How to Afford Christmas Without the Credit Card Regret | 487

21:21They know that Christmas is coming up. And as long as you've been really good about making your payments, they will usually say, yes, let's find a way to be able to make this work for you. Another way that you could probably help this out is, or to help build your budget for this is to work overtime, right? So maybe your office or your place of work allows you guys to work overtime. Maybe you're on salary. I don't know if there's like a time and a half. I know my husband or his salary people, there's like a time and a half option for them. So maybe you can have yard sales, this is a great time to be able to get rid of stuff in your house that you have that you've been wanting to get rid of, because guess what?

21:59In two months, you're all your, there's going to be more stuff in the house, right? Your kids are going to be getting more things. So in order to be able to have a clean slate, when all those new gifts come in, you can get rid of all your stuff now and have a big yard sale to be able to make some cash for that. Okay. And really quick, if you don't want to buy new. So I remember when my kids were super young and we were very frugal back then, we didn't have a lot. I bought a lot of our Christmas presents on Facebook marketplace and things like that. And they didn't know they were like four and five.

22:26They had no idea whether they were new or not. So this is also a chance for you to figure out how you want to spend your Christmas budget. Maybe you want to buy locally and not buy big expensive gifts. Hold on. Okay. So we, I was thinking about when my kids were that were younger and we live in Alaska. I just want to share this little story. We had, we lived on like this circle loop neighborhood and everybody just recycled presents. It was just like, just every yard sale every weekend. We might as well just trade stuff. Right. But I will say the first big gift we got my son, I think he was three, was one of those power wheels.

22:57Do you remember power wheels? Like it was something like that. It was a Ford truck. It was kind of like, like my son, my husband's truck, but y 'all, we live in Alaska. So I was just thinking, it was just making me laugh. We live in Alaska. So he got to sit in inside for six months before he was actually able to take it outside and learn how to use it. So I I just wanted to share that little fun joke with you. It's so good. But yeah, I think, sorry, yard sales is a great idea. Declutter and then get ready for the new inventory that's coming in December. But there's also other ways. So think about maybe you're funding a trip sometime next August, right?

23:29And you're like, okay, I know I need to save this money for this upcoming trip. However, I could pause for two months and pick it back up in January after Christmas to be able to help fund Christmas. Ways to be able to look at your money that's in your budget and go, okay, how can I tweak and change what I'm currently doing to be able to make this work? So in this budget specifically, if you look on the left-hand side for savings, they're saving some things. Oh, we're in September. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they're saving for a couple of things like travel and their pets. Annual bills is a non-negotiable because that's a bill.

23:58So we need to continue to save for that. But let's just look at some ways that we can cut back in other areas to be able to afford the things that are most important to us right now. Yeah. And I wanted to come back to this tab real quick, guys, because the other thing that you might be able to do is trim some unnecessary subscriptions. So here's my idea for you. Okay. Okay, pause all of your subscriptions and only get the Hallmark channel or whatever it is and just sit in your house and watch Hallmark movies in fuzzy socks with hot chocolate. Can we do it? What do you think? But really and truly, something to think about is you don't have to do every, you don't have to keep your subscriptions or you can pause them for one month and get them right back.

24:35So think about that. How much are you actually going to be doing a lot of Netflix until during the couple months? But maybe a lot, maybe not, but you could still pause some of them. The other thing is I shared this because this is a budget that's been cleaned up. This is one of our clients' budgets. But if you go for the first time, you guys, and put everything on one piece of paper, you might find that you have a lot of subscriptions. You have some duplicates even. That happens with our clients. And maybe you don't need to have all of those. Maybe once you see them in one place, you might be willing to get rid of them.

25:04Because here's the thing. I see people that have all of these. You know how you can get specific channels now instead of cable? Like you cut the cord and now you can get Peacock and whatever. I don't even know what they all are. And I'm like, by the time you add all those up, you're basically paying a cable bill again, guys. And that's not good. I don't love that for you. But what I really know for you is you don't have enough time to watch all that TV. I know you, you're not sitting there watching$50 worth of TV a month. I know it's true. So maybe you can just look at those and trim those. Yeah.

25:33And a lot of people ask us when we had this question asked in a different workshop they were in last week. And she said, what is one of the first things that you usually tell your people to cut? And we're like, listen, we're not here to restrict anything in your budget. What we will go through your budget though, and look at is what are you not using? So the same idea that Shana is talking about, if you are signed up for five or six different subscriptions, you have a gym membership. You also have like a spa membership or wellness, whatever in town. If you're not using those things and they're not truly important to you and they're not part of your goals, then you need to look at them and think, okay, what am I wasting money on?

26:08So that's really the conversation when you've actually put everything on paper, the conversation you want to have with yourself and your spouse is where are we wasting money? Where are we spending money that we're not using these things? And what can we get rid of to be able to fund the things that bring us joy? Yes. Okay. I want to, I want to go back. There's a lot. Oh, where does it go? I don't see it. I know. I think we were, our browser or our mouse was somewhere, but there's a lot back up there. Okay. Okay. So Bougie is a state of mind. Yes. Anna is our hype woman. We're keeping her around forever.

26:36She's our jingle person too. Yeah. come up with some good ones. Okay. Where can we get a pretty template? So yeah, you can just go to our website. We'll tell you about that. Anna is one of our fun friends. We'll tell you about that here in a minute to get a copy of it. Super helpful permission slip. Yeah. Just, you don't have to, you don't have to do everything at once if you want. And this is going along with what Anna's teaching you about your time. You don't have to do everything and it's okay. And we are giving you permission to say, listen, I'm going to cut back. Maybe we're not doing so much of all of these other budget line items that we could do, right?

27:06Maybe we're cutting back on some of these other things that we normally would do so that we can put it towards Christmas because we want to and because it's fun and everybody's excited. And yeah, okay. I love these, but thank you guys. I think that's great. Like 2000, 2000, 2500. That's really realistic and very fruitful, honestly. No, that's great. That's really great. And I love that, that, that you both pointed out that there's things in your budget that you, you haven't been putting for your Christmas budget. it. And that's really what we want to put out. Dolly Parton Christmas show. Yes, girl.

27:35I know last year I went to the nutcracker with my girlfriend and her daughter. So we made like a little mommy daughter date out of it. And that was so fun to be able to put in there. Now it's care. We're doing that every year. What's the new thing. So just really think about, and here's the thing too, is this year you're going to know exactly how much you spent on Christmas. Cause maybe this is the first time you're really going to track it like this and that's okay. So then you have a really good way to look at what next year's budget is going to look like. And that's you have a starting point.

28:02Okay. Oh, Anna Beth. She said she put it on her paper and it actually made her feel worse. No. Okay. I do not manage my money well at all. No. Listen, here's what we are here to tell you. You do not have a money management problem. You don't have an overspending problem. You just have a disorganization problem. That's it. Because that's what we have to tell all of the women. It's the deal is it's not simple. First of all, nobody ever taught you how to budget. That's we know that like nobody, this was not a class, even though it feels like it could have been a class in high school or college, whatever.

28:33Nobody taught you how, and it's really complicated now, Annabeth. I want you to think about when your grandparents were budgeting, like they had five line items in their budget and that was it. And we're over here with 80 ,000 things coming our way from different sources, different payment methods, different subscriptions. And then you have, if you add kids in there, jokes. Okay. We got jokes. Yeah. So it's just really a lot going on. And that is why it feels like it's messy. It's, and that's why we just think it's an organization problem. And we, if you guys ever come over and follow us and listen to our podcast, we talk, we teach you how to organize it.

29:06So it feels really easy and not complicated because what happens is you have a thousand transactions in one bank account, like you said. And then once I finally put it on paper, I'm like, Oh, maybe that's on it. That was the first step so that you can figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. I think what really, what boils it down to is that you just didn't know. You have no idea what you're spending because everything is in one account. It's so messy. You have endless lists of transactions and you just can't separate and you can't clearly see where your money is going. So again, I think what we've looked at is that it's not that you're anyone's terrible with money.

29:39It's usually not even that they don't even have enough income. That's like 0.01 % of the problem that we've seen the last six years. It is really that they just don't know where their money's going. Yeah. And And again, I love the champagne taste on a beer budget. I'm going to have to reuse that. That's a really good line. It's really funny and unfortunately true for a lot of us. But I will tell you, the way that we teach you to have separate accounts for your spending and your bills is the biggest game changer you're going to hear. And what we've noticed is people naturally get better at budgeting.

30:09They naturally spend less, which you wouldn't really think that's a thing, but they naturally spend less when it's separate. that's like the I feel like the the decision fatigue and the mental clutter that you have when every when all of your stuff is like this I can't decide if I can afford this so I'll just pretend like I can't yeah let's just wipe and figure it out later make it a problem for future self to figure out but once it's organized and separate and I know I have spending money every paycheck I go a little bit into my spending account and I know I can spend it the same for the kids that are always stealing your money and the same for groceries which you still have to feed them like even every single day they want to keep eating right so having it all separate and you know where the money is coming from naturally because it's less stressful.

30:46You have money, you know how much money you have. It naturally makes you spend less and makes you a better, feel like you're managing it better because it is, it's organized. All 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.

31:30If 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 budgetbesties.com forward slash budget and grab yours. Now back to today's show. So let's talk about this whole Christmas idea of saving money. Okay. You guys have figured out your budget. We've laid it out on one paper. We know what we're looking for. We know what we have available to be able to fund that with. How do you do this? How do you save money for the future, but not let it get all combobulated with the amount of money that you already have in the bank.

32:08Okay. And what that looks like is opening up a separate account for, for all of your, for all your Christmas stuff. Okay. So that means we want you to have a separate account that you rename Christmas. So that way you can start saving and funding it. Yeah. Yeah. And so Elizabeth, I just put in there, we have a hundred clutter free gift ideas. So we have a little freebie that we have. I just put that in there because we get it. Like we get it. I don't need more stuff. And let's can wait, what is that Ariana? Is that Ariana Grande? Which one? I want it. I buy it or something. Is that the song you guys?

32:43Can we be honest? That's where we're all at right now. If I wanted that, that new sweater, I probably bought it myself. Okay. But so I totally get that. But we have, so we have that list. Hopefully the link came through for you. It's a different experience. There's different ways you can give gifts that are clutter-free. Some of them are even like less expensive. That would be, and the experiences options is on there for sure. Lots of ideas. Lots of ideas for that. We actually did that one year with our kids. We said, we're not buying any presents. We're doing all experiences. And they got to pick 10.

33:10And then we checked them off as we did them. And it was awesome. The kids loved it. We loved it. It was so nice. And then, yeah, she said she's going to figure out, okay, we want you to figure this out, Annabeth, but then we never want you to have to do this again. This is what we're talking about. Like, there's so many options to subscribe to. And there's so many payment methods to figure out. Apple is my, our least favorite. We do people's budgets with them and for them. and trying to find out where that, what that Apple charge was. It's so fun. It's our favorite. So anyway, we hope that you figure that out.

33:39And then that we do teach to have just one bills account and have all the money that four bills and all the bills coming out of that. That way you can see it clearly. And it helps you again, to be organized and you'll be able to make changes much easier when it's all one bills account and it's separate from your spending. It's really easy to track. Monarch has been amazing budgeting. Yep. I'll check it out. Elizabeth. Okay. petrified of coming off cheap. Ooh, that's, yeah, I wish I spent less. Why would you be petrified? I'm petrified of coming off cheap. I wish I spent less. Listen, I'm a big believer that Christmas, I know people say it's not about the gifts, it's about the, it's about the accounts, but there is a way that you can go on Etsy.

34:17You can go on Pinterest. You can use chat GPT nowadays, and you can make a very personable gift for somebody at a very low cost. So that way they know that you really took a lot of time and effort to think about this and it came from your heart right i am not about a club i am not about clutter like i my mom loves to give me things and it makes me crazy because i do not love things hold on not a stuff does anybody have a family member that if you like if you get one thing let's say a smile like red like a smiley face when you were a teenager and then they bought you a smiley face for every event or every smiley face they ever saw And then you have every smiley face thing in your room.

34:56Do you have a family member that does that? Like they, they latch on and you're like, I actually wanted one of those. Thank you so much. Why do I have 80 now? That, that can happen. But I want to push back a little bit. And this is just me. Like, cause I am, I have no filter a little bit, Megan. So what I'm going to say is if I am thinking about somebody giving them a gift and they think I'm cheap, they're not, I don't care. Like you're no longer in the arena with me. I like, I don't want to be your friend. I love you so much. because that's what I would just say. I would just like gently. So pretend like I said that more gently, like your people that you love and that you're giving gifts to there, they aren't thinking that because they're cool people and they're lovely people.

35:34And they're not like this girl's chief. They're like, wow, she took time to think about me and got me a gift. I love her so much. That's what's happening. Okay. So I'm just saying that. Okay. Business tool subscriptions, business tool. Okay. Elizabeth, we're going to tell you for that, we're going to keep that separate. Okay. We're going to keep our business expenses separate from our, our personal expenses. and we're going to fund both separately. That way you can keep a, and we call it no making, no spending. Yeah, I was going to say, listen, we have a big thing about business. We have a multi six figure company.

36:03Okay. We really take some time to think about the subscriptions. Buying this pin was a decision, you guys. Okay. I'm just kidding. But seriously, like we had to sit down and go, okay, we're not going to be this company that has all these subscriptions because you have to have them to run your business. Our Asana, not even gonna lie, be totally transparent, guys. Our Asana is still the free version, okay? Because it works for us. It may not work for everyone depending on the level that you're at, but there are a lot of things that we thought we needed at the beginning because everyone told us we needed and we cut them all out and we found a way to do without.

36:39We don't even have a CRM. We have Google Drive. It works for us. We don't need anything bigger. So I think that it is okay to really, if you have a business dissect, look in and go, okay, how is this really serving them? Is there a free version available? Okay. And then real quick, Elizabeth, profit first. Yes. So we started our business our first month. We had$47 in profit. You're like so impressed with us, but we did start our business on profit first. And then our budget system, the way that we teach is very similar in that separate accounts because it helps you to keep track of everything and it helps you stay accountable.

37:13So we have you attract who you are. 90 % of our clients are all business owners. So we do both business and personal budgets. You have to, you can't do one without the other. So it's just one of those things when you're looking at your budget, make sure you're looking at your business budget as well. Okay. And then I did want to say that Megan has some judging in-laws. So here's what my random solution for that would be like to get them the same thing every year and like a combined gift that feels like it's something. And then, and then just take all the pressure off of you for all of that. But good luck with that.

37:40I'm sorry about that. I, if my in-laws are judging me, I wouldn't know. So we would, we just would have, I would know. And then finally, we have some more things that we're going to say, but I want to say, Dana, I just saw a story that American Airlines sold a lifetime ticket to somebody, a lifetime airline ticket, and he got it for$225 ,000 and they canceled it after he had spent, he had cost them $21 million. So they finally canceled his lifetime ticket. And so that was reminding me of, it was a great idea, I thought, to pay for these Netflix subscriptions. And then they just keep getting more expensive okay so what have we learned here we oh we i think we didn't specifically say maybe we did yeah i saw that was that you need a separate account called christmas you can call it um okay so make sure you have your separate account and then when you have the full annual budget you're going to divide that monthly starting in january right now it's a crunch right you have to use november and december to fund it that's all you have but in january it'll be a much sweeter number and you're going to set that up to transfer automatically to your new christmas savings account, which hopefully is a high yield savings account.

38:45So that way all year, it's making you a little bit of money. And that way all year, you're able to buy gifts. If they come, if you come across them on discount instead of full price, which is what I pay for everything. It's just me. So think about this. Most of y 'all said your budget was around 2000, 2500. If you, if your budget was $3 ,000, let's just say that then you're being bougie, right? So if you were to start in January saving for Christmas, that means you would only need to put$250 in your budget a month to know So by December, the most important thing is that 90 % of it will be funded by Black Friday.

39:18But to know that you have all this cash available, because if you want to buy a present in July for somebody that you're on a trip and you're seeing like that would be perfect, you have the cash to do that. If it's March and there's a big event and they have this massive sale on something that you want to buy somebody, buy it because you have the cash. So saving$250 a month is way easier than trying to save$1 ,000 a month for two months. but you just have to be mindful enough. And if you make your budget and you know that you're living within your means, then you can honestly say and feel good about saving that two 50, because you know, you're going to spend it anyways.

39:51Yeah. And your, your future self next December is going to be like, girl, I'm so thankful to you. You love me enough to set up a separate savings account and you named it Christmas and now you're transferring money and I can just spend money. All I have to do is spend money and buy gifts and I don't have to worry and I don't have to stress and I don't have to like Scrooge and be like, I don't know. Okay. Cause you were so nice. So be kind to yourself and do that for this year. You can start it right now. If you, whatever money you have earmarked for Christmas, open that savings account, put over.

40:19And in the moment, when you're at, where do you put in the chat, where you shop for Christmas? I'm asking for me, where do you shop for Christmas presents? Put it in the chat. And so when you're at, enter the thing that you're going to say, you're going to be like, Oh, here's my Christmas money. I'm going to transfer this into my, my, cause it's a savings account. So you can't spend out of it. I'm going to transfer it real quick into my spending account. I'm going to swipe. And I knew where the money was coming from. It was set aside. Okay. Amazon, let's be really honest. Obviously. I want to know about this Mark and Grant.

40:45Yeah. We need to go there. Because Anna's our people. Like everything she does, we're like, yes, that's for us. And we're just going to follow you and do everything you do. But yeah, Amazon is obviously one. But yeah, you can set that money aside right now and just know, because that's the part of our whole system. One part of our whole system is everything's not in one account. Like when everything's in one account, you don't really know what's going on. You don't really know how much you have for this or that, or if the mortgage is still going to pay if I go grocery shopping or whatever. So you having this money set aside, and you know the rest of this is paying your bills, and it helps you keep accountable to a budget because there's a number right there.

41:16And it's only one number. You don't have to do 13 transactions and math in public before you figure out how much you have left over Christmas. It's already done. And that's the wonderful thing about using a debit card versus your credit card is a debit card has a limit. Okay, when you're using money out of a certain account, there's an amount of money there you can't go over versus a credit card. If you go to the store and you say you're going to spend 20 bucks, but you actually spend 30, like that credit card is so going to swipe. But if you bring in 20 bucks in cash, or you only have 20 bucks on your debit card, because that's what you decided to put, I'm just making a number of, it's not going to, you can't swipe it for over the lot.

41:47And on purpose, like there, there has to be guardrails guys. You're not going to build wealth. You're not going to feel good about your spending. You're not going to be able to do this. And if there's not a way for you to just have some type of guardrails around your spending. First of all, I want to say I'm sad Maria left because she was our floating emoji lady. And so she just left. Hopefully she'll be back. But the other thing I was going to say really quick, something that we didn't mention. Oh, Maria, you're back. Please send us floating emojis. We really missed you. I know we missed them.

42:12It was like two minutes. Anyway, the kids is what I wanted to talk about. Your kids like to buy Christmas gifts. Yes. So do not forget that maybe they have their bestie that they want to get a gift for. Or if you want to start to give some of the onus for teacher presence on them, you can set aside a budget for them and talk to them about it and bring them in on the conversation because they are going to end up being adults that have to buy Christmas presents. So let's go ahead and teach them right now. Give them a little training wheels on how to do it without using credit cards. Cause we don't want your 20 year old coming to you and be like, mom, oopsie, I have$5 ,000 credit card.

42:43You'd be like, what? Yeah, this is a great way. So we are really big advocates on bringing the kids in on the conversation. And what we mean by that is having healthy conversations around money. So that way you don't, they don't grow up and become another you. If you grew up with money baggage, right? We don't want our kids to grow up with money baggage at all. So those conversations look like instead of maybe, and I'm not saying this is you, but what we've seen in the past is conversations where we can't afford it. We don't have the money answer is no, like all that. It's usually just all negative.

43:13And then the kid grows up with a scarcity mindset around money. What we want to do is change that vocabulary to, hey, this is what we decided to spend our money. This is how we decided to spend our money as a family. It's not in the budget right now, but let's talk about it. This is an us, a we like bring them in, show them the budget. Shana said, give them their own budget and say, Hey, you got 50 bucks to spend on all your friends this year for Christmas. How do you want to spend it and allow them the chance to make a budget for the first time, because they are going to someday going to have to budget, whether that's way out of college or when they get married, there's going to be some point in their life that they're going to need to know how to build a budget.

43:50Why not start that now at the table with you so that when they do it on their own, they have a good foundation. Yep. Okay. So please put any questions. I know we're getting ready to wrap things up. Put any questions in the comments there or in the chat. They were asking where to find the thing. If you want to do budgetbesties.com forward slash Anna, if somebody wants to plug that in there, I'll do it while I'm waiting for all these amazing questions that y 'all definitely have because we talked really fast. That was sweet. Maria, thank you. Okay. So our, one of our questions is what's marking Graham.

44:25So we're going to figure that out. Yeah. That's one of, I'm going to do some deep research on that. Don't worry. Do that. Yeah. So what were some things that we said that maybe you'd not heard, you heard of before? Do you have any tips on how to change mindset around money? Seeing your numbers. Yeah. I think it starts with seeing what's actually going on because a lot of times it's wrecking balls in your brain that you really can't address because they're not tangible yet. When you put it on paper and you make a plan and you go, okay, this is my income minus minimum debt payments, minus bills, minus spending, minus savings.

44:57And maybe you don't have any savings. That's okay. But in that order, you want to list your stuff in that order. Then you can look at, okay, this is what I really have going on. Now you can make a plan around it because listen, we don't want to make a plan around drama, the wrecking balls in your head. we want to make a plan around the data like what really is going on and that's just the numbers yeah and i think if you have everything on paper because i've got the separate accounts and i've got all the i'm a type a but i've got everything but i've got this it's either i i'm i'm rebelling against my budget a little bit yeah because it's like i don't have enough money to do the things I want to do because all of my money's budgeted away for things I have to do and then I end up spending money on things I want to do because I want to do them and I keep fluctuating the money between the different accounts to cover what I've loaded from my different accounts so I guess that's like my issue yeah I think that having the budget be realistic so what we've seen do you have a personal spending line item in your budget, Lizette?

46:07There's not a room for that. We have to look at it because something like that's part of it. Like even if it's a little bit, that will change your money baggage, your money mindset all by itself. So what happens is we want you to, it's not negotiable. Something has to happen. So we can talk, we have, I don't know if you have any debt. So like sometimes debt is what's stealing a lot of your, a lot of your income. And we have a whole podcast and a whole like series about how to deal with that and how to do sort of your own debt consolidation plan so that you can free up some room in your budget.

46:39But having personal spending money is a must. It is a must. You work hard. You deserve to have some spending money. We have to find something in the budget that can give so that we can do that. Having that money going in either it's weekly or every other week, even if it's a little bit, it starts to change how you feel because you don't have that scarcity anymore. I will get money. I'm giving myself money every two weeks and I can start to heal some of that. And what we've seen is that when you don't have money for yourself and your budget, you're going to pull it from somewhere to spend, which is what's happening.

47:10And you're not different from anyone. There's no shame in that. It's just that is what is happening. And we have a client who she graduated from coaching, but she said when she saw that she had money being replenished in her account every Thursday, whatever day that is, she had it weekly in her budget. She said it did something. she didn't feel the need to go spend all the money because she knew that her account was always going to get replenished every thursday even if it was 20 bucks a week whatever that amount was it was enough for her to feel like this is mine there's no judgment on where it goes and i can do whatever i want with it and all that is still happening over there and i know that you're saying that there's no wiggle room in your budget but because you're pulling money anyways to do what you want you have to find a way to make that work and another way that you can do that was shana was talking about the debt consolidation podcast episodes that we have i would go there and find them our podcast is financial coaching for women and research that because with a couple phone calls talking to your debt the debt companies you can make huge wiggle room and some big leeway on reducing your debt payment so that way it gives you the wiggle room in your budget that you need and you deserve yeah and you can try re-quoting stuff again taking a good look at what's needed what's necessary and if you're doing if you're doing a budget good job and you have a different accounts.

48:25Like sometimes people don't realize how much they're spending on different things. And that is something that makes them be able to change things. As far as inconsistent income, really simple. We want you to have, again, I think I'd mentioned it for, I'm not sure who it was, but somebody up there was talking about their business. Somebody who knew about profit first, because they're really super smart. You're going to have a separate income account for your business and you're going to let money pool there. And you're going to pay yourself consistently according to your business budget and your personal budget.

48:50So let's say one month you make, well, first of let's say you did the work to make sure your, your business budget is what the bills are that you have for that every month. And you did the work for your personal budget. And let's say you decide I, with this business, I need to bring in$10 ,000 a month, whatever it is, right. In order to pay myself personally and to pay all the business stuff. Okay. Let's say you have a month that has 20 ,000 and then you have a month that has 7 ,000 and you have a month that has 13 ,000 and you have a month that has 4 ,000 and you're just like any other entrepreneur in the whole wide world, right?

49:17You're going to let money pool in the business account or in the income account. And then you only pay yourself the 10 ,000, whether you have a really good month or you have a really low month. So you really need to look and see what you cost personally. Now, when we say to make your personal budget, you need to add in not just your monthly costs, but what is Christmas? What are annual bills? What are your expenses that you absolutely know that you're going to be spending on? Because most people, all these unexpected expenses that pop up, like your annual pet visits, you know, that for their shots and stuff, your kids' birthdays, Christmas, those are not unexpected.

49:50y 'all. We knew that they were happening. Oil changes, those are not unexpected. So we need to actually put them in the budget. So the best way to do this is to figure out how much you cost on a monthly basis, which means take all those annual big expenses, divide them by 12, put them in your budget to figure out what you need to budget for monthly to be able to cover all that stuff when they come up. Okay. So make that, then you take that over to your business budget. And that is a line item in your business budget, how much you need to pay yourself. So once you have that, then do the same thing with your business.

50:19What are all the annual expenses? How much does my CPA cost to file my taxes every year? What are my taxes every year? What are like, if you own a beauty business, what are all the supplies and things I need to buy for annually? Take that total divided by 12, put it in your business budget. So you know exactly how much your business costs you. And then that's going to tell you your baseline. Okay. And then that is what you need to fund yourself consistently all the time. Doesn't matter what, even if you make 30, 40 ,000 that month, you need to only pay yourself the exact amount that you need to fund everything else pools for those low months so it can cover.

50:52Yeah. And we got to wrap. But the last thing I want to say about what Elizabeth said is you, we tell our clients to this as well. This is why it's so important to know what you cost a month, because if you do, and a lot of people might be struggling with this right now with the government shut down here in America, at least is you, if you have savings, you're not just living on, you're not just pulling money whenever you're still paying yourself that paycheck from your savings and And you still need to live on that budget on purpose. And that's why it's so important to have it on paper and know what you cost.

51:19And then, and you'll be able to stick to that. Let's throw it back to you, Anna, our hostess with the mostest, the one that has all the hype and acronyms and the sayings, like she's our woman. She's our lady. Thank you guys for having us. Oh my gosh. Thank y 'all so much for giving your time, for coming and sharing your wisdom and all of your just so incredibly helpful. I know you've given us a ton to think about. I love you. You're wonderful. And just, I can't wait to see the amazing holidays that you're going to have. So go forth, have an amazing week, Shana and Vanessa. Thank you one more time for joining us.

51:59Y 'all are so awesome. And I'll talk with everyone soon. Bye. 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. Watch 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.

52:34Go to budgetbesties.com forward slash automate to start today.