How to Build Your December 2025 Budget (Step-By-Step Walkthrough) | 492

0:00Welcome. We're so excited to be live with you guys and talk about how to build your December budget. it. It's time to do December's budget. And that's exciting because December's a very, not really expensive month. There's nothing really going on. It's not a big deal. Just easy, smooth budgeting, right? Yes, absolutely not. Oh goodness. Lots of variables going on in December, but that's what we kind of want to plan. So listen, we know it's a little early. We're going live. We're talking about all of this on the social media and then our podcast. You guys are going to listen to it at the right time because it's going to be ready to go for December.

0:33but right now with as far as it being live, it's a little early, but listen, we know that Thanksgiving is coming and you're probably not going to be in the right mindset to do it while you're out and about. So this is why like you can come back and revert to this video at any time. Yeah. You can bookmark it. And either way, you're definitely going to want to go through the steps that we're going to tell you for your December budget. 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?

1:05Or 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.

1:41In 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.

2:08This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. The first thing that we're going to do is close out November, which if you're doing that right now, you need to think about what maybe how my income changed, if I got any bonuses, all that kind of stuff. you need to think about if any bill amounts change if you spent money that you said you didn't say you were going to spend but you're actually spending money to put that in the budget right vanessa yeah so you definitely want to close out the previous month so we have it we're showing it here and you can follow along if you want through social media but it's just basically going through and checking the boxes now we don't talk about tracking the only thing we want you to really check with boxes off are for your bills and debts because that's really what's important you just want to make sure that those bills and your minimum debt payments are coming through the account and it's very pleasing to be able to check those boxes and see them semi-disappear and just know that, Hey, everything is on track.

2:55I'm ready to go. I've closed it out. I've changed numbers. I've adjusted it. Like Shana said, and I know exactly how much I have in my account rolling over to the next month. If you have any. Yeah. And so just like we said before, what the way, just to be really clear, when we start with our clients, we go through the asset tracker, we probably go through the debt tracker, and then we go over here and make sure that what is on the budget is actually what matched what happened because one reason that you might need to update is if you are still getting your bills account figured out, you might have some straggling spending happening in there.

3:25You want to make sure you did that. And if anything else happened that we didn't pre-plan, you want to update your budget to match it. Yeah. And again, this bills account is only paying your bills. So make sure as you set everything up, you are removing ways to use the bills account and other areas like Amazon or PayPal or Venmo and things like that. Okay, so now we're starting with December's budget and we have a nice clean blank slate. If you're using our budget system, it pre fills for you. So you're just going to use the template of last month of November for December. You don't have to do the extra work, but we have it all blank here so we can show you.

3:57The first step is to start with your income. Yeah. Why is that the first thing that we want to do? And it's because it's the best number of your budget, right? So it tells you exactly how much money you have coming in. And remember when you're making a budget, the whole concept here is with this amount of money, all of my money can do this for me. And this is what we're going to fill out with the debts, the bills, the spending, and the savings. Yeah. And so this is a really fun number. It's the positive number. It's where you get to see how much you make, which a lot of people, they don't necessarily have, they don't know how much they make until they do a budget like this because they're allotting this paycheck to that they're not looking at the whole month as a whole and that's what we want you to do we want you to put every paycheck that comes in we want you to put every side hustle that comes in we want you to put your bonuses we want you to put if you had a garage sale like any literally any income that's coming into your account we want you to put it on this column and add it all up and see how much you have to work with for the month so in this case we have britney and james and if you can see we're putting November 28th paycheck at very first paycheck because they are a paycheck ahead.

4:58So that would mean her second paycheck of the month would be December 12th, which should be, she's got 11 days there that if she used December 12th as the first paycheck of the month, that's 11 days of bills and things that she wouldn't be able to fund because she was not a paycheck ahead. So we are using November 28th paycheck in here to start the month of December. Yep. Okay. So once we have all the income, The next thing to do is to list all of your debts. Okay. And we want you to list just your debt minimums. So your credit card payments, your vehicle payments, your HELOC, your student loans, any medical debt that you have that you're paying on, you're going to list here the minimum, the actual minimum, not the fake minimum that you're paying because you randomly chose the number, the actual minimum and the due date.

5:41And so remember a debt is considered any money that you owe anyone for any reason. And what Shana is saying, as far as listing your minimums, it allows you to see, okay, if things were to go away, this is the required amount of money that I need to make sure that I am paying out. And because if you want to pay extra on debt, we want to use that chunk of money for something specific, not just randomly throw$20 here,$50 here,$100 here. And we have you listed this way, because this might be just like your income, the first time that you see really how much you pay on debt every month. So for our sweet Brittany and James, they can see that they They pay$1 ,774 in debt minimums each month.

6:21And that's a good thing to see. And we have it first in the budget because we want you to be aware of it. We know that all of these numbers can slowly slip away, work to pay them off and go away, but it's good to see it up front and center so that it has your attention so that you can focus on getting it gone because, hey, ask this question. What do you think Brittany and James could do with$1 ,774 in their budget each month if they weren't paying it on debt? I bet there's some fun things that they could do. A lot of things. And I will tell you that, look, if you look, there's$79 here that they're paying on one credit card, 36, which means Shana, that they're really close to paying these off.

6:54There must be small balances. Yes. They're small balances. Like we're getting there. We're, we're that close. And so that's why it's really fun to be like, okay, once that's paid off, it's going to lessen the amount of money that I'm paying monthly on debt required. And then I can take that and add it into my extra and do something with it. Yeah. And I'm going to speak here. Like Vanessa said, we do this step that I'm going to speak now, but if I don't tell you now, I will forget. We do this later. But I, when you're saying that I have a client because of the way they're, they set up their program, their debt payoff program with the creditors.

7:24They have two Wells Fargo cards that they pay three, one of them is 370 a month and one's 329. But to pay both of them off, they need$5 ,000. And so they are going to get a, they are going to get a bonus or commission check. So they're going to pay those off and they're going to get$700 back in their budget for the next month. And so it's like super exciting and doable. And so that's when we go to pay off debt, this is just a side note. We look at stuff like that. Yeah, I might have a really low balance, but if I pay this other one off, it's maybe a little higher. I get so much more monthly money back in my budget.

7:59So anyway, there's just a lot to consider. But if you don't have it front and center, Vanessa, you don't know, you can't know and make those decisions. And I was going to add on to that and say, this is why we don't always recommend the debt snowball method it's not always the case so in this person's case if they just get five thousand dollars which they're gonna get here really soon then they can wipe that away and have all that money back in their budget yeah which may not be the case for everyone but we don't know and that's why every case is different and so that's why we have in our budget system the debt snowball the debt avalanche and the debt minimum payment methods to be able to pay off all your debt yep and again this between this and your debt tracker it might be the first time you're really looking at everything and that's really going to help you make informed decisions.

8:37But yes, so we do the debts first. We want those gone. So that's why they're up first and center. But then we have the income. We've subtracted your debt minimums. So in this case, Brittany and James, they were bringing in 12 ,646. They're already paying 1774 on bill are in debts. Now we're going to see how much of that$10 ,872 that they have left goes toward their bills. Yep. So we've got, let's see, we've got$3 ,149 going towards their bill payments. And this includes their mortgage, their utilities, their gym membership, their subscriptions, their ring cameras, like all of that. Yeah. Your bills are anything with a due date.

9:13Right. And so that's what they've got all of these listed. This is a very regular, this is a very regular budget, right? There's only a total of what, 14 bills on here. Seven of them are subscriptions. Very normal, very normal in this day and age. That's why we say it's like very complicated. That's seven bills that wouldn't have happened before. Right. I do love for them that their trash and water are bundled with their rent because who was the magic person that decided trash should be billed quarterly? I don't love that for everybody. It's confusing for people. So I love that they just have one monthly payment and they get it all figured out with that.

9:46Yeah. And they do have a conservative budget. It's just because they know that they're busy and they don't want to waste their money on things that they're not using. So they have their gym membership. They have Disney Plus. Yeah. They have gas, Apple Music. I call it like Spotify. they have the things that they need, but it provides for their family. So I think that this is a great budget. Like we said,$3 ,000 is not small. It's not a small amount, but they're able to cover it. And as they fill in their budget, they're able to see how much left they have remaining. That's what I was going to say.

10:12It's actually very small because what we're seeing with this budget is half of their money, they have quote unquote discretionary, what people would call, right? Half of their budget is going to their debts and bills, which is not that bad because a lot of times we'll see people that have a mortgage that's taking up an entire paycheck or more and it's scary because they don't have a lot left over. So here they have half of their budget almost, more than half of their budget to allocate between spending and savings. And this is really important because a lot of times people won't, they don't see this.

10:46And when I see this, I say, why did you get in debt anyway? Unless you recently got a raise or whatever, you were just kind of job change. Yeah. Changing the, unless something recently changed, you don't need to be in debt. You don't need to be using credit cards, but that's probably why they're at, they're doing coaching. That's why they're doing this because they know they can do better and they will, they'll quickly pay all this stuff off and it'll be a win. And I think that everyone's priorities are different. We've talked about some people are like, listen, I, I negotiated my debt payments.

11:11I negotiated my interest rates. Everything is low right now. I really want to get my savings buckets beefed up so that way I don't go back into debt. And in this situation like this, as you'll see, as we fill out this budget, that was their case. And for those of listening through our podcast this is a budget with an income of twelve thousand six hundred and forty six dollars and so far we've done their minimum debt payments and their total bills and they have budgeted so far four thousand nine hundred and twenty three dollars so we still under five thousand yeah so we have over seventy seven hundred dollars left to budget like shannon was saying between spending and savings okay so after we've done the debt and the bills this is what like we heart what we know for sure we have to we cost in a month and now we have to start saying okay with the money left over let's assign it to to what we need to spend money on which is our gas our groceries and all that kind of stuff and savings those are the two things that we have left to spend$7 ,700 in this case on and so the things that we spend money so other people first of all no other budget says spending in it and that makes sense invariably yeah that makes sense to us this is what you're going to do you're going to go spend money and these are the categories that you're going to spend it in that way because all of these things are going to come up every month and we want you to be able to know where the money is coming from that is not taking away from your bills, not messing with anything happening over there, but I know I have money for the categories are gas, groceries, family fun or restaurants, whatever you want to call it, personal spending money.

12:31And then little things that come up with the kids. I want to have money set aside specifically to spend for them on purpose. Imagine building a budget that you know, these are the categories that you can, you put your money in and you don't have to track anything. That's what we want for you. We have one, two, three, four, five, five separate checking accounts. So we're saying we want you to have five checking accounts for you to be able to categories you're spending in. And that way, you know exactly how much money you have to spend in those categories because you're automatically funding them on payday.

13:00Yeah. And then the money is just in the accounts and you spend there until the next payday when they get refunded. And it's very simple. Vanessa said no tracking, but the key here when you're building your budget is to be realistic. So, you know, they have how many kids too? Yes. Okay. Two kids. Let's be realistic with much you're going to spend for groceries you're not going to put a 500 budget on there for a family of four right a lot of times people try to be super frugal there and it's just not realistic so either we either you sell steal money from another category or we use debt so you want to make sure you're not doing that and as we can see they're not being super frugal they're like saying we're going to live our life right here and we're going to we're going to have a little bit of spending money yeah they're having some fun like you can see they're being bougie on a budget right now excited yeah just so that if you can't if you can't see it they have their family fund which we've told you is like restaurants going bowling anything like that you're going to do is family time that that for me it was like the way that it always worked before is my husband seemed to always pay out of his spending money restaurants and when we were going out and then anything the kids needed i always spent and then neither one of us had any money that's really what ended up nobody ended up having money for themselves so that is part of like why we want to categorize so that when these things come up when the kids come ask for something or we want to go out to eat we one know where the money is coming from and two we have set some guardrails in this budget under the spending category so that we can say yes but not yes to everything we're saying yes to only to so much of this so that we can also do our our other goals as well that we have but we can still say yes sometimes i think that's a good point shana because we want you to say yes to what matters to you and it's not the same for the next person right our goal is for you to be bougie in budget.

14:38What does that mean? It something, it means something different for everyone. So that may mean to this person that they are being able to have spending money and have a good time, but Hey, listen, we don't have all the subscriptions because one, we don't need it. It's a waste of money in their eyes and they don't want it. So that is the compromise. It's not, we get everything all the time. The answer is always yes. It's, Hey, listen, we're going to say yes to this because we're saying no to this because we don't use it. Yeah. And this is a sort of, I would say maybe a kind of a normal case, but this, this couple so far is spending$1 ,700 on debt, $3 ,100 on bills and$3 ,500 on spending.

15:14And, but this is so unique to them, their family, their situation. A lot of times other budgets or other things will tell you 50, 30, 20, or whatever, like some cookie cutter thing that you're trying to, then you're trying to fake, put stuff into the, to these categories or these percentages that doesn't actually fit your real life. Your budget needs to fit your real life. And that's what our budget system hopefully does for you. And I really believe that you go into debt because you do not budget properly. You don't know how to properly put everything in the budget. And especially if you're trying to do these percentages or do something that somebody else tells you or thinks that you should do, it really is hard to be successful.

15:50And then you feel like you fail. You feel like budgets are for you and you can't do this. 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.

16:31If 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. The next thing we want to do is look at what is going on this month this month specific december is a big month we have a lot happening and you'll see the reason why we don't have a lot in this section for this budget but right now because this isn't what they've budgeted for they don't they don't have savings buckets get for this so that's why it's in this section here for spending college trip i feel that in my soul and 500 is a very conservative budget so good they're driving yeah they're not flying wow yeah they're good yeah and then birthdays so this is very personal to Vanessa and I and and tell me if you relate to this for December like it's not like there's already enough going on but if you decided to be smart raise your hand and have December babies okay cool and then you have several kids and every activity they do they want to have they're going to have a Christmas party and maybe a little white or whatever they do Secret Santa that's awesome oh by the way your kid is coming to my house to do all that that's one and then Ayla she has one for gymnastics and she has one for Scola and I'm like oh good let's just keep spending my money everyone who I already pay for the activity thank you so much anyway it's fine I'm just venting and then you probably have a Christmas party and to Vanessa's point next year you're gonna be so good you're gonna have your savings buckets for Christmas on point but right now if you haven't gotten there yet you need to have the little all the little things that maybe you didn't budget for in a savings bucket for Christmas for this December month in your monthly budget so how we do our spending section of the budget is at the top it's all of your normal things groceries spending money kids family fun dining out whatever and then at the bottom we add okay what is this month specific what do you have going on right now that you don't have a savings bucket for you haven't saved up for that we need to make sure we put in here that because it's just as important and i think that it's really good that you pointed that out vanessa because 90 of your budget can be the exact same every month and we want you to take the roller coaster out of it you're gonna have the same money for gas and groceries going in the account every month you're gonna have the same money for personal spending and you get to choose how you do use that each month but the bills are the same every month for the most part and so are the spending and so that's 90 and we're going to show you your savings here in a minute of your budget that doesn't change all you have to do is come in here and do just a few things which would be transfer the money for your college trip your the birthday party that this person is having and the christmas party that's all they're going to have to do other than maybe pay off debt everything else is going to run like clockwork while they're like doing literally anything else yeah we really want you to be able to make this as simple as possible.

19:13I think sometimes when people make a budget, they think it has to be complicated. They're not sure how to do it. So they don't do it right. Or they stop doing it. They don't continue. So making your budget consistent and exactly the same every time is really going to help you want to do it and help you continue to do it. And adding just that one little section, the bottom right of your budget is this month. And like, okay, what are this small, like three or four things that I have going on that I have to make sure that I add in here. Yep. And so then the last thing that you're going to do is your savings, right?

19:44So we have already, we've taken your income, we've subtracted the debt minimums that you're going to pay, all the bills that you pay, all of your spending, which includes everything that's normal and monthly, and then the few things that are special this month. And now we're going to go ahead and look at our savings buckets, right? See what do we need to be saving money for moving forward for our budget? All right. So if you look at this budget and their savings buckets, they have a lot of savings buckets right now they are very excited but this is new they just started being able to do and build their savings buckets and so for them they wanted this was really important to them they wanted to be able to build all these so that way they don't go back into that but you're as you're going to see they still have money left over to be able to put extra on debt and they just sorry really quick they just started this so that's why they don't have the money for the college trip or the birthday or the christmas party yet okay yeah and so that's wonderful so So they're starting it now knowing that next year it'll be fully funded.

20:41They won't have to do some of that stuff for the monthly spending. But let's talk about what their savings buckets are. Annual bills, kids, travel, Christmas, gifts, glam up and clothes, vehicle maintenance, home, pets, and medical. Now, they're going to have an account for every one of these categories. Super exciting. And they're going to see money stacking up there every single, let's see, December. How often do they do it? Twice? Yep. every single December, they're going, or sorry, every single paycheck twice in December, they're going to see three, their annual bills account grow by$340. Their Christmas account grow by$225.

21:17Their pets account grow by 50. All of those are going to grow automatically and they're going to feel so amazing, Vanessa. I'm so excited for them. Because they're putting$2 ,800 a month aside for savings. Okay. That's huge. Think about being able to watch those savings accounts build. Now, remember, I told you that this was new for them. And they've been doing a couple of these a little longer. Like they started Christmas really early annual bills. That was a non-negotiable. They started that early, but they recently just started doing the medical, the pets, the home and other things. But this is the point.

21:47The point is you're going to have less in the moment things that you have to fund. If you can get your savings buckets up and going. And the savings buckets that we've told you before, those are the, both the things that derail your budget and the things that you wish you could have, if you could figure out how to budget. And so having that, the glam up close, close account, like you, you've wanted to have that. Now is the time that you can do that once you've gotten on a budget and figured out what your money really can do. But also the things like annual bills, whatever annual bills that they have, those things probably sneak up on them and they've made them feel like they weren't doing a good job budgeting, but now they're going to have the money set aside every single time for all of these things.

22:24It feels so good. They're paying$680 a month and annual bills. So they have a hefty amount. I think they have a half a cow and different things are auto insurance or there's some other insurance maybe their homeowner's insurance yeah i know there's something in there that's big but but they're saving for that and let's see 680 is not a small number so imagine whatever that bill is that's due if it's two thousand dollar hoa fee that you have i think i have one couple that they have a quarterly country club membership it's two thousand dollars every quarter that's due that is not small and so you want to be able to plan ahead for that yeah and so i think it's really important to note that let's we're going to give you some numbers here just in case you're not watching income they're at 12 six twelve thousand dollars for their debt they're paying seventeen hundred dollars for their bills they're paying thirty one hundred dollars they're spending between the regular monthly spending and the few little extras they have this month is forty three hundred and then they're saving almost three thousand dollars a month so that they like venice said they don't have to use debt for any of these things that pop up which actually leaves them with$543.

23:29And once you put everything on paper, you guys, that's when you're really going to see what's possible. You're going to see, oh, I need to, I can up my spending or, oh, I need to lower some of the spending or I need to, I can do this savings bucket, but not this one yet or whatever. It gives you all, and our budget system actually does all the math for you. So you can play and tweak with it when you're first coming up with it to see what's possible. Right. So with this extra $543, the question is, what do you guys want to do with it now that we've made your budget way that you want it and you're very happy with it.

23:55And their answer was they want to put it on extra on debt. So that's what we did. We have an extra on debt line item. We put that amount there, which brings their budget down to zero and voila, voila, they are ready to go for December. Yeah. And so that's usually the last thing that we do in the budget. And that's why this budget goes and does the math. It tracks how much we're taking away each time we add a line item, Each time we fill out a column and it gives you a real clear picture. And this person on purpose is saving a lot of money and going to pay off a credit card maybe. And that's going to be their December.

24:30And they're going on college trip. Like they're having the best life. They're doing a good job. They're literally bougie on a budget. Yes. Okay. So this has been hopefully a great step-by-step for you to figure out how to make your December budget. We know it's a hard month, but we still want you to do it. Okay. And just like these people, it might be a little squeeze this month, right? to get stuff paid for but if i can get to the point in january maybe where i'm setting all these savings buckets up i'm gonna feel really good and we want that for you too and again do it now before you're in the really crazy like black friday mindset okay just do it now and so that way even if you don't hit your exact numbers you're all your goals for december just by writing it down you're going to be more aware more conscious as you go through spending in december for Christmas.

25:15All right. We will see you. I'm just going to, no, we're not going to see you because it's going to be next month before we see you, but we love you. And we hope you enjoy this video. 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.

25:48Imagine 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.