Make Your April 2026 Budget with Us: Plan Your Month and Your Money in 20 Minutes | 543

0:00Vanessa, I know you're going to be shocked, but it's time to make April's budget. I know. This is how I know what's going on with my life. When I know that we're making a new budget, I'm like, oh my gosh, is it already next month? How is this going by so fast? Is it for them or us? I know. It's definitely for me, selfishly, to know where I am and what's going on with me. Yeah. So April starts next week, you guys, and we need you to make your budget now so that you're ready ahead. And we need to make our budget too. And this is really good for all of us to think about what April is going to look like.

0:32Yes. And for those of you that may be a paycheck ahead, I know for new listeners, you may be like, what does that mean? That's a different episode, 517. We can talk about that. But listen, for those of you, the reason why we're having this episode now is because you may be using March 20th or March 27th paycheck for April. So we need to have this episode now. So that way, you know exactly what to do and how to budget for the upcoming month. Also, you need to be ahead. You don't need to be like, oh, it's the second here. I'm going to make my budget because you're probably already messed it all up by then.

1:01Let's just be honest about that. We love you so much. Okay. Step one in making your budget. Remember, we are here to teach you how simple, how easy, how quickly, all of that. We're going to make this budget in like less than 20 minutes, you guys. We're going to do it and you're going to be there with us. 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? When 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 to get through the month.

1:31Hey, 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. 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.

2:07We 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 workers. 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. So step one is just to list out all your income. Yes. So what is considered income? Income is any money that you make in the month.

2:38So whether that's garage sale money, whether that's tip money, whether it's anything you bring in cash. Some of you people like think that cash is girl math and that you don't have to actually put that in the budget. It's not a real thing. Make sure you put that in there. Your income, commissions, bonus, tax return, all of that money that you have going on. So as you see here, Rosa is a teacher. She has her two consistent paychecks that are coming in, plus she's got her child support. And if you can see this, she's going to get all of her money by the 10th of the month. All of her money is going to be in and everything's going to be on autopilot.

3:09So exciting for her. Yeah, it's important to note child support, disability, money that you get from adult kids that they pay you for stuff. All of that needs to go in income on them and it all needs to go directly into the bills account. And then we were we were going to slowly, as you see, we're going to we're going to spend it. Don't worry. Yeah. It won't be there for long, that positive number. It is the best number of your budget. That's why we start there, right? It's the only black number. Everything else is right. It's being deducted out. Okay, so we go straight from income to your minimum debt payments.

3:36Shana, why do we only put minimum debt payments here? We are working on seeing how much you cost, see how much your budget costs, so that eventually you can go find out exactly how much you can afford extra to pay on debt if that is your goal. But that's not here. We need to see what the baseline of your life costs, and then you're going to balance your desire to pay off debt, your desire to go on vacation with your desire to eat out, whatever those are, whatever your version of bougie is, and you'll make those decisions. But at first it's going to be those minimum payments, which you can, you're going to list the name of the debt, the budget, the minimum payment amount, and the due date on all of those.

4:08And if you can see here, she's got a couple of credit cards. Actually, they're all credit cards and she's got them. We haven't, she hasn't put them in due date order yet, but that is preferred. If you can list your bills out that way, it really does help. So anyways, all the minimum payments is what she has listed. So you can see, we didn't say it, but this might be the first time that you know how much money you actually make in a month. You haven't really thought about it. You just, especially a lot of, I get a lot of people don't know about you, Vanessa. They're like, I make$125 ,000 a year.

4:34I'm like, that's what they told you when you signed the contract. What do you actually make? And so this was a good thing. And so we, our budget shows you, and by the way, you can follow along budgetbesties.com forward slash April budget. You can watch. Our budget says, oh, you make$8 ,000. That's how much you have to budget. And now we've taken away her debt minimums. Remember, these are our minimums. That's a whole thousand dollars. So you better believe this woman is going to be trying to pay these offices and get that money back in her budget. None of that is even a car payment. This is all stuff that can be gone.

5:01And that's also why it's the first thing, because all of these can be eliminated and you don't have any more debt payments. And it's really exciting to get that. And so that's why we put it front and center. And then the next thing that we do is your bills. We list your bills. And that's why they're in their column all by themselves, too, because you can get rid of them. All right. So your bills. A bill is anything that you are getting paid that has a due date on it and that you're getting charged for every month on a reoccurring basis. That is a monthly bill. Yep. And so here you can see we've got things like your mortgage.

5:30You've got things like electricity. But we're also going to have those subscriptions that you decide. First of all, you're just going to list everything out. If this is your first time, go look in your credit card statement, look in your bank, look in Venmo, look in PayPal, look in Apple, look in all of the places that you get to pay bills. Super fun. And put all of those bills down. And then once you see them, again, this is a cleaned up budget because Vanessa's been working with this client. But you need to do that cleaning up yourself. You're going to put them down. We actually recommend put all the subscriptions bundled together at the bottom, at least at first, so you can see them all together, see how much you're paying on subscriptions, and then decide, okay, I don't need this many things, streaming services or this many musics.

6:08Or I don't need Jim and the online videos of working out or whatever. Or I don't need YouTube and Netflix and this. Whatever it is. You're going to make those decisions, but seeing it all together on one column is going to really help you. And you can see here, she has her mortgage, her child's tuition because she goes to her private school, her auto insurance, and she's got two things for herself. Those are gardening and car wash. She gets charged for those monthly. It's a monthly bill. So that's why it goes in bills. It's not a spending thing. Okay. So that's what I really love is she is very conservative.

6:38She doesn't spend a lot of extra money on things. She's a single mom and she's got two kids. I believe they're both in high school or one's in college, something like that. And so, yeah, I think that she's spending her money wisely. Yeah. And so when you're building your budget so far, what we've told you is you've listed out your income. And by the way, we're five minutes in, you guys, like you can do this. You've listed out your income, you've listed out your debt minimums, and then you've listed out your bills. And maybe once you get this process underway, you're deciding on some bills that you want to cut, which usually happens.

7:05And so now she knows out of everything, she has budgeted$4 ,200 and she has$3 ,800 left to allocate towards spending, towards savings. And then like we said at the end, if she wants to pay extra on debt, she could do that too. So let's see what – she has two kids. What is she going to be spending? You know that we have – or maybe you don't. Maybe this is your first time listening. We have some basic categories of spending. Other people track spending each individual transaction in their budget. Seems like a terrible idea. It is terrible. And that's like the after effect. What we want you to do is pick a monthly amount that you're going to allocate toward each spending category.

7:41And that's what you're going to put in the budget. So you're going to say, I think we spend about$1 ,400 in groceries. That's what we're budgeting. And that's what I'm going to spend on purpose. And the same is going to be true for gas, dining out, family fun, whatever, personal spending money. And then she has her two kids listed here. They're spending money. And then I don't have to track anything. Those are the on-purpose amounts I'm deciding I'm going to spend, and I'm going to put those money in, we're going to talk about that, in separate accounts. And then I don't have to track. I don't have to say a little bit here or there.

8:10I can adjust the amounts later if I feel like they weren't correct. But this makes it so simple. Yeah, this allows her to see her money completely in separate categories. So she knows exactly what she's spending, what she's spending, where she's going to spend it, and when she can spend it. So the gas and groceries, that's one account. You have one account for gas and groceries. She has a debit card. She knows exactly how much she can have there throughout the month. It's very consistent for her. She uses her debit card stickers. Like, she loves it. And she called it, we usually call it family fun.

8:38She wanted to call it dining and fun. This is all Chick-fil-A runs. This is taking her kids to Goofy Golf, maybe to a movie. This is for her taking them out to dinner, whatever she wants to do. She wanted to budget$200 a month. They're pretty conservative. Again, she cooks a lot. She likes to stay home. And then she has her money. So she makes good money. She should be able to have money for herself to spend. So she's got$300 a month to spend on Rosa and nobody else. Okay. And then she has both of her kids listed. She budgets$100 a month for each of them. And some of it, she helps out a little bit with gas money with that.

9:08But that is for everything that they need throughout the month. It feels good knowing that she's giving them a little bit. I think it was like$25 a month. So we just said it was$100 a month evenly that she's giving them. And then they get to decide and budget how they're going to spend it throughout the month. And all the pressure is off of her. I want to park here for a minute because long story short, I was having a conversation with my daughter yesterday and she said, I need to get a bathing suit before I go to this. She said, I need to get back in the gym and then I need to get a bathing suit before we go to the beach with her friends.

9:34Oh, okay. Because I was like, you guys go on spring break. She's mom. I don't know. I think I need to get in the gym and I need a new bathing suit or whatever. And she said, but I don't have enough money for a bathing suit yet. Yet. And I was like, that's correct because you decided to go to Starbucks with your little buddy. And so my kids are similar. They get a certain amount. It's not as much. They're not as old or they're not older and driving. So they have to figure that out. Like I want, she wanted new pants. Okay. Then you're going to get new pants. You're not going to go get a bathing suit probably.

10:00And by the way, this doesn't mean that you're not buying stuff for them. These are optional. Tell me the truth. Did she get a new bathing suit last year? Yes. Did she get another one from your daughter? Yes. Does she need a new bathing suit? No. Therefore that is the lesson we're teaching. If you want it for sure, have it. That's fine. But I'm not replacing things just because you want it. But the point being, again, not on me. That's on her to think about that. 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.

10:33It'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. If 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.

11:07This 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. I love the point that you said, especially a single mom. I think any mom can relate. Do I get money for myself? Is that ever allowed to happen? Now it does happen. And she doesn't have to stress. But I think what differentiates us a lot, Vanessa, is we have categories of spending that match your real life. This is what you do. This is where it feels like everything goes off. And I don't know if I have money. I can't decide. I don't know if the bills are going to be paid.

11:38If you just categorize your spending money, that's going to make it so much simpler. Yeah, and knowing that you have a gas and groceries account with a certain amount of money in it, I think hers is$1 ,700 a month. And she knows it's completely separate from all her bills. And she can feel confident knowing that she has that money to spend on her family, like as far as groceries and being able to get to and from work safely and with gas. And all her bills are being paid over here. So when you make those separate accounts with that money in there, you're literally making mini budgets for gas and groceries, for dining and fun, for Rose's money, for both of her kids.

12:12Those are mini budgets. And have a blast. She's got$2 ,400 a month budgeted to be able to spend. If you look at the bottom of the column, it says here she's got$2 ,400 a month to spend during the month. Have a good time. Have a blast. It doesn't matter how many times you go to the grocery store. You don't need to document, I spent$50 this time and then$60 this time and then$50. No, nobody cares. You have$1 ,400 to spend. That's it. Yeah. And I think so what we can see here is, again, we still have that$8 ,000 total income. She's now with her spending, which is not little, she's having a decent amount of spending in all of these categories, especially compared to her income.

12:47Now she's budgeted$6 ,500, which means she only has$1 ,500 left to put towards savings. Now, so this is all auto, like Vanessa said, they all have their mini budgets. It's all like all of their bills and your debt payments can come out automatically. Your spendings will be transferred to those separate accounts like you talked about automatically. It's going to be amazing. There is a little bit of your budget that's going to change every month. And that's because life changes every month. There's different things coming up, exciting things. So this month is going to be April. So you, friend, need to think about all of these things that we have listed.

13:17They're going to do something really special for Mother's Day. Maybe they're going to go to a big brunch or go do a big party or something. So they're going to prep. It's not till May, but it's the beginning of May. So maybe I want to save a little money or maybe I need to buy the tickets now in April or pictures or whatever it is. They have prom. I love that it's only$200. I love that. Maybe she only has one girl. And maybe, I think maybe she was borrowing a dress. Yeah. So prom is a big thing in April. All the proms are in April. I could be wrong. Easter is in April. It's in the beginning of April.

13:45So we definitely want to get that. And then spring break might have already happened for you, but maybe it didn't. So you want to put it in there. And so you can see here, she has$5 ,000,$6 ,000,$7 ,000,$8 ,000,$1 ,000. There's an extra$1 ,000 of stuff happening this month. Okay, so you'll see why her savings buckets section is not as big as maybe she wanted it to be. because we are still budgeting in the moment for a couple of things that are happening month specific because she's not there yet. She didn't, she just started coaching. So she didn't save for spring break yet. She didn't save for prom yet or her mother's Mother's Day prep and all that.

14:16So right now in the moment, we are budgeting for all this stuff that's happening. Yeah, and just real quick, other things that you might wanna think about as far as April that are month specific would be any birthdays that are happening in April. School class, maybe you're, I don't know when teacher appreciation week is. I think it's in April, but I always feel like it's right when it's maybe it's in May but either way maybe there's something like that or a book fair or they do spring photos right yeah don't they stuff like that maybe different sports and activity fees that are happening my daughter's our daughter both are going to start beach volleyball probably in April all of your outdoor stuff depending on where you live we've already done it here in Florida it's already like spring sprung here but maybe for you you need to put that in there home maintenance I was talking about that swimsuit maybe you need a new swimsuit or something.

14:59And then any weddings or stuff or like spring type events, graduation that you want to start getting ready for. Yeah. Especially, I love how you said start getting ready for, because listen, if you know that you're traveling in May or June for your niece or nephew's graduation, and you know, it's going to cost you a thousand dollars because you have to buy a ticket and then obviously the, the, the gift and all of that budget for it now, put it in your budget now. So if there are some things coming up, make sure you put it in there now, figure out how long you, how many months you have to be able to budget for divided by three, and we'll put it in your savings buckets.

15:28We'll talk about that in a minute. But just really start thinking about what is happening this month and what can I budget for so that way you're prepared and you have the cash and you don't feel like strapped or you don't feel like you need to swipe a credit card to make it happen. Yep. Okay. So the last part, we've done four columns, right? We did income minus debts, minus bills, minus spending. Now she knows she has about$484 left to figure out what she's going to put towards savings buckets and what she's going to put towards debt. So let's see what she's doing. Now understand, like Vanessa said, this is just right now.

15:57Like the future, we really do love you to be able to start your savings buckets. But as we said with this single mom, she's got$1 ,000 going to her debt. Once she can get rid of those debt payments, it's going to be so much. That's$1 ,000 easy that she can put towards savings, plus the stuff that was monthly this month. So you can start small with your savings buckets. Super important. I do want to say this is the thing that differentiates us. Every budget has most of this stuff. They don't do it as cool as we do. It's fine. They don't do it as pretty as we do. That's fine. And not everybody tells you, hey, you need to think about all of the medical expenses that you're going to have to pay this year or the vet bills or the annual bills that only come out once or twice a year.

16:32Let's go ahead and plan monthly for those so they don't come and derail your or blow up your whole budget later on in the year. Yeah, especially if you have kids. They have, if they play sports, they have fees due in the fall or the spring or they have summer camps and they have field trips and they have school pitchers. They have, like we said, prom. There's a lot of stuff going on with them. And so being able to save ahead of time for that and knowing your true cost, how much you really cost in a year and then break it down in a month, it's going to allow you to budget better and know that you can budget.

16:59Because a lot of people think that budgeting isn't for me. I can't do this. It's because you just really, we don't believe you've been showed how like the proper way, the true way on how to budget. And that's really what makes us different. And so as we've said before, different savings buckets are, besides that, is Christmas, birthdays, gifts, home maintenance, vehicle maintenance, all of those things that you might eventually get to. And you might want those on your budget this month. Even if you want to put$10 or$20 in there a month, it's going to start. But those are also separate accounts, like Vanessa was saying.

17:26This is the cash envelope made modern, made digital, right? We're saving for stuff in separate accounts so that we know we have the money, we know what it's for, the same as we are putting money in spending so that we know exactly what that money is for and how much we have for each category. Same thing for your savings buckets. Yeah. So if you look at this budget, she brings in$8 ,078. She's budgeted$1 ,038 for debt. She's budgeted$3 ,156 for bills,$3 ,400 for her spending,$350 for her savings. And she has$134 left. Is it as much as she wanted? No. Does she have some big things this month that she's paying for?

18:02Yes. She has an extra$1 ,000 that she's paying for this month with spring break, Easter, prom, and all that. Normally, her savings buckets would be more. Normally, the amount of money she's putting extra on debt is more. But this month, it's just not happening. But if we showed you a perfect budget every single time, it would be completely unrealistic. And that's why every month you can go to budgetbesties.com forward slash whatever month it is and then put month, right? April's budget, February's budget, January's budget, March budget, all of that. And you can see all the different types of budgets.

18:33so you can really relate to them individually. The other thing to think about here is that she's not putting all of this stuff on debt. That's why she has those bills, those bills, is because when she needed to buy the tickets for spring break, she put it on debt. Now she's paying for cash and that's a big win. And if she has$134 actually to put on debt, that might cancel out her lowest credit card, which is a$33 payment. And then that's$33 that she doesn't have to pay towards debt each month. And then we're gonna continue to do that on the months that aren't as expensive, she'll be able to put more on debt.

19:04And that's okay that she used all of that money because she paid for cash. Next month, she maybe doesn't have as much pay$1 ,000 extra on debt. And that's fine. That's why it's not cookie cutter. It's your budget. It's your life. A lot of times, a lot of you feel like if I'm not putting so much extra on debt, then I'm doing it wrong. That's not correct. If you're not adding to your debt, that's step number one. You're not using the credit cards. Perfect. You're paying for your life in cash. Great. And then we will move on from there. And listen, her goal is to get out of debt. She's a single mom.

19:34She's paying for everything in cash right now. She has to get out of debt. A thousand extra dollars a month in her regular budget would be huge. So for you, you may be like, listen, I'm actually fine just paying minimum payments. I don't want to pay extra on debt. So you would take that$134 and disperse it elsewhere. But because this is Rosa's goal, then that's where it's going. But when she's done with that, imagine having all that extra money to be able to put towards savings buckets to be able to maybe get a couple extra things that she wanted in her bill section that maybe she wants a gym membership, but she feels like she can't get one and she wants to wait.

20:04She knows, hey, I'm going to do that for myself when I pay down some debt. That could be a goal. So allow this to be your budget. Allow yourself the freedom to build a bougie budget for you that brings you joy, that gets you excited. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And what we've shown you is a very simple, by the way, if you go to budgetmessies.com forward slash budget. You can buy this budget. You saw it do the math for you in the moment. It will also show you how to automate your all these transfers that we're talking about on separate accounts. It'll teach you. For example, Rosa gets paid twice a month.