Accelerate Your Legacy
Accelerate Your Legacy
89. How to Know When it's the Right Time to Buy
In this episode, we explore how to determine the right time to make a purchase, whether it’s a car, home, or even everyday groceries. Laura discusses the pressures society places on us to buy now and emphasizes the importance of making informed, pressure-free decisions that align with your goals and financial situation. She shares personal anecdotes and provides practical advice to ensure you're making purchases with confidence and wisdom.
In this episode we’ll discuss:
. Timing Your Purchases
. Avoiding Emotional Decisions
. Aligning Purchases with Resources and Goals
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Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place. Hey accelerators, today we're going to talk about how to know when is the right time to make a purchase. This is something that a lot of people wrestle with, especially right now, when the world feels so uncertain, we have to really kind of hone in and make our decisions. And we, we live in a society where it's just so easy. To do whatever it's easy to just put it on credit. You know, don't pay attention. Just go ahead and buy it now because it feels good now, but that's not the best way to utilize our resources. It's not a good way to be a good steward of what you've been given. So, I wanted to talk about things like how to know when it's the right time to buy a car, how to know when it's the right time to buy a home. How do you know when it's the right time to go back to college or go to college in the 1st place? You see Right now, we're in the middle of a crazy political season that is thankfully almost over. We are getting real close to November guys. But because we are in this political season, people are holding off on making big purchases, making big decisions, and part of that's because I don't know what the world's going to do in a couple of months to you? But in reality, what's going on in your house is a lot more important than what's going on in the White House. What's going on in the White House does not matter because anything they do, it's going to take a long time for it to trickle down to get into your book. And nobody has a policy right now of purchasing you a brand new car. Oprah is not going to be in the White House, so she's not giving you a new car. If you need a new to you vehicle. How do we know when it's the right time to make a purchase? And it could be a car, a home, college. It could be going to the grocery store. How do you know when it's the right time to make that purchase? So for my family, we do a big grocery run on payday. Now usually that's a Wednesday. So on Wednesday, we go to Costco and we go to Ralph's and we buy all of the things and we fill our pantry and our refrigerator. Why is that the right time for us to make that particular purchase? Because we have built our family life around the budget. We have built our meal plan around the money that we have. And we know as soon as that paycheck comes in, we have a certain amount of money that we can spend on food. So we know that's the best time. Now, if there's something else we need, our kids occasionally take snacks to school. My preschooler takes snack once a month. My Daughters have Girl Scouts and they take a snack to Girl Scouts once a quarter. And sometimes we have specialty things like that. So we have to really pay attention and budget those things in or at least pay attention to the budget. Not overspend on groceries when we also need to go buy snacks. For our family, the best time to go to the grocery store is on payday. Get everything we need and then we can supplement later. Let's talk about when it's time to buy a car. I'll tell you the wrong time to buy a car. The wrong time to buy a car is when you're very pregnant and you don't have enough seats and you're starting to feel the pinch and you put yourself in a position to where you feel like you have to do it right now. When you feel desperate, you get stupid and you make dumb decisions. And I still to this day am upset about the trade in situation that happened when I purchased my minivan. I love my minivan. I am very, very happy with it. However, I did not like the trade in situation, and if I could go back in time, I would change that. You see, I had put an undue burden on myself. I'd given myself a deadline that was totally artificial. I said, I have to have a new van by September, so I'm not stressed out. Y'all, I didn't have the baby till January. I could have waited until December to buy that minivan and it would have been fine. I would have eventually found the car that I wanted, but I put a deadline on myself and I stressed myself out and I bought the first thing that fit all of my criteria. I could have made a better decision. I could have got more money for my car instead of trading it in. I could have sold it private and gotten a lot more for it. So how do you know when it's the right time? Well, there's no pressure. We put that on ourselves because of the society that we live in. But in all reality, you can afford a rental car, or you can ask your friends for a ride to work, or you can use public transit in most places. There's this really cool app on your phone called Uber. There's another one called Lyft. There's this other thing called a taxi. I actually don't know if taxis still exist in most places. I think it's still just New York and LA, but there are ways to get around. You are not desperate for a car. You do not have to make the decision from a state of panic. Asking your friend for a ride does not Make you a bad person. In fact, a lot of people would be happy to help you out. So, you know it's the right time to make the purchase when you have the money in the bank and you can go make the purchase because you have the money. You don't feel pressured. If you do go onto a car lot and you feel pressured, walk away. That is not a person that has your best interest at heart. That is a person that is worried about themselves and their own pocketbook and the money they can make off of your sale and not about you and what you need and what's best for your family. When it comes time to make a purchase, I hope you hear me saying this. When you have the money. And it's not going to put an undue burden on your family and you don't feel pressured. That's the right time to make the purchase. When's the right time to buy a home? The right time to buy a home is not when the interest rates go back to 2. 5, 3%. I hate to, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the probability of it getting back down below 2, 3 percent is next to none. It's probably not going to happen. If you were waiting for the interest rates to go down, you were doing the wrong thing. If you were in the 1980s when interest rates were at like 18%. And you were saying, I'm going to wait till they go down to 12. You would have waited until the mid 1990s for it to be under, I believe it was the 1990s when it went from 12 to 10. So if you were saying, I can't buy it 18%, I have to wait till it's down to 10. You would have waited 15 years and the prices of homes skyrocketed during that time. So you are actually out money because you waited. Based on an interest rate. Now, if you didn't have a down payment or you weren't making enough money that you could have covered your mortgage, that would have been the wrong time, but if you right now have money for a down payment and you can get a mortgage that is going to be less than 25 percent of your take home pay, that's after taxes, but before benefits and other things are taken out, if you can afford that, Go ahead and then when the interest rates do go down, which they may, they may at some point get to 4. I mean, I'm not 100 percent sure that it will 5, 5 and a half might be as low as it goes right now. But if you're getting a mortgage at 7%, you can drop it down when it goes down to 5 or 6. You marry. The house, but you date the rate. You don't want to wait for outside forces to say, yes, now's the time. You don't need to wait for a government program that says, oh, we're going to give you 25, 000 for a down payment. You know what? That's going to do. It's going to increase the cost of the house by 25, 000. That's not going to help. So, when you are ready and you have money in the bank and you. You hear, you hear who the deciding factor is here? You are the deciding factor on when to make a purchase. When does it feel good? When do you not feel pressured? When do you have the money? That's when you make the purchase. One of the things that you need to remember is when we're sitting down to look at making a big purchase, there are a couple of things you want to ask yourself. What is my ultimate goal? Where do I want to be in 10 years? Or let's give it a smaller timeframe. In five years, I plan on moving to Oklahoma for a job. Well, then you don't want to buy a home right now because it doesn't fit with your plans. If you have plans to leave, there's no point in purchasing a home right now, because the home purchase, though, it may help you in the short term, may not be best for you long term. Does this purchase align with what my goals are? Does this purchase align with my resources? If I were to wipe all of my savings out. Put a down payment on a home. That would be the wrong thing because yes, if I have a down payment set aside, that's fine. But if I have a down payment, plus my Christmas saving money, plus my emergency fund, and I use all of that for the down payment, then what am I going to do when Christmas comes around? I'm going to be out all that money, and I'm not going to have the things I need. See, I have to use my resources wisely. It's something I learned in Girl Scouts. You have to use your resources wisely. So if I have something set aside specifically for a new car purchase, That money can go towards a new car, but I don't need to steal from my emergency fund or steal from other resources to make a purchase happen, to make it make sense, to make it fit what I want right now. When I could just wait a couple months and have the same result. The other thing is, what is your plan? Now we talked about goals. What are your goals? Goals are a little bit further out, but if you have a plan, I want you to stick to it. I don't want you to get crazy. I don't want you to go outside of what you need or what you want. Focus in on what your plan is. And then once you do that, you're able to make the decision on when to make the purchase. Set yourself a goal. Set yourself a plan. I had a plan, right? When I had baby number four on the way and I was like, I need to buy a car by September. You also have to check that plan. Because if your plan is too focused and you're not looking at other outside factors, then you might be missing something. And that's probably something that I should have had a, a more detailed conversation with my, with my money coach and asked, does this make sense? But at the time. I was just so in my head. I was like, this is the plan. This is the plan. This is the plan. I will not deviate and when I look back on it now, I'm a little upset. Now that doesn't mean I've told you guys before. I love my car. I'm very happy with the purchase. The fact that I have my four children soon to be five driving around in a 2012 Honda Odyssey. I love my car. It gets us around. We have no mechanical issues. We're over 100, 000 miles. That's fine. So people don't come at me with, I have a, I have a new baby, so I have to buy a brand new car. That's not true. And I am living proof of that. It is not true. You do not have to do that. It's absolutely asinine. Make a baby be the reason for your bad decisions. So what's on the horizon for you? What are you making a decision about? I, you know, funny example, I bought a brand new Stanley. And, you know, everybody big dumb cup. I know, but I got all excited about it. Cause it's real pretty. It's like this hot pink with these teal accents, which is totally on brand for me as everything to do with my accelerate your legacy colors. It's like, it's a workup. No, it's not. It's just pretty, but I actually agonized over whether or not to buy one because that's money that I could spend on something else. And so. When it was the right time was when I had a coupon for the store. I was still thinking about it a couple days later. That was when it was the right time for me. It's a silly example, but in the world we live in, it's a relatable one. So what about you? What are you thinking about purchasing? What are you curious about whether or not you're ready for? Does it fit within your goals? Do you have a plan on how to make it happen? Are your resources going to be used wisely in making this purchase? If you can say yes to those things, today's the day. Let's go get it. If you're like, actually, it's going to take me another six months. All right, let's adjust our plan so that in six months we're ready. If you need somebody to go over these to have conversations with, to be an outside resource, I can't tell you how valuable it is to have somebody on the outside look in and tell you, yes, this is a good decision. No, that's a horrible decision or question. Why, how did you get to this conclusion? Why is it that this is the thing that you're thinking about? Is there something else that can get you to the same place? Those are the things that we need to be thinking about when it comes to our career. Is college the only way to get there? Can we get certifications for much cheaper and faster and get to the same result? There are a lot of things to think about in this world. And sometimes we get so laser focused in that we stop paying attention to the other things that could be possibilities. And that's when you just want to have somebody to talk to you. Laura at accelerate your legacy. com, send me an email. Let's chat about how we can help you make the right purchase at the right time. That's it for this week, accelerators. Go out and make a difference. Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.