You can’t pay off all your debt fund, all your savings buckets and it just, it’s fine. It’s no big deal. You’re not alone. Like a lot of people start there, but you have to pick and choose. So if you wanna get outta debt and it sounds like you do, then that, that money that’s all going towards the savings buckets right now or your volts.

Figure out what are the ones that you absolutely need to have maybe this quarter or, coming up here soon, fund that. Everything else needs to pause. Use all the extra money that you have towards paying off that debt. So when you actually go to make a budget without debt, you’re gonna see that you can put that money in all these different places that’s funding your future ’cause you’re no longer paying for your past on your credit card.

  📍 Do you make good money, but have nothing to show for it. Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have a 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.

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 All right, Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on Financial Coaching for Women. We’re so excited to have you for a live call today.

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Alright, so tell us, what questions you have, what brings you to the call? What’s going on?

My problem is I don’t have really that much debt, like literally 1007 $62 in credit card debt.

I don’t have a house payment, don’t have a car payment. I’m pretty good. But my problem is I have all my savings accounts, my little things that I wanna do, vacation, and, pampering and all that kind of stuff. And I don’t wanna use my credit cards, but I find myself using my credit cards all the time because I don’t have the money to pay for.

The things I wanna do that was happening with my gas for my car. So finally I did the 90 day audit, and I’m like, okay, I spend about $300 a month on gas, every payday when I get paid. Now I put $300 in my gas account for my car. And it, if I have money there now to,

to spend. Yeah.

Put

in my car. Yeah. That’s great. That’s a great start. Okay, so you did the 90 day audit. You figured out how much you needed for gas, and you put that away. You said you did the same for groceries or just gas?

No, just gas. I haven’t done that for groceries. So I have my gas account, I have a so account, so I have all my vaults and that’s where the gas account is.

I have a different account for groceries. So I just wanna leave it like that for right now.

Okay. So what are the unexpected expenses that are popping up that you’re using your card for?

I go to Costco and I use my, Citibank beats the card, but I try to. Pay for it, when I, when I do that, I I charge it and then I go into my account and pay it. But I know that’s not the ideal situation to be in.

Yeah. So it’s always an extra step that we’re not, we’re gonna forget to do.

And we, I know we’ve done a Costco ramp before in our. Our, what we had to say about that is no one can afford Costco. There’s so many things in there that we are like, yay. And then we get to the register and we’re like, oh yeah, they’re bright and shiny things. But yeah, there’s so many, exactly.

Everything there costs at least $50. Okay. So that’ll be difficult. But what you can do is, do you go to Costco every month or every so often?

I try to go every month, and I don’t spend, like the other day I went and I spent $186. It’s not a lot, but it’s, more than, okay, what you

wanna do.

Okay? So if you wanna make this sort of regular, is you wanna look at your Costco, what am I buying there? And even it out on purpose. So if my budget allows me that I can do $200 at Costco without having to use a credit card because that’s part of my grocery budget, then I need to do it on purpose.

So if I’m getting paper towels one time, the next time I’m getting the toilet paper, like I need to make it a steady. Spend at Costco if I really wanna work go at Costco versus I go once for $500 and then I go once for a hundred dollars. We wanna make it even so that you can plan for it and you can budget for it in your monthly budget.

Just like you did with your gas, you did the 90 day audit for gas and you figured out how much you spend there. We’re gonna do the same with your Costco. We’re gonna And your groceries. Yeah. Yeah. Your G So if what Shayna is saying, if you don’t wanna break up groceries versus other stuff at Costco, just make a Costco.

Account or a Costco volt if you’re using SoFi, and go, okay, this is my allotted amount that I’m gonna spend there every month, and that’s what I get. So it’s holding you accountable. If you wanna add a buffer, that’s totally fine, but it gives you an amount of money that you know that you can freely spend within those boundaries.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. See, I get paid once a month, so I really like that. At first, when I first started getting paid once a month, I was like I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve never done that before, but I like it because my money comes in once a month, my money goes out, all my bills are automated, so I have all my buddy.

I like the, when I first started listening to you girls, I was like, oh a, an account just for bills, right? So I did that and I’m. I.

It sounds like you’ve got a lot going for you. Like you said, you don’t have car payments, you don’t have all of that. You just got, you’re just in the last bits of finalizing it. And it sounds like the grocery is spending, because what you’re saying is getting paid once a month is nice. ’cause it’s like one and done, but then you have to budget that money for a whole month before you get more, and that is exactly, actually really hard.

So there’s a couple ways to solve for it. Either way, you need to see how much you’re spending on groceries, and then you need to hold yourself accountable. When I go to Costco, if I only have. $200. I can only spend $200. I don’t get to get all of the things there, which is why it’s easier for me to just not go to Costco.

That part, for me is easier, but if you love it, then you just need to make it work within your grocery budget. You need a grocery amount. Yeah, for each month now. Now the other thing that you can do is keep all the money on your bills account and pay your spending accounts weekly so that you are just still.

You are still living, like whether you have restaurants, spending personal money, whatever they are, you can get money in there weekly so that you can just live that week to week and you don’t have to try to budget a whole month. Okay, I have a thousand dollars to last the whole month. Instead, you would get 250 a week, and then you just have to make the week work.

That’s the power of you being able to make your budget match your life. Like you get to decide how often you quote, unquote pay yourself into those spinning accounts. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so I don’t, say for example, I like I said, I have the gas the gas vault.

I have the travel vault because we’re going on vacation in September. I have I get my nails done and I get my hair done and I get massaged, things like that. So I budget for that and I have that in my, my, time I get paid, I move, the money automatically gets transferred.

Every direct deposit, this amount goes there, this amount goes there, this amount goes there. Yeah. And then I’m like, okay, we have $130 left for the entire month for whatever comes up. Okay? So realistic.

So you were saying that you still find yourself using the credit card at basically, I’m sure at the end of the month when you still have things that you need to buy or want to buy, but you’re still, you are funding those vaults, right?

Is that what you

Okay.

Vaults? Yeah.

Okay. And so what do you find yourself using the credit card on versus what you’re saving for in your vaults? How, what is, how is that different?

Like I said, I use it at Costco. Really? That’s the only place I use it. Okay. But what I do with the, and I do it, I’ve been really good.

I’ll go get gas and if I get it at Costco, I’ll just use my Citi Citibank card and then I’ll transfer the money outta my vault and I pay it right away. So I’m pretty good doing that, but I know it’s a pain I shouldn’t be doing.

Account instead of using my credit card.

It’s just one less step. It’s gonna be way easier for you to just use the cash and be done instead of having to figure out how to transfer every time. So I think making that Costco account or Volt, however you, however SoFi does it, it’s one less step and it’s gonna help you.

It’s gonna help wean yourself off your credit card.

Yeah. Like I said, I know a lot of the other one is my PayPal account and all I use up for is like when I go to concerts or, and all whatever I do. And I use that and it’s oh, six months free interest. I screwed up on that a little bit.

So I’m paying, they have those promotions on purpose.

Those promotions are there on purpose. ’cause they know, like they’re not dumb.

  📍 📍 All right.

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So you have your travel vol, you said use fund that and think about, okay how many concerts, how many times do we go on vacation throughout the year? And so that way you can fund it with the proper amount to be able to pay for cash when those trips and stuff come up that you wanna get.

And I would shut that PayPal account down.

Yeah. The problem I have and this is a problem I had with my gas, is the same thing. It’s okay, I have all this money going out and then I still need to pay my credit card bills, but how am I. I’m not gonna have any money left after I, it’s like a vicious cycle. So I’m like, oh my gosh, how do I get out of it? That’s where I’m stuck. As trying to have the money and still fund all these little savings account and pay my bills off at the same time.

Yeah. There’s a couple different things. The first thing is to stop using the credit card, like if you’re gonna, that’s how you break the cycle.

That’s the first step. Then slowly pay it off as you can. I would say, I know you mentioned most of the savings buckets you had. I might have. I might. It sounds like the budget is so tight that we might not be able to do all of the savings buckets. I’m not sure because if you said you had 130 or 180 left over at the month for anything, and that’s not that much, that’s a good buffer to have as you’re getting going with budgeting.

I can see where that go, where that disappears really quickly. And then on top of that, if you have a credit card bill that you have to pay, then that’s also making it really tight. So stop using the credit cards. Don’t go to Costco for a couple months or something. If you have to do what you have to do to.

To make it stick. And to be able to not add to the Costco credit card and to be able to use cash for groceries and then start paying it off. You, you might, like Vanessa said if you really want you set, you can set up a separate Costco vault eventually, but I might break up with Costco for a minute until I can get myself out of the cycle of what you’re talking about.

Yeah, we just, you can’t do it all. You can’t pay off all your debt fund, all your savings buckets and it just, it’s fine. It’s no big deal. You’re not alone. Like a lot of people start there, but you have to pick and choose. So if you wanna get outta debt and it sounds like you do, then that, that money that’s all going towards the savings buckets right now or your volts.

Figure out what are the ones that you absolutely need to have maybe this quarter or, coming up here soon, fund that. Everything else needs to pause. Use all the extra money that you have towards paying off that debt. So when you actually go to make a budget without debt, you’re gonna see that you can put that money in all these different places that’s funding your future ’cause you’re no longer paying for your past on your credit card.

Okay.

I know it’s easy. I know it sounds so easy. It’s oh my.

Listen, we know that it’s gonna be tempting in the moment, but I think that’s where Shayna was saying like, just don’t go in, don’t go into too into Costco. Delete the PayPal app from your phone if you have to. Let’s break up with those things right now to hold yourself accountable to getting out of that situation so that way you can feel better moving forward.

And you then when you go back, you now have a plan because you have your own Costco account that’s gonna hold you accountable to the amount of money that you’re gonna spend there. Okay.

Yeah. What do you think? I know I can do that. I think I can do that. I think I can do that. Like I said, I did it with my gas for my car and it’s oh wow.

What a concept. I don’t have to charge my gas anymore. Yeah. ’cause I have the money there to pay for it.

So just implement that slowly in your budget. Implement it one thing at a time. So now that you have the gas thing down. But you said if you go to Costco and get gas, then you’ll use your other card.

No, that’s a non-negotiable. You always use the gas. The amount of money for gas, you don’t use the card anymore. So you have this system down for your gas. Now let’s implement it for groceries and then let’s implement it for Costco entirely. Let’s just. Roll it out in baby steps.

Yeah.

And I mean that, that is how we would tell you to do it anyways. Like, how are you gonna slowly wean yourself off of the credit card? Yeah. Is you’re going to go, take one thing off that I’m using the credit card, take the next thing so that, then the next thing is all of the groceries sh pantry shop just to get through a month.

You just need to get through a month to where you’re not spending over what you have. But also to do the audit, to be truly honest about what you’re spending on groceries. I think that’s good too. And then if you have that money in the account. That’s what we stick to and that’s it. There’s no credit card bailing us out.

We have to spend only this amount so that I can, not be relying on credit cards anymore.

I know I’d probably be shocked if I do a 90 day audit and go back and see how much I’m actually spending on, and that’s what credit

cards always do. They allow you to overspend without thinking about it.

But if you’re planning it on purpose and really looking at the numbers, you’re gonna automatically be better and do better. So yeah, I think that’s definitely. What you should do, you can look at the numbers and then try to stick to what’s something that’s realistic and get and get yourself off of those credit cards.

Is there any other, did you have any other questions? Did we, did you, I, on our last call, she wrote some stuff down, so I wanted to make sure that we hit all of your questions and helped you as much as we can while, yeah,

That was basically it. Fund my account, my savings account, and pay off my debt at the same time.

And I’m, I’m lucky I don’t have a lot of debt, like a lot of people. Don’t say you’re lucky.

You’ve made good decisions. You worked hard and you’ve worked hard. Yeah. That’s a good deal. That’s, yeah.

I’ve worked hard. Yeah. Yeah, you’ve gotta get over this last

little

bit. You just got a little hug.

One little hill to go over and

you’ve got

like sailing. You’ve got the savings bucket set up. You’ve got the bills account set up, you’ve got the cash account. You’re like this close. Yeah, this close.

All. Thank you very much. You’re 📍 welcome. Thank.

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