Why Smart Women Still Struggle to Budget and How to Finally Take Control Without Shame | 551

0:00People underestimate how much they truly cost. They do. And it's because they're trying to be frugal or they're trying to be whatever it is. But you just need to be honest with yourself. And you're not going to get it right month one or month two or maybe even month three. Our coaching program is six months because we have to make some tweaks. We got to change things up and set it up right so that way when you graduate, hey, you now know exactly how much you cost and everything is automated by then. So you just have to give yourself some time. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck?

0:30Do 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 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.

1:02We'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. 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.

1:34And 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. We are so excited to have you on Financial Coaching for Women. We're excited to talk to you today and see how we can help. Tell us why you're here. Tell us how we can help. So I'm grown. I'm college educated and I now manage P &Ls and teams and businesses. I can't manage a budget. I don't know why. And I don't have like expensive tendencies, but I do also, but not like in the traditional way. And so I know that I'm capable of living like super well, but for some reason I can't, I know what's going on.

2:24Like I have debt, I spend a little bit impulsively, but the biggest thing is I just want control of my money. I imagine like this dashboard, that's just like money out money in, and I know that's possible, but like I have so many different ways that I can pay for things. And so it's all like in different spots. PayPal, Venmo, Affirm, Chase, blah, blah, blah. And then there's the credit cards. There's that part. And then there's a part where I was unemployed, self-employed for over a year. And I built a business and then I invested a lot in that. So I like lost income, didn't change my lifestyle.

3:02And then also invested out of business. It wasn't super smart. I want to go back to when you said that you can't, you can do all this other stuff, but you can't budget like Like that, don't do that. It's not fair to say that about yourself because you've just not been taught how to do it properly. There are so many budget templates online that you can print out and they're just putting words and numbers on paper. And you can call it a budget, but then what do you do? So that's really where we come in and we really help you set up a system. So don't, it's just, you were never taught, you never had that conversation.

3:35It's the one area that you're struggling with and that's okay. And then that's why you started listening to the podcast and that's why you're on this call. Yes. I downloaded some beautiful conditionally formatted Etsy templates for budgeting and then got overwhelmed because it was, yeah. So I have your template. I have awareness of the template. I am so scared to download and open it because of all the trauma that I've been through previous templates. Hold on. I want to tell you that we had the same exact experience because we were using like a makeshift budget to help our clients for years, like that we had built.

4:11And we were like, you know what, we can do better. We can get something better for our clients. And we went on Etsy. We did the exact same thing. And we looked around and we're like, we researched. I was like, this is awful. I don't want to use this at all. And we like budgeting. They were so overwhelming. We were spreadsheet nerds. And we were overwhelmed. We're like, hard on all of that. And that's what we've, over these years, what we've come to find is a lot of people just want to have a lot of busy work. There's a lot of tracking. There's a lot of numbers. There's a lot of stuff that you don't even need to get on a budget and be grown, like you said, and do the things that with your money that you know you probably and that you want to do, you don't need all that.

4:45It's very overwhelming. What hopefully when you do open it, so step one, you got it. Is it's one page and it's simple. It's simple. And it's going to, like Vanessa said, once you fill that out after that, we're going to automate everything so that it happens on purpose or on automatically. So you don't have to do anything with your hands. It's less mistakes you can make. And it's not overwhelming because your budget is just happening and doing the things that it's supposed to automatically. It's so different than what you saw on Etsy, I promise. And that is really the appeal. And that's why people have been drawn to it is we have so many testimonials of people who've said, I bought this on Etsy and then I bought yours and this made so much sense.

5:27And this was so much easier. Why are they not all like this? So just open it, open it and just. No. Watch the video. Watch the video. Yeah. The other thing too is like I'm there's so much guilt and shame associated with this need for budgeting. There's no nothing dire going on in my life. I just want to get it done. But Dave Ramsey is not helping me right now. That is not a good message for me. What are you doing with your money? And it's I don't think I would make it on that particular show. If he had me on, I would cry. But like in what he said. Yeah. Yeah. But there is truth in like the message of why am I in this place?

6:07And I know that the lifestyle creep happened. I know that for a fact. And I think that's something that I've been trying to like actively work on and understand like what truly is driving happiness. And it's not the dopamine click on Amazon or whatever. So that's good. I do want to pause. I want to pause here because I think we work a little bit different than a lot different than Dave, even though we love him and we learn from him and he has a lot to offer. But we don't see a whole lot of value in going, combing through your past and seeing why did this happen? And let's talk about how the shame and let's just go drag ourselves through the trauma that everything was.

6:47Or new idea, let's set up a budget and go from here forward. And like, let's just leave that in the past. There's literally nothing you can do. We can't go back and change the math from the past. We can't go back and change. What we do know, what we do see is once you get on a budget and a bougie budget, not a beans and rice budget, a fun budget that you actually want to do, then when you start seeing your money do what it's supposed to, what you want it to, all of those other things start to take care of themselves. All of the trauma that you may have from the past, some of the over the binge spending tendons, all of that.

7:24Once you see, because what happens is everything's out of control. So you add to the out of control by spending, by debt, by credit. But once it's not, once you know your numbers and you feel good about, ooh, I have money to get my hair done and I have money to pay the bills. Woo-hoo, you're happy. And it's all good. You don't have that stress, that anxiety. Then everything can start to work. And then we can just move forward instead of living in the past. How long have you been listening to our podcast? So I'm not a podcast, but I've been reading a lot of stuff. Not very long. But there is this element of, I've been trying to fix this for so long and trying so many different things.

8:00There was some, there was the bougie part, the bougie podcast that I listened to that just hit me. And I was like, this is also a fun fact. I have a financial advisor who's wonderful. And my mom tried to teach me how to budget, but so guilt. But what you said around like making me worry for all these things. And then I also want to acknowledge, like I've taken, I've made trade-offs on certain things. want this sort of bougie thing, but I'm going to give up these other things. It don't matter. So like I figured that out, but that it was like the one podcast and then just continuing to read your material because I did it does speak to me and in a non-judgmental way and very realistic way.

8:39That's the answer to your question. No, you're good. And the reason why I ask is because I wanted to, I was sensing that the way that we set up our system that you weren't truly familiar with yet. So when we, when Shana talks about setting up a system and making all your money work for you, and what does that look like, we really talk about setting up those separate accounts. So when you open your budget and you go through the course and you listen to all the videos and stuff, it's gonna teach you how to make your budget and turn it into something that's alive, right? And automate, separate all of your money so that way you have money for spending.

9:13So you're excited about being able to spend money because it's yours and you have it and it doesn't mix in with your bills and what you have to pay. it's also not touching what you're saving for the future that you're excited about those are the big dreams and big goals that you have so when you pull up your bank account and you can see multiple checking accounts multiple savings accounts and they are labeled they have names on them and you can see your money working for you that is what's going to keep you stop binge spending or going off on the deep end and spending all your money at target or wherever wherever your advice is that How does it keep you motivated and want to keep going in the direction that you're going because you see your money working for you?

9:55Do you know what? And I know this is your thing, but I signed up for Novo. And I don't know if you're familiar with this app, but this is not as bad. By the way, I just, I did it for my business side thing that I was doing. And it automatically takes the money that you get and puts it in reserves. so I got an actual I didn't want to do this I didn't ask for it I didn't know I wouldn't even know what buckets to put in but it was the first time that like whenever I got money it was like this goes to taxes this goes to operating income this goes or operating expenses this is actually yours this is your profit have fun and then but the rest of it wasn't just profit good luck now hire people, it was like, here's what you should budget for in four years.

10:46It was a really interesting, like ultimately unhelpful because I would just deduct, right? I still need a sister, but I understand where you're coming from that perspective. I know what my run rate is generally on a budgeting level, on a monthly level. And I know generally, like if I had to, I could go under it. No, that's not happening. You have a business, so you need two budgets. Okay. So you have to have a business budget and you have to know exactly how much it costs for you to run your business and then how much you personally cost, because that is also a line item in your budget, in your business budget.

11:20You have to pay yourself. You have to know how much you have to pay yourself. You do your personal budget to see how much you personally cost. Then you have to bring that over to your business budget and put that as a line item to pay yourself. And then you have to do your business budget. And then that tells you exactly how much you have to make in a month to afford both. Yeah. And if, yeah, go ahead. oh I was just gonna say I don't have that anymore I work a full-time job now yeah okay makes it simple yeah it's more simple but yeah it's the same deal and so if you're fine and so that we're gonna put that in the past because we're moving on from the business but what if you're fine so you're gonna set the budget you're gonna have all your income go into one checking account the income account or the bills account it's going you're gonna keep enough back to pay all your bills automatically and then automatically would you get paid twice a month or once a month i still want that it usually goes to my financial advisor who then gives a budget oh why is he in charge of your money or whoever i don't want to out him but like it was always understood that he would give us a budget based on our budget which was never really a budget and then we would get we would get money from him monthly because he would take the excess and then invest it.

12:36Why does he know what your excess is? I don't love that at all. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. You're paying him to do a job, okay, for you. Understand that he has a vested interest. She, whoever, has a vested interest in your money. The more money they keep, the more money they make. And I'm not saying he's doing anything bad. I'm just saying they have a vested interest in you wanting to keep the most of your money with them because they are making money off of your money. Yeah. So the interesting thing about that is if you take salary out of it and you just look at 401ks or whatever that we've rolled over and then we've done like insurance policies and college funding, all that stuff is going through him, insurance, et cetera.

13:22Not just like life insurance, but other things. We've made over the last 14 years, like quite a bit of money over if you were to compound it and add like ups and downs. Okay, but this financial stress that you have, but you have this. So if you've made all that money in investments, sure, but is it worth what you're feeling now and how out of control you feel because you don't know how to budget and you don't know how to handle money because somebody else has been handling that and you can't function in your day-to-day finances? Is that worth it? Yeah, it's almost we, he's not budgeting for us.

13:57That's the funny thing. It's like, that is not his function. And I think that's the biggest misconception I have with a financial advisor is they're not really advising you on how to spend your money. Like, yeah, you know what I mean? So here's what needs to happen. You're going to set up a budget. Okay. You're going to write down all of your bills. This is the big deal. The one page. Yeah. I have it all written down to one of those templates. Okay. Yeah. And so you're going to, I have, this is how much I spend. Let's be honest about how much I really want to spend each one. how much I need to save for each savings bucket.

14:31That's the number you're going to get from him. And he doesn't tell you what number you get. You tell him, this is what I need. Yeah, that's what he does. He was sending a big budget thing that would annualize everything. So I, and all this stuff was great, but it was like, essentially like what he didn't know. And I didn't know is that I don't even know what should go in those things because I don't know how much I'm spending. I'm not, I'm doing everything the opposite. So that financial advisor would have been awesome if I had the practice of the budgeting in the first place. No, no. But like, because he would have given whatever we asked for.

15:09He always does. Okay. So he doesn't police anything. Okay. She would, but yeah. Well, no. Yeah, that's not his job. But when you open up the budget system, you need to, I would print out that savings bucket tracker. It's in there. you need to know how much y 'all cost in a year. So your budget is going to tell you what you cost monthly, which are your monthly bills, your monthly groceries, like all the monthly stuff and all the videos, trainings, all that's in there. And then you need to print out the savings bucket tracker. So it tells you all of those one-off unexpected expenses that pop up randomly throughout the year.

15:43So you can put it on paper and go, okay, how much do I actually cost? Put that in the budget. Cause it takes it, it explains exactly how to do it. So you're going to put that in the budget, the monthly budget as well. So when you tell him how much money you need in a month, you have a full picture of everything that you need so you can fund every part of your life. Yeah. And just so you know, a lot of times your savings, once you get to a real budget, like a real working budget, are going to be as much as your bills or as much as your spending. Because as I said, we take into account what we cost every month, but you have Christmas, you have birthdays, you have vacation, you have health insurance bills, you have annual bills, You have pet visits.

16:23You have all of these things that are very expensive that pop up unexpectedly, but they're expected. They actually are expected, but we just don't think about them. We have to pay for those too. And so you don't want in a month, if you're only getting a certain amount of money because your basic living expenses every month are a certain amount, that's not enough to fund your real full life. And so that's what we want is you to have money going in. You're going to do your debt, your debt payments. If you have all of your bills, your spending, which is like Vanessa said, gas and groceries, restaurants.

16:53If we have kids, we need to put that in there. Personal spending money. Then we have savings buckets, all kinds of ones. It depends on your life, what you want to be. Like you said, I'm bougie in some stuff and I'm not another, whatever that is. If it's vacations, travel, it's different annual bills. It's Christmas, it's birthdays, it's pets, it's vehicle maintenance, it's home maintenance. It's glam up maybe. Whatever those are, what happens is your income goes into that bills account and then transfers happen to each spending account and transfers happen to each savings account for each thing you're saving.

17:20And then you can see all of your money stacking up. You can see it all. You know exactly what's happening. It's very clear. It's not like overwhelming or you can't understand it. You can see, look, I have 500 savings for Christmas right now. Now another paycheck dropped. I have 600. Like it's going to be very clear to you. It happens automatically. So as soon as he pays you whatever day of the month that is, or whatever system you guys have set up, then all of those transfers happen automatically into those accounts and you don't have to do anything. It's all working for you. And all you have to do now is just look at your bank app and you can see how much money you've got growing in those accounts.

17:55It'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.

18:34If 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. I love this. Like this makes sense because of what I experienced with that one business checking thing. This is really taking it. This is not just like right now I have a checking account and a savings account. That savings account. do it's like always getting transferred to the check because it's not about how I actually how much I actually cost I love that I just wrote that down and obviously yeah people underestimate how much they truly cost they do and it's because they're trying to be frugal or they're trying to be whatever it is but you just need to be honest with yourself and you're not going to get it right month one or month two or maybe even month three like we are our coaching program is six months because we have to make some tweaks we got to change things up and set it up right so that way when you graduate, hey, you now know exactly how much you cost and everything is automated by then.

19:37So that's, you just have to give yourself some time. Yeah. And so the reason, like you said, you said I have a savings account, but sometimes I pull from it. It's because you don't know, like you said, what you cost truly and what needs to be in the bills account, how much I need to have set aside for spending. The other thing is a lot of times we have a generic savings account and it's very easy to steal from a generic savings account because it's for something, maybe someday when you have a account named travel, when you have an account named birthdays or gifts or Christmas, when you have an account named, whatever the things that you want to save for, and you have money going in there, it's going to be a lot harder to, to steal from those because there's, you know what it's for.

20:13And those are things that you're looking forward to. Those are your, your dreams, your hopes, your goals, right? And what, and the way that you want your money to go is to be spent. That's why, and then you'll be able to see everything. When you pull up your bank app, you're like, look, I got money to go get coffee if I want. I have money set aside for that trip next spring break. Like all of it is going to, you're going to see it. And that seeing it motivates you to keep doing it. It's like gamifying it. So you see the progress that you're making. You know, exactly where your money is going. There's no doubt you can see it.

20:41And then also when you pull up, when you need new tires, or when you are going to lunch with your friend or whatever, you know where the money's coming from. And it's not one big account with a million transactions. And you're like, I think I have enough or maybe I don't know. It's all separate and easy to understand. Yeah. Yes. This isn't speaking to me. And I could talk to you guys for hours, but I know that we only have so much time. I do. I get the end. I could tell you how many credit cards and the APR I'm spending on each credit card and how much debt is associated and how much monthly minimum payment I'm paying and how much I'm paying over from my brain.

21:18But I do not know how many different places I can gather up how much I cost because I'm so many different ways of spending money. Do you, like, certainly I need to have a tighter control. It should be from my debit, my Apple card, and that's it. No, no, not Apple card. You need to put your debit cards on your Apple wallet, but you don't need, we're swapping the credit cards. Okay. We're swapping out the credit cards to use the debit card, a credit card balance, a credit card limit, all of that, that is on a budget. You need to be able to, if you're, if you're truly in and you want to set some guard rails and you really want to be successful, you already have multiple credit cards.

21:59Okay. Take those out of your wallet. Now we're replacing them with a couple of debit cards, whether it's gas and groceries, whether it's dining out and restaurants, whether it's personal pocket money, Like those are three right there that you may just, that's what will be in your wallet. And that's what you're spending. And it's very clear when I go to the grocery store, I use this debit card. When it's me out with girlfriends or I'm at a target and I want a shirt, this is the debit card that I use. When I'm having date night with my spouse, this is the debit card we use. It's very easy and it's very organized.

22:27Yeah. And the other thing you need to do is we think that we're helping ourselves out by having all these different ways to pay and different accounts. And it's actually driving your brain crazy because I have to remember which bills on is coming through PayPal, which thing is coming over here. We want all of your bills are going to come out of your bills account. There's not going to be Klarna's this or that. I am paying it with my own money out of my bills account. That's it. Okay. And then I have to pay it off the Klarna that has to get paid off. That will come out of the bills account, right?

22:53Take away all of the messiness, right? It's all definitely coming out of the bills. If I'm going to spend money on something fun, that's coming out of my spending account, right? And it's very simple. that's the way so like the problem is budgeting you said your mom tried to teach you that's fine but it's way more complicated now we have way more bills everything's digital it's like stuff is flying around everywhere we want to take what we can of that modern digital stuff and use it to our advantage which is why we're saying your bank can be your personal assistant it can pay your bills for you it can automate transfers automatically reoccurring to your spending account so you wake up on friday morning and you have money in your spending account for the weekend that can all happen you have savings growing automatically are being paid automatically all of that can happen you can rename the bank accounts all of that to use it to your advantage that is actually going to help you having it all like everywhere and you're not alone we have lots of people that come in several banks and they're wondering why why is this confusing it's confusing because there's a lot to keep track of you know that bill that you have is may need to be attached to PayPal or whatever to pay the bills, but you are not spending out of that account.

24:00That account is solely to pay bills out of in any platform that you are buying things off of to spend money. Amazon, if you're using PayPal, if you're using whatever else, Venmo, that's where you attach your spending account debit card or your spending account number and routing number two. And that is the only account that you're spending out of, but we have to keep those separate. We have to keep the money that's set aside for bills safeguarded. And we just, we don't spend it. That debit card isn't even in your wallet. That's how I was looking. And that's incredible because I didn't know how to, I don't know how to do that with like my current checking account.

24:37So is that just like a digital function? I could just go into the app and create those buckets or do I need to go to Chase and be like, Hey guys, no, they're separate accounts. They're not, but we call them savings buckets, but your savings buckets are separate savings accounts. And then for checking we, You need separate checking accounts. Yeah, you can do it online. You don't have to go in anywhere. That's my favorite part is you can go online. You're going to open at least, you're going to have at least three checking accounts. One is going to be gas and groceries, one is going to be your bills and one's going to be personal spending.

25:05That's where to start. Okay. And then your savings account, once Vanessa said you already have the savings bucket tracker, go dream, go brain dump everything that you think you want and that you do in a year, brain dump that. And then those, when you figure that out, that will dictate which savings accounts you open. You can open a chase. We have people that have chase. You can open several accounts. That's another thing that blows people's mind. You don't have to have one checking. And when you can have as many as you want, we might as well, like we said, take advantage of the tools that we have.