Your spending habits already reveal your priorities, even when your goals say something else. We sit down and get brutally practical about how to audit your lifestyle, cut the right costs, and turn “I should save more” into a plan you can actually follow.

Julie Schwenzer asks the questions we all have, and Jason Taylor, CFP, breaks down what he recommends to real clients: why spring is a smart time to review your money, how far back to look (three months), and how to separate normal spending from one time outliers like holidays or special trips. We also talk about why the 50/30/20 budgeting rule can feel impossible with today’s rent, inflation, and housing affordability and what to do instead when the math does not cooperate.

From there, we move into the clean up phase: cancelling unused subscriptions, finding bigger “quiet” expenses like car payments and overpriced phone plans, and tackling debt in the right order. Jason explains why high interest credit card balances are a financial emergency, why an emergency fund beats a credit card as a safety net, and what to consider before using tools like a HELOC or refinancing when interest rates are not in your favor. We also touch on using AI to speed up a spending audit (with privacy in mind), plus how retirement planning and retirement age expectations are changing.

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