A recent Yahoo Finance-Marist Poll survey found that one-third of Americans reported deteriorating financial conditions over the last year, with Gen Xers and baby boomers among the most frequently impacted.
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If you’re feeling unsure how to get rid of debt, control your expenses or simply understand your money, now’s a good time for a financial reset that gets you back on track for financial security.
Financial YouTuber Humphrey Yang outlined a plan to sort out your finances in around 90 days, or 12 weeks. Here are the simple steps he recommended doing each week.
First, Yang recommended starting to view your personal finances like a business, meaning you know how much you bring in, spend and profit. He said to go through your last three months of statements to categorize expenses as fixed, discretionary and debt payments, and then find the monthly average for each. After subtracting the month’s average expenses from your income, you’ll see what’s left to save, or your profit.
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Now that you better understand your spending, you can proceed with what Yang described as “cutting the fat.” He suggested ranking your expenses from the highest to lowest, and brainstorming any opportunities to cut each by 10% to 30%.
You’ll often find it easier to lower your smaller discretionary expenses — such as Uber rides and unused subscriptions — than housing costs and other major essentials. Yang suggested considering why you’re paying for each of your expenses and how important it is.
You’ll take the “pay yourself first” approach, which involves setting up automatic transfers for your paychecks. While you’ll need to keep some of your pay in your checking account for bills, Yang encouraged sending at least 10% to your high-yield savings and investment accounts.
He explained, “This simple act of automating your finances is going to be one of the most single important things you can do because it’s going to take out all of the hassle and friction of managing your money.”
The KeyBank 2025 Financial Mobility Survey found that debt stressed out 33% of Americans, including many who didn’t necessarily struggle to make their payments.
Since debt is an expensive burden, Yang encouraged knowing your balances and interest rates so you can plan to pay debt off more quickly and save money. For example, you might make bigger automatic monthly payments or negotiate a lower credit card interest rate. You can also try the Debt Destroyer tool to explore different payoff strategies.
Yang said, “$1,000 is a significant number because it’s when your bank account actually crosses the four-digit barrier, which psychologically should make you feel pretty good.”
Having an emergency fund of this size will put you ahead of many Americans, and selling unused items, looking for extra income opportunities and further cutting costs can help you get there. Yang recommended keeping this money in a competitive high-yield savings account.
With your emergency savings in place, you can open a brokerage account to start investing and growing your money further. Yang recommended S&P 500 ETFs and index funds, which he said help you benefit from the stock market’s average 8% to 10% return. You can use automatic transfers from your pay to fund these investments.
Even small, consistent contributions add up when you factor in growth. For example, investing $300 each month for 30 years at an 8% return gets you to around $408,000, per this compound interest calculator.
Boosting your income provides more funds to invest and improve your financial security. It’s also essential because there will come a point where you can’t cut your expenses further.
Yang discussed several options, such as requesting a raise, moving to a higher-paying job, taking on a side gig, selling things and spending time learning profitable skills.
Knowing the reason you want to save money over the next several months will help motivate you moving forward. That’s why Yang suggested jotting yours down (along with the target amount) and telling others about your goal.
Maybe you want to use your spare cash to pay off $10,000 in credit card debt, put down $50,000 to buy a house or boost your emergency fund to $6,000. You can divide the amount by the number of months until you want to reach that goal to know how much to save each month.
Yang explained, “Credit cards are a dangerous double-edged sword because it’s the one category of personal finance where you need to know yourself very intimately.”
He said credit cards may be OK if you can control your spending, avoid carrying balances and enjoy the rewards. However, if you have less self-control, rethink using credit cards or do a short trial run, since you risk paying a lot of interest and becoming overburdened with debt.
Your net worth is simple to figure out by manually subtracting your debts from your assets, or using a tool like Dave Ramsey’s net worth calculator. So, if your debt balances are $60,000, and your assets are $100,000, you’d have a $40,000 net worth.
Yang explained that tracking this number is often fun since you’ll see how your wealth progresses, which is also motivational. He suggested a quarterly or semiannual review.
This week is for looking back at your spending since week two, recalculating average monthly expenses by category (fixed, discretionary and debt payments) and determining how your expenses have changed up to this point.
Yang said that you’ll want to aim for flat or reduced expenses. He also recommended addressing any money leaks you find.
During the last week, start thinking about your bigger goals for the next one, five and 10 years. Examples include having $10,000 saved in a year, starting a business in five years and retiring from full-time work in 10 years.
Yang advised making smaller savings goals that eventually help you reach each milestone by the target deadline. He also encouraged doing quarterly check-ins moving forward so you can check your overall financial progress.
Yang added, “I personally like to review my finances at the end of every month and then at the end of every quarter — so March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 31.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Humphrey Yang’s 12-Week Financial Reset — How It Works
