How Much “Fun Money” Should You and Your Spouse Get Each Month? (Hint: It’s Non-Negotiable) | 433

0:00Hey, before we jump into the show, we wanted to give you a heads up that our free budget workshop is happening Friday, September 11th at noon central. At the workshop, we'll show you the simple budget system that we use to help women organize their money, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and finally feel confident when it comes to their money. So if you're brand new to budgeting, this will help you start the right way and avoid common mistakes. And if you already have a budget that's not working, this workshop will help you simplify it and make it work for real life. This workshop is 100 % free and you can save your seat right now at budgetbesties.com forward slash workshop.

0:32How much money should you and your spouse get for personal spending each month? $100? $400? Should you use the cash? Should you use the card? So listen, turns out there's really no right amount, but we do know that you have to put it in your budget. So you want to make sure that you do have the right amount for you in your budget. And today in this episode, we're going to explain exactly how to figure that out. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are 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?

1:07Or 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.

1:43In 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.

2:10This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. So this episode is inspired from a Facebook post that we had in our Facebook group, which you can always come join. It's free. It's the fund community. It's budgetbesties.com forward slash Facebook. This was posted by a member in that group. And then there was 20, like so many comments. Everybody had their little take on it. And there was a lot of back and forth. So I thought it'd be a good episode. Yeah. And a lot of people were saying like they have$40. It was like a range from like$40 to$400. We've even seen with our coaching clients, like up to$500 to$1 ,000 a month each person for spending money.

2:45So we're just going to break it down and talk to you guys about what do you feel like is the right amount for you. Okay. So we've got what four different points, Vanessa, that we're going to talk through. And the first one here is that it's non-negotiable. That's the most important thing that you take away from today. As far as personal spending money, we have people all the time, we'll see like they try to give their spouse spending money, but they're like, I don't really need any. Nope. That's not okay. Everybody has to have spending money in their budget. And you need a little freedom. So what we know is that you, if you don't have any breathing room, you're going to find the money somewhere in your budget to spend it.

3:18So you might as well just go ahead and make a line item for you specifically. So that way you have, like you said, the freedom to be able to spend money as you want. Yeah. And this is also this line item really helps you fix a lot of the money baggage that you have. Maybe some of the bad habits that you have when it comes to your budget, which is or to spending, which is I never know if I have any money. I don't know how much I have. I feel bad. So I go spend money. If you systemize how much spending money you have and that you always have it, you'll see a lot of that stuff start to heal. You'll feel an abundance.

3:48Like Vanessa said, you won't feel restricted. You'll feel freedom. And a lot of people say that, oh, I had money, but then it went to my kids. I had money and then this unexpected expense came up. So what we're trying to do is tell you that this money that you are putting aside specifically for yourself to spend this month is for you. It doesn't have, not for your kids' lunch money. It's not for your kids' field trip money. It's not for their friends' birthday. This is specifically for you to spend on however you want. Yeah. And it doesn't matter what you call it. You can call it whatever you want.

4:17You can call it personal money, spending money, pocket money, fund money. I had clients that call it their slush fund. Like literally everybody has their own verbiage for it. It doesn't matter what it is. Just make sure it's in your budget. All right. So point number two is that there's really no wrong answer here on how much you choose for your spending money, especially if this is maybe the first time that you're actually putting it in your budget for yourself. Yeah, there's no wrong answer. It's going to fluctuate with your season of life, with what's going on with your budget. You might have a lot, you might have a little, and that's okay.

4:47There's a lot, we're going to get into a couple more points about what's really going to affect it. But the point is there isn't a wrong answer, except the only wrong answer, which we already covered, which is not having it. If you have it, you're winning, yeah. If it's really hard for you to think about how much money do I want to spend or do I want to have to spend in a month? I try to have clients break it down in a week. It's okay. think about what you do on a weekly basis where do you go where are you at what are you doing and okay what do you think you need for those seven days and then we times it by four and that's easier to figure out what is the right number for you yep okay so then point number three here is complexity of your budget is going to affect it right what do we mean by that if you have a budget that like is the perfect happy budget that we would have for you once you've been through six months of coaching where you have savings buckets all figured out.

5:34You've got gas money set aside, which is spending, but it's not your personal spending. You've got grocery money, which is spending, but it's not personal spending. You've got money set aside for haircuts. You've got money set aside for kids. If you have all of that, then it's going to affect the amount that you actually have for personal spending. On the other hand, if you don't, if you're just starting out, then it might be a little bit more. You might have more spending money because you haven't divided it all out. But if you have that complex budget, it's not really complex. It's just fully complete.

6:01It's in its best form. Then you don't need as much because everything that you might potentially spend money on, gifts, Christmas, hair, all of that is already in your budget. So you probably don't need as much for your personal spending amount. Yeah. A lot of people, when they first come to us, they're like, I don't know what the right amount is because I have, we go out to eat and the kids need this and I need that. But the reality is those are all expenses that should be planned out as line items in your budget. And that's what we want you to start doing is really thinking about what is your life looking like?

6:30This is season of life involved. How much money do the kids need? How much money do you need to go out to eat? How many Chick-fil-A runs do you have? And plan all that out. We're not asking you to get like nitty gritty down, just like generalized numbers. But then the idea here is, okay, that is all spending money. But Shana said, it's not your spending money. So after you've planned out how much money you need in your budget for your family and for life, then you can say, okay, now what does my budget allow for me? Like, what do I want to have for myself for small little spurges throughout the month?

6:59And that's a really good point. So if you go to budgetbesties.com forward slash budget, you can get our budget and it will help you because the way that this all works is you take your income, you subtract your debt minimum payments, then you subtract your bills, and then we're getting the spending. And like Vanessa said, the beginner budget, even the beginner budget is going to have grocery money set aside, gas money set aside, money you're spending for restaurants and kids. Those are our minimum four along with personal spending. So once you have all of those figured out, then you'll put the personal spending.

7:28That's non-negotiable. All of those all are going to be in your budget. And you'll be able to see my income minus the bills, how much I'm really working with to have for spending. And then the more complex, the more advanced, mature you get with your budget, you'll have those savings buckets. And those are also going to have some things that you would typically spend money on. Yes. Whether you get to that or not is fine, but you will already have money set aside for the different things you spend on. Like Vanessa said, then you just have to figure out what do I want to spend for me for fun each week, each month.

7:55So for example, this may be your first budget or you're just starting out with this budgeting journey and you're like, okay, I get my nails done. I get my hair done. Maybe I get a pedicure or I get a massage. I'm just naming different things. If you get all those, you are living the best life ever. But okay, so let's say you get those things done and you're like, is that part of my spending money? We may say, yes, if that's what you want. A lot of people may at the very beginning don't have savings buckets set up. Shayna said they don't have a glam up fund yet where they've been saving for this stuff for a couple months.

8:25And now you have a bulk of money to be able to spend on those items throughout the year every now and then. So yeah, let's include that in your spending money. But if you already have your savings buckets built and you've been planning for a year and you have all that done, then your spending money is literally just those small little spurges to target. Maybe you see a necklace. Maybe you see a shirt that you want or sunglasses and all that big stuff, your hair, your nails, your facials, all that you've been planning for in your savings bucket. So that's an example of maybe when you would put it in your spending at the very beginning when you don't have anything added up in your buckets or versus you've been doing this for six months and you have all that set up.

9:04All right, budget besties, it's time for some real talk. You don't need another budget. You need a budget system. Our simplified budget system is what you've been looking for. It's going to allow you to be bougie on a budget. You'll be able to easily set up a system that runs automatically and shows you exactly where your money is going. And it's going to give you permission to spend. Everybody loves that. Yeah. It's straightforward, pretty, and packed with walkthrough videos that break down the exact methods we use with our clients to get out of debt, set up a bills account, separate spending, build savings buckets, and end the paycheck to paycheck feel.

9:40If you're new to budgeting, this is the perfect way to jump in. And if you're already a budget nerd like us, you're about to meet your new obsession. This is the upgrade to your finances that you need right now. Yeah. So head on over to budgetbestc.com forward slash budget and grab yours. Now back to today's show. Yeah. And I want to pause here and mention Vanessa, why are we sitting on a couch? I just, I feel like we didn't cover that. And we want you guys to know it's raining outside. We have a Monday. We haven't seen each other in a while. So we just had cozy vibes and we wanted to put that out there for you.

10:13Now back to the regular program. I feel like we had to say something. Looking up, like hanging out. Everyone's things look a little different. What I do want to say is it's important here how you do this. You might get confused. So you might think, like Vanessa said, we have the women getting their hair did. We have the men going to get their haircuts every week or every two weeks. And it might feel like that's spending money. And you can decide that. But what we would want to say is you want to make sure you have spending money separate. Those are things that kind of have to happen. The bouchiness of it maybe varies, right?

10:43But you have to get your hair done and everybody benefits if you have your haircut, like both of you. Him and he and her, we're all fans of hygiene, okay? And looking good. So if you want, sometimes we have couples that will add that into the spending account. It's easy for them to go swipe or pay when they're at the haircut. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's your whole spending budget. So just understand that those two things, while you are spending it, it's not really a personal, like, fun budget line item. Yeah. So a lot of our husbands are like, listen, I want one account that I can spend all my money out of, and that's it.

11:15That's great. That's fine. But when we make your budget, we're going to separate those things out so we can see, okay, this is for haircut. This is for gas. This is for spending money. So on the budget, it's separate, but the amount of money in the account is just all together. And then I do want to add in here one thing that's been coming up a lot lately, actually, is video games. So we, if you want to spend money on video games or buying movies or something that's like for fun for you, that's going to come out of the spending account versus like a subscription or whatever. We're going to have that come out of the bills.

11:44So just to throw that out there. Okay. And then, so the fourth point here that's really important, Vanessa, is what can your budget actually handle? Yes. So you may want to live this life where you have$500 to$1 ,000 a month on spending for yourself. That doesn't include restaurants. That doesn't include Glam Up. That doesn't include any of that. However, the numbers just aren't adding up in your budget. Yeah. So that's why our budget system, budgetbestings.com forward slash budget, does the math for you. So once you've done all of your budgeting and things are real tight, then you can, the personal pocket money is one of the things you can eat most easily tweak, right?

12:17But if you have a lot left over and you feel good about it, I have clients that have$1 ,000 each for their spending and we're just trying to be realistic, right? And so it's up to you, but it really depends on what numbers actually add up in your budget. So I had a client a couple of years ago where every time they hit a certain or every time they paid off so much debt, we would increase their spending money. Right. Yes, it was the half debt snowball method. Right. So we would if we when we paid off debt, we would roll maybe like half of that into the next payment. But half of that would go back into their spending money because they really needed some breathing room.

12:50I think they were working off of$40 a month for spending money because they just didn't have a lot of wiggle room. But she knew that if she didn't put it in there, she was going to go pull from the grocery budget. right so it may be a thing where it just grows like you start small and then as your budget allows your spending money can grow yeah and that's a really good sort of a period at the end of the sentence start with something yeah whether it's a lot or a little start see how it works out if you have a lot left over you can you can reassign that maybe to something else to something else in your budget if you start small and you realize i need more than this and you can always change it for the next budget the key is get a separate spending account put money for you and your spouse in there and start living in that part of your budget so you can keep the bill separate so you can keep the anxiety separate or just disappear make the anxiety disappear like just start with an amount and then you can adjust it yeah now we have a little bonus thing like step five is basically do you want to take this money out as cash or do you want to have an account and use a debit card and one of the questions i always ask my clients the girl the women will come in and go oh i'll just use cash and i say girl you're about to tell me you ain't buying anything on Amazon and she's, oh, you're right.

13:59Or tell me about when you're going to go to the ATM because we all know that's rarely going to happen. Yeah. So we really recommend you opening up. You and yourselves have separate spending accounts, right? So it's Jenny's money. It's Matt's money, right? So completely separate. And if you want to pull money out of the ATM, if you have something in cash that you want to purchase, you can do it from that account. But you do need to have, we believe, debit cards because there are things online and here and there that especially nowadays, it's not, it's we're going into a digital world. You may, you will need to use a debit card.

14:28So it's easy to have that separate account where it's not mixed in with anything else. Yeah, and so what you're going to do is you're going to set up that separate, each of you are going to have your own account called Jenny and Matt's, whatever. Jenny's spending money, Matt's fund money. And then you're going to set up the automatic transfer to go in there either weekly, every other week or monthly. Whatever cadence you want is fine, but you're going to have it automatically go in there. And then every two weeks, you're like, yeah, yeah, we're spending money. and it's automated, it's easy. And then like Vanessa said, if you decide that you want to go to an ATM, the money's in there, just take your card, go to the ATM, get the cash out.

15:00You can have the best of both worlds, whichever one you want. But the key is set it, set it up automatically and do it. Yeah, and just know that if you start small, it's going to grow, but we want to have an amount of money in there that gives you some guardrails, but also gives you the freedom to spend. Because we like to say there's no millionaire out there that they got up to that point on accident. It happened very strategically. And this is a chance for you to give yourself money, but also allow yourself some boundaries. All right. So we hope that this helped you. We hope that you're going to talk with your spouse about how much money makes sense based on how much you're planning for in your budget and how much your budget allows.

15:37And we hope that you guys set up your accounts. We hope that you set it to happen automatically. We hope that you learn to be okay with spending money and sticking to a well-planned amount. And being the type of person that has money. I think that is new. What we've seen with our listeners is, listen, this is the first time I've had money to spend on myself and that takes some adjusting too. So listen, if you don't have a plan, if you've never had a system that allows you to do this, go to budgetbesties.com forward slash budget and check it out. If you're tired of feeling like your finances are all over the place and you're ready for a simple set it and forget it way to budget, we have something special for you.

16:13Watch our Automate Your Budget Masterclass at budgetbesties.com forward slash automate. We'll show you step-by-step how to finally organize your money, how to set up your accounts, and put your budget on autopilot so your bills, saving, and spending run like clockwork. Imagine less stress, more savings, and the freedom to spend money without having to track every dollar or babysit your bank account. Go to budgetbesties.com forward slash automate to start today.