Alongside WBEZ, we’re gathering your questions about all things money and finances. Then we get your questions answered by the people who know best.
We heard from Morgan of Pilsen, who said:
“I hear a lot of things about inflation and tariffs. So I want to know a good way to budget and prepare for any changes in my spending habits.”
Track and save
Having a budget then seeing where your money goes can help you figure out what to cut back on, says Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar, a global investment management and research firm based in Chicago.
“One category that we always tell people to take a look at is subscriptions,” Benz said. “If you haven’t looked at your credit card bill closely for a month, there’s a good bet that you’ve got subscriptions on there that are stacking up that you’re not necessarily using. So do an audit there as a starting point.”
Setting up automatic withdrawals from your checking into savings accounts can make budgeting easier and help ensure you’re prioritizing things like your retirement, Benz says.
“If you want to have an emergency fund — and everyone needs an emergency fund — you’d also want to be automating your contributions to it so that you can get it up to the level that you’re targeting,” she says.
Managing price hikes
Tariffs have yet to fully hit consumers, Benz says, with businesses appearing to “kind of be eating those extra costs.”
But she warns that businesses won’t be able to keep prices down much longer.
“If you have things on your radar that you definitely expect to spend on in the next couple of months, if you need some new clothes for fall or you need a bigger ticket item like a new car, do some shopping now because we haven’t fully seen the impact of the tariffs,” she says.
And if you see your go-to items on sale, consider stocking up.
“These are nonperishable things, of course. You can do a little bit of stocking up when you see good prices on things,” Benz says. “But the big caveat is you’ve got to have the space for the stuff. So if you are going to really load up on a given product, you need to have space in your house to keep it.”
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