We are continuing our start here series. Yes. Today we’re talking about our bill system.

It’s kind of a big deal. It’s kind of a big part of the whole budget system that we teach. It’s one of the most important parts. And so we’re going to be here for a minute. So get comfortable, get ready. And we’re going to teach you all about our bill system. It’s like the bread and butter. It’s like the main part of everything.

So we are so excited to dive in and hopefully step by step explain. Why you need one and how to do it. Yeah.

 Vanessa, imagine she’s in the checkout line.

Okay. She’s got a basket full of groceries. That did they add it up like don’t you just try didn’t she just try to do that make that like math in her brain Yeah, and then she just try to keep it keep it little but then every time you turn around you need something else to go In that basket and it just adds up and so she’s in the checkout line.

There’s two people in front of her Okay, so she’s got to go in her bit her bank and look okay first She goes to her credit card and that’s maxed out Right. Thank you. Okay. That, that one’s going to say no. If I run that, then she’s looking at her bank account and she’s like, okay, the mortgage came out.

We went to Chick fil a yesterday. Did the electric bill come out? I don’t know yet. If I buy this, we’ll, we won’t be able to go to to the thing this weekend for her birthday part for the birthday party, but I’ll at least have groceries. So she’s in the checkout line. She’s trying to figure this out as people like are moving up.

She’s got to find out if she has enough money for all this groceries, how she’s going to pay for them. Right. And also like how many bills still have to come out out of the paycheck. And when is that paycheck actually going to drop and is it going to be enough? And Oh, did I work enough hours to make sure that it covers all of it?

Like, and then the bills that she forgot about, like she probably doesn’t even like the Apple, the random Apple charges, all the charges your kids are about to rack up over the weekend. It’s a rainy weekend and they’re bored and you get Amazon charges and Apple charges, Google charges, all that. So why is it important? Why, why is what we are saying, Shana, the way to go? Yeah. Why is it so much different and so much better than than the way probably everyone is thinking? Everyone around you is doing it. Yeah.

Well, obviously, so we like to think about like the old way to do it. And then a new way, the way we want you to do it. And the first thing, like we already said, is there’s too many transactions. It’s just too much for your brain to be able to handle. It’s too much to sort through. It’s too cluttered.

It’s not cute. It’s not pretty. Well, and think about it the old days. So maybe 10 years ago, you. only had maybe 20 transactions going on in your bank account. There wasn’t a lot, but right now, nowadays there are so many more subscriptions, so many more bills that kids are involved in so much more. So like Shana said, do you have a lot more transaction lines going on in your bills account or whatever account you have that one main checking account?

Yeah. We like to think about like, A generation ago, some of the bill have more than half of the bills that you have right now weren’t even a bill. There was no internet bill. There was no phone or cell phone bill. Right. And then obviously like when I said all the subscriptions and then, hey, go back to told maybe tops two generations, probably more like one and a half.

There was not even a credit card. So there were all of this debt. Was not a thing. So there’s just way more transactions anyway in there. And then you, you talk about all the swiping that you’re doing and it’s just too much to track. It’s, it’s not fun. That’s what all of the other sort of systems are having you do is like track where all of this is going.

No, we’re not, that’s not, we’re not here for that. Well, and we didn’t, we’re not promoting you to data entry job, right? Like that we don’t want to sit here and track of what’s, what’s going on. And in the moment when you’re trying to go make these transactions or you’re buying things, we don’t want you to have to.

do math in the checkout lane. Like what is that? Nobody wants you to do that. I had a lady this morning for a free call and she said, I bought this budget planner thing and it has me write down every single one of my transactions every day. And I said, well, that’s why you’re not an accountant, nor are you a bookkeeper?

Like you don’t want to do that.

Yeah, we are not for public math, or math in public, mental math, like no, we’re not for that. We want you to be able, like, the difference between what you’re saying, Vanessa, is like when you’re tracking everything, instead what you’re going to be able to do is look in the checkout line and be like, oh, I have 500 for groceries, done, all the math is done, I did it.

Like, the math was already done, and and that’s what’s, that’s what’s going to happen after you get done with the bills account, bills accounts first, right? So we’re going to reduce that. And then, you know, the other thing that we know, Vanessa, is banks make trillions, like actually NSF fees are their number one, like moneymakers.

They make trillions of dollars in NSF fees every year. And so what we are going to do is set up your bills account to where it always has enough money. Your bills are always paid. You never get, you never bounce. You never have a problem and you stop being late. You start having late payments, NSF fees, all of that.

Think about how many NSF or overdraft fees. I actually don’t know the difference between either one of those, but I think they’re the same. But how many of those have you received in the last year because of you not knowing what In your account and what you could actually spend on food and gas versus what was going towards bills, right?

So what we want and it’s not like the ones. Oh, I knew I was gonna overdraw because this bill was too high or whatever Or I was late. That’s not it We’re talking about how many of those were because you had no idea of what was happening in your account And we do hear that a lot. So we want to remove that like we just want to completely explain that that is no longer a charge that you’re gonna get put in your budget is in an In NSF fee.

Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that we say all the time in us is, you know, people are living paycheck to paycheck and the bills account is going to remove that feeling. It’s going to make things more steady. But so what you’ve been doing is live is feeling like feast or famine. Like these are my good paydays.

This is my bad one. And we’re going to take that away using the same fee. system. We had a lady ask us recently in our Facebook chat, like, I get paid once a month, but when do I do my transfers? And I’m like, it doesn’t. And that’s what we’re trying to remove is like, it doesn’t matter now when you get paid because everything is separate.

Everything is set up to be automatic. And all the transfers are going out. So like literally your money is coming in and all of it’s going out. Imagine the day where everything is automatic and you don’t have to worry about stuff like that. That’s going to be so good. So, okay. So that was like the old way, all the bad, the bad ways that that, and honestly, you don’t know what you don’t know.

You’re operating on the same system that you’ve had, which was what you set up when you’re 18. So it’s fine for your first job. Yeah, we’re loving you through this. Okay. So now the new way is going to take the guesswork out of it. There’s going to be no guesswork. Like I said, you’re going to look and at a glance, you’re going to know every, like, you’ll be able to, as Vanessa was saying, like, Look at one, you won’t have to scroll right at your transactions.

This is going to be very simple because it’s only going to be bills. And then you’re not going to have to guess for anything for any of your spending, because that’s going to be one glance. You know exactly what’s going on with your money. I want to go back really quick to having an account that you probably have had since you were 18.

And listen, they have not, they’re not teaching financial literacy like in school anymore. Do not be upset. There’s no shame in what you don’t know right now. You are hearing probably a new way for maybe the first time. Take it, absorb it, see how, and just try it out. See if it works because what we know is that setting up a couple extra accounts, organizing your money, especially having a bills account that is designated only for paying bills.

It has completely changed some of our listeners lives and we want you to feel that we want you to see the difference in that. Okay. So imagine having a bill account, like I said, All it’s doing is paying bills. Like there’s nothing else happening in that account. It doesn’t do anything else. You’re not spending money out of there.

It’s just paying your bills and you always know that it’s funded. Yeah. And it’s paying them automatically. Like, and the, the thing that is really funny is you’re going to have, you’re going to save so much time and bring calories. You’re not going to know kind of like what to do with yourself because it’s all going to happen automatically the way we’re going to teach you.

So you’re going to have money in your bills account. The bills are being paid automatically, which means you don’t have on Saturday morning. You’re not going to go through and say, okay, did this get paid? That could be like, it’s already done. It’s going to be done and automatically. And you’re going to save time and stress.

Yeah, absolutely. And then like Shayna said before, when you go to look at your bank statements or you’re going to, you’re scrolling through your bank app to see transactions, there’s no like clutter in there. It’s all very clean and simple and clear and all of it’s organized. And you’re going to see your mortgage come out.

You’re going to see your water bill. You’re going to see electricity bill. You’re going to see some subscriptions. And maybe your, your gym, your gym subscription or whatever. Like it’s, that’s it. That’s all that’s coming out of your bills account. So it’s organized, it’s decluttered, it’s easy to read. And there’s, it takes all the guesswork out.

Yeah. And it also gives you peace of mind because you, you know, that they’re getting paid. There’s no, like, you’re not going to have to think about due dates and paid paycheck dates and whether I have enough or what, if there, if I’m going to have to transfer money, like none of that, you just have peace of mind.

It’s going to be a smooth smooth running operation. Yeah. And consistency, Shana, like think about knowing that the same thing is happening in that account all the time.

Of course, unless you add or subtract a bill, but literally you’re putting the same amount in there, the same amount is coming out. You don’t have to worry about it because you’re not living in your bills account. Like you, the only thing it’s doing for you is paying for bills. You’re living over here in a spending account, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. Yeah. And so it just reminds us of a client that we had and she said, For the first time ever, I went on vacation and I didn’t worry about bills being paid.

And we were like, yeah, that’s the, like, obviously that’s what we’re going for. We don’t want you to ever worry about bills being paid. Certainly not when you should be enjoying your vacation. And this is going to take, the bills account is going to take away, any of those things, you’re never gonna have to worry about it and you’re going to have to find something else to worry about, honestly.

So you have really quick, didn’t you have a client who was going through a really hard medical crisis, right? He had cancer and she said like, all I was able to do, like all I had to do was focus on him. Like I didn’t have to worry about anything else. Cause I knew that it was all taken care of and it was fully focused and fully present on him in the situation.

Like how good of a feeling that was for her. Yeah. And yeah, and we want, we definitely want that for you. Like we just. We like, like I said, life is going to come at you. There will always be something else to focus on, to worry about. So money shouldn’t have to be, and certainly Bill’s not one of them, but listen, Vanessa, we’ve only spent like 16 minutes or more talking about why we want you to do this Bill’s account and what it is.

Now we’re going to quickly tell you how, because well, I don’t know about quickly, let’s be really honest. There’s no truth to that. There’s nothing quick about what we do. But now we’re going to tell you how, because we’re not just here to build you up without giving you the how. Before when we taught you how to create a budget, when you did that, you came up with all your bills. Like you found, you went hunting for bills from every different direction, wherever they come.

Every credit card. And so now you have a list of your bills. What you’re going to do is you’re, so you’re going to set up a buffer using that. You’re going to total all of that up and you’re going to put half of that into your bills account to start. So you’re going to pre fund your bills account with a buffer to start with half of your bills amount.

Yeah. And the reason for that is because we, we talked about it before that feast or famine situation. So sometimes you have like half of your bill or more than half of your bills coming out in the beginning of the month. And then like, so that’s when you don’t eat anything. You like just you go shopping for groceries in your pantry and your freezer because you don’t have any money for groceries.

And then the second half of the month is usually when. you’re on shopping sprees and you blow all your money because that’s the only time of the month that you feel like you have money. So we’re trying to remove that. So the reason why we need a buffer is because when you’re in that famine state, we need to have money in there to be able to pay bills and also fund your groceries and gas at the same time.

Yeah. So if you think about like looking at your budget, If you have, you get paid on the 1st and the 15th. If three fourths of your bills come out before the 15th, then that paycheck isn’t going to cover it. Right. Does that make sense? So what you want to do is have money in there. That’s kind of acting like it’s just a rolling buffer.

So the money is always going to be rolling forward. It’s not that you have That to spend extra. It’s just, there’s always, you know, whatever, a thousand dollars in there. That’s always extra so that I know that, you know, those onesie Tuesdays that are, that are off during the month or whatever. I always have the money in there.

The paychecks, all they’re doing is refilling the bills account so that I’m never going to be drained to zero. It’s all, I’m always going to have enough money in there. Yeah. And think about like that second half of the month when all that extra money comes in. Only continue to spend what you’ve budgeted for gas and groceries and things like that.

Like Shaina said, because that extra money is going to sit in bills to continue to fund the upcoming month, right? So we, you never want to change the amounts that you’re going to fund your spending accounts. We just want you to consistently do the same thing. So the same amount stays in your bills and all you need to do is do this one month.

Okay. One month, and it’s going to be rolling. That first month is going to be a little tight, especially depending on when you start in the month. We understand it may feel constricted. But it’s a season, it’s a short 30 day season that you’re going to get through and you’re going to, we promise you’re going to see and feel the benefit in the upcoming month.

Yeah. So it just kind of depends, you know, sometimes we have people who have savings and they can just pull it over. Otherwise you might need to do a yard sale. You might need to do some overtime or something just to get that buffer in there. Because like Vanessa said, once I have that buffer in there, it’s there forever.

And I just know that I always have money. in there to pay my bills and my paychecks are just refilling that buffer. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So step three, we want you to automate your income that’s coming in and automate all of your payments that are going out. Yes. So this is the magic. This is where all the goodness is going to happen.

You’re going to, which may have already been done, but you want to make sure, you know, sometimes we have a different, we’re not, our finances aren’t combined or whatever. Maybe we have random, you know side hustle income that’s going somewhere else, whatever. We’re going to make sure every bit of income is coming into this this bills account, we’re going to set it up directly automatic direct deposits in there for every bit of income to start.

Absolutely. And then on the contrary of that, you want to set up all of your bills to also be paid automatically. Right? So anything coming in. It’s automatic. Everything going out of the account is automatic. And. We suggest you setting those up as ACH payments because you save on fees. Most companies right now are giving you discounts if you do set them up automatically and as ACH to avoid to avoid fees and save money. Yeah, and then you’re going to do this for all of your bills while you’re going through and setting up them to come out of this because like, like we said, like you did when you did your audit, you’re going to have to pull all of these from credit cards from different accounts, wherever there’s usually a bunch of different ways that you’re paying your bills, we’re going to set them all up in this building out and while we’re in there, we’re going to set everything up to paperless payment.

billing. A lot of times that will, that can also possibly get you a discount, but also it’s just going to declutter everything. You don’t need to see the bill every, every month. You can go online and look at it in you. And you’re going to be able to see it getting paid very easily in your bills account.

You can save it on like your email, like set up a folder in your email that says bills and have everything go in there again. So it’s automatic. decluttering your inbox, all of that. Okay. So the second thing, that we want you to do after automating your income and setting up your your automatic payments is to delete the bills account from any online spending platform.

Right? So this is like Amazon, PayPal, Walmart, Venmo, all of that. Yeah. You have to go into each one of these and take it out. And there are unfortunately going to be endless. You’re going to have so many endless things that you’re going to have to you’ll find eventually you know, we have I just had a client that had to take it off of Instacart.

And then it was in one, it was actually in. So her, her, her gas and groceries card was in there, but so is the bills. One still, and she accidentally selected that one. We’re going to take that off. We don’t want that because you know, yeah, you might be able to repay your bills account, but that’s the step you don’t need to take.

So let’s just take the bills. Debit card out of any way to pay and out of your wallet. It’s going to stay at home. It doesn’t go with you. You only have that debit card, Vanessa, because some archaic, you know, like Neanderthal bill, bill billers out there don’t take ACH for reasons. They want you to use a card.

So that’s the only reason you’re going to have a debit card for it, but it’s not going to stay with you and your wallet is going to stay at home. And you don’t need two debit cards for the bills account. So you probably already have two debit cards because you know, you were using that count for you and your spouse.

So go ahead and just tell the bank that you want to cancel one of those and you only keep one on you. And again, like Shaina said, it’s only to attach to, to pay bills that don’t not, that don’t take ACH.. I want to go back really quick to the online platforms.

The only reason why you should keep your bills debit card on your account Attached to like Amazon or Google pay or Apple pay is to pay for a subscription right to pay a bill and Hopefully those accounts allow you to nickname them I do know that a PayPal is really great about nicknaming your your your cards So you can see what account is what but that is the only reason otherwise we are not using it to pay for things at all Yeah, and you can set up With Apple and Amazon, I know you can set up certain things to go with certain cards.

So like I have my Amazon Subscriptions for like grocery type things they come out of my grocery card But then obviously anytime I spend I use my spending card for Amazon so you can designate that for any of those So what’s cool is like we’re all done once you do this, you’re, you’re all done with your bills account.

All you have to do from here on out is supervise it right and just make sure everything’s happening the way it’s supposed to. You know, it might take a minute to get all the bills figured out to get them all automated to make sure they’re all coming out the right amount and everything. So that’s cool.

That’s the only thing that you really kind of want to do. And you’re just going to keep adjusting. If you add a bill or take a bill away, that’s the only kind of like supervision you really have to do. Yeah. The first month, a little wonky. Like you’re not going to get it right. Maybe month or one or two.

And that’s okay. Cause like Shana said, you may be still trying to find bills here and there that are lingering. Maybe there, you have quarterly bills that pop up every now and then. However, eventually you’re going to have everything in one place. You’re only going to have all your bills coming out of your bills account.

And like, if you have changes or updates or you, it, you lowered a bill or you change companies, then that’s when you would adjust the amounts that are staying in your bills account. But otherwise guys, like you’re just now you’ve now become the CFO. Yeah, and there’s Vanessa, I think it’s, it would be good to think of two small caveats that came to mind that I think people might push back on.

One is the annual bills, and two is the utility bills that change. So maybe we adjust, we address those two things. So you’re going to have your annual, when you go to saving, when you go to learn about savings buckets, we’re going to teach you about annual bills. And so you’re going to be saving up for any of those big annual bills.

When they do come due, you’ll just transfer them from your annual bill savings bucket To your bills account and that will allow for any of that. And then of course you have your utilities that might fluctuate. Yeah. So if your utilities fluctuate, you have two options here to be able to handle this. If you have enough buffer continuously every single month, it doesn’t, it’s fine.

If it, if it fluctuates, it’s going to fluctuate every single month. But if you always have 3, 000 buffer at the end of the month, then it doesn’t matter if they fluctuate because you can adjust, adjust that in the month. Yeah. If you want to do it like I do, I take an average of all of my bills for the year of my utilities, and I put that amount every single month in my bills account.

It never changes. Now some people set up on the, that the, like the company run automatic payment, like what you’re doing, but through the company, right? Don’t do that. They don’t go through them to do something that you can do yourself. We always want you to be in control of your money. Okay. And the reason why we say that is when we have customers and clients get off of that payment program, nine times out of 10, they’re ahead two months.

Okay, so we don’t want you to do that. Do it yourself. So, again, take an average, I go back 12 months, do an average, that same amount goes in there all the time, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s winter or fall. Summer, like the same amount is going in. So I know it’s always funded. Yeah. And so this something to think about is you’re not looking at your bills account and saying, Oh, there’s so much extra money.

No, everything is designated. We have the buffer on there on purpose. So like, just all your job is to make sure your bills check, check, check, check. They got checked off of your, your system your bill, your budget, and you know that they’re all gone and you’re good. So what’s going to happen, Vanessa is I want, I want them to like visualize my daughter’s closet that my mom just did.

It’s beautiful in there, by the way. So she’s going to love it. Think about the closet that we’ve all seen, like on TV or in the magazine or whatever, and it’s got, you know, it’s just spilling over everywhere. There’s so many shoes coming out of the shoe compartments and the hangers are stuffed full.

There’s no extra room. You like, can’t even like get an extra hanger in there. Cause you got so much clothes. And then like, Scarves are coming out of here. Sweaters like on the shelves and, and just things are just everywhere. There’s stuff on the floor. There’s stuff like, yeah, there’s just stuff everywhere.

That’s like the before. That’s like your bills, like, like your, your one account that you’re using right now, but the after yeah, imagine walking into your closet and Everything having its own place. There’s no shoes on the floor Everything is organized in its own bin. The clothes are all folded your maybe they’re even color coordinated, Shayna, like rainbowed.

A lot less, because you’ve gone through and separated, like what you didn’t need, what, what, like that, that’s not something we talked about. What didn’t fit. Yeah, what didn’t fit, like you, you have so much less, so it’s already better. It’s already more clear. And then, but it’s also just organized. So just visualize, that’s what your bills account is.

Like the very messy before closet, the very color coordinated more minimal organized closet. Yeah. Is the after that’s what your bills account that’s the before and after of your bills account that we’re going for. Yeah, so we want you to imagine guys. We want you to imagine this for yourself. You can have a very clean very simple organized system in your in your bank account And the bills the bills account is the first it’s the first of them It is the main one if you can get that set up and everything else is just going to flow So easy and simple now we have you’ve heard us talk about spending accounts.

You’ve heard us talk about savings buckets. We’re going to get into all that. But the first main part of this is all of your income. You’re starting a funnel here, right? So we have all the income coming into the bills account and from there it’s being paid automatically. And then after that, you’ll hear us later talk about funneling it into the bills.

into your other accounts. Yes. So what do we want you to do? Well, we want you to set up your bills account right now and do exactly what we said. You’re going to go through, designate the one that you’re currently using as your bills account. You’re going to put a buffer in there. You’re going to automate your income coming in and all of your bill payments coming out.

You’re going to make sure there’s no more spending ever, ever, ever coming out of that bills account. And then you’re just going to supervise it. And that’s what we want you to do right now as a result of listening to this.