Build Your September Budget With Us: Step By Step Monthly Budget Walkthrough | 451

0:00Skyler:Okay. It's almost September. And what does that mean, Vanessa? Oh, well, my first thought was pumpkin spice lattes. But no, we are building September's budget with you guys. Yes. We are here at the end of August, which means we need to start looking ahead at September. And so we do this every month. Hopefully you can follow along and use this as your reminder to build next month's budget, which in this case is September and fall back to school. Well, all the things are happening and we're excited to dive in with you. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck?

0:35Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt free but you don't want to live on beans and rice?

0:41Skyler:Or you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? Hey, it's okay if you don't already know how to budget or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it's okay if you want to seem like you have your finances all together or you're not on the same page with your spouse when it comes to finances. We know what you're doing probably isn't working, but guess what? You're in the right place. We're Shana and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners, and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019, helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and know exactly what to do with their money.

1:17Skyler:In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know, plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation. We can help you no matter where you're at, whether you're the single mom who's never had$500 in her savings account or the millionaire who's paid off four real estate mortgages. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time.

1:44This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. All right. So what is coming back into the school season, regular flow of life mean? It means we're making budgets consistently, y 'all. Look, summer has come and gone. Like, we're done with, we're past that. There's a lot at the end of the year, Shana, right? We've got holidays. We have events. School is starting. There's a lot going on. So we want to make sure we have a good budget in place so that way you're prepared for all those things financially.

2:15Skyler:Yes, we do want to make sure of that. And what is the first step that we always want to do before we even dive in to building the next month's budget? Well, we'll tell you. Since you asked, they asked, right? I could hear him asking. We're going to close out the last month's budget. What does that mean for you? So, you know, this podcast is airing on August 25th, okay? So you should be making your budget right around August 25th or maybe, you know, that week you're going to make the budget. And you're going to go and click everything off of August, update any amounts that needed to happen, add any spending that maybe you hadn't planned for, and just see where you land and close out the month.

2:52Skyler:For some of you, that means I had$200 left that I knew was going to hopefully happen by the end of the month, and I'm going to put that on debt. Or for some of you, it can mean different things, but you just want to close out those numbers for August. Yeah, and if you have our budget system, it's awesome. Yes, everybody should, obviously. But you can check off, right? So if you have the budget system, it allows you to use your little check marks. Important. Yeah, it is really important because it satisfies the completion of the thing, right? The bill has been paid. The spending money has been transferred.

3:23The money has been transferred into interest savings and buckets. So all that's happened. And if you're watching us via the video, then you're seeing, Shana, go ahead and click all the buttons to show you.

3:32Skyler:Just like therapy. What it does. It really is. So it's just really nice. And it allows you to go, okay, like Shana said, what happened this month so I could better plan for either next month or next year during that timeframe? So, again, closing out the month to be able to move on to the next month. Yes. And we do this with our clients. We make sure so they might have some, like we said, extra at the end of the month, or they might have overspend or something. We just want to get the numbers so we know what's really, truly happening. And then we're going to move on to September. Yeah. Okay. So what's the first thing we're going to do when we're building a budget?

4:03Skyler:It's really exciting. It's the best part. Yes. So we are going to talk about our income. Before we do that, I want to say somebody sent in this budget. So we had some requests about making a budget with a specific income. Yeah. Yeah, lower than last month. Last month we did the clients that make$20 ,000 or so a month or however much it was. And we had a request to make more realistic budgets. And I will say they said in the Facebook group, and if you're not in there, you can always go to budgetbessies.com forward slash Facebook and join our free group. They said, is anybody discouraged? And we had one of our clients comment.

4:36Skyler:She said, no, it's not discouraging. They said, was anybody discouraged that they were listening to a podcast with so much money or a budget that has so much money? and our client that has a lot of money said, nope, because it just shows me that doesn't matter how much money you have, the same problems are happening. And I think that is true. The same problems, but also the same concepts apply to everybody. Well, and I think it's fair to say, we have a lot of clients coming to us that are only making six, seven, eight,$9 ,000. Like not everybody who comes to us that works with one-on-one with us is making$20 ,000 a month.

5:08We, and to be fair, the budget we already had in place for September was making$7 ,000. And then And this person in the Facebook group said, hey, I would love to share my budget. We whitewashed it, obviously, so nobody can tell who this is. But this budget that she sent us in, their income level is$8 ,000 a month. So we think this is a really great way to show you how, like Shana said, it doesn't matter the income. It's just like, what can that amount of money do for you? And how can it serve me best?

5:33Skyler:Yeah. Okay. So these folks, this person is really active in our Facebook group, and she's really wonderful. I love watching her win, and she's getting closer and closer to where she wants to be. So we're really grateful to have that. So this particular income and budget has a lot going on. So this person, we have a husband that gets paid weekly and a wife that gets paid twice a month on Fridays. And then the husband gets paid every week. And so one thing that we would say that might make it a little easier to clean it up is just when you're putting your income in, try to put it in when you're going to get the paycheck, like in order of paychecks.

6:05Skyler:In the month, yeah. For me, it's just exciting to be able to check them off in the order that they're listed. And so they put all their income in here. They put the child support. So we're doing really, really great. Good job with that. Yep. So after you list all of your income, remember, it isn't just paychecks. It's child support. It's alimony. It's money you made from a garage sale. It's money you made from Facebook Marketplace. Like it's whatever. Bonuses, yep. Yes, bonuses, commission, everything. Every penny that you make that month is going into this section. So once you finish that, we're going to move on to the debt column.

6:33And in the debt column, we're only listing the minimum amount that you owe that company. Now, it's very, very important that you do that. So if you have an auto paying like$50 extra on top of the minimum payment, we want to take that out. We want to remove that. We're only going to list minimum payments here.

6:48Skyler:Yes. And I have to tell you, it looks like this particular budget perhaps isn't doing that because we have some very round numbers. Very specific numbers. And she has budgeted it down to zero. So she might have changed it after she did. But what we would want you to, what you want to do is what Vanessa said. You're going to list them all out and only put the minimums to begin. And then the best practice will be later to put extra payments separately so that you can check them off all separately, not just in one conglomerate. We don't want you to have to – like I have people that, you know, they have house cleaners or whatever.

7:22Skyler:I'm not going to put the whole total amount. I want to put each week what you're doing so we can check it off because some months you might have five payments or whatever. So we want you to be able to know, yes, I have two payments done but two to go, and you want to be able to see all of this separate. So in this case, you know, one of the things that we've, we always want you to notice is how much of your money is, how much of your income is going to debt. And it is available to see on our budget. We, it does it automatically. I think it's really important, Shana, to hone in on that, that like if you tithe weekly, I think you need to put that in there weekly.

7:54If, like Shana said, if the house cleaner comes weekly, put that in. If your debts are being pulled out multiple times of the month, you need to put that in separately. And let's have a conversation about that too. I just had a new client sign on and like, well, we pay our car payment twice a month. It pulls out when we get paid. So that way it's, it's the accountability factor. They want to make sure they have the money available when they get paid. So they have it paying that way. But I reminded them, you are now paying two extra payments a year because of that. And you're probably already ahead.

8:22And we need to actually like clean up your budget to see how much money extra you have. So that's a whole conversation on itself. But what we're saying is, you need to only list the minimum payments and then all the extra that you have, then we can decide how much extra you're going to put on debt. And we're going to tackle one thing at a time. Because if you have a piece of string and you cut it in five different, you cut it five different ways, right? You can't really go very far with those little pieces of string. But if you keep it all together, you can go further faster if you have it all in one direction.

8:51So that's kind of what we're trying to do here.

8:53Skyler:Yeah. And so the$2 ,000, the fact that they're paying$2 ,000, I do think that she's paying extra on debt. That's why she got her budget down to zero. But where and how much? Yeah. Well, imagine in this case, and think about what your debt minimum is equal. What you could do with$2 ,200, they're$2 ,200. So they're bringing in$8 ,000. You know, one fourth, more than one fourth of their income is going straight to debt, right? So that's just, that's the whole point of getting on the system and doing it is so that you can hopefully get beyond that and be able to put more of that money in savings or spending and more Yeah, we want it to be eye-opening.

9:28Like it is. Sometimes people see that number at the bottom of the column. They're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I was spending that much money just on minimum debt payments. Like, yeah, but that's the point. It's to get you fired up. It's to get that going inside of you so you want to do something about it.

9:43Skyler:Yep. Okay. So then we go after that. So we have done the income, right? We always start with the income. So we're checking those off. Not because they've happened, but just so that you, if you follow along on video, you can know where we're at. But the next thing we're going to do is your bills. And again, we want you to list out your bills, list them all out, figure out how much you are owing and their due dates. And then when you put them in your budget, try to put them in order because it's just going to make your life easier. Cleaner. But yeah, so here's the bills and bills. Listen, bill is anything with a due date, literally anything with a due date.

10:12Skyler:And an invoice is a good indicator that it's a bill, right? Not spending. So you're going to have all your normal things that you might expect, your mortgage, your utilities, all of that. But then we're also going to put the pin, like this person has Pandora music. that used to be your music go-to for a while. Yeah. Amazon Prime, that's where you can watch Chosen now. I just found that out. That's where that's on. So that's important. And then they have some other stuff. They have Amazon Prime and then Prime Video. Sorry. Separate. So all of your subscriptions would go down here too. And I did mention last time, and I'm going to mention it again, I've actually been separating the subscriptions down in the bottom half of the bills column.

10:45Skyler:So you can see, because, you know, she's been doing really good. This person that's - It's conservative. And she's been like really on this journey for a minute. So she's doing good. But when you first do this, guys, you might see all of the subscriptions you're paying for and realize we have some duplicates that we don't need. And so if you can put them all together, it'll be easier to see that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So one thing I want to point out here, they have a transfer station, which is their garbage. And it looks like they probably pay this quarterly. We're not sure. Again, somebody sent in this budget.

11:16We whitewashed it to the generic names and labels that we thought it was. so$350 in one month is a lot of money right so what we want the idea here is that you are paying for this this month and then you have an annual bills section that shana just put on there right now and so for from this point on you are taking that 350 and you're dividing it by three and going okay if i put a hundred and something dollars away every single month then i'll be able to afford that$350 every quarter when it comes due and i no longer have to pull$350 out of one month's budget to make this work. That's the goal here.

11:54Yeah.

11:55Skyler:Yeah. So they have all of their bills listed. And so as we do that, you know, and we didn't take everything off, but what the budget is doing here, guys, is subtracting as we go. We are doing all the mandatory things. We do not actually divide your budget and wants and needs, but we're sort of going in the order that things are going to happen. Like you're going to pay your debt. You have to pay your debts, and then you have to pay your bills. And then now we have a really good picture with what's left over that we can put towards spending and savings. Yeah. All right. So this next category, this is where you live in your budget.

12:26This is where you're getting Chick-fil-A's, where you're going to Target's, where you're buying groceries and dinner for the house, where you're getting your gas, right? This is where you have your fun money. So you want to list this. And maybe this is the first time you've ever put a number on like what you're spending on groceries. So you're probably going to get it wrong a couple months in a row and that's okay. The point here is just try to guesstimate and do a best guess here. The 90-day audit is a great way to start kind of filling this in. But just know and be okay with tweaking it over the next couple of months.

12:56Skyler:Yeah. And so these folks, their grocery budget is$800. And it is a family. And I can't remember how many kids they have. But so they're eating as a family for$800 a month, which is great. How unfortunate that their gas bill, like to pay for gas almost as much as groceries. So they must have a community or something. And so then they have family fun budgeted, which family fun is a great catch-all label in your budget for going to restaurants, going bowling, going to the local baseball game. Like whatever things that you want to do as a family, you can put in there. Okay, here's one you might need to put in September's budget.

13:30Skyler:Well, apparently there's going to be K-pop demon hunters sing-along. So my husband's buying those tickets for the girls. Okay, who knew that was a thing? Something might pop up like that. But that would be a family fun event is what my example is. And then they have their spending money,$200 a month. That's a good - $50 a week. That's good. You can totally do that. That's doable. So then they have, that's what they're planning to spend kind of consistently throughout the month, each month. Yep. So up top, they have what, like Shannon said, what's consistent. They even have a Facebook market page section.

14:02Yeah.

14:02Skyler:Vanessa wants to know more about this. I do. So she didn't list a number yet. So maybe this month she wasn't buying anything yet, but she did have it on the budget, which was fun. And then at the bottom, she kind of listed, okay, what is month specific? So she knows this month they have vehicle registration, and she's got her pets, whether it's a vet appointment, maybe it's grooming, maybe it's both. So they have some stuff with their pets going on this month. Yeah, and so those were the this month things. You guys for September, what do you need? Probably now that your kids are back in school, you might find out the things that you forgot to get if you're like me.

14:33Skyler:So you might need that. Obviously, Labor Day is going to come in hot. It's going to be really at the very, literally the very beginning. You might be having some sports in your life. You might have anything like that. Maybe this is when the pets do. My kids, maybe you're going to have dentist appointments. Like what's happening in the month of September for you? I will also say that Hobby Lobby puts up their Christmas decorations in July. So if you're like me and you love Christmas decorations, you may want to start budgeting now. Okay. So listen, we talked about at the end of the year, there's a lot happening.

15:02So you may need to start now. If you've not, if you don't have any of your savings buckets in yet, that's okay. Don't worry about it. But you may now need to start budgeting in Christmas, budgeting in Thanksgiving, budgeting in Halloween, like all the things that are coming up. Maybe you have a carnival. It's a big thing in some areas where the carnival comes once a year and people are blowing like$1 ,000 that weekend on the carnival. Maybe that's you. It's totally fine. Put it in the budget. If you need to take three months to save up for that, that's okay. So we're just saying this is a great time to look ahead and see what can you start pre-planning for.

15:35Skyler:Yeah. And so then the only other thing that you might want to add in that I was just thinking is if you have tuition, like, right. For like college. College. We are, our folks have tuition to pay for their private school. You might have tuition. They call it tuition for preschool or daycare sometimes. And then you might have any of the extracurriculars that kids are participating in. We get billed monthly for those. So you just, anyway, you just might want to think what else needs to go in your budget. And so then you're going to have those things. And then like Vanessa said, at this point, now this client had already done it.

16:07Skyler:At this point, what you've done is you've taken your income, subtracted debts, subtracted bills, subtracted your regular spending, and then what you think you might need to, what might be coming up for this month. And then what's left over, then you need to figure out what you need to do a lot for savings. And so you're going to look, once you get all of that sort of running up and running, savings buckets are a really fun thing to start. And you're going to be able to assign whatever leftover money you have toward going to those things. For this person in particular, Vanessa has pointed out, we clearly need an annual bill savings bucket.

16:37Skyler:We've got this transfer station, which, or this trash bill, which is either quarterly or twice a year or whatever it is. We've got vehicle registration, the pet visits, and the pets is plural. So we probably want to start saving for those things moving on from now so that we can be ready for, we can get all of it and be ready for the next time. Well, and it looks like, you know, we said before that they are putting extra on debt because we have some really round numbers. So that is their goal. This month was to pay the transfer bill. They have the pets. And then they did not put anything in their savings buckets.

17:11But maybe next month we'll allow them some wiggle room to be able to take, if we did convince her, Shaina, to only bring those payments down to minimum payments and see how much she had extra for there. So maybe next month we'll start in annual bills for her transportation, for her pets, and whatever else she's got going on. But right now she couldn't do it, which is okay. But she kept the labels. I want to mention that really quick. She kept the labels on the budget for the important savings buckets that she has her eye on. And I think that that's really great because it keeps you like, okay, I'm going to get there.

17:42Okay, it's coming soon.