up a lot of the financial clutter I’ve already mentioned a couple of times.

You can have your paychecks direct deposited (many people still deposit their checks manually), you can auto pay your bills, you can even auto pay your monthly credit card payments. Sometimes, going paperless will give you discounts on some of the payments you make on a regular monthly basis.

Automating your payments can even make managing your budget easier!

Even though I check through all of my transactions and expenses, I still automate many of my actual payments so that I never have to worry about forgetting something or being late. Most of my expenses are similar from month to month, so I can usually just check the payment to see if everything is correct.

 

15. Improve your confidence.

This can be one of the most difficult areas to work on, but I really do believe that gaining confidence will make life easier for you.

Gaining confidence isn’t an overnight thing, and it starts by finding small ways to believe in yourself. 

Once the ball gets rolling, your confidence will allow you to improve your life rather than dwelling on things that scare you. This can make your life easier because you’ll stop holding yourself back from reaching success.

Confidence can lead to:

• Achieving the things you want in life.
• Working your dream job.
• Earning a higher income.
• Making new friends.
• Traveling the world, and more. 

Learn more at Be More Confident And Get What You Want In Life.

 

16. Save for your future.

Saving can make your life easier because you are making a plan for your future self!

Starting to invest for retirement now is incredibly important if you don’t want to work for the rest of your life, and you might even be able to retire early.

Investing is a powerful way to save because it means you are making your money work for you. If you weren’t investing, your money would just be sitting there and not earning a thing. Plus, the earlier you start investing, the more you’ll end up earning because investing is long-term financial planning. 

The problem is that many people don’t know how to invest or don’t think they have enough money to get started. To start to simplify your life for the future, learn more at How To Start Investing For Beginners With Little Money.

 

17. Set reminders on your phone's calendar (or any calendar).

One of the things I regularly do to make life easier for myself is to set reminders on my phone.

I live and die by my to do list, haha!

If there is something coming up that I know I will not remember, I will create a reminder. This makes managing my life easier because I don’t have to worry about forgetting things, missing payments, etc.

I create reminders for things such as:

• Business tasks and to-do lists.
• When it’s time to pay estimated quarterly tax payments.
• Renewing license plate tags for our cars.
• Paying semiannual bills, such as car insurance.

I’m always surprised by the number of people who don’t set reminders for things, because you can use them for anything! Plus, they do more than simplify your life, they can help you save money.

 

18. Slow down to make life easier.

To make life easier, I recommend slowing down every once in a while.

People rush through all sorts of things, from busy days at work to rushing from one life milestone to the next. Maybe you’ve spent college only thinking about graduation, after graduation only thinking about a job, working and only thinking about starting a family, until everything has passed by and you are wondering what you did with your life.

It is exciting to think about the future, but if you stop and look around at your life right now, you might be surprised by how good it is.

This is something that I’m just as guilty of doing. However, as I’ve learned to slow down and take my time, I’ve learned how to do things correctly, enjoy life more, and start living more simply.

 

19. Leave your negative outlook behind and find positivity.

I know what you're thinking — How is this related to making my life easier?!

Well, according to the National Science Foundation, the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts. (statistic found on Medium)

That is a lot of time wasted on negative thoughts!

And, I’ve recently realized that I waste a lot of time with negative and repetitive thoughts too. It's been crazy to realize how easy it is to turn something so little and simple into something negative.

Changing your mindset from a negative one to a positive one can be hard to do, but adapting to positivity will really help you in the long run.

Negative thoughts like regret, guilt, and comparisons can cause a lot of mental clutter. All of that can prevent you from seeing what amazing things you have happening in your life.

When you find that you are thinking in a negative way, take a moment to think of something that makes you happy. Is it your family? Do you love what you do? Did someone do something nice for you today?

A positive outlook can be life changing. It gives you more time to focus on your goals, you’ll feel more confident, and you’ll realize that you can achieve much more than you realized.

How are you going to make life easier this year?

The post 19 Ways To Make Life Easier This Year appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.

from Making Sense Of Cents


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If your income and your budget don't match up, it's time to make a change. Here's how focusing on spending cuts vs. budget cuts can make you richer.

The post Spending Cuts vs. Budget Cuts: How Spending Cuts Can Make You Richer appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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Happy 2020! May this new decade be better than the last. One of the things I enjoy about the Financial Samurai community is that you guys keep it real. After announcing that I plan to be more entrepreneurial and less focused on retirement, you guys gave an outpouring of support and encouragement. This means a

The post Why I Failed At Early Retirement: A Love Story appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from Financial Samurai


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There is strong evidence that exercise is wildly beneficial. There is even stronger evidence that most people hate to exercise. So if a pill could mimic the effects of working out, why wouldn’t we want to take it?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

Hey there, and Happy New Year! If you’re like most people, you’ve made a New Year’s resolution or two. And, if you’re like most people, this resolution will fail. Among the most popular resolutions we make, and fail to keep? Exercise. This is the year I’m really, truly going do a whole, regular exercise thing. If that’s your resolution, you should find today’s episode particularly compelling. It was first published last June and has already been downloaded about 2.2 million times. It’s called “The Zero-Minute Workout.”

*      *      *

AUTOMATED VOICE: Pedal faster, Stephen.

Hey, this is Stephen Dubner. I’m at the gym.

AUTOMATED VOICE: Your current heart rate is 110 beats per minute. Your target rate is 130 beats per minute.

We all know that exercise is good for us. We also know that most people don’t get nearly enough. Thirty-four percent of U.S. adults are “physically inactive”; another 20 percent are “insufficiently active.” And, not surprisingly, almost 40 percent of U.S. adults are classified as obese. To be reductive: many of us eat too much and exercise too little. Now, why don’t we get more exercise? Let’s be honest: it is hard work.

AUTOMATED VOICE: Stephen. I told you to pedal faster.

The cost of physical inactivity is massive — not just in illness and death but in dollars too. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Emory University say the U.S. spends around $117 billion a year on healthcare due to inadequate physical activity. And those are just the direct costs from treating cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and so on. It doesn’t even include things like the loss of productivity.

AUTOMATED VOICE: There is a big hill coming up, Stephen. Are you ready?

It’s strange, if you think about it. For thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors worried about not getting enough food to eat, and their daily life required physical activity. Today, food is everywhere, and cheap, and super-fattening. And a lot of us have lives that require very little physical activity — which is why I’m here, on this stupid bike.

AUTOMATED VOICE: I am not going to take that personally.

A lot of smart people have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get people to exercise more. Mostly, they’ve failed. So what happens next? Wouldn’t it be amazing if, instead of exercise, there was something like an exercise pill?

AUTOMATED VOICE: I do not like that idea. I do not like that idea one bit.

*      *      *

So: obesity started out as a problem in wealthier countries, but now it’s spread to middle- and low-income countries. The contributing factors are not in dispute: we consume too many calories, especially low-quality calories; and we don’t burn off nearly enough calories with physical activity. Now, to be fair, burning calories through exercise is a pretty inefficient process; it takes a lot more exercise than you’d think to burn off one cheeseburger. In that regard, it’d be better to just eat less. That said, exercise is also considered a very valuable input for overall health. That’s what we’ve been told at least. But let’s not take that for granted; let’s see if we can find some real evidence for that claim — and understand why exercise is supposed to be so good for us. We’ll start with this man:

Michael JOYNER: My name is Michael Joyner, and I’m a physician scientist at the Mayo Clinic.

A “physician scientist” meaning what?

JOYNER: I’m basically a physiologist who’s also a clinical anesthesiologist.

So that sounds pretty impressive: a physician scientist at the Mayo Clinic. But just so you know, Michael Joyner was an unimpressive student growing up in Arizona.

JOYNER: You’re correct, I was a sort of an indifferent student at Rincon High School, and I started college in 1976 and went to several schools in one year. I ended up, in 1977, at the University of Arizona, where I promptly almost flunked out. And in December of 1977, I’d actually signed up to take the test to become a Tucson city fireman. And what happened is, I was out running a race, a 10K race—

Joyner was a pretty good athlete.

JOYNER: I ran track and field at the University of Arizona, where I ran the 5,000 and the 10,000. I also ran a 2:25 marathon in the late 70’s.

If you’re not familiar with marathon times — 2 hours and 25 minutes, for more than 26 miles, that is a very fast time.

JOYNER: And then I continued to run until I was about 40.

He still exercises about an hour a day.

JOYNER: It varies between a relatively easy day of aerobic exercise on the bike, or maybe some swimming, and then on the opposite days, I do something relatively intense, which includes a warm-up and then about 30 or 40 minutes of circuit training. And because I’m 60 years old, I’ve done probably a little bit more strength training the last five, 10 years because, as you get older, you really want to avoid frailty, muscle loss; you don’t want to slip on the ice, that sort of thing.

Back when Joyner was thinking about becoming a fireman, and he was running that 10k race:

JOYNER: A man named Eddie Coyle, who’s a well-known exercise physiologist, Eddie was a graduate student in the lab at Tucson at the time, and he said, “Do you want to be a subject in a study on lactic acid?” Said, “Sounds good to me.” So, I showed up and ran in the lab, and I said, “Man, this is unbelievable. There’s actually people who do this for a living.”

Joyner was told he could work in the lab as a student assistant if he got his grades up.

JOYNER: I had a square-wave experience with my grades and started basically getting straight As. And I saw that if you wanted to do studies in humans where you put catheters in and do biopsies and that sort of thing, it would be facilitated if you were a physician. So, unlike a lot of physicians who get interested in research in medical-school residency or fellowship, I actually went to medical school with the express purpose of becoming a research-based integrative physiologist.

It did take Joyner a while to get into medical school.

JOYNER: Because I had to do a little academic rehab to make up for those first bad two years, and then I came to Mayo in 1987 and I’ve been here ever since.

DUBNER: So, you’re a big deal in the field of physiology, exercise physiology. Can you first, just for total laypeople, define physiology for us?

JOYNER: If you think about anatomy, anatomy describes the parts of the body. Physiology is really the engineering equivalent of that and says, “What do these different parts do alone and in combination?” There are all sorts of regulatory mechanisms that increase or decrease our breathing, increase or decrease our urine output. What we do as physiologists is study these regulatory systems and try to understand how all living forms adapt to environmental challenges.

DUBNER: Okay, so, open ended-question: tell us what we know, in a nutshell — we’ll get into details as we go — but tell us what we know about the benefits of physical exercise.

JOYNER: What we know in a nutshell is that people who are physically active, especially if they get somewhere between 150 and 300 minutes per week of moderately vigorous physical activity, have a large reduction in their all-cause mortality — typically about a 50-percent or maybe 40-percent reduction in their all-cause mortality. And typically, they live somewhere, depending on the study, between about four and seven years longer.

DUBNER: Wow, okay. Quickly, define for me “all-cause mortality.”

JOYNER: It just means you could die of anything. Could be cancer, heart disease, infectious disease, and so forth. And that’s one of the points people need to remember: we typically think of exercise as being especially protective against death and disability and diseases associated with the cardiovascular system. But it’s also protective against a number of forms of cancer, and a number of things like diabetes and other diseases.

Okay, so you may be saying to yourself: Michael Joyner sounds credible, and he’s got great credentials. But we also know he’s a bit of an exercise fanatic himself. So how can we be sure that it’s exercise that’s actually causing better health outcomes? What sort of baseline physiological evidence is there for that claim?

JOYNER: Well, a couple of things. The best evidence comes from various population cohorts, the most famous being the bus driver/bus conductor data from after World War II in London, where they showed the sedentary bus drivers had much higher rates of coronary-artery disease and heart attack than the active conductors who were walking around punching tickets, going up and down the stairs all day. And they showed a similar thing when they compared clerical workers to postmen. Again, all males, all members of the British civil servants. And that’s where that 40-, 50-percent reduction in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality came from.

Okay, that is a neat story, the bus drivers. But that was a long time ago. Has the effect been shown more recently?

JOYNER: It’s been shown over and over again in every sort of cohort study. Then, you come to some other things. So if you start looking at people with risk factors — people with hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, so forth and so on — people with high levels of physical activity or cardiorespiratory fitness, their risk is markedly blunted. So, I like to tell people that exercise and fitness really absolve you of other sort of risk-factor sins.

Alright, fine — but a couple things here. Cohort studies, or population studies — those are not the randomized, controlled trials that scientists consider their gold standard. And how do we know that people with high levels of physical activity, as Joyner’s describing here, how do we know that there aren’t other reasons for their good health? Maybe the kind of people who are more likely to exercise are the same people who are more likely to eat better, or sleep better; maybe they’re the same people who don’t smoke, or who face less stress in their lives — stressors like poverty or difficult work or home environments. How does Joyner know that exercise is such a strong causal mechanism of good health?

JOYNER: You get into studies in individual humans, where you can take people and do very brief periods of exercise training, improve their glucose tolerance, improve the function of their blood vessels, and improve a whole lot of biomarkers which are associated with health. And then you go one step further to animal studies, and you can really take a deep dive into the mechanisms behind those positive changes.

Okay, what are those mechanisms? A lot of Joyner’s research is about how physical activity increases blood flow to skeletal muscles.

JOYNER: Your heart rate goes from 60 or 70 to around 200, so you have about a threefold increase in heart rate. And then the amount of blood pumped with each heartbeat also goes up. So, think about that. At rest, a tiny amount of that blood flow — maybe 500 mls. — is going to all the muscle in your body. During maximum exercise, perhaps 16 or 17 liters is going to muscle.

DUBNER: Now, why is blood flow per se important or beneficial?

JOYNER: Well, the bottom line is, if you’re going to do prolonged exercise, you’ve got to get oxygen from the lungs to the skeletal muscles, so you have to have a big cardiac output. And you’ve then got to get it to the muscles that are actually contracting. So, it’s just a supply/demand situation.

DUBNER: Okay, so take me from there, though. So you do vigorous exercise, it increases the blood flow a lot. What, then, are the longer-term, I guess, physical and cognitive benefits of that increased blood flow?

JOYNER: One is that the blood vessels grow, they become larger in diameter. The lining of the blood vessels, the vascular endothelium, becomes more slippery and becomes more prone to relax versus constrict, which makes your blood pressure lower. And then the capillaries in small blood vessels around the skeletal muscles also grow. So, because there’s this large increase in cardiac output, all of the large blood vessels throughout the body become larger, and the endothelial function increases; they become more elastic, less stiff, which is also a good thing.

The other thing to remember is — and this is a really big finding in the last 20 years — is that there are hormone-like substances secreted by the skeletal muscle, which have remote effects. They have effects on the liver to improve metabolism, they have effects on blood vessels everywhere, and they also release something called B.D.N.F.: brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is good for brain growth. And people think that’s at least one of the links between physical activity and cognition, and preservation of cognition as you age.

DUBNER: So it sounds like the benefits of exercise are massive and widespread, and therefore we would all be idiots to not do a lot of exercise, or at least enough exercise. So, Dr. Joyner, what share of Americans do get what you’d consider to be enough exercise?

JOYNER: Oh, you see various numbers, depending on whether they’re survey research or tracking research, but if it’s 20 percent, that’s a generous number.

DUBNER: So, do you feel that you, personally, have been preaching the gospel of exercise for a long time, and that people are not really buying?

JOYNER: I just try to point out the benefits and set a good example and be as encouraging to people as I possibly can. People really need to understand that they need to do something, do it regularly, and it’s okay to take it in small bites. But until we have a wholesale change in transportation and food policy and just the way things are, I don’t see a whole lot changing. Most of the population’s behavior aligns with various overt and covert incentives, and we have a whole lot of incentives to be physically inactive and eat a lot.

I mean, there’s a terrific study from Toronto showing that the walkability of whatever ZIP code equivalent you’re in in Toronto, the walkability of that neighborhood predicted who gained how much weight over 10 or 20 years. We have a built-environment problem. We’ve got an incentive problem. As much as I’d like to tell everybody to go exercise, I think we’ve also got a transportation-policy problem. When you go to places like the Netherlands or Denmark, where they are very biking-friendly, when whole cities are built to do that, you see a lot of really fit people.

Ronald EVANS: The challenge is, we are endlessly pitted against the technologic advances in civilization that tends to make us not move.

That’s Ronald Evans.

EVANS: I am the director of the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute.

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the most important biomedical research institutes in the world.

EVANS: And a lot of the work that we do studies the nature of genetic circuits that control metabolism.

Dr. Evans, like Dr. Joyner, is a big believer in the benefits of exercise.

EVANS: Exercise is a beneficial factor that burns calories, but it also activates many metabolic pathways that are pro-health.

But Evans is also a realist. And this, given the human propensity to eat too much and exercise too little, has turned Evans into a futurist. He wonders whether we should accept the fact that most people are never going to exercise enough, and instead think of a biomedical solution.

EVANS: Very big question, and it deserves a lot of thought.

What sort of solution is Evans working on?

EVANS: Exercise in a pill.

Details coming up, right after this.

*      *      *

Fact one: the typical modern human would do well to exercise more than they do. Fact two: public-health advocates and others have been urging us to exercise for many years. Fact three: their urging doesn’t seem to work. Consider fact four: in the U.S., more than 80 percent of large companies offer programs that encourage, and often incentivize, exercise and weight control. A randomized study of one such company, BJ’s Wholesale Club, was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.It found that employees in the wellness program did self-report that they were more likely to exercise and manage their weight. But the data revealed there were no significant differences in actual health markers, including weight loss. And as we heard on an earlier episode of Freakonomics Radio, a world-class team of behavioral scientists recently did an experiment over 28 days, with 53 different interventions, to try to increase the exercise activity of people who were already members of a gym.

Katy MILKMAN: So after our 28-day program, pretty much we saw nothing in terms of behavior change.

That’s Katy Milkman, from the University of Pennsylvania:

MILKMAN: All 53 versions of the program, pretty much nothing sticks. And that was the ultimate goal. So that was major failure.

With so much failure, you can understand why a lot of people look for exercise shortcuts:

ANNOUNCER: The revolutionary new Ab Transform system is the safe, effective, and affordable way to change the way you work out, and look, forever.

But maybe there’s another kind of shortcut. Something a bit less hucksterish. A bit more grounded in science. Which brings us back to the biologist Ronald Evans from the Salk Institute. Evans is well known in the field for having discovered a family of hormone receptors that act as genetic switches.

EVANS: And if you think of genes as instruments in an orchestra, you can have many different kinds of sounds, or many different ways to have them work together. And the conductor that makes the genes come on at the right time and orchestrate all that are regulatory factors that are called transcription factors, that activate the gene. So those are genetic switches. This is really the underpinning of a lot of our body’s physiology is, while all cells have the same number and same set of genes, individual cells activate different sets of genes and the receptors and the hormones control gene networks. A lot of our physiology is about genetic control.

The discovery, and understanding of this mechanism of genetic control has been incredibly important.

EVANS: Once you have a mechanism, then you can think of how to actually develop therapies or drugs that can control that mechanism. Everyone’s familiar with hormone replacement for people. Sometimes we lose a thyroid gland for various reasons, and you can replace that by finding the or making the hormone and then giving it back to the person. The steroid hormones are amongst the most widely prescribed drugs on the planet.

And, perhaps, the most famous steroid-hormone therapy: the birth-control pill.

EVANS: And that’s all about using these receptors and in many ways, the impact of this family of receptors, and pharmaceuticals have changed society.

Ronald Evans may be on his way to creating a new pill, which once again has the potential to change society.

EVANS: “Exercise in a pill.”

His lab is developing a pill that would mimic the effects of exercise in the absence of actual exercise. Other labs around the world are working on similar exercise mimetics, as they’re called, with various mechanisms. Evans’s pill works by targeting one of two key hormone receptors.

EVANS: There are two hormone receptors that we discovered that are very, very close to each other but play exactly opposite roles, and complementary roles, in body physiology as well as in disease. One of the hormone receptors is called PPAR-gamma. And it is the master regulator of adipose tissue.

Adipose tissue is what most of us know as “fat.”

EVANS: You need this genetic regulator to activate the fat network. It’s critical for survival. You need to store energy and fat to survive. And then the partner for that, that’s called PPAR-delta, which we discovered in 1995, that’s the receptor that burns fat. And most of the problem with disease is too much storage and not enough burning. So one of the ways that we have approached the problem is looking at drugs that can be specifically built to target the fat-burning receptor PPAR-delta. And that’s led to a number of companies producing new kinds of molecules. And one of the companies that I created a number of years ago developed a screen technology that was licensed to Glaxo Wellcome, and they built a drug called GW1516.

Glaxo Wellcome is now known as GlaxoSmithKline. GW1516 originally had a different purpose.

EVANS: It was made to change cholesterol levels and to try to increase something called H.D.L. And this drug never made it into F.D.A. approval. It had problems.

Problems like: causing tumors in the mice it was tested on. Evans eventually began working with a less-powerful version of the drug, with the assumption it would be less toxic. Another difference: he wasn’t looking at its effect on cholesterol.

EVANS: So, one of the surprising things that came out of studying the GW1516 compound — and it was very dramatic result — is, when we gave it to sedentary mice, or obese sedentary mice, either one, for about 30 days, the G.W. drug progressively activated the genetic program that is normally activated by exercise.

I think we should hear that last bit again.

EVANS: The G.W. drug progressively activated the genetic program that is normally activated by exercise.

In other words, their physiology seemed to indicate the mice had been exercising.

EVANS: But these mice were not getting exercise. They were just getting the pill.

As you can imagine, this was a pretty exciting research result. But how well did the pill do in terms of giving the benefits of exercise in a general sense?

EVANS: You have to be careful when you say, “Does the pill give the benefits of exercise in the general sense?” because exercise is a hundred things, but I should say, in general, exercise, no matter how you do it, focuses on a few things. It increases energy expenditure. It tends to increase burning of lipids and fats and sugars. You get adult neurogenesis, and that enhances cognitive performance. It also improves immune fitness, lowers inflammation — so it has many benefits to the heart and other parts of the body.

Now, if we go to this, “What does PPAR-delta drug do,” in terms of metabolic fitness in, let’s say, the brain, it does exactly the same things. It gives you this increased energy expenditure, you burn more lipids, you burn more sugar, and you correct your insulin. Your adipose depot starts to shrink, so you lose weight. And the drug, by itself, gives you adult neurogenesis.

The drug also seemed to boost endurance, at least in the mice. After 30 days of giving them the drug, Evans and his team put the sedentary mice on a treadmill.

EVANS: It’s a mouse treadmill. It’s very cute. And we compared the mice that got the drug with ones that did not get the drug. And the difference was striking: the ones that got the drug could run approximately one hour longer, continuous running, than the ones that didn’t.

And what is the mechanism for this endurance effect?

EVANS: What the actual drug does, it increases fat burning by the powerhouse of the muscle cell, which is called the mitochondria, and the mitochondria can burn sugar or fat, but what the drug says is, “We want the mitochondria to burn fat specifically and convert fat into the chemical form of energy called ATP — but don’t burn sugar.

That’s because the sugar — or glucose — is needed for brain energy.

EVANS: The PPAR-delta drug powers the brain and powers the fat by separating out the two energetic molecules in the body for different purposes: one for the muscle and one for the brain. And by doing that, you’re able to sustain your running time by an hour or an hour and a half, if you’re a mouse.

So this sounds pretty much like a miracle drug, doesn’t it? Others thought so too. Right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Evans reached out to theWorld Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, about the potential for athlete abuse, and he eventually helped develop a test for it. Soon after, WADA banned the drug. But in 2013, a bunch of pro cyclists were caught using it. Fast-forward to today: Ronald Evans and a pharmaceutical firm he co-founded, Mitobridge, are working on a new form of the drug that’s meant to minimize side effects.

EVANS: So the Mitobridge drug has been in what’s called phase 1 studies and it’s now moving on to phase 2 studies. So, the most critical is the phase 1, to me, because that’s the safety. They’re now through that part. So, the next part is, does it work? And it works very well in the mouse models, but we have to show that it works well in people. We know it’s safe in people, but we now have to show that it works. I would say, two or three years, that we will have a pretty good idea if it’s working in human disease in a way that could achieve F.D.A. approval.

To get the drug through F.D.A. approval, Mitobridge is targeting patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. That’s a genetic disorder, typically striking young boys, who rarely survive into their twenties.

EVANS: There is no real drug to treat it. But our approach is to restore this balance of energy utilization in the muscle, and we can stimulate that muscle to actually burn fat and become activated as if it was being exercised.

But Evans clearly sees a much wider potential use for this drug.

EVANS: There is absolutely no way that the potential here is going to be limited to one or two diseases. It will be very high, from metabolic to neuro to vascular to aging. We can think of the potential here in different ways, and maybe, to the wider question, can it be used preventatively in some cases just to maintain health, as opposed to just treating disease. And this is not an easy issue, because taking healthy people and giving them a drug is not common. Now, it does happen. A lot of people take adult aspirin for their entire life because it’s thought to be helpful to reduce inflammation and reduce heart disease.

Tens of millions of Americans also take statins every day to forestall heart disease; millions more take metformin to treat diabetes, or even the onset of diabetes. We put fluoride in our water supply to prevent tooth decay.

EVANS: Could you transition this to a society that is getting heavier and running into the problem of obesity and diabetes and the related complications? The answer is yes, but I think from a social and ethical component, it raises a big question that should be addressed. It’s not unusual for scientific advances to raise social issues and questions. We have this all the time.

Indeed: just because a drug may soon exist that could mimic the effects of exercise does not necessarily mean we should immediately spike our water supply with it. So Evans’s drug, if it does make it through F.D.A. approval, will surely have its philosophical and ethical skeptics. But even now, it’s got its physiological skeptics.

JOYNER: So, an exercise memetic.

That, again, is Michael Joyner from the Mayo Clinic.

JOYNER: If you think about it, the main ones have been designed to try to increase the function of the mitochondria, the little organelles in skeletal muscle, that burn carbohydrate and fat and are critical to the metabolic benefits of exercise. And certainly, you can stimulate those with drugs. But if you look at the broad class of things that exercise does, it goes way beyond just affecting the mitochondria. It affects, again, the blood vessels, the remote effects of training, the effects on the brain, the effects on intermediate metabolism, and all sorts of other things. You can find a mimetic for things that sort of look like exercise, but I don’t think you’re going to find the big-picture drug or compound that can do the 10 or 15 main things that exercise does for people.

DUBNER: What would you think of, let’s call it, the exercise pharmaceutical, that works along the lines you’re describing there on a mitochondrial level for those who can’t exercise due to, let’s say, a physical handicap or some other condition. Do you like that idea?

JOYNER: Absolutely. Absolutely. You start thinking about exercise is good for your lipids, exercise is good for diabetes, exercise is good for this and that, and there’s a terrific idea and very interesting paper in the early 2000’s, I believe in the British Medical Journal which said, why don’t we put everybody on low-dose statins, low-dose antihypertensives — everybody over 50 — low dose anti-diabetic drugs, and see what it would do to their life expectancy and all-cause mortality. So, some people have argued that really this is closer to an exercise mimetic than drugs that target the mitochondria, for example.

But you can imagine that if a so-called “exercise pill” does come to market, it might provide people the license to never exercise again.

MILKMAN: There’s been research showing that there can be licensing effects with diet behaviors — you remind me that I’ve been dieting well, then I maybe eat more.

Katy Milkman again, from the University of Pennsylvania.

MILKMAN: So if you give people a pill, and say, this has the effects of exercise, will they feel licensed not to exercise? It’s a real risk.

EVANS: I do not actually like to think of it that way, because we are designed to move.

And that, again, is Ronald Evans, the man behind the exercise pill.

EVANS: The social issue is not just, should we give the drug to everyone — it’s how do we manage the intrinsic advances that are working against our health?

MILKMAN: He may not intend for it to replace fitness, but will people take it and then feel that they’re licensed to skip workouts? Whether that’s the intent of the medication doesn’t mean it won’t be a nasty side effect.

Marcas Bamman, a physiologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, is also not in favor of an exercise pill.

Marcas BAMMAN: Because there are thousands upon thousands of molecular responses to exercise that cannot be recapitulated by one pill.

Bamman has another idea, a sort of hybrid idea — which he feels may be necessary, given the difficulty of turning an inactive person into an active one.

BAMMAN: Going from true sedentary status to a regular exercise training habit or behavior, there are a lot of steps required to make that happen. And one of those that would be very tangible for people is a prescription with good guidance.

A prescription meaning an individualized exercise regimen.

BAMMAN: It really doesn’t do the patient a lot of good for a healthcare provider to just say, “Well, your blood pressure is high, your glucose is high, and you need to lose some weight so you should do more exercise.” They don’t know how frequent, what intensity, what dose. Is it resistance, is it endurance, is it a combination?

Bamman and his research team at U.A.B. have been doing research for 15 years on this idea. They started with older adults and now work specifically on patients with Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy. But their idea is that everybody could benefit from an exercise prescription.

BAMMAN: Let’s just take the individual who comes to the clinic, 45 years old. They’ve got a body mass index of 32.

For the record, that is a pretty high B.M.I.— the equivalent of a five-foot-ten person who weighs more than 220 pounds.

BAMMAN: They’ve got some level of insulin resistance going on, they’ve got stage-1 hypertension, they’ve got some knee pain.

In a perfect world — or at least in Marcas Bamman’s world — a physician would have a lot of good data on exactly what forms of exercise, at what intensity and duration, would be most useful.

BAMMAN: If you can then point to that data and say to that person, “The evidence is clear this works, and now I’m going to refer you to somebody who knows how to implement this evidence-based prescription,” that would have a major impact on whether or not somebody adopts the change.

But the truth is, those data on ailment-specific exercise, are fairly sparse.

BAMMAN: In terms of which type of exercise is best for a given disease risk cluster, the research is really void in many areas.

That may be starting to change. The National Institutes of Health is starting an exercise trial this summer as part of a program called the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium.

BAMMAN: And that study is really comparing resistance training to endurance training and trying to understand the molecular mechanisms by which each of those modes of exercise training induces potential health benefits.

You could also imagine that technology, especially smart technology, has a larger role to play in helping us achieve our fitness goals. Like making exercise equipment and apps that, rather than beating us up:

AUTOMATED VOICE: Stephen. I told you to pedal faster.

Are a bit more encouraging.

AUTOMATED VOICE: Well, aren’t you the little champion? Five whole minutes on the bike without a break. That’s your new personal best.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Morgan Levey, with help from Daphne Chen. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Zack Lapinski, Matt Hickey, and Corinne Wallace; we had help this week from Nellie Osbourne. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Searching for ways to add money to a prepaid card? Here are step-by-step instructions on how to transfer money from a bank account to a prepaid debit card.

The post How to Transfer Money from a Bank Account to a Prepaid Debit Card appeared first on The Dough Roller.

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With a new year comes new goals. It’s a great time to take control of your finances. Here are eight budgeting moves to make for 2019.

January is a time when we’re naturally trying to re-set some things. You might take some time this month to look at different life goals. While you’re in the process, don’t forget to think about budgeting. Now is the perfect time to evaluate your finances and fine-tune your approach so that you can reach your financial goals. Here are eight moves you should make right now to start the year off right.

1. Review last year’s annual expenditures

Getting a big picture overview of your last year’s expenses can be helpful. You can do this in a couple of ways:

1. Download all your bank transactions for the past year. This can get complicated if you use multiple debit and credit cards. But if you generally stick with one account, it’s easier. Then, group your transactions by broad category. Don’t get too much into the weeds, or this will take approximately forever. This gives you a big picture overview of where your money has gone over the course of the year.
2. The other option is to use your current budgeting software. If you’re using a program like Mint or YNAB, you can get a historical overview of your spending with the category assignments you’ve used throughout the year.

Breaking down your spending into large categories like this can help you see where your money has gone on a large scale. This lets you know if you’re on track with your spending or if you need to make some major adjustments. For instance, if you’re spending a huge percentage of your income on dining out, maybe it’s time to re-prioritize for 2018.

2. Re-set periodic expenses

It can be hard to budget for periodic expenses like insurance, vacations, holiday gifts, and car repairs. Pull a list of these expenses into a separate report or spreadsheet. Then, figure out what you spent, in total, on each one. Budgeting for irregular expenses isn’t difficult. But you do need to go through the steps in the process. It looks like this:

1. Calculate the annual cost. Use last year’s numbers as a starting point, but then try to estimate for any changes in the coming year.
2. Divide by 12.
3.  Add the result to your monthly budget. You can set that money aside in a short-term savings account to be used for the specified expense when the time comes.

You may already be budgeting for the expenses in this category that you expect annually. This could include your bi-annual car insurance payment or a specific home maintenance project you do every year–like having your furnace tuned. But when it comes to discretionary expenses, such as your annual family vacation or Christmas spending, take some time to think about these expenses. Related: How to Create a Family Vacation Budget Are you happy with what you spent last year? Do you want to cut back on that spending or do you anticipate needing to spend more this year? Either way, take this into account when you’re re-doing your budgeting for annual and periodic expenses.

3. Re-evaluate 401k contributions

By now you’ve likely been through your year-end review at work for 2017, if you have a traditional job. If that review gave you a raise, even a small increase, consider making an increase in your 401k contributions, if you aren’t already maxing that account out. Even a small increase can make a huge difference over time.

4. Plan for an IRA contribution

A lot of people make a lump sum IRA contribution, but it’s a good idea to plan if you’re not able to make a big deposit. Divide your planned IRA contribution by 12, then set up an automatic monthly contribution from your checking account to your IRA account. If you start in January, your IRA will be fully funded by the end of the year with no lump sum required. If you need to open an IRA, here are some of the best IRA options.

5. Plan for your HSA contribution

If you have a high deductible health insurance plan combined with an HSA you should plan now how you’re going to fund it. You can use the same formula that I use for an IRA. Just take the amount of the HSA and divide it by 12, then begin making monthly contributions to fund it. The great part about an HSA is that you can use it throughout the year, but you don’t lose the funds. So try to put at least as much in this account as you’re likely to spend on medical expenses this year. And then fund the account beyond that if possible. Again, having last year’s spending numbers in hand can be helpful here. If you’re not sure how much you spent on medical care in 2017, just look over those numbers. Then you can see the minimum amount you should contribute to your HSA.

6. Conduct a spending audit

This is the ideal time of year to go through the “One-N-Done” method of cutting back on your spending. Basically instead of trying to nickel and dime your way to wealth, you figure out where you can save month after month. Go through each of your monthly bills and decide whether you really need a product or service. Do you use that gym membership? How often do you watch shows on Netflix, and could you do something different with that down time? Even if it’s only a few bucks a month, by the end of the year, that could spell serious savings. Once you’ve figured out any bills you can eliminate, then go through your bills to figure out which ones you might be able to reduce. If it’s been a while since you’ve shopped around for insurance–life insurance, homeowners insurance, car insurance, etc.–you may be able to save there. You should shop for car and home insurance about once a year just to be sure you’re getting the best possible rates. You may even be able to negotiate with your internet provider, cable provider, and cell phone provider to get lower rates on these services. In all, finding ways to save on monthly expenses is the easiest way to save big money over the course of a year. It’ll take some time now, but could pay off big in the long run.

7. Re-evaluate your plan to get out of debt

Take stock of where you are when it comes to paying off debt. Are you making progress towards this goal? Could you make progress more quickly by changing the order in which you pay off debts? Could you boost the amount of money you put towards debt? Or could you save on interest by refinancing your debt to a lower rate? This is where you determine if you’re on track to payoff your debt. Can you refinance the debt into a lower rate loan? Are you paying off the right debts–paying them off in the right order?  Should you increase or decrease the amount of extra money you are putting toward your debt? Deciding what order to pay off your debts is important. If you have a big interest rate differential, paying off the higher interest rate first could save you thousands over time. You can check out different options for paying down your debt with our debt snowball vs. debt avalanche calculator. Once you’ve figured out how to pay off your debt, be sure you’re meeting your goals each month. Make a spreadsheet or chart to keep track of your debt so you can stay motivated to meet your goals.

8. Compare your net worth from the prior year

If you want one indicator of an effective budget, it’s this: an increasing net worth. An increasing net worth shows that you’re spending less than you make, paying off debt, and saving more money. This is why I recommend tracking your net worth at least once a year. Net worth is simply what you own, less what you owe. It can be a positive or negative number. It reflects the sum total of all of your financial decisions during the course of the past year, which is why it’s so important that you track it. Comparing your net worth from one year to the next is the best way to know if you’re moving in the right direction. If you aren’t happy with where your net worth is going, this is the time to make changes. You need to get net worth tracking into operation, and you can check out Personal Capital’s free tool for this purpose. Those are my eight suggestions for the new year, and they’re a way for you to make decisions that can help you to make financial progress in the year ahead. By making the important financial moves in January, you won’t have worry about it later in the year. Listen to the Podcast of this Article With a new year comes new goals. It's a great time to take control of your finances. Here are eight budgeting moves to make for %%currentyear%%.

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Debt consolidation and debt negotiation programs (DNP) are often associated with seedy companies more interested in helping themselves than helping consumers. The debt consolidation industry is largely responsible for earning this questionable reputation. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, warns consumers about the false promises many in the debt business make to consumers. And the FTC has even brought legal action against “non-profit” debt negotiation companies for violating federal consumer protection laws. The FTC has published an excellent article called Knee Deep in Debt that talks in part about DNPs and is definitely worth reading. But the concept behind debt consolidation is still a good one for many people overwhelmed by debt. By consolidating debt, many can lower the interest rate on their debt and lower their monthly payments. This in turn can make paying your debt and providing for your other expenses more manageable. But this still leaves one big question—how? How should one go about consolidating debt? Should you use a debt consolidation company? Should you negotiate directly with your creditors? To help answer these questions, below is a list of 8 ways you can consolidate your own debt. There are advantages and disadvantages to each option, which I’ll explain below. But before we get to the list, there are a few things to consider before you start a debt consolidation program:

• Credit Score: Opening a lot of new accounts for purposes of debt consolidation can weigh on your credit score. While this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t open new accounts to get lower interest rates, do so with care. You can check out How to Improve Your Credit Score for more information.
• Lower Interest: One of the key goals in debt consolidation is to get a lower interest rate on your debt. As a first step, however, contact your existing creditors to see if they will lower your interest rate. You may end up getting a better deal on some or all of your debt and not need to consolidate.
• Don’t be a Yo-Yo: Just like there are some who yo-yo diet (go up and down in weight), there are those who yo-yo debt. They pay off some debt, only to go into more debt. Debt consolidation can actually make this worse in some instances. For example, you may consolidate high interest credit card debt onto a home equity line of credit, only to charge your cards back up. If you think this is a big risk, think twice about debt consolidation, or figure out a way to discipline yourself from going into more debt.
• Student Loan Consolidation: This article does not cover the consolidation of student loans. There are separate programs, some sponsored by the federal government, covering education loan consolidation.

8 DIY Debt Consolidation Techniques 1. Cash Out Home Refinance: Cash out refinancing is when you refinance your mortgage for more than you owe. For example, let’s assume you owe $150,000 on a home that is worth $250,000, and you also owe $25,000 in high interest credit cards. In a cash out refinance, you would refi your mortgage for $175,000, paying off your original $150,000 mortgage and your $25,000 in high interest credit card debt. Advantages

• Home mortgages offer some of the lowest interest rates available.
• The loan can be amortized over 30 years, resulting in lower payments for the consolidated debt.
• If you consolidate all of your debt in a cash out refi, you reduce your monthly payments to just your mortgage.

Disadvantages

• A home loan is secured by a mortgage on your home, meaning that if you fail to repay the loan, you could lose your home.
• Extending debt payments over 30 years could result in paying higher total interest payments on the debt.
• There are fees associated with refinancing a mortgage, and depending on the terms of the loan, they could be significant.

2. Home Equity Line of Credit: A home equity line of credit, similar to a credit card, is a revolving line that allows you to write checks up to the amount of your credit limit. A typical home equity line requires you to pay interest only on the balance for the first 10 years. The existing balance at year 10 is then converted into a loan amortized over 20 years. Once you have a home equity line established, consolidating your debt onto the line of credit is simply a matter of writing checks to pay off your other debts. Advantages

• While interest rates on these lines of credit are higher than on a first mortgage, the rates typically are much lower than credit card rates and interest on other unsecured debt.
• Once established, it is very convenient to access the line of credit to consolidate bills.
• In many cases, there are no fees to establish a home equity line of credit.

Disadvantages

• As with a mortgage, a home equity line of credit is secured by your home. If you fail to make required payments, you could lose your home.

3. Home Equity Loan: A home equity loan is very similar to a home equity line of credit, with one major difference. With a line of credit, your outstanding balance can go up and down as you borrow and repay against the line of credit (again, much like a credit card). A home equity loan works more like a car loan. You borrow a set amount of money and repay it over a fixed period of time. Advantages

• The advantages are the same as with a home equity line. However, you don’t write checks against a home equity loan. Instead, you receive a check from the bank in the amount of the loan that you can then use to pay off your other debts.

Disadvantages

• As with the two options above, a home equity loan is secured by your home. Fail to pay the loan, and you could lose your house.

4. Low Interest Credit Card: Low interest rate credit cards can be used to consolidate higher rate debt. Expect to pay between 2% and 5% of the outstanding balance as a minimum payment. Low interest rate cards generally require excellent credit to qualify. There are two ways to transfer high rate debt to a low interest card. First, you can use a balance transfer to a low rate card. These cards tyically charge no balance transfer fee, but remember, this is not a 0% balance transfer (see below). In other words, while you pay no transfer fee, you do pay interest on the amount transferred (typically between 7% to 9%). Second, you could use the low interest card for everyday purchases, and take the money you would have spent and use it to pay down high interest rate debt. Here is a list of low interest rate balance transfer credit cards. Advantages

• It’s easy to apply for a low interest card online and to transfer balances to the card.
• The interest rates are not introductory teaser rates. While credit card companies can increase rates pursuant to the cardholder agreement and federal law, rates won’t go up simply because an introductory period expired.

Disadvantages

• These low interest credit cards require excellent credit, and as a result, can be difficult for many to obtain.
• It’s still a credit card, and interest rates can go up.

5. 0% Balance Transfer: Unlike a low interest rate card, a 0% balance transfer card offers no interest for a set period of time (typically 6 to 12 months). After that time, any remaining balance is charged the regular interest rate that applies to the card. In addition, these cards do charge a balance transfer fee, typically 3% to 5% of the amount transferred. For short-term debt consolidation, however, a no interest offer can save a lot of money in interest payments. Here’s a list of 0% balance transfer credit cards to consider. Advantages

• Zero percent interest can save hundreds if not thousands of dollars in interest payments.
• It’s easy to apply online and transfer existing high interest credit card debts.

Disadvantages

• The 0% offers don’t last forever, and eventually the interest rates rise to whatever rates apply to the card.
• You will pay up front a balance transfer fee.

6. P2P Loan: Social lending from companies like Prosper or LendingClub have become more mainstream over the last year. With these online companies, you can apply for a 3-year fixed rate loan that must be paid back over 3 years. Unlike a traditional loan, however, the money doesn’t come from a bank or other financial institution. instead, the loan comes from individuals looking to invest in consumer loans. That’s why it’s called social lending or person-to-person lending. Advantages

• P2P loans generally offer competitive interest rates to borrowers, although the rate you receive will depend on your credit history.
• The interest rate is fixed for the life of the loan.
• Loans can be obtained relatively quickly.

Disadvantages

• There are fees associated with obtaining a P2P loan. The fees vary based on a number of factors, including the amount of the loan.
• The loan limit is $25,000, although you can typically obtain up to 2 loans at one time.

7. 401k Loan: Some 401k programs allow you to borrow up to 50% of your retirement balance (maximum $50,000). You then repay the loan with interest, but the interest is paid back to your own retirement account. This can be a great way to consolidate high interest debt, but there are some significant risks to consider. For example, if you leave your job for whatever reason, you must repay the outstanding balance. If you fail to repay the loan, the IRS will consider the outstanding balance to be a distribution, and you could end up paying a 10% penalty on top of taxes. Some also believe it is a mistake with remove your money from the stock market to repay debt. Here, you should consider the interest rate on the debt you would pay off, and how your money is invested in the first place. Regardless, this is an option worth considering. Advantages

• Interest payments are made back to your retirement account, so you don’t lose the money.
• If your company allows 401k loans, they are very easy to obtain.

Disadvantages

• The loan may be considered a distribution if you leave your job and are unable to repay the loan.
• The money borrowed will be removed from your investments.

8. Two or More of the Above: This may be obvious, but it’s worth noting. Debt consolidation does not always mean consolidating debt into a single loan. Depending on the particular circumstances, it may make sense to combine two or more of the above approaches to deal with your debt.Here are 8 simple and effective ways to reduce your interest payments by consolidating your debt.

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