The New Year is just a few weeks old, and there’s still time to get good financial habits in place that can help us have a better year ahead when it comes to spending, saving, and budgeting.

On this latest edition of Connecting Faith, best-selling author and finance columnist Mary Hunt returns with wise advice on planning and managing the money we have, as well as her collection of tips to help us save more and spend less on everything from groceries to grand kids.

In addition, we get a refresher course in how to get out of debt and stay that way. It’s applicable money talk with Mary Hunt. Here’s where our conversation takes us:

In a quest toward debt-proof living, our underlying issue is a need for instant gratification. Our attitude is often, “Buy now & pay for it later”.

Our goal is to get to a place where we’re managing our resources in a way that allows us to give and save. We can’t rely on credit cards to live beyond our means long term.

Mary calls for us to get ride of our credit card debt as soon as possible. If we’re using credit cards, the best case scenario is to pay off our bill in full each month. We have to be wise in the way we approach our credit decisions.

“There is not a credit card around that was created to make your life better!”

One credit card is enough, says Mary. Also – it isn’t advisable to be using more than 30% of your credit line at any juncture.

These actual pieces of advice aren’t as tricky to put into place as the underlying state of mind. We need to get through to ourselves this message: we can’t have everything we want at the moment we want it.

Highlight: Just cash

Developing good financial habits