Build Your September Budget With Us: Step-by-Step Monthly Budget Walkthrough | 609

0:00This is going to be the last hot mess month that they ever had. We always go from the best number of your budget, which is your income, to the worst number immediately. You always want to do bare minimum on income and then like expenses for the bills. Like electricity, you always want to overestimate for that. There is money everywhere. And I'm like, this is the first time it's ever been like this. She paid off a ton of debt and now she has thousands going into her savings. And it's really eye-opening and mind-boggling for her to know that's a possibility. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it?

0:31Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do 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? Or you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? If you don't already know how to budget, or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. 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.

1:02We'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. 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 a 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.

1:35And 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. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. Guess what time it is. It's time for September's budget because before next Monday comes, it's going to be September. So you need to know what's happening with your money, what to do with your money, what's going on in your life. And that's what we're here to help you with. It's time for you to go get a pumpkin spice latte and make your September budget. Yes. We are here to help you with that. So we are going to walk through figuring out how to set up your September budget category by category.

2:08All right. We're going to start with what we always start with, which is wrapping up August because look here, what I'm going to speak this life over them, Vanessa, this is going to be the last hot mess month that they ever had. Okay. Oh, praise Jesus. And because we're all getting some routine now, all the kids are back in school and we're going to get some systemization in my home life. In literally every part of my life. So I had a bunch of people over yesterday and it kept coming up that we all had a lot of bills in August. That's what it was. And for us, our tuition bill is due in August.

2:41When you add that to everything else in August, it's been a little crunchy. You have to go scrappy. But September, we're going to go strong. The reason I say that is you have to wrap up the month. So this month for me, there was a lot of things that didn't go exactly as planned for my budget. We weren't the only ones. There was a lot of people. Yeah. So you have to go back and document that and make sure you have in August what really happened. And this is important because you need to know your bills account, your spending account, your savings. Like they're all correct and they're all up to date.

3:12Sometimes you might have been anticipating that you were going to pay a bill, but you didn't because it got delayed or something. So then you got to put it in the next month or the opposite might have happened. You were like, I really hope I could put that off until next month. And then no, it had to happen this month. So you need to go in and tweak everything and make sure everything's good to go. It's just about closing it out, right? So when you make a budget, it's the anticipation of what's going to happen. You're telling your dollars where to go. And then the month happens. This is why we recommend putting a buffer or some type of miscellaneous fund in for those things you may have forgotten about.

3:40So what we're trying to do is go back in the budget and go, okay, this is what I said was going to happen. I have checked my boxes. Let me add in a couple of things that maybe I forgot about. and let's close out the month because the purpose of this is to get that total remaining box to zero, right? You're trying to get your budget down to zero on purpose, right? And so we've got to be able to close out the month. And like Shana said, what this allows you to do is go back next year and go, okay, what happened in the month of August before I make August's budget so I can be better prepared? One thing that you really have to look at is your bills account number because it's never really going to be zero just because there's always rolling paychecks, rolling bills, and a buffer.

4:16but you want to make sure that buffer if you have it is what it's supposed to be and you didn't drain it or it's not too much and you need to do something with that money on purpose right sometimes we oh vanessa said we have this buffer and we're trying to be like over cautious but then there is a point we need to wrangle it in so just look at your account look at what actually happened wrap up august put a nice little bow on it and then move on over to the september tab of your life close the august tab i was watching a training yesterday and she said she was so good with her business systems that she closes all her taps at the end of the day.

4:47I have to keep mine open if I don't get to it. Otherwise I forget. Anyway, but you can close August tab once you do this and then you can open up September and just be done. Yeah. And we recommend being a paycheck ahead. If you wait till September's paycheck, it's going to be what, like the seventh or something? Sixth before that first paycheck comes in and you had bills coming due the first to the fifth. So you really need to use that paycheck ahead, those last paychecks in August to be able to start your September budget with. Yep. So go ahead and put your income in to September. This might be a regular paycheck.

5:19This might be bonuses. I have a client that has a longevity bonus. She works for the state government and gets an annual bonus, which is nice. We get to learn all these fun things when we work with you guys. But anyway, she's putting that into her budget and you need to do the same with your regular paychecks. And if they're changing, so I have another client, his income went up because he took, he's like the athletic director now. So he's in charge of all coaches. I'm like, is this enough money that they didn't need to take this promotion? His paychecks went up. So we have to document that. Any dividends, any other sources of income, if you're doing a garage sale or whatever, all of that needs to get listed in the income section.

5:55Another one of my clients, we recalibrated her minimum paycheck for her husband. He gets paid every week and he's a welder, which is so cool. So he makes so much money. Like they, whatever, go be, go, if you need to figure out a job, go find a trade. Yeah. Cause the trades are where is that I think her original checks that she's got a baseline on were a little optimistic. So we redid that. If you don't get the exact same paycheck because you work overtime or you have different things going on, you have a baseline. So you put that number and then as the paychecks actually drop, you're going to adjust it throughout the month and go ahead for her.

6:26We said every dollar that you guys make over that, this is where it's going. Once between sessions, if we don't get to talk, this is what you need to do with it. You're going to put the baseline in the income and then you can update it as you go. You always want to do bare minimum on income and then like expenses for the bills, like electricity, you always want to overestimate for that. So if you don't have that bill yet, you always want to overestimate on the bill side, but underestimate on the income side. That way, when everything actually does come in, it evens out. Once we're moving past the income, the very next thing we're going to put in is the debts.

6:53Why do we put the debts in next? It's because there's not usually as many of them as all your bills, right? And this is the numbers that we can really, we can take a second and glance at. If we can get rid of these, look at all this money we'd be saving. Look at, and it's just a way to streamline and separate and really wrap your brain around what you owe. We always go from the best number of your budget, which is your income to the worst number immediately. And Shaina said they're in their own separate section and category in the budget because we want to be able to delete them. We want to be able to get rid of them over time.

7:22And then you can use that column for something else right in your budget. But it's really nice to be able to just delete as you pay them off and you can see them. So we always put them first and then we move into the other fun stuff. And I want to point out our budget, you can get budgetbesties.com forward slash budget, our budget system. We actually did that on purpose. A lot of other budgets will put it down toward the end. While that's not necessarily wrong, you want to look at that before you plan everything else because you have to make those numbers, right? You're not going to make the numbers work once you figure out how much you're spent on my hair.

7:54You have to put those numbers in first. We know they have the possibility of going away, but if we can put them front and center, it helps us stay focused. And I'm not add to debt a lot of times. Yeah. And it helps us get mad at it too. It's like we go from the best number to the worst numbers. Oh, Shep, I didn't have that. What could I do with it? Yes, you're absolutely right. There's a total at the bottom of our budget and it tells you exactly what the total is in each category. So we like to tell clients, especially when we first start working with them, you're putting$2 ,000 extra on debt, not including your mortgage.

8:21What could you be doing with that money instead? It's really nice. Like Shannon said, to keep it front and center and make sure you're focused on it. When you're putting it in our budget, you want to make sure any budget the template that you're using, you want to make sure you're putting the minimum payment only. So you're not putting any extra money. You want to only put the minimum payment. What we're really trying to see is what are, what can we do with all of the dollars within your budget and your income? We're not saying you're going to end there, but we want to start with the minimum payments.

8:44If you're following along, what you're doing, what the reason we have set their budget up this way is so that it can be easier to start. So you don't have to think about the conglomerate, everything. Think about income first, write that down. Think about debt next, write that down. It's the minimum. The next thing, equally simple. The next column you're going to work through is the bills. Yeah. What bills do I owe? Once you look at the bills altogether, you can be like, maybe I don't need 18 subscriptions for movies or TV. And so you want to look at all of those at once. And honestly, if you can go ahead and put them in the order that they come out, like their due dates, that kind of helps too.

9:18It helps when you're checking the boxes because you're checking them off in order. It really makes a difference. Groceries are not a bill here, right? Your gas is on a bill. Your bills are things that you're being billed for specifically every single month on a reoccurring basis. Think of your subscriptions, utilities, mortgage, auto insurance, things like that. Everything that is coming every single month that doesn't usually change. It's very consistent. Yep. All right. Vanessa said the worst, the numbers, you go from the best to the worst. The better thing about them is they're usually very concrete, finite.

9:48This is exactly what I have to pay. There's no guessing game. Exactly. Then we move over to spending. And that's where you have to be subjective and come up with some numbers, which is why we teach you to do the 90 day audit so that you can see a little bit better. You spend money on, but that's what's next spending. And this is all subjective, not finite number. This is how much I think I want for each category. You're going to put in groceries, gas, spending money, kids, restaurants, whatever, babysitter. I have a bird sitter. That's in one of mine. Bird sitter. That's cute. Yeah. So all of those are going to go in your spending call.

10:17If this is the first time you're doing this, the 90 day audit is really going to help you decide, okay, okay, how much do I think I spend on groceries? When you do that and you've never added up how much you're spending, there's two questions you wanna ask. How much am I spending on everything, which is what the 90 day audit is gonna do. And then it's, okay, what do I wanna be spending? But you get to decide now, because if I go to the grocery store, I can spend some money. I love to go to the grocery store and I can easily blow like$400 a week on groceries. Do I need to? Absolutely not. So it's like the idea of really trying to figure out what is the right amount of money for you and your family to spend on a monthly basis that's going to get you through.

10:52And it's going to be not overly, not so much that there's a lot of extra, or you can buy a bunch of junk, but it really just was going to get you by. It's time to enter your coaching era because making good money should feel like making good money. Yeah. Imagine six months of private coaching where we'll tell you exactly what to do. No guesswork, no confusion, and absolutely no judgment. It's a done for you system that actually works. You don't know what you don't know, and that's not your fault. And that's why we're here. Financial coaching with us looks like two coaching sessions a month, personalized recaps, and after our support, you can text and email.

11:31So you're never stuck wondering what to do next. Together, we're going to build your budget, set up your system and tackle any challenges that come up along the way, which by the way, they always do. If what you're doing isn't working and you're tired of trying to figure it out on your own, sign up for financial coaching at budgetbesties.com forward slash coaching before all of our spots fill up and we will help you go further faster. Six months from now, you'll wish you started today. We have a client. She wanted to lower her grocery budget month two. Okay. Month one to month two. She was like, we can lower it.

12:04I didn't, I don't. By how much? What was she? Oh, we didn't get there yet. Because I didn't use it all. I had some extra. I was like, that's great. Congratulations. Good job. Um, be proud of that. We're not going to lower it because too soon, but especially Actually imagine having, oh gosh, I have to remember how many kids she has. She has foster, she fosters several kids. How many? She has a lot. Maybe four, maybe more. But imagine going back to school and having a lowered grocery budget. You have to go get the snacks. You know, you have to get in a system of food. So I was like, let's just pause that idea and make sure you need more than one month really to make sure that is right.

12:38And we came back and when we fill out the asset tracker, girl, there wasn't that much in the groceries. It was because she needed some bigger things. once you have a number they can start systemizing how if I get one so there's a lot of things that are bigger items and maybe my kids were just fighting over who was going to get toilet paper from my bathroom but maybe toilet paper and you have some of those household items that are bigger and you can start to systemize I buy those once a week I buy one different one a week or however you want to do it but part of why you have to really work on the spending categories it's not immediate like Vanessa said you have to be intentional because I could easily get every single bogo at Publix.

13:11Then we have a bunch of snacks and no real food. So you have to be intentional and give yourself time to figure it out. One of the categories that people go crazy on is going out to eat. Okay. Restaurants, whatever the fund name is for you. I had a client one time, she said, I want to cut it in half immediately. I was like, Oh no, we're not doing that. You're going to hate you. Like month one, she, cause she did the 90 day audit and came to the session. And she told me, this is how much we're spending currently on going out to eat. And I want to cut it in half. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that.

13:43I said, let's, we're going to put that exact number in because they can afford it. And then the next month she said, thank you for not letting me do that because we did use it because we're so not used to the system yet. We're so don't have everything organized yet. We're not on our game as far as making sure we're staying within our categories. We really needed that extra money in it. So we would caution you, make sure that you're allowing yourself grace for the first couple of months of really trying to set all this up. Yeah. And to Vanessa's point earlier, be a little over on these because don't go for the bare minimum because then you're going to have to steal it from somewhere else and the whole system's not going to work.

14:15Or don't go for the bare minimum because then everybody's going to resent you and you need time to transition because people get into the budget, they get going and they're like, okay, now I'm ready to really go all in. So we're going to do less of this and put more on debt or put more into savings. But you need a moment to change your habits, change your mindset and get to the point where you feel like I don't want to do some of these things. I would rather put my money somewhere else. Right. Just give yourself that time and you'll probably become the person that will do that. Yeah. So the spending category, this is where you basically live in your budget.

14:45Like Shana said, this is the discretionary stuff that happens. Your gas, your groceries, your pocket money, restaurants, haircuts, dog grooming, things like that, that come up throughout the month. Okay. So make sure you label all those. Yep. Okay. So what we've done is we've started with income and we, that was a great number. and then we subtracted debts, subtracted bills, subtracted spending. And now we're going to look at our savings buckets. You are going to be in different areas of this life, right? If you're just starting, you may not have much. You might be starting to set aside for an emergency fund.

15:13Or like Christmas. Or something that's definitely happening that you have to pay for. But if you're further along, maybe you have several savings buckets. Either way, that leftover number that isn't down to zero yet is what we can allot between savings or whatever other goals you have, which might be debt or something. Yeah. So you really want to decide after you've filled out your debts, bills and spending. And now I have this extra money. How many savings buckets do I want? How many things do I have coming up that I have to pay for? How much of it do I really want to put on debt? And you have to think about your priorities.

15:45What are your goals? What are some things that you are really wanting to happen? Cause I have a lot of clients. I, you know, she really wanted to start her savings buckets, but the reality is that she couldn't. And she was frustrated at the beginning, but she paid off a ton of debt and now she has thousands going into her savings. And it's really eyeopening and mind boggling for her to know that's a possibility. It's not a possibility. It's a reality for her, but she never thought it would be by paying off some of that debt. It really became an option for her. We do say you want to be bougie in a budget.

16:13And we do believe that there might be a month where you just have to pause. I think of it like triage, like you're not going to do anything else, but try to just stop bleeding. Try to just get your metrics or whatever. What are they called when you're under like security and feel like you're going to live? And then you can go into the regular hospital room. That's what I'm saying here. There might be a month or two where you don't get to do all of this stuff that you want to be able to do with your money. You're giving it a month or two to get the system in place, to be a little frugal, to say no sometimes.

16:42And you can come out of that and you're a paycheck ahead and you got everything automated. Just give it a minute. After you have your main income, debts, bills, spending, savings. Now we're going to look at what are some things that you need to add specifically to the month that are happening only during this time. Some examples would be Labor Day, maybe some fall food festivals that you have going on. One example for me is my son is going to start playing the bass. And so I have, so what my monthly budget is is piano lessons. But now in September, I think I'm going to, I'm going to owe rental fee for the bass.

17:14So that's going to be a little different and that's not consistent. So I need to add it to my budget and then I'll be able to take it off in October. You have to think about if there's anything this month specific. Another one for us is we have our car insurance coming out in September. My son is going to be getting his license. I know. I'm so excited. So I don't know. Is it two weeks away? Well, he can't get until September 11th, even though his birthday is on the 9th because our computers went down when he went to get it the first time. So we're going to pay all of our six-month car insurance, including his, which he's saved up for this month to make sure you're going to go put it in the budget.

17:50And I like how you put eating out after sports. One of the things that I am specifically adding for the next two months for September and October, because that's when my kids are playing soccer and volleyball. So if your child is playing a team sport, you probably know they go out to eat after every away game. We have to save for that. It's like an extra line item in your budget that you have to, because it's not cheap to go out to eat anymore. I want to go around with everybody and be like, are you all dying from this budget? This is not necessary, but it's treated like a given. Yep. And we just have to say no.

18:22It's expected almost. Yeah. After Ayla had her first gymnastics meet, they all went out to eat. And I was like, that's great. No. Sometimes you have to say no. When they're traveling home after their thing, you might have to put this, they're eating. Especially when it's nine o 'clock at night and nobody's had dinner, you have to decide what's right for you and your family. Shayna's thing was different. It was during the middle of the day, with 15 minutes from home. When my child's driving, when we're 45 minutes an hour away and it's nine o 'clock at night, like I'm starving. As the adult, we're stopping to get food.

18:49My point with that is it's just a new expectation. There's so much expectation that I am super here for with our budget. We all are super here for it. So here for it. It's just automatic. We obviously have the money for that I budgeted. It's fine. Yeah, that's why you have to put it in the budget. We're fasting until dinner, guys. I hope you enjoyed that. Okay, so you're gonna add in those different things, like we said, that are specific to September. She had a car appointment scheduled for September. Her brother was getting married. So she would be putting this in her September budget specifically.

19:18But then once you have all that figured out, then you're going to look at your paycheck plan because yes, we were looking at everything in a monthly view, but now all of those things are going to happen on your paycheck schedule. Your spending is going to get, so you're going to look at, okay, if I have a thousand dollars budgeted for groceries, each, and then I get two paychecks, $500 is going to be transferred to my grocery account each paycheck. And you're going to, you're going to look at that. If you buy our budget system, does it automatically for you? And then guess what? Then you set up the automatic transfer.

19:48That's the game changer. You're spending and the savings sections of your budget happen on payday. The bills and their debts are getting paid automatically in the bills account. Nothing is happening with that. You don't have to physically do anything as long as they're set up for auto pay because the money is coming. Your income is getting deposited into your bills account. The bills are getting paid. And then you are transferring out from there the spending stuff. Whether you get paid weekly, make those transfers by four, or if you get paid every other week, it would be by two. Yeah. This is a key part because the bills are off our hands.

20:19This needs to be as hands-off as possible. As soon as you set your budget, you need to set up the automatic transfers to the different accounts based on what you put for savings and spending on purpose. And then you're just funded spending money and saving money and you're busy going to sports and there's money when you need it everywhere. You're You're going to go into everywhere. There's money everywhere when you need it. And that's all automatic. And it's definitely a key part of the system. I know I laugh when I said that, but it is actually true. It is what happens with this when everything is automatic.