Jasmine Taylor was thirty when she found herself with nearly $70,000 in debts that included student loans, medical, and credit card debt. The Texan woman used her stimulus check money to start a cash-stuffing business online.
Two years later the business not only paid off her debt but also turned her into a successful businesswoman. The company she started online, Baddies and Budgets, brought in $850,000 in 2022, and she is well poised to cross the million-dollar mark in 2023.
Prioritizing Your Stimulus Checks And Tax Refunds
The last three years have been a period of limited means for most Americans as jobs were slashed and prices went up simultaneously. Families learned to prioritize the use of their stimulus checks and other federal support measures.
While there were families who spent the money to pay off debt, others learned how best to use the money to protect their financial future.
There are many options that Americans choose to spend the stimulus money that the IRS sent to taxpayers through the economic impact payments and other measures like the expanded Child Tax Credits.
Using these Stimulus Check funds to help weather this unprecedented economic shutdown with minimal long-term impact has helped pay dividends in the long.
For most long and moderate-income Americans, it was a period of acute financial distress as they struggle to pay off their mortgages. For most Americans who could not work out a deal, paying off their debts was the best option.
Next in priority was paying off car payments or utility bills. While most local governments did not allow utility companies to shut off service immediately, being ready with the amount was the sane option.
Most Americans used the stimulus check amount to pay for their upcoming bills and to figure out which ones would hurt their credit and future finances the most if they skipped a payment.
Credit cards and other high-interest debts were the most troublesome for Americans during the pandemic. People feared defaulting on their payments as it would affect their future ability to get quick cash when they need it the most.
Planning For Your Monthly Expenses Is Most Important, Especially At A Time Of No Stimulus Checks
Juggling your debts and expenses and keeping them in line with your earnings can go a long way in managing your funds.
And when it comes to budgeting for monthly expenses, calculating your tax refunds would be a good idea to start calculating your expenses.
Jasmine Taylor has helped many Americans with just that, managing limited expenses by planning ahead of time. And she is well on her way to becoming a millionaire doing just that. Like millions of others, she lost her job in early 2021 and struggled to manage her monthly budget. She was soon buried under heavy debt. That was when she discovered the idea of cash stuffing on social media.
Cash stuffing is a money management practice where you put your debit and credit cards away and revert to the old system of managing all your expenses in cash.
You put all your monthly expenses in envelopes that are designated for different expenses including rent, shopping, groceries, etc.
Taylor said that she put aside money for their bills in separate envelopes, elaborating on how she managed her monthly expenses.
She followed that system and began putting aside money for bills in separate envelopes. She says she put aside allocated money for variable expenses, which include weekly spending.
She also allocated a part of her income for sinking funds, which are like little short and long-term saving accounts.
These envelopes can include a rainy-day fund, holiday expenses, and vacation money. She says that this system of allocation changed her life. She was not just managing her monthly expenses. She also needed to be accountable for her previous financial mistakes.
The cash-stuffing system showed her that she was spending way more money than she had normally budgeted for. She shifted from swiping her credit cards for every expense to having to tangibly handle the cash. The credit system lured her into spending frivolously on impulsive spending, she realized.
And when she added it all up at the end of the month, it was a considerable amount. She realized the reason why she continued to struggle to pay certain bills or struggle to make it to the next payment date.
By switching to the cash-stuffing method, Jasmine paid off $32,000 in debt and even managed to save $1,000 in the first year. She says it felt surreal to realize that she had been messing up her finances all her life, and then she suddenly hit upon the right way of managing it.
Jasmine Used Her Stimulus Check Money To Start Her Cash Stuffing Management Business
She used her $1,200 stimulus check from the first round of the stimulus check to launch Baddies and Budgets. It was her own line of products that were designed to help others adopt the system of cash stuffing.
Her own examples of using the cash-stuffing method and managing to still pay off her debts with little more than stimulus checks inspired many to adopt the system. Her line of products included planners, budget binders, spending trackers, and labeled envelopes.
Within the second year, her business has netted $850,000 and is well on its way to net in over a million dollars in 2023. She says that she teaches her audience and her customers exactly what she practices to this day in her life. She continues to be frugal and gives herself a weekly salary of $1,200 and invests the rest into her business.
Cash stuffing has been around for decades though Jasmine must be credited with taking the concept to the TikTok generation. She says that older women reach out to her and say that it was a system that their grandmother used.
While the stimulus checks were wildly popular and successful, it appears that they are not going to return soon, at least not the federal ones.
During this economic downturn that has been compounded by record inflation, the US government is using a number of levers to keep families spending, while shielding them from the most dire situations.
