Put Your Money and Budget On Autopilot in 2026: Automate Your Bills, Spending & Savings | 511

21:40And nobody expects you to. You should be able to be focused on those things, not also your budget. So this is why it sets it up. I just really quickly wanted to show you guys a paycheck plan, which once you make your budget, it tells you, okay, these are the transfers. You want to do it twice a month. This is the amount that you're going to set up, the automatic transfers to both. So I just wanted to show you that real quick. That is on our... Yeah, it's an option. Again, our budget has a ton of features. You don't have to use a lot of them. You can just use the monthly budget or you can use all of them.

22:05However you want to do that. Yep. Okay. So now it's time for a giveaway. Michelle, can you give us our honor? Where's the drum roll? Give me a drum roll. Do we have a drum roll? Okay. Ready? Did we hear it? I don't know. Did anybody hear it? I didn't hear it. I was just thinking, but you got one, don't you? Janet did it like... She did. And Andrea said automagically. She remembers from our podcast. Thank you. It's automagical. all right all right yep we have tessie plunger yeah so much congratulations all right girls so email us at budgetbesties.com no that's not right that's our website go to email us at hello at budgetbesties.com i think i've done that every day now and then let me know if you want an amazon a starbucks or a target and i will send it your way okay and i want to get to talking to about what Dana just said in the chat.

22:56But first, cute couple. They're at a water park or a beach or something. Look at them having their best life. They probably did a savings bucket. They have their like VIP tag and everything. Get it, girl. Get it. Anyway, she said, I love, this system has helped me so much. I love having all my bills being paid automatically, automatically, whatever, out of a designated account. The system takes so much stress out of budgeting. I love the feeling of being organized. We love the feeling of being organized. We want you to love the feeling of being organized. The whole problem is not you, not your lack of knowledge.

23:27It's simply disorganization. If you can get it organized, it's all going to become so much easier and clearer. Yeah, absolutely. OK, so let's talk about your homework for tomorrow or for tonight, for tomorrow. We are going to look at and Shana is going to put the link in the chat for your homework. And it's also you're going to get it on your email. And it's in that folder that you've been looking at all week for replays. So it's all there for you. But tonight's homework is talking about your annual bills account plans. We want you to plan out what your annual bills would look like. OK, we know we talked about yesterday or the day before was your savings buckets and what they would look like.

23:59Let's be visionary. Let's dream here. But really, the annual bills, that one's a must. We talked about that. But let's think about if you had, let's say,$4 ,000 a year that you need to pay in annual bills. You divide that by 12. What does that look like in your budget? And guess what? Set up that automatic transfer every single month to go into that account. And voila, your bills, those annual bills, when you need the money, is there for you. It's amazing. And I just want to show you real quick. You have a workbook that's going to really walk you through this. But if you wanted to see what it looks like here, please hold.

24:29We have a lot of extra stuff. This is just our play around. So this is where the annual bills, this is the kind of things that, like Vanessa said, that are auto insurance, property taxes, just stuff like that. And then this will show you, okay, once I add that up, how much do I need to be setting aside so that these big surprises don't punch me in the face like it can sometimes feel. So that's your homework is to go figure those out. Think about that. Again, as Vanessa said, it's never about perfection. It's about just try and get a rough draft. A rough draft is going to be way better, way more helpful for you.

24:59Brain dump it. And then you can always come back and add to it and figure it out more. Okay, guys. Remember, tomorrow is Coffee and Chat. We have three budgets that we are going to redo. So a lot of y 'all have sent in your budgets. We're really excited to. We've already started looking them over. So we're going to remake those on tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a little bit longer. And then we're also going to pull up some other budgets because we saw some really good ones and we can't just do three, okay? So we're going to do a little bit more. And then remember, we have some big giveaways.

25:25Invite your friends, invite some people back. Two people are going to win coaching tomorrow. Two people are going to win coaching. We are so excited to give that away this month. If you bought this system, let me actually iterate that. Everyone who bought this system during the bootcamp is going to have a chance to win coaching. and we're so excited to work with you guys. All right, now it's time for questions, you guys. So we're going to get some questions. Hey, Vanessa's got a hair appointment. She's going to get to, okay, it's time. Y 'all know why I'm wearing a hat. Told you yesterday why I had a headband on.

25:58That's going to be - We're advancing to hat level. That's going to be in her glam up fund, you guys. But we're going to get her out of here so she can get to her appointment after we answer you guys some questions. Oh, Andrea, great tip. She said she watched a video on what not to do. When you buy the budget, you guys, we have videos in there. Oh, we did that. And we did help you with that video and it's a great one. So please, please do that. You guys are not asking. Oh, there are Cheryl has a question. Tithing, is it spending your bills? Now, this is going to, we like, we want, and we want you to start getting in this mindset.

26:28It really depends on how you do it. If you tithe and you pay online, we're going to put it in the bills because it's going to be a pretty similar amount each month, right? But if you are taking cash to your church, then you can, if you want to put it in spending and you get it out periodically every week or every two weeks, that is just going to be up to you how you actually functionally tithe. Yeah, I think the best thing here, guys, if it's automatic, it's systemized, it's reoccurring, it goes in the bill section. If it's something that you do here and there, that's where the spending, the discretionary spending goes over in that column.

26:59Andrea asked the easiest way to reorder bills in there is don't add ROS. Don't do that. So thank you for asking. That was a great ask, but don't do that. We're just going to, like you said, And Vanessa showed you guys in a video how to... I just made one, actually, and put it in the course. Okay. Here, you just can... I'm pushing Command-C and then Command-Shift-V. And then she also showed you in here. You're just going to have to copy and paste, but you want to paste special and do the values only. So that's how that's going to work, okay? Yeah. You can just drag the name, the budget, and the due date all together, and you can reorder them.

27:34If you highlight it all and go to the tools and click on, I think it's the range, it doesn't work. It's weird. It does all the ones and then all the twos and all the threes. It doesn't go in order from smallest to least or smallest to biggest. Yeah. And then somebody else asked, wait, where did it go? Oh, entertainment. So this is a great question. And we like to talk about how we don't want you to get into the weeds. She said yesterday they bought concert tickets. This is what throws her. Where would that come from? Okay. So we're going to make a decision here on where this makes sense in your brain.

28:04And then we're going to just be consistent with that. Yeah. If we were if personally, if I was buying concert tickets, it would just be a monthly item for us. I would just put it in my budget this month. We're buying because if we're buying them, they're not cheap. Otherwise, if they're super. I had a client that they she went to like local concerts all the time, like 25 bucks or whatever. That just came straight out of her spending and it made sense for her. Someone else said that it made sense for them to come out of the entertainment budget. I'm telling you right now, any concerts I go to, we don't have enough in my entertainment budget to play.

28:34They're coming from a savings bucket. Yeah. They're coming from a travel savings bucket. But what is most important is what makes sense to you and that you are consistent with it. Does that make sense? And just again, I think that's the part is release that nitty gritty have to get in the weeds part. Make a decision, make a broad like this is where everything goes and stick with it and move on. Okay. I want to answer Janine's question. This is a great question. She said, so from your bills account, you pay bills and send money to savings and spending. Whatever's left over is what you can decide.

29:05And I think that's why it's so important for like why we did our budget the way we did it. Because you need to be able to see as you go. That's why we want you to build it with these categories. This is what makes the most sense. And this is the way to build it. You start with how much money do I have? And as you put your debts in, it attracts it. And as you put your bills in, it subtracts it. At that point, you can look and say, OK, I'm really living beneath my means or I'm not or things are getting tight or whatever. And then I know how much I have left for spending and savings. And then once I get my spending on there, then I can see how much I have for savings.

29:35And then after that, you can play around with it. The goal is to get to zero on purpose because you're meeting all your goals and you're being realistic with your budget. And then, yes, that's when you decide after you figure out those amounts based on real math. Then you decide and you set up those automatic transfers. I think what we always want to remember is with this money, we're doing all of this with it. OK, so if you start the budget and you already have in your bills account$1 ,000, you need to put a line item here that says starting in bills$1 ,000. And then because you have it doesn't mean we're going to use it.

30:13It means you have to account for it in your budget. So that way you can see the full picture of what your money can do for you. And then you can make a decision. I don't really need$1 ,000 in there because all I need is like a$300 buffer and I feel good. Then that can go extra on debt. That can go to fund your savings accounts or whatever. Does that make sense? Yeah. I also want to ask somebody, or now we're getting some good questions. She said on the monthly, does the savings automatically get updated from the savings planner? It does not. On purpose. Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say, listen, there's a reason we don't do that because a lot of people will use the savings bucket to dream and they want to plan all of this stuff that they want to do eventually.

30:49That's great. We love that. We want that for you. But then their budget can only do three of them. And that's OK. So we do. We did not. The debt tracker doesn't attach to your budget because a lot of times they have more debts than they can pay for every month. So that also doesn't attach. Also, I'll tell you a little another little secret. If this person, it was probably two hundred and thirty seven dollars is what they needed to save a month. We bumped it up a little bit, whereas that's the kind of people. We like round numbers. OK. Somebody said, do I automate bills at the beginning of every month or once I do it once and set it and forget it.

31:19Yes, that's the idea. And she said she's nervous. I get it. We get it. That's where you're going to start. But you need to, you're going to learn to trust yourself. You're going to learn to trust that the money is in the account. You don't touch the money in the bills account. That's why we say all the time, if you have a debit card, excuse me, if it's hooked up to Amazon, all of that needs to go away. The only thing happening in your bills account is bills are being paid. And if you do that, if you stick to that and you're trying, that's why we're separating spending so that you can still spend money and know all your bills are going to get paid.

31:46You will never have to worry. You won't have to be nervous because my paychecks are going in there. And because I built the budget the way that we're teaching you, I know all of the amount of money I need to pay my bills is staying in my bills account. You don't have to worry or be anxious about it. I recently took my Disney Plus subscription off of my Amazon because I did not want my bills count card sitting on the Amazon. You can set your preferred method of payment to be your spending account. If you're paying a subscription or you're paying your annual prime membership fee from Amazon so you have to have your bills account on there, That's fine.

32:17But your preferred method of payment is not your bills account, nor should you ever use it for any type of spending on there. I'm going to let you answer Tessie's question. What'd she say? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then how do you answer if you have something special for this month, but the money is coming on savings and not the paychecks for that month? So there's a couple of ways you can do that. Here, we would probably say savings from and or you can say specifically entertainment and 300. and then you can say concert tickets. And this actually goes along with Tessie's question, which is it, she's, do I need to get an extra feeder account to fund all my spend buckets so I can transfer the spend money out of bills as soon as possible, but it only hits my debit accounts weekly?

33:01You, Tessie, you're not gonna need to do that, okay? Because you're gonna start to really trust yourself and the money's gonna land on payday in your account and then that day or the next day it's gonna go over to your spending. There really shouldn't be a long time that it's just sitting there in bills. anyway, but you're going to learn to trust yourself and you're going to learn to be like, wow, look at how much money is in my bills account. I don't care. I don't have to spend it. It's fine. I'm not. Yeah, it's going to be like a revolving door. Money's coming in. Money's going out constantly all the time.

33:25And eventually you will not. I promise I know right now you guys may be in a spot where you're constantly checking your bank accounts. You're constantly in there trying to figure out what's going on because you don't trust yourself and you don't trust your account, the money, whatever. Eventually that will not be a problem. It doesn't matter. The income income level does not matter here. It matters setting a system up that you feel good about that. You Know your money is organized and systemized. Okay. I like this question. She said, how do I account for a paycheck that varies and not a set amount because it's consistent on a biweekly basis?

33:55It's not consistent. Not a set amount. But it's consistent on a biweekly. Oh, so like you get some, like one of them is bigger, one of them is smaller, but they always equal out the same amount. Is that kind of what you're saying? Either way, what we want you to do is just budget based on your income. I see how if you have one of those paychecks being smaller might make you nervous. So that's why you're going to want to get ahead or have a buffer in the account as much as that is lacking. So that way you can just, what we want to do is, best case scenario, we have money in the bills account. We can always pay the bills and we're refunding it with the paychecks.

34:27That's where it's going. The paychecks are just refilling what was already there to pay the bills. Yeah. Again, once you get a paycheck ahead, that question will be obsolete. It won't matter. Yeah. How do you determine what gets funded first? Do you suggest funding savings accounts with the last paycheck aside from the one for the following month? Okay. Okay, so listen, this is where we're getting in the weeds. We want all the money to come into the bills account and all the transfers to happen. We're not picking what paycheck pays what and funds what. We're not doing that. Once you get a paycheck ahead, the money is coming in, the money is going out.

35:02So for me, my husband gets paid weekly on Wednesday afternoons, Thursday morning at midnight. All of my transfers happen. All of them. Okay. But we are a paycheck ahead. You have to get to that point to feel comfortable enough to make those transfers happen. Okay. We're not, again, no paychecks are assigned to any transfers or spending accounts or any bills. Yeah. It's just a revolving system. Yeah. Okay. Since different months have different numbers of paychecks, how can you explain how the auto transfers work in that case? I thought transfers to our savings bucket might have to be manual versus automatic since the amounts might differ each month.

35:36That's a great question. You can make your savings transfers only happen twice a month versus every two weeks. Your spending, you might want them to happen every two weeks, or you do want them to happen because you have to have gas. No matter how many paychecks just happen, I have to have gas to get to work. And the same with your grocery money. Those have to happen along with your life. Savings can be once a month. They can be twice a month. That way it's consistent. And it's a certain amount. And it doesn't matter if you've got an extra paycheck or not. I'm going to go to the paycheck plan really quick.

36:04So I want to show you guys something. This is a new feature that we just updated the system with. Thanks to our lovely Becky. I think, I don't know if she's in here today. She left early yesterday. Okay, so listen, now you have an option to pick the number of transfers for spending and the number of transfers for savings. The reason for this is if you guys are on a every other week paycheck cycle, that means you get 26 paychecks in a year, okay? But your budget, if you divide it by two, is you would only actually transfer things 24 times, not 26. For savings, we budget on a monthly or a yearly basis.

36:36That means you don't need 26 transfers for all of your savings. For spending, spending is tied to the amount of weeks that you need, that you get paid. So you need spending per paycheck, but your savings doesn't necessarily have to be tied to your paycheck. So that's why we gave you the option. Some people are like, listen, on the 20th of every month, is when I want all of my savings to go through. I only want to do it one time. Perfect. You have the option to do that. Your spending, they want tied to their paycheck. Every time they get paid, their spending gets funded. Perfect. You have the option to do that here as well with the new paycheck plan.

37:08I hope that made sense. Yeah, and I want to show you guys, this is way more tactical than we necessarily, but you guys are here with us live, so you're getting it. Can you see this? Look at this. This is my transfer screen on my bank app. And this is how I can choose the recurring. And every bank is different. Every bank is different. But look at that. It gives me the option once at a later date, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, every two months. That's random, whatever. And the first and the 15th. So for me, I would probably pick first and the 15th on this one. The alternative I would do is if I wanted it, like I have a client, they get paid on the 5th and the 20th.

37:43They want all of their things to happen on the 6th and the 21st. I would do once at a later date. I would set it all up for the 6th. And then I would do one more time. I would set it all up for the 21st. And then I'm done. And the only thing I ever have to do is go edit those if I change my amount of times. But they're going to happen. And that's where, that's what we're talking about, the magic of automating your budget. You can set it up and use all those tools. Usually if you have a military bank, then they give you the option of the 1st and 15th. I don't have that option. It's kind of jealous, a little bit jealous.

38:08It's fine. Don't worry about that. But listen, this right here where it says transfer dates, you have the option to say, I do it on the 1st and the 15th. I do it on the 6th and the 21st. Whatever that is, you know when all that's happening. And guys, it's got checkboxes. We love some checkboxes. So you can come in here and check off to know that they're done. Yeah. And somebody said, how do I get the budget on my phone? So we have, see that, don't worry about what's on my phone. I don't know what's on my phone, but look here. That's right here. I have Google Drive. I don't know. I click in there because I have a lot of different things that I want to do.

38:40And then I go and look, it's a it's a sheets right here. I click that right there. Sorry. There has to be sound effects. Sorry. Sorry. Not sorry. You know what I mean? And then I click it and then everything's right there. It's right there. Super, super. So it's super easy to get on your phone. Super duper. And then I want to show you it's super easy. I can click these buttons. Like, because sometimes you just want to check things off. And you're like, look, I got paid. Checkies. I still check off. Check a check. It's fabulous. Agreed. Oh, Kristen said right. Yeah, go ahead. Her mind is blown.

39:12I never realized that you could do that in your app. Yes, girl. We have the direct deposit set up through work. Yep, it's fine. And then it goes into different accounts. We do not recommend using HR, your work, to do your automatic transfers to different accounts. Because, listen, if you ever want to change that, now who do you have to rely on? Now it's out of your hands. You have to wait on somebody else to do their job. I don't want to trust anyone else that they're going to do their job. OK, I want to know that I can do it on my own. So set up all of your automatic transfers through your bank on your own through your bank, not through your work.

39:42Tessie said her bank has a limit of 75 internal transfers per month. That's pretty funny. That's arbitrary. Is this a competition? I know. I was like, but I think you'll be fine with 75. The deal here, the only time you wouldn't be fine, and this is a great, this is a great leads into a great question is if you are using a savings bucket in a savings account, that really should be a spending one. So we talked about like I had that client that had homeschool. I originally set that up for her as a savings bucket because that's where my brain went. I didn't ask her enough questions. That's my fault.

40:11But she was used as emptying every month because she was using it. They were going to co-ops and their field trips and buying crafts or whatever. So that needed to be a spending account for her. It's really changed. Yeah. So it moved over because otherwise she would have been transferring all the time and says she's just getting it funded and she goes swipes when she's doing it. So that's what we're saying. You shouldn't need that many transfers unless you're just got one in the wrong category. And you just got to figure out, like for you, what do I need to have money set aside so I can spend it without messing with my bills, without having to worry?

40:41What categories are those? And then what are the ones that I'm saving for in the future? Those are actually savings accounts. And those transfers usually are a little bit more limited. For example, if you're using Ally, which somebody tell them that we should be we should get sponsored by them or something. But if because I use Ally and I think their savings has a limit of 10 transfers a month. And so that's that makes sense for a savings account. You shouldn't need to be doing more than 10 a month. So just understand that would be the only time that you would go over. And I think that's a good point.

41:08This is why we don't tell you these have to be savings and these have to be spending and checking accounts. No, that's up to you. That is your discretionary decision of, I want Christmas to be its own checking account because I want a debit card to be able to spend from that. Great. My travel account is a checking account, right? So I put all the money in travel and I just take my husband and I have each have a debit card for our travel account. And we take that when we go on vacation. It is easier for me. Everyone does it differently. Homeschool, medical. I think I said that the other day. Sometimes medical is a checking account, especially maybe you're older and you have a lot of appointments and that just makes more sense for you.

41:41We want this budget to match your real life. That is why it gives you the option. That's why it's not cookie cutter. Gives you the option and the freedom to do what you want. OK, somebody asked if we could show the mock budget. And I want to tell you, why would you need a mock budget? Let me tell you. So many reasons. Let me tell you my personal experience. OK, you guys may have heard me mention my husband retired, retired. Who, girl? It's a lot of talking. OK, retired in 2020 from the military. In order for him to do that, you guys, we had to look at a budget every day leading up like six months just to be.

42:10Are you sure? Are you sure? It's going to be OK. Are we going to make it? Are we going to be on the streets? Are we going to be homeless? Whatever. But that's where mock budgets come in. You want to see, OK, something big might change. Maybe I'm moving. I'm getting a new job or whatever. What could our budget? What would our budget look like if it's completely different than what I've got going on right now? And that's where you would want to you want to you can it's like a playground for you to see. Right. I think in this situation, we did somebody who was buying a house. So they're more they're like, OK, now the mortgage is going to be three thousand thirty five hundred dollars.

42:37Can I afford that? And so that's what we made a mock budget for. You can duplicate the mock budget section. If you guys watch the videos, it'll tell you which tabs you can duplicate, which ones you can't. Please do not duplicate the monthly budgets in there. But the mock budget you can't. It's not tied to anything. You can make as money as you want. Maybe you're having a baby. Maybe you're moving. Maybe you're changing jobs. Maybe you're retiring. There's so many different scenarios as to why people use this. And we use it a lot with our clients. And we know a lot of people use it to help them prepare for a decision or something that's happening in the future.

43:05And I just want to, since you asked, you didn't ask, but also we have a debt-free budget. And this one does populate from whichever month that you want. But imagine, you guys, so many times we have people like this. These people are paying$25.75 a month in debt, just minimum payments. Being able to see what their life would look like without paying it. That's what this does. And they can just, they don't have to copy anything over. It just shows you and you can start to dream. And which is really important when you need, when you're stressed out about, or you're in the hard part of paying off debt.

43:37It's really nice to be able to look. And then one more quick thing. We also have the retirement. Keep going. Please hold your call. It's very important to it, which is another big transition in life. What is my what do I want my retirement life to look like? And what is it going to cost? And so this one has what there are directions and it tells you how to do it. But it's basically what is the income that you know that you're going to have, which you have dividends coming in, you have investments coming in, you have your pension, social security. Great. But you're still like if after you make your budget, it's showing you you still need fifty three hundred dollars to be able to make your monthly budget work when you're retired.

44:06So then you go over to the retirement calculator. It tells you how much you need to be saving to make that happen. Or it tells you, OK, if I want to work in retirement because I can't actually retire, I need to make sure I'm bringing in at least$5 ,300 a month to make this work, even though because I have all this income here. OK, and then somebody, a couple of people actually asked, do I go in every time and close? Do we go in every time and close out the budget? Sort of. What I want to say is, especially in the beginning, you're going to be going in there very specifically. But like I just showed you, I'm checking stuff off as I go or updating amounts as they go throughout the month.

44:37It's not some hard or fast thing that you have to do, but you do want to stay on top of your numbers. So that's why I'm saying, yeah, you want to just see it. And then it's five minutes to close it out, update numbers, see that everything went the way I said it's going to. And what that's going to do is give you a history to look back next year at July. Oh yeah, look at how much I spent July 4th. I forgot. And so that's really good to do, but it doesn't take a lot of time. But also it's something that as you get better, you're doing it as you go instead of all at once at the end. and then that's going to help you plan the next budget.

45:06Yeah. Okay. Okay, guys. Thank you so much for coming. We are so excited to be here and come tomorrow. Bring all your friends. Again, tomorrow we're going to actually go through people's live budgets. We're going to look at some extra ones. We're going to answer all of your questions. And two lucky winners are going to win coaching with us. Yeah. All right. Bye, guys. 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.

45:42And 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. This is the upgrade to your finances that you need right now. Yeah, so head on over to budgetbestcc.com forward slash budget and grab yours.