Year in Review: How to Reflect on Your Budget, Debt & Goals Before 2026 | 493

0:00We're doing something we've never done before. we are having annual planning sessions for anyone who's purchased the Simplify Budget System. What we want to do is help you plan for 2026 all the way out. Look at your goals, look at your budget, look at your savings buckets, look at your debt, all of that. We want you to be able to have someone else's eyes on it to help you for one session and so that you can see what you want to do with your year, what's possible, and have someone to bounce it off of. Yeah, this is something that our personal private coaching clients absolutely love to do. And so we decided for those who've bought the system, this is a special offer for y 'all.

0:35You can click on budgetbesties.com forward slash annual planning, and you can schedule your session. So that way, like Shana said, set up your year. Yeah, this is a very, very unique opportunity to work with us one time. We have never offered it before. We will see how it goes and we'll see if we're offered again, very limited spot. So go ahead and book your session now. guess what? 2026 is almost here, Vanessa. It's almost here. But just like when we asked you to make your new budget, we don't go to the next month yet. We got to look and see about this year what we did this year. Yeah. So before we want to move on and set goals for 2026, you guys, since that's coming, we want to look at 2025 and go through a checklist to do a year in review.

1:19Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt-free, but you don't want to live on beans and rice? Or you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? 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?

1:48You're in the right place. We're Shana and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners, and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019, helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and know exactly what to do with their money. In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation.

2:20We 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. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. Okay, so before we get started, don't forget to sign up for our bootcamp. You're going to go to budgetbesties.com forward slash bootcamp and you'll be able to sign up for our money makeover bootcamp. You're going to be with us for five days. It's going to be the most fun you've ever had, probably.

2:48Yeah, sign up now because it's coming up soon on December 29th, and we hope to see you there. So what are we going to do? We want to go through it. So here's the deal. A lot of times, Vanessa, people are down on themselves. They get to the end of the year, and they're like, what did I do with my money? Where did all my money go? Et cetera, et cetera. We're going to look and see exactly what happened with your money, with your finances over the last year. And it's going to be a good, positive experience because we told you. I think it's really easy to get down in the dumps of, oh my gosh, where did all my money go?

3:18How did this happen? Or whatever. I should have, would have, could have. I think it's, I don't know if it's natural, but I think it's easy to go down that rabbit hole. But what we want you to do is really be excited about what all your money did for you this past year. So we want you to go back and let's start with your budgets. Pull up your budgets. If you have our simplified budget system, I'm going to plug that. Yeah, plug that really quick. If you don't have it, you need to get it at budgetbetsies.com forward slash budget, because it is a place for you to see your entire year at a glance. So just go back and open up and just start looking at your budgets to see your spending habits throughout the year.

3:50Yeah. So I love that you can, because here's the deal. When we move on from the year, from the month, each month, and your brain like forgets it, right? Because it's got new information every single day to decide where it's going to store, right? But with our budget system, you can go back and look at January and you can look at February and then all the way through. And you can see the different changes or different things that happen throughout the year that maybe you've forgotten about, which is really good because, as I said, you can see, oh, this is when I started paying extra on debt. Or, oh, this is when I decided to finally give myself spending money or started savings buckets.

4:25Or, oh, look at this month when I was doing way too much spending. And now I have every once in a while I make my one clients go back to when I had to fill out their whole bills column. And then I had to use debt and spending columns because of all the charges that were happening before we got it all organized. And now it's so clean. They don't even fully fill up the bills line or column. And I never have to use any extra spending ones. So good. And it also allows you to see patterns, habits, patterns, all of this. And maybe you didn't have your savings bucket set up then, but now you do. and you can see what a hot mess your budget looked like before because you were trying to pay for things in the moment.

5:01It just allows you to make some better decisions for the future, being able to see what happened in the past. Yeah. And so let's, we can also, once we've looked at the budget, you don't have to spend a whole lot of time there. Just some ideas, just for information, just for funsies. Yeah. And we have a notes section in the Simplified Budget System. So hopefully maybe throughout the year, you've been jotting some things down in there, or right now is a good time to go, this is what I saw in my year-end review, so you can take notes. But then what we want you to do, one of the first things that you can do to see your year in review, your financial year in review, is to look at your debt and see overall, how much debt have I paid off?

5:36What progress did we make? One of my favorite things to do is to look at how much monthly, how much you were spending, maybe think about in January, how much were you spending on your monthly minimum payments on debt? And how much maybe has that changed December 2025? Yeah, I think it's just a great place to make sure all your numbers are updated, all your interest rates, like Shana said, your minimum payments, your balances, like all of that. So that way you can see all the progress that you've made. We have a wonderful chart there that shows you, breaks up your debt and tells you how much you've paid off this year.

6:04And then you can take that, what you'll do is you'll take that number and make your new budget in your new Simplify Budget System for the new year. Yeah. And I have, so I have a pair of clients as a pair. They're just, they're clients. I don't know why I said that, but they, this month in December is the first month that they're really going to be able to pay extra on debt since they started coaching. But because they did the work to call all of the creditors to do all of that and set it all up, they have, they can actually see a lot of progress that they've made paying off debt. It does the math for you, but to see just paying the minimums, how much they paid off.

6:36So when you're looking at this and when you're trying to give yourself a pat on the back, that counts. How much you paid on minimums, hopefully the interest rate maybe on all of your credits or debts are not super high. So you can see, hey, even though I didn't pay extra on debt, the fact that I made my$300 payment every month has made a difference throughout the year. And we want to look at those wins. We want to celebrate that because it matters. You're doing a good job and you should be able to celebrate it. Yeah. And like Shana said, now that they made those, they had those conversations, they're putting more on principle because their interest rate is lower.

7:07So they're making more progress fast. So that is really fun. Yeah. So you, like Vanessa said, you might be able to cross some debts completely. You might have crossed some debts completely off over the year. You might have lowered your monthly payments. You might have cut one in half. Like just go ahead and look at it and get excited about the progress that you did make. All right. So maybe you don't have a lot of debt or maybe debt wasn't your big focus or maybe it is, but now let's move on to your savings goals. So we have an asset tracker there as well. And we also have your savings bucket planner.

7:34So these are two places that you can look at all of your saving goals and kind of everything that you've accomplished throughout the year. Yeah. And this is why savings buckets are so important, you guys, because what people have otherwise is one savings account where money just goes into randomly and also leaves randomly. There's no real rhyme or reason. But like Vanessa said, when we sign on with a client, we start on the asset tracker and we say, okay, let's list all the accounts. Let's update all the amounts. And most of them are always going up because you're saving money for a purpose and it's automated.

8:05And so that's what we want for you. But this is when you can go back and say, look, I saved all that money for that trip. We saved all the money for our travel sports fee. We paid taxes for the first time in full on time or whatever. That's what you can go see and you can be really proud. Yeah, absolutely. 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.

8:39And 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 budgetbesties.com forward slash budget and grab yours.

9:11Now back to today's show. All right. So the next thing you want to do is listen. It's the end of the year. It's that we know tax season is coming up. So let's start just getting your ducks in a row. It doesn't have to take a lot of time, but it is important. It is something that you want to make sure that you have everything ready. So that way you're not filing taxes in October of next year. You want to do that beginning of the year, knock it out so you can continue on with your life. Yeah. And any other things that you might need to update insurance, anything like that, this is a good time to do it.

9:40and just get everything nice and tidy so that you can go into the next year really, really well organized. I was thinking too, re-quoting. So if you're looking at all your numbers and you're going, wow, I really pay a lot for auto internment. This is a great time to re-quote and just see what you can go into the new year paying versus what you're paying now. Yeah, for sure. You never know. We mentioned this a month ago on our podcast, but you can go check your credit report at what is it? Annualcreditreport.com. And it is.com, even though it's a government funded thing or a government sponsored thing.

10:09I should say. So just go there, check a credit report just in case. Again, first of all, maybe your credit score is really great and you're going to be excited about it. But just in case anything else appeared or you forgot about it, it's on there. Any frauds or anything like that. But you can go check that. And once a year, it's good to look at it. We personally don't particularly care about your credit score. But for you, it's good for you to look at it once a year just to keep your eyeballs on it. It's even like Shannon said, in case there's something on there that you didn't know or there's fraudulent, now you will know.

10:36So just keeping an eye on it once a year, checking in, I think that's a great habit to form. One time I had a client that thought that they had settled a debt and ended up coming back. And so it wasn't. So that's why it's good to just check it. Absolutely. All right. So now think of like maybe any life changes that you have coming up. So think of what happened in this year and maybe how that's going to affect the upcoming year, what you have going on. Maybe you have surgeries scheduled, maybe you're moving, maybe you have other things going on that you need to make sure that you're planning better for.

11:05So make sure you write those down. And so that way, when you go to make your goals, you have more data for that. Yeah. Or if you're like my brother-in-law, you had a baby maybe, and you should go ahead and add them to your life insurance or add them to anything else that you need to. But there's all kinds of things like Vanessa said, life events that maybe that triggers something that you need to do. And you can just do it really quick. This is also a good time to see if you can, if you want to maximize your investments, you're at the end of the year and you haven't hit the threshold that you're allowed to hit to do that and you have the money, hey, sounds like a great plan to me.

11:37I think the other part of that is we have a lot of people. So for right now, maybe in December, you have extra money because you've already met your deductibles and you've already maxed out all your contributions. So now you have this extra money that you can either spend on Christmas, you can spend paying off on debt or whatever else you want to do with it. Yeah. And maybe like we talked about before you, or we have talked about before, you want to not be like Scrooge in the beginning of the month. You want to be, or beginning of the movie, you want to be like Scrooge in the end of the movie, which means right now, as you're going anywhere, people are asking you for money.

12:09It's the time of year where they're asking at church for extra donations or whatever. And maybe you want to be a part of that. Maybe this year, you want to be able to say yes, when you feel like inspired, when you feel called to give money and be generous. And we want you to be able to do that too. So maybe think about what do I want? Where do I want to give? Again, we might be a little tactical with this. If you have, if you do claim that charitable contribution on your taxes, we might be like, hey, we've already hit that threshold. Or hey, if we do, if we hit this much more, where do we want to give our money?

12:38Because then that would be a tax advantage and it would help these people out. And it's a win-win. Yeah. It is such a wonderful time of year of giving. And so just see what is possible because maybe you said we were going to give this amount, but now you're able to give so much more and you can do so much more with your money. And then that allows you to plan better when you go make your 2026 goals as well. Yeah. And speaking of making your 2026 goals, now's a good time to get it on the planner, on the calendar. So maybe there's one of you in your relationship that doesn't particularly want to do this or like to talk about money that much.

13:08It's okay. Let's go. We love you anyway. Let's set a date. Let's get, I think about this. You want to give your partner like the mental freedom to know. I don't have to think about this until then, but I also know I'm thinking about this on purpose then. Right. And that helps them if they're not the one that really loves to do this, they can just compartmentalize it. Great. And so you can set those dates. You can set one date for a big dreaming session. If it's not your partner, it's your accountability partner, anyone, and you can start thinking about next year. I think this is important too, because doing this in passing, as you're like walking through the door or passing by each other in the house or through text message, it doesn't, it's not the same vibe, not the same.

13:46We don't recommend that. So plan a session, have a date night, have a dream date night where you guys come together. We're going to have a podcast coming out about it, that you guys can take all this information and review the year together as a team, and then you can plan for the new year together. Yeah, that's such a perfect point, Vanessa, because next week, the planning 2026, getting your goals, setting your goals is going to come out. So you're going to be able to use this information that you're thinking about right now to set. So when I'm looking at what I did for debt, when I'm looking at what I did for charitable contributions, when I'm looking at what I did for savings.

14:20Like what do I want to do in 2026? So this data is going to help me to make good decisions and plan for 2026. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So the last thing we want to do is reflect and celebrate here. Acknowledge all of your financial wins. Doesn't matter how small they are. Okay. What was your money able to provide for you this past year? And let's reflect on what we learned of your financial habits. We're not trying to shame you for things that you didn't, you weren't excited about, or you were frustrated with how they went. That's fine. Again, it's just data. it's not drama. There's no shaming here, but use that information to better plan for the future.

14:53Yeah. And to go along with this, we have a checklist that you can download and everything that we just said, these are the things that you should look at as part of your year in review. You can go to budgetbesties.com forward slash year in review, and you can get that checklist so that you can have that to go along with as you're doing this, because you're going to do it because you want to be able to see what you did over the year. So like we said, the 2026 goal planning podcast is coming out next Monday, but don't forget also, we have our bootcamp coming up December 29th. We want to see you there.

15:21It's five days of free coaching from us. We're going to go through all the different challenges, different things, different ways to help you set up for the new year. And it's going to be at budgetbesties.com forward slash bootcamp. 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.

15:56Imagine 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.