Community Karma: Dreaming—and Saving—Big Financial Consultant

Community Karma: Dreaming—and Saving—Big

**This summer, we’re excited to present “Community Karma,”a weekly series featuring people just like you sharing their financial stories, personal money tips, how they over overcame hardships, and more!**

Cyndi Finkle, 43, never imagined she’d be “a business or money person.” But she is, and she’s good at it. How else do you explain the fact that she’s expanded her company, Art Works, to a second location, conquered her busy family’s budget, and managed to pay for her daughter’s $30,000 per year private school tuition?

And those are just a few of her accomplishments.

We can’t all afford to whisk our family away to Mexico, Tahiti, or Australia, but we can learn a thing or two from Cyndi’s clever money strategies. Here she shares some of her best tips with the Credit Karma community. Read on!

Save aggressively for your kids’ college fund.

Cyndi puts at least $500 away in her daughter’s college fund each month. While it may be difficult for most of us to come up with that much in additional savings monthly, we can use one of Cyndi’s clever strategies for college savings.

When her daughter was too young to remember, Cyndi discouraged gifts from friends and relatives. Instead, she asked them to donate to her daughter’s college fund. “You don’t need to buy something just to buy it,” she rationalized. Her daughter didn’t notice the lack of gifts back then, but today she can benefit from the luxury of having a college fund to keep her out of student loan debt.

Reprioritize your spending.

It seems Cyndi’s 10-year-old daughter is catching the personal finance bug. When she was a toddler, Cyndi spared no expense throwing her impressive, extravagant birthday parties. It wasn’t until her daughter was old enough to express her own opinion about her birthday that Cyndi learned the truth. “You know what? I don’t want all of those people here,” Cyndi’s daughter said.

Shocked, Cyndi realized that the extravagant parties had been social events for her, her husband, and their friends, not for their daughter.

You too might find that you’re spending unnecessarily. Maybe it’s pricey clothing for your kids thatll be stained in seconds. Or it’s a slew of cable channels that you don’t watch. Perhaps you buy premium dog food when generic will do. Whatever it is, reevaluate your expenses and make your spending purposeful.

Give kids money choices.

With Art Works Studio Classroom, kids learn all about how to create and appreciate art. But they learn something else too: how art can pay off.

Cyndi recently launched smART through which the kids’ artwork can be purchased for $100 per piece. The young artist keeps $50 and Cyndi offers a few choices of what to do with the remaining $50. The kid can:

Cyndi hopes to teach kids that they can make a living selling artwork and also to make wise money choices. Hopefully theyll spark smart money decisions in adulthood.

Take some time off of spending.

Perhaps Cyndi’s most prized piece of financial advice is to have “no-spend” months. Her family takes two months out of the year off of spending. Although they still permit themselves to buy fresh fruits and veggies and pay bills, other spending is avoided.

“It’s cleansing,” she says, and it “curbs unconscious spending.” During the month, they make meals with items left in the pantry and freezer. Instead of going to the movies, they’ll read books at home. They skip the car wash and get outside together and suds up the car.

These “no-spend” months regularly remind Cyndi and her family that “everyday things add up to a lot of money.”

Bottom Line: Whatever you do with Cyndi’s advice, make it work for you. Don’t have aspirations to own your own company? Think of other things you can do to make a bit of cash on the side. Come up with creative ways to save up for your children’s college education. And take control of your financial life.

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