How to Budget as a Couple (Without Fighting About Spending) | 590

0:00That's a personal choice, like that expensive hair appointment. That should come out of your spending money. Trying to decide what we're going to do for the six buckets is challenging. Let's just put it all in the budget, see where we stand. First of all, Brandon, listen, you look at that beautiful head of hair every day.

0:15Vanessa:It's really for you, too. It is the best thing that has ever happened to our marriage. 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? 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.

0:44Vanessa: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. 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.

1:19We can help you no matter where you're at, whether you're the single mom who's never

1:22Vanessa: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. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. All right, Jennifer and Brandon, we're so excited to have you on Financial Coaching for Women. We're excited to answer your questions. So tell us about what brings you to the call today. So we bought your system and we have it all filled out. We were going to start in February, but we just didn't make it in time. So we're shooting for March.

1:55We just, Chase wouldn't let us do the, all the different accounts. So we switched to a credit union and we still have to pick up our cards from there and do a couple of things. But we had our kind of like our first sit down where we were planning the month of March and just a couple things came up like about spending money and a point like I have every six weeks I have a really expensive hair appointment and then he has supplements every month check check then he was saying that's a personal choice like that expensive hair appointment that should come out of your spending money not we shouldn't be counting it as a monthly bill or monthly and so then I was like okay your supplements that are on here that are monthly bill can come up.

2:42And so we were going back and forth and then trying to decide on, we have six buckets, seven accounts total. And then we're just trying to decide like, maybe down the road, we'll add more, but trying to decide what we're going to do for the six buckets was challenging. We didn't even really finish. Are those all checking or savings or tell me what check? Okay. Okay. Do you guys have kids? Yes. All right. How old, if you don't want me asking, how old are they? Six and three. Okay. Perfect. Love that. Okay. So we really recommend with the checking accounts, like a set number, just because it makes it easier.

3:20So you'll have the one for the bills account, which is all for reoccurring your reoccurring debt payments, your minimum payments, and then all of your bills. So your bills are anything you get charged for that are due every single month. So that is your utilities, your mortgage, your auto insurance, your gym membership. Like we have people that put supplements on there because it is something that comes out monthly all the time and it never changes. And then your spending is going to be your gas and groceries, or if you want to split those, you can, but we gas and groceries, each of your spending accounts.

3:50So there's two more. So Jennifer spending Brandon spending. Okay. We have family going out to eat restaurants, entertainment, whatever you want to call it. That's all things going out to eat. So that's your fourth spending account. And then your fifth one would be your kids because they have their own money. They're not going to take yours. And we want to make sure that we give them their own. Yeah. As they're when they're, so that kind of will change as they get older, as they're being six and three, it's like perfect for, you know, how one year they grow out of everything and the next year they don't like, or they have a field trip now that they're starting school or whatever.

4:24So there's like random stuff that the kids will like surprise the budget. So we like to put money aside for them to be able to do that. so that it doesn't mess with your money, Brandon, or your money, Jennifer, that you both can have your own spending money. Let's go back to the original thing about that's your personal expenses. That is very, that's, that, that is very normal. That's a normal way to look at it, but we want to be a little different in that. First of all, Brandon, listen, you look at that beautiful head of hair every day. Aren't you? It's really for you too. No, I'm just kidding.

4:54He's like, whatever. And he's taking the supplements, taking care of the family, all that kind of stuff. So it's ours. It's all ours. It's all for us. So really what we want to do is just put it all in the budget. And then if we want to from there, let's say, because even like my husband, he was against like, he has Spotify and I have Apple. I'll pay for that. And like in the beginning, let's just put it all in the budget, see where we stand. Once we see it all on one piece of paper together as a team, we might be like, look, we might need to taper this down, or we might need to look at, but it's going to be together.

5:25It's not going to be like it's yours versus mine or a little bit. And you both need to have completely only for spending, spending money. So we want to put the hair in the budget. We'll talk about that in the supplements in the budget. We'll talk about how to do that, but we want you each to have your own spending money in the budget, non-negotiable so that you can do the things because you both work really hard. And for me, when we started this, what was really important is the kids would always steal my money, but anytime we wanted to go out to eat, it would always be dad's money that got, or my husband's money was always the one that was paying.

5:54And so we never had any money. That's what it felt like. So that's why it's important for us that you separate that and you both have your own money so that if there's a couple of different things, you can make that as much as little as you want after you put the other stuff that's actually going to happen. Like we both want you to get your hair done. We both want you to have your supplements. We want that. So we're going to put it in the budget on purpose. If you have our system, our savings bucket planner that's in there, that's a really great way to have the start the conversation and go, okay, if I get my hair done every six weeks and it's not monthly, this is how much it costs in a year.

6:23So add that to your glam up fund. If that's the only thing in your glam up fund, then that's fine. Or if it's the kids or their haircuts or whatever else needs to be in there for personal care. Some people put massages in there. Some people are putting their facial products or whatever, all of that. And then supplements, like figure out if it's not monthly, but figure out how much and how often you buy them. So that way you can say, does this need to be a savings bucket where I pull from it every so often when I do go to buy the thing, or does it need to go in the budget because it absolutely absolutely happens monthly.

6:54And Shayna said, the first thing is put it all in there. Like the first time you make a budget, if you know, you have a decent amount of money and you make good money, put it all in there. And then if you make it and you're in the negative, you're like, okay, this is a dream budget. Let's back up and say, what do we need to tweak, not cut back on, but tweak in a way to where maybe we have less spending money or less in this category and move. Maybe you need to move that over to your spending account for the, at the beginning. And then eventually you can move it back. There are so many different ways to do this.

7:25And that's why we say it's not cookie cutter, but you need to find a way that works for you. But the first step, absolutely put it all on there to see what you're working with. Right. And then I get confused too, like with the spending and then the savings buckets are, I was, we were putting this like buckets under the savings. We had kids slash Christmas, annual bills, travel slash vacation and vehicle. So those were four of them. And then my spending and his spending were the other two, but we put those under spending. Okay. That's correct. Okay. So the kids, the monthly line item for the kids at six and three, it might be 50 bucks.

8:05It might be a hundred. It's just like a miscellaneous for kids because my goodness, they really feel like, I feel like they really come up with some things every month. They can get creative, but what you're, what you might be saving for is summer camps or school supplies or clothes back to school or sports. Yeah. Don't start them at six guys. Come on, let's wait. Let's just do the YMCA. No, I'm just kidding. But that's a savings bucket. So if you're spending it every month, that's when it's going to go in that spending column. And then if you're saving and then sometimes using it throughout the year, that's a spending bucket or savings bucket.

8:38Sorry. And kids sometimes are double. So that can be confusing because of that. The kids can definitely be double, but everything else sounded like you had a good ones for the, and so like Vanessa said, you'll use that savings bucket tracker, plan out all those annual bills. So once you put the property taxes, the CPA fee, the insurance, the water for HOA due, that will give you that monthly amount. If we set that aside in annual bills every month, then we won't get these big, huge surprise months where it's like, ah, we're going to do this. And so you're going to do that for everyone. So like your hair, you go every six weeks, you divide, you take 52 divided by six and multiply it to how much, how many times, how much it costs every time you go.

9:16Including tip, including your tip. That's the amount you put in there. And then down below, it's going to say, this is the monthly costs that you need to be setting aside because you know, that, that fee can be a little something else. And then I don't know if the supplements are monthly Brandon, but if they are, that can just be a bill and it's okay because we want you to have those. we are not going to, we're not the kind of people saying cut everything from the budget. We want you like your dad, we got you to be healthy. We got, we got you to, we need you to be healthy. So we want to pay for that.

9:44Cause if we don't pay for it as we don't pay for it now, we're going to pay for it later one way or another with healthcare costs or whatever. So put it in the budget. Don't be shy about that. And the way that the savings buckets work is you'll be saving for that. Those expenses, right? You're going to make the savings bucket planner. You're going to plan it all out. You'll put the amount that it tells you in there every month. And then when you need it, you will transfer the money from your savings to your spending account because you're the one spending the money and then you buy the thing. Okay.

10:12So that's for all the one-off random expenses that happen throughout the year. Okay. And if you're saving for travel, for instance, if you're going to go on a vacation for spring break and you're saving$5 ,000 for this vacation, you're transfer the whole amount over to be able to spend it. Don't try to do it in the individual transactions, right? So we're trying to make this system as easy as possible for you, not make it as hard for you. And that's why you're spending accounts are checking because those are the things like Shanna said that you're buying things and you're spending every month all the time on a regular basis.

10:44Your savings buckets are things that you buy randomly once in a while. Okay. So we weren't supposed to open six checking accounts. Yeah. Yeah. I named them. So your bills, gas and groceries, each of your spending accounts. Okay. You're dining out to eat restaurants, family, whatever you want to call that. And then kids. So that's six. And, but you just said, transfer the money from the savings over into our. So that's, if you're, like I said, if you're that's for your glam up, let's say you're not budgeting. Savings buckets are savings accounts. You open six checking accounts for spending. Those are not savings.

11:22So check all of those are good. Yeah. That's perfect. Good job. So your savings buckets, your savings buckets are like for Christmas, for travel, for vehicle maintenance, oil changes, things like that. All the unexpected expenses that pop up that derail your budget every single month. That's what you're saving for in the savings buckets. And when you go to spend money out of those categories for those things, you'll transfer it from there to your spending account and you'll buy it. So it's like the cash envelope system was. We used to do that. We used to teach that. And then COVID happened. And also like people don't want to use cash like for a lot of things.

11:59And so we've, we're using the bank, the bank can do all of this and it's just the same. It's like, you have a different account, but it's got a label on it called Christmas. And you know exactly how much you have in there. And when you need to go spend money for Christmas, you pull it out of the digital envelope. It's the same function and it's way better. So what other people do is they'll have one savings account and they just slowly drain it. And they don't really know how, like what's for what and it's, and they have to track what's in there for what. And we don't want that. There's no reason to not use the extra accounts.

12:30Your bank will let you do it. It's super simple. You can hide them if you want. You can hide them from your daily view where you only see your spending. So it's like less stuff that you have to see. But it's just a digital version of cash envelopes. It's super simple. It separates it and you can set it up automatically, like Vanessa said. So where it's transferring over there every paycheck. So you're saving a little bit every paycheck on purpose and you don't have to remember to do it. You don't have to see if there's money left over. Like it's all happening automatically, which is a great step for a lot of families.

12:58They're not used to saving money consistently and not stealing from it. So that's what the whole thing is going to do for you. And this is where you become your own bank. Like for instance, my husband is going to the vehicle maintenance place today because my car needs new tires. And he said, Hey, how much is in vehicle maintenance? And I'm like, I don't know. I have to go to work. You can check. And literally he pulls up the bank app. It says vehicle maintenance. And he knows exactly how much is there to be able to spend on the tires that we've been saving for because we've been slowly putting money in there.

13:23Oh, I thought you were going to say, because we have been traveling all over the country for volleyball. We knew we were going to do. I just got new tires. I think we got our cars similar time. I just got new tires like a couple of months ago. So it was your turn. So it's just knowing. And some people may be scared, especially not going to lie, Brandon. I'll say the husband sometimes starts care. Like, why do we need all these accounts? It is the best thing that has ever happened to our marriage is being able to know exactly. I love being able to pull my phone up and I have all of my accounts and it says kids education.

13:50It says house maintenance. It says vehicle maintenance. It says travel, like all of it. All of it is laid out, organized, and I know exactly how much money I can spend in those categories.

14:01Vanessa: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-hour support, you can text and email. So 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.

14:40Vanessa: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. One more clarifying question. So the savings for the kids' Christmas annual bills, yada. So that is going all into the savings accounts. And then you said then we transfer it over into the checking account for it when we want to use it? Yeah, because it's sitting in a savings account. So when you go to spend money, like my husband, he's going to go buy tires, but he doesn't have a debit card to our savings account.

15:20So when he goes to the counter, he says, how much is it? He's going to transfer from vehicle maintenance into his spending because he's the one spent buying it. And he's going to swipe the debit card. What if we both just had, we didn't do savings accounts. We just did checking. So what if we both had a card for those accounts? You know what I mean? You're going to need like a lot more. That's a lot of debit cards. Yeah. Yeah. That's the whole idea of just saving on a card. The only thing I have that's that I use a debit card for, like I have my travel is a checking account because I love being able to take my debit card when we go on vacation and know that I can use that account.

16:03But everything else is a savings bucket because you don't spend it all the time. It's very easy to be able to know, okay, this month I know I have to get tires and I'm going to spend that out of that account. It's not something that happens regularly. Yeah. You don't have to. That's why they're savings accounts. They're just like envelopes, digital envelopes, holding the money for you for when that day comes that you need to spend it. But in your wallet, you have a gas and groceries account or debit card. You have your personal spending debit card and you have you're eating out one. That's it.

16:35Like you might have your kids one. You might not. I never, I didn't ever really carry one for a while until they got much shoulder. And then now they have their own. We moved into that transition, but you only have three debit cards, which sounds like a lot, but a lot of people have that many credit cards apparently, but you have like Brandon, if he, if she asked you to stop for groceries on the way home, it's you're using the groceries card. Or if you guys are going out to eat, it's not coming out. You know, where the money's coming from. And you guys can, as a family, like when we had younger kids, we're like, look, you're going to Chick-fil-A today.

17:06We ain't going next week. that's it. That's, this is our choice. And so you know how much money you have. Everybody can help stick to the budget together. And I said, it's very clear. Like, like the more the money is clear and we've pre-decided all of these things, the less tension there is in the marriage or the conversations about it. It's all right there. It's all laid out. And that's one of the big perks of the system. It's even fun. If you want to take the kids out in cash, like we have a lot of people with young kids, like they'll go, okay, I just want the kids in cash. And then you get to bring the kids in on a conversation.

17:35Okay, guys, guess what? You guys have 50 bucks this month to spend on whatever you want. What do you need? What do you want to do? What do you have going on? And they get to be in on it. And it takes the pressure off of you deciding on how they're going to, how you're going to spend their money and they get to decide. Yeah. So it just, it brings some responsibility in on it too, for them. Did we help or crickets? I'm just bummed out because we didn't do savings accounts. You go back. You can all buy them online. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But you can also start with, start with the spending and get that figured out and then worry about the savings after that's all figured out and done.

18:15And the part I'm not trying to be this kind of person, but I am like, my favorite part is I don't have to go to the bank. Like I don't want to have to go to the bank and, and you don't like, you can open them all up online and rename them. You can rename them. You can hide them. You can set up automatic transfers. You can put notes on it, like reoccurring automatic transfers. I need to remember to say those two things together. So you can say on the 15th, the first and 15th every month,$200 goes into each of our spending account. That's what we mean. And you can make it go for the rest of forever.

18:45And then you don't have to worry about it. What we want to do is we want to take your good intentions. When you set up that budget that you bought the budget system, when you set that up, we can make that all happen automatically so that you don't, it's not, again, it's not relying on willpower. It's not relying on your memory. A lot of times, okay, I'll get to it. And then no, because then the three-year-old got the six-year-old sick and now we're all sick and no, let's like make it happen automatically so that we're sticking to the budget that we both set as a couple together. The goals that we set, we're sticking to it because it's happening automatically.

19:14The goal for us, for you guys is to have you out of it as much as possible. You're going to be in it to make it, you're going to set your goals, set your budget up, set it up to be automatic. And then you can just go live your life knowing that everything is happening for you. Yeah. My husband gets paid every Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning at midnight, all of my transfers happening. And I did nothing because I set it up that way. And all I have to do is just continue to spend and swipe my debit card. So that's what we want is to have it transferred automatically for you. And you knowing that you always have money coming and going.

19:43And just one last little bit of that part of this is that your budget is 90 % consistent And before people start with us or start with the system, it feels like it's up and down roller coaster. And I don't know, like we, because you're going to have those savings buckets for the quote unquote, unexpected expenses of your property taxes and Christmas payment, Christmas bills, whatever. We're going to make that a little bit each month so that it's nice and steady. There's no up or down. You always have money in your groceries. You always have money paying the bills. Like it's nice and steady and it takes away any anxiety or any tension or anything about it.

20:17One more question. So my income is up and down. And so I, I remember you saying, just go with the lowest amount. And so I'm doing that. But so then whatever is left over and sits in our main account before, what do you suggest we do that? Or how do we figure that out? Just gather and say, where do we want to put it? Or no, we want to be very strategic about where that money is. what we want is your everyday monthly budget to be on the bare minimum amount that you know you're always going to bring in. And so maybe that's not a couple of your fund savings buckets that you want, but your that extra amount that when you get in, that's what funds your savings buckets.