Ever wish your bank account could actually help you stick to your budget instead of just holding your money. In this episode, we’re breaking down nine things your bank can do for you to save you time, brain calories so Shayna, a lot of people just think that their bank is just this electronic thing that they can put their money in and then just swipe their debit card, right?

But gosh, the, what we’ve learned since we’ve started this budget system and this process with our clients is that it can do so much more. Listen. If there is something I can delegate, I’m going to do it. I don’t care what you’re talking about. I need any as many things off of my plate and to happen either by someone else and if even better automatically.

That is what I’m here for. That is what I want. And like Vanessa said, what we’ve learned is the bank can do a lot of this budget stuff for you. The thing that’s keeping you from wanting to do it. We can put a system in place in your bank. We’ll do a lot of these budget tasks that you’ve been like wasting time and energy over, they’ll do it for you.

And a lot of people just don’t know that their bank offers these options. They really don’t. And that is, for me, that’s mind blowing. Maybe, ’cause I’m just in my bank app a lot and I’ve figured it out, but. For me, it’s just common sense, but it’s not right. What we’ve learned is that people come to us and I had no idea you could do X, Y, and Z.

And we’re like, oh, let us please show you how. Yes. So you can get back more time in your day.

we’re going to drop the results from our national research study, but I’m just gonna tell you the number of people that are just using the exact same bank account and bank, like their bank habits since that they started when they were 18, is very high.

And again, it’s what? When am I gonna wake up? You know what? Today I feel a, I’m gonna learn about banks and budgeting. I think this’s gonna be a fun thing to do with my life. I think today I’m finally an adult. Yeah. And I’m gonna do something different. No. Life just keeps speeding past you.

So we got, we get it. Anyway, let’s get to, the nine tasks that your bank can del do for you. Yeah. So you can take save time in brain calories. All right. So number one is we want you to have a specific Bills account. Your bank will allow you to have a checking account. Just like more than one, but one checking account we want you to use just for bills and it will pay your bills for you.

Then yeah, chop boop, all done. It’s saving you time and it saves you all the bill pay. Like you don’t have to worry about it. Yeah. Like you, you have a Bills account, you know that it’s gonna pay bills. You don’t have to worry about doing that. Yeah. Just imagine. It’s like this, person.

It’s holding all your money and when the bill come, bill person comes and says, I need this much. It says, here it is. And then it’s just holding all your money. And then the next person, here you go. And it’s all fine. And listen, you don’t have to go manually pay bills. You can just set it and forget it, let it happen.

And that saves you time and it gives you peace of mind to know that the bills got paid. That I don’t have to, I don’t actually have to do anything with my hands. All right. So number two. The second thing is you can open separate accounts, which allows you to organize your money. Yes. So as we’ve told you.

Many times before you probably have heard you have one account and there’s so much going on, and literally how much time do you spend in there? Like scrolling, trying to do math or thinking like what? What’s going on? Open the separate accounts and you won’t have to do that anymore. And then the other thing, and what’s you’re really doing when you’re scrolling all those thousands of transactions that are in that one account is you’re tracking what happened.

You’re trying to track like figure out what happened, track what happened, and what can happen. Yeah. Instead we’re gonna have separate accounts, one for the bills account for the spending and an, accounts for savings. So I don’t have to track. What’s gonna happen is I can look at that account and I already know what’s happening.

I don’t have to worry about it. Yeah. And there’s no wondering like, what was this money for? What am I still saving it for this bill? Did that come through? Is that still pending? Yeah. Do we, did my kid ha did he get his field trip money? Like all those questions that you’re asking by trying to use one account to do all of your banking, like no longer.

Yeah. And so just imagine if you had an envelope that had all your money for bills in it, an envelope that had all your money for spending in it, and an envelope that had all your savings money. It can get, it’s gonna get a little more complicated than that, but you don’t like, you know what money is for what.

That’s exactly what the accounts do. So no tracking. There is, no more decision fatigue. Can I or will I or should I, or what if I do and I’ll just figure it out later. There’s, I think that’s a big one. I’m gonna pause. I know that we’re not necessarily there, but like you’re, a lot of times ’cause everything’s in one account, you’re like, there’s money now.

I’ll figure out how to solve this later. I’ll just spend this. But that decision and those that back and forth, you have a spending account which has your spending money, you don’t have any back and forth. You’re like, I have. I have $10 or I have $200 or whatever’s in there. That’s all I have to think about.

I don’t have to think about or figure out everything out at the same time that I’m trying to decide if I’m gonna buy those shoes. And in that moment when you think, I’m just gonna spend this money and I’ll figure it out later that later in two days. When you have to figure it out because your mortgage payment’s dropping is causing you so much stress and you know it, that’s you know that’s there.

Yeah. And so we’re just trying to remove that. Yeah. Okay. So number three. The third task that you’re you can delegate to your bank is automatic transfers. Okay. Listen, we don’t want you to have to do anything, one, because we want you to save time, but the other. Real truth is life is, are you, life is so busy, are you gonna remember?

No. The answer is no. We already know the answer is no. We know from coaching you that you’re not. So you can set your bank up to send money to your savings accounts according to whatever number that you decide automatically. That way you don’t forget that way you don’t spend it on frivolous stuff.

It’s done for you. And it’s much harder to mess up that way. So we know this specific automatic transfers is for. So this automatic transfer that Shayna’s talking about is specifically for saving money. Imagine being able to automatically save your money. You have savings buckets, you hear us talk about savings buckets and that’s saving for a purpose specifically whether it’s Christmas travel, vehicle maintenance, home, all of that. You don’t have to remember. It’s just set up automatically and you don’t have, and there’s no skipping.

So this is holding you accountable to doing the thing that you said you were gonna do. Yeah. We talk about this all the time. Like we want you to do things when the paycheck drops. Before you have time to figure out other ways for your money to get spent. No. How you figure out ways to screw it up.

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s be honest. What this does is instead of you being like at the end of the month when this magical month you think is gonna happen when you have so much money left over, and you’ll be like, I think I’ll save money, that’s usually the game plan. Okay. If I have money left over, I’m gonna. Save it for the vacation or whatever.

Nope. You can set it up to happen automatically. That way it goes in there, you can, and we’ll talk about some other hacks that go with this later, but now when I look at the new number going on, I know that my savings has already been taken care of. So I can live there and I can feel really good about it and it’s consistent.

Yeah. So this allows for discipline and it doesn’t, you don’t have to no longer remember to save. Yeah. So that’s what automatic transfers into your savings accounts does for you. So then the fourth one is that automatic transfers can go into your spending account. Now this is huge. Yeah. 

Hey guys. In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Shana.

And I’m Vanessa. We’re the budget besties. We’re best friends and master financial coaches and we love talking about the B word. We help women who make good money but have nothing to show for it. Finally, set up a budget system that fits their bougie lifestyle. If you’re liking this so far, hit the subscribe button and stick around.

Your budget is about to get a major glow up.  Yeah.

I think this is such a good task to delegate to your bank so that you can get comfortable and relearn your spending habits, right? Yeah, absolutely. So imagine, we talked about the Bills account. We talked about your savings account. Imagine having. Automatic transfers coming into your either one or multiple spending accounts, and you know exactly how much money that you can spend on gas, on groceries, on your kids, on going out to dinner with your husband on all of that, and there’s no white knuckling.

You don’t, you no longer have to wonder if that money is gonna be there. Or if you have to quote unquote figure it out later. It’s there for you set aside in a different account and there’s no decision fatigue about it either. Yeah. And I think that this like rollercoaster of emotions, like we we do this. I’m gonna spend this money ’cause I want to, and then I realize, whoops, I shouldn’t have done that. So now I have no money. And then I go back to now I’m so sad, I have no money and then I’m gonna spend so much money. And it’s just this, ugh. It’s just, and the white knuckling a lot of times comes from not knowing that you don’t, that you have money and we want to heal that for you right now by you knowing.

Depending on how you set it up, that you’re either getting spending money every week or every other week, or however often you want. Every Friday I get more money to spend, so I don’t have to feel scarcity. I don’t have to white knuckle, right? Because I don’t ever know when I’m gonna have money again.

I can set up on payday to have a certain amount according to my budget, which you’re gonna do because you’re gonna go to budget besties.com/budget. ’cause you’re gonna get the system. You’re gonna figure this all out, get it all on one page. It’s so pretty easy. Blah, blah, blah. And then that number.

That I put in the budget is gonna go into my spending, and I’m gonna wake up every whatever day that is and be like, look, ah, how am I gonna spend my money? It’s gonna be, and you’re gonna be happy, right? Instead of Ooh. And it just allows for self-control. Okay, so we always like to say or to ask the question.

If you were to ask any millionaire how they got there, it would never the answer they would give you is not, it just happened on accident. Okay? It doesn’t matter how much money you make, it’s not an income problem, it’s a spending problem. What we wanna do is have some type of guardrails around your spending, okay?

It doesn’t, we’re not saying we want you to skimp on groceries or skimp on going out or skimp on your pocket money. We’re saying put a number on it, put it, give yourself some type of, a boundary as to how much you’re gonna spend. So it allows for some self-control. It allows for you to be able to make decisions easily on spending, because Shana said, it’s no longer mixed with your Bills account.

Yeah. And then, so all you have to do is spend money. Yeah. So if you set this up and like I said, you go to our website, get our budget system. Then all you don’t, your bills are gonna be paid automatically. You’re gonna be saving money automatically. And now I just have to worry about how I’m gonna spend my money.

It’s fine. That’s, I can do that. That I feel like that’s, if that’s the only thing that I have to do, I can do that for it. Okay. So the fifth thing is we want you to name your accounts inside your bank account. This allows you to categorize your money. Yeah. So what I was talking about before with the envelopes, but this is more specific, so this is.

Especially specific with spending and savings. So spending, we like you to have a gas and groceries account, we like you to have a personal fund, pocket money, whatever version of that name you want. And maybe even a restaurants, maybe one for kids. And you can open separate accounts for all of those and name them so that you know what is, how much you have for each as your budget, month or pay period goes on.

So when I look right now, I just got paid yesterday and I’ve got whatever, $200 in my kids’ account, and I know that’s what we’ve got to. We do monthly, so it’s really fun, but that’s what we’ve got to last to for the kids’ birthday parties or their little fees here or there. That’s what we’ve got to, and I know that’s for kids and it’s named and I know exactly what’s going on.

Yeah. Versus just having it all in one or not having the accounts named because you can’t transfer and stuff. So the naming of it. Really does categorize it like a cash envelope, but it’s digital, right? So that you know what’s going on. And we like to tell our clients like, we can’t be friends until you have named your accounts.

It’s the part of our coaching that is required because it allows for like the visual cues. Like Shayna likes to give the example, if you wanna go to Target and splurge and you go pull up your bank account, and the fund that you’re looking at says, you know Melanie’s wedding.

Then you’re less likely to pull from that account to go on your target splurge instead of just sticking with the amount of money that you gave yourself in your spending account. Yeah. So it just, it allows for so much clarity in your budget. Yep. Okay.

 So another one that your bank, you can, your bank can do for you is to hide your accounts, which is really great.

Because it removes the temptation Yeah. To be like, there’s money there. Shouldn’t I find a way to spend it or what? Or there’s money there. Let me, I can be a little more whatever about this, and I’ll put it, I’ll save my bills. I’ll put it in my bills money later. Yeah. We don’t even want you to think about it.

We don’t want you to see it. It’s see, no, see no money. Spend no money. So outta sight, outta swipe. Yeah. Yeah. Isn’t that fun? It is fun. It’s fun. So you don’t have to swipe when you don’t see it. You don’t. Or you’re not tempted to pull the money. You’re not tempted to spend the money.

It’s there. It’s great for emergencies, guys. It’s great for long-term savings when you’re, like, when you’re thinking about travel, the smaller ones that are like home maintenance vehicle repair, those are things you maybe pull from more frequently. But when you’re talking about.

Going to Bali for Vanessa’s 40th birthday or you wanna be able to know that money is gonna be there when you wanna buy those plane tickets. So hide it and you just, you don’t need to see it every day. Like you don’t need, so the ones that you want to be able to see your gas and groceries, your personal spending, your bills account, like you wanna be able to see what’s going on with those.

And have ’em above ’cause you’re spending out of those, but the longer, one, longer term savings that you’re not spending out of definitely can hide, especially emergency fund. Just don’t see it. And hopefully, you don’t have to tempt yourself. It’s I’m not going to. To the ice cream shop because I will get ice cream.

Like I don’t have to see it, and it doesn’t have to be a bug in my brain that this is money I can spend if I really want to or need to. So just helps with some willpower. Yeah. Okay. So the seventh thing is use the a CH payment option. Okay. This is a one and done. Literally you set it up to pay bills using your a CH option.

And you don’t have to update it because you no longer need to like. Update your what is it, the debit card? Expiration date. Yeah. That’s not a thing anymore. Even, I just had a client in her bill. I felt so bad. She just started and she had just gotten going and her debit card got hacked or whatever.

Okay. So then she had to go back and reset all of her bills up to come out automatically of her bills account. With the a CH we went with, I was like, do the a CH this time. Don’t worry about trying to use that debit card if it’s possible as much as you, as much as you can. So anytime that you might need it, you lose it or you get a new expiration date or it gets stolen or whatever, or messed up than you won’t have to worry about it.

The a CH is the way to go. I actually feel like it is safer. Because my, we recently were in Atlanta for my daughter’s volleyball tournament, and my card got compromised. Your card? Yep. My debit card. Not your bank account. Aach h and yeah. Yeah, my debit card got compromised. I don’t know how, because I have a, the magnetic or whatever.

Yeah. I have that, that fail proof thing, but it must have been out, or I must have given it to somebody and they must have done it while they were using it or whatever. But anyways, so that happened and I had to do the same thing. It was really frustrating. However, if everything was set up on Aach h yeah, that’s not a thing.

And I don’t think I’ve ever had my bank account be compromised with routing number and account number. It’s only ever been through a debit card. And this is especially, we’re talking about for your Bills account. Yeah. You don’t have to ever take the bills account out or the debit card out, so it shouldn’t ever get compromised.

It stays in your nightstand or in your safe or whatever. So that’s definitely one. All right. Number eight, direct deposit. Okay. So we know that you have a lot we just know from personal experience that you like to have a lot of bank accounts. Okay. And maybe you like to put some income there.

And maybe I like to have HR do this thing with my with my paychecks. We want you to direct deposit all of your income into your Bills account. And let your bills account disperse your paycheck. For you. Yeah. If you’re really old like us, there was a time in the day where you would actually get, receive your check from your placement payment.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. And then you would have to deposit that check into the bank or mobile deposit it. You could take a picture and put it that way. Oh, that’s brand new. Yeah, that’s, yes, but we want you to use that direct deposit option. The difference, like Shana is saying, we don’t want you to set it up through your HR depart department as far as what account it goes through.

And you don’t. We don’t want you to use your HR department to disperse it among many accounts in your bank account. We want it to be put into one account. Only so you can see all of the money you have on payday. Yeah. Direct deposit is key here because it’s going to allow you to run this whole system.

So what happens, as you may have heard for from all of our podcasts is all your money goes into the bills account enough there, enough stays there to pay all your bills automatically, like we talked about. And then you can set the bank up like we talked about, to transfer for your spending and savings, and therefore your paycheck has been planned.

Right? All of these. Paycheck plan and apps and stuff like that. You don’t have to do anything. Yeah. As long as you have the, you do have to have the direct deposit. Going and then all the other features we’re talking about can make your paycheck plan come to life without you having to lift your finger.

When you wake up, like it’s, the whole thing is when you wake up in the morning, your paycheck is there, it’s deposited. Hey, guess what? All your transfers deposit your entire Yeah. And you didn’t have to do anything so that your entire budget is done. Yeah, it’s already, you can check everything else off on your budget.

’cause it happened because you set up the direct deposit. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s just less stress. Love that. So like for instance, my husband gets paid every Wednesday, Thursday morning is when everything happened. I didn’t do anything like, ’cause I set that up like a long time ago. Snap. Just spend, girl.

Just spend. Okay. Yep. All right. So number nine. Here’s the, here’s, it’s like a little fun. Bonus one, which is kids accounts. You can create accounts in your at your bank that are designated specifically for the kids stuff that you do, the kids spending. And this is gonna help you to teach your kids to budget.

So how does it gonna do that? What we like to do is have you put in your budget, because we know the kids, you’re gonna spend money on the kids, right? This is also not saving the big things that you’re saving for, it is the little things that you know are gonna come up this month. Your kids are gonna ask for money.

We like you to set up a budget for them that, is set aside each month for the kids. So you can do this a couple different ways. So a lot, some people, some of our clients have one account that says kids and it’s for all their kids. And they just know the, like within that, the kids know how much money is theirs and what they can use and whatever.

So you can bring them in on the conversations, say, Hey guys, y’all have this much money this month to be able to spend and you can help them. Or they can decide on their on their own how they wanna spend it. Or we have clients who open up separate checking accounts for each kid and each kid has their own little budget and they can decide how they spend their money.

But like Shana said, this is not like the kids’ savings bucket for summer camp or church camp or their clothes that they need to buy for school in six months. This is the everyday things that pop up throughout the month. Yeah, and I like too, as much as possible, which is very possible where we live. I know it’s not for everybody.

I like as much as possible to give the kids cash and try to teach them how. To manage it their budget, that’s how you can bring them in on the conversation. It’s not you’re saying no or yes to anything. It’s them saying, okay, mom gave me 50 bucks or whatever for this month, or for, or 2010 bucks for this week, whatever it might be.

I am going to figure out how I wanna. Spend that. And that takes you, you don’t have to have the mom guilt and it lets them learn how to budget. Yeah. And the same thing is true if you do it the other way. You can have them have their own bank account and they can start to, to see money stack up and, okay.

So I have clients that do that specifically. And there one, the older one didn’t spend, but she knew that she had prom coming up and she wanted to do all this different stuff for prom and this was still her budget? Yeah. She still had to manage it. So it just allows you to She’s saving. Yeah. It allows you to bring them into the conversation.

You don’t have to say no but, so what I was trying to say is it could be cash, but it could also be. Debit card. Debit card. Just, you just wanna be able to talk to them and teach them. Now, just allow them, I think the biggest thing, and we’ve said it like three times while we’re, while we’ve been talking, but bringing them in on the conversation, having let them have some buy-in here.

You don’t have to, like Shana said, you don’t have to be the one to say no. They can say no. No. Like with the amount of money that you’ve given them, they get to make the decision. So it’s really cool. Yeah. All right. So we hope that you’ve loved these nine little tips to recap, we’ve got.

The all of them are Bills account, half a bills account open, separate spending accounts automatic transfers to your spending account, automatic transfers to your savings accounts. We want you to name your accounts ’cause it helps you categorize. Yep. And then we’re gonna hide the accounts from view.

The ones that we don’t need to see every day. We’re gonna use a CH payments to pay bills as much as possible. We’re gonna make sure we set up direct deposit and allow our paychecks to be planned by the bank and and do all of our budgeting for you. And then also a little bonus one was the kids account to help you teach them how to do it.

Thank you guys so much for listening. We hope that you have hopefully you took some notes and then you’re gonna go back to your bank app and make it work for you.