We are so excited. Guys. Guess what we’re going to do? We are going to kick off today a series where we talk in depth about each step. Mm-hmm. In the budget besties method. Yes. So we have a lot of people who ask us like, okay, but what do I do first? Like, what is, what is the order?

Especially when they buy our system because they set up their budget. Mm-hmm. But then they wanna know what are the next steps? And we do have our bonus trainings at the bottom that show them how to do everything. To put it in some type of order, in a system, in a method. We came up with our budget bestie method.

So we’re excited to share that with you over the next couple of weeks. Yeah. And so what’s the way it’s gonna work is, you know, so we have podcasts, you know, you guys come and go. You, you come because you need help, budgeting, you leave because you mastered it, whatever. We love you, but, uh, you no hard feeling.

That’s fine. Either way. Every once in a while we try to go through our steps, the what we teach, like overall, um, step by step. In a row. And so that’s what we’re gonna do for the next several Mondays. We’re gonna, we’re gonna go, we’re gonna start today by going over all eight steps. Mm-hmm. And then we’re gonna go through each one individually over the next several Mondays.

And then just in case you guys don’t realize, like Mondays are kind of our beefy episodes. Uh, Wednesdays we’re trying to tell you like little lessons, little tweaks, little things that we’ve learned. And then Fridays is when we have live calls with other people that come on and, um, either share their story or, um, have questions that you guys relate to.

And so that’s kind of how it’s gonna go for over the next. Eight Mondays. Right. We’re gonna be telling you our exact method and I wanna, I wanna caveat from this just for a moment, so y’all know that these are our, our main steps. Yes. We talk about investing. Yes. We talk about, you know, how to save for kids college and we do other topics.

Those are. Wonderful conversations, but when we talk about our actual system, this is gonna be the meat and potatoes mm-hmm. Of what you hear us say all the time. And if you ever have questions about other things, feel free to email, text us, ask us, and we’re more than happy to do, um, a podcast on that as well.

Yep. So the first step we have is to dream again.

Mm-hmm. Okay. We understand that maybe that sounds right off the bat. You’re like, Hmm, I need something more tactical. But we promise you cannot skip this step. You need to start with this step. Yeah. It’s not woo woo at all. Like, do you remember when you were younger and you were excited about this vision, this, these goals that you had for your life?

So we. What we want you to do is get excited about your financial future. So you actually want to budget, right? If you’re coming into this budgeting because you feel scared, anxious, worried, that’s only gonna get you so far. But if you have a big goal, if you have a big why, if you’re excited about the things that are coming because of what you’re doing, you’re actually gonna stick to, mm-hmm.

And do what we say. Yeah. So we just definitely want you to get clear on the why. Are you looking forward to being able to talk to your spouse again about money without it turning into a fight? Are you excited to get out of debt so you can travel more? What, um, do you want, do you have things that you wanna do with your kids?

Like what is your why? What do you, what are you doing this budget thing for? What is the reason? Yeah, maybe you’re building a house or maybe you want your kids to go on private school. That was a big goal for us. Like how, but how could we make that happen? And we had to put it on paper. We had to want to budget it made us want to budget.

Mm-hmm. To be able to see the results of that. Yep. Okay. So step two is to build your budget. Hey, we’re getting soccer right to the right, to the meat and potatoes, and here this is where we wanna get everything, everything on one page, which is unique to us. Mm-hmm. It’s signature to us. It’s your income, your debt, your bills, your spending, and your savings.

Mm-hmm. That’s our columns. Those are the things on one page that you’re gonna get and see where you’re at. And here’s the thing is this is not just another budget. Okay. This whole thing, this whole entire method that we’re showing you is an entire budget system. Mm-hmm. And putting everything on one page is.

The start of that, you have to be able to see all your numbers very clear, very easily organized, so then you can set up all the stuff that comes after that. Like your automations and stuff, right? Yeah. And it’s really important, Vanessa, we hear all the time that, you know, a lot of times people are, are couples, are, are budgeting separately, so they haven’t actually.

Maybe they don’t have any idea how much they actually make. We had that somebody say that the other, we didn’t know how much we made. We had an idea, but we didn’t know how much we actually made until we put it on one piece of paper that go for their income. Right? The same is gonna go for your debt. You might be shocked and appalled when you actually see how much your minimums are, but that’s okay.

We want to get it all in one piece of paper. And the same goes with your bills. I love this one because people, um, people sometimes they have duplicates or they have bills that they forgot that they were paying or it’s coming out of four different credit cards and that’s not cute. Like, so we definitely want to see it all on one piece of paper.

This is the starting point. Mm-hmm. I think I just had a new client this morning with a, I had a call with her and I said, okay, the idea of this budget and we were able to lay it all on one page, and I said, with this income coming in, it’s doing all of this. Mm-hmm. And that’s really the vision that we’re trying to create for you.

Mm-hmm. Is to go. You know, some people say, well, what is that gonna do for me? What is putting all my numbers on? On paper, it’s gonna show you where every single one of your dollars is going. Mm-hmm. And just show you how you can afford everything. Mm-hmm. It’s gonna show you how you can afford your gas and groceries and all that, but you can’t do that if it’s all coming out of five different accounts and this credit card and that credit card.

Well, and usually if you’re writing something down, it’s only your. Right. So you’re thinking, this is how much my bills are every month. We want you to get it all on all of it. So like we said, we are gonna have your income and your debt, but you, like Vanessa was alluding to, you’re gonna put all of the spending that you’re planning to do on there, and that’s really gonna be eye-opening, right?

And then your savings. We’re not just thinking maybe if there’s money in my account at the end of the month, we’re going to save money. We’re gonna put it all, that’s what the point of the whole pa piece of it all in one piece of paper is. We can see all the math at once. We can see, okay, look. The real truth, the honest truth, now that I’m actually seeing it, is we have $2,000 left over after bills.

Mm-hmm. Um, so now how can I divide that into what we have to spend and like the money that we wanna save, and then you can see it all in one paper, how it all works together. Right. And that’s what’s really magical about it. Yeah. No, it’s gonna be an I opener if you’ve never done this before. Okay. So step three is gonna be to set up a Bills account.

This is where you’re gonna create a separate account. Only used for paying bills and nothing else. We hear all the time that this is the biggest game changer. You know, people will say, um, it makes so much sense. Why wasn’t I doing this before? And we agree it does make sense. Um, but you’re basically gonna just have that one account where all of your bills are coming out of, you’re putting your income in there and all your bills are coming out of, and then we’re gonna talk in the next steps how everything else is separate so that your bills have a safe.

Place. Mm-hmm. Right. You’re not gonna worry about if there’s money enough in, therefore you’re not gonna have bills bouncing anymore. You’re not gonna have to do mental math. If I, if I, if I do this, am I still gonna be able to pay my bills? So the bills are gonna be their own account, their own checking account.

It’s gonna be really great. And this is really where you get a paycheck ahead. Mm-hmm. Because all your money is coming into the account and what’s going out is, uh, being accounted for. And so the money is gonna pool in there to be able to allow you to pay your bills whenever, wherever. So that’s, it really is a game changer.

And, and typically what we see clients do is they use their current checking account to, uh, the one checking account that they have to be the bills account. And then they do the next step, which is to separate your spending. So then you open separate checking accounts for your gas and groceries, your restaurants, and personal spending.

And this is where we say. Guess what, you’re not 18 anymore. Mm-hmm. It is time You can have more than one bank account. Yeah. It’s it’s true. It’s true. The idea here is to separate, to simplify. Right? So yes. Opening up these other accounts, some people are like, wait, what? I don’t know if I can handle that.

You, hon, I promise you you can. Mm-hmm. And once you do it, you’re not gonna know how you did it without it. Yeah. Because having those. Extra accounts to say this amount of money is being transferred into, into your gas and groceries account, and this is what you got. Hey, also, you have spending money. It’s all yours.

There’s no judgment on how you spend it and what you spend it on, and also your bills are being paid over here in this account. So the idea of being able to have money for everything that you want in that month. And it’s not like messing with each other, right? Mm-hmm. It’s not touching each other. It’s not fighting.

It’s really gonna allow you the freedom to be able to spend freely. Yeah. And you don’t have to do any mental math, like Vanessa said, you can look clear like clearly at your, um, your bank app, right? Your app that you used to bank with, and you, you don’t really have to even go into your bills ’cause you’ve already made sure that there was enough money in there.

But you can see clearly, okay, I have $300 till to for gas and groceries till next time I get paid and I have $200 to spend on whatever I want. Like you. And you can clearly see that there’s, it’s separated like Vanessa said. And it makes it so simple. You don’t have to like do math and like subtract and add math and that.

Nope, no more of that. And you also don’t have to track, like, that might be the biggest bonus of this part, is you don’t have to go back and track anything. You don’t have to go back and, and adjust or, or make a account or sign or any of that. There’s no accounting necessary. Well, and what we mean by that is when you transfer the money from the Bills account into the gas and groceries account, nobody cares that you went to the grocery store seven times that week and spent $50 here, 30, $30 here.

$40 here, like nobody cares. It’s that you transfer the money, it’s no longer in the bills account and just spend it freely as you want. Mm-hmm. So that’s when we talk about there’s no tracking required. Mm-hmm. In any of your spending accounts. All right. So step five is to start your savings buckets. And before we get into that.

Notice this is step five. The most important thing for you to do is, is step one first, we’re gonna have a reason to do this. We need a reason to do this. Then we’re gonna build a budget. We have to see everything on one piece of paper before we can do any of this. Then we’re gonna get the bills account going, then we’re gonna do spending accounts.

Then once those things are done, then we can start looking at our savings buckets. Yeah. And so a savings bucket is when we’re planning ahead for not monthly like expenses that are non monthly, but they’re 100% expected expenses. So we’re talking about Christmas and birthdays and travel and sports and all the things that you know that are coming.

We’re going to save ahead. Yeah. So if you think about, you know, your monthly budget that we created, uh, here with your savings budget, it’s kind of like your annual budget. Like what are the things that I spend annually that, like Vanessa said, I forget about? They kind of come up un quote unquote unexpectedly, but they definitely are gonna happen like Christmas.

It’s Christmas or my car registration, or the vet bill that. Oh no, they have $600. Yeah. Like all of these things are gonna happen, and so we’re gonna start saving for them in advance so that you’ve stopped having this rollercoaster of a budget. So you can, you can anticipate all of these bigger things, but pay for them a little bit at a time each month and set that money aside.

Mm-hmm. It’s gonna feel really good. And you know, you also putting this in a high yield savings account. Guys, you’re gonna make great interest on all this money every month. It allows you to be your own bank. Like imagine now you are funding your your own life. This is actually this section, like the step where people go into debt because they can budget easily for bills, debt, payments, gas, and groceries.

But when you’re talking about. Travel sports that pop up. Oh gosh. And all the different things that happen throughout the year and you haven’t budgeted for it. Where do you put that? You put it on a credit card. ’cause you can’t pay for it in cash. So being able to plan ahead for all this stuff and save in your savings buckets for all this money is going to allow you to become your own bank.

Yeah. And so when we say be your own bank, for example, I had a client today and she, we were talking about whether or not she was gonna close her credit cards. Mm-hmm. And I said, worst case scenario, whatever your credit card limit is, we are gonna make your emergency fund that much, because you’ve gotta get out of this mindset that you need a credit card to rely on.

Right. Right. Um, we’re going to use your savings, use money that you set aside yourself, like Vanessa said, to be your own bank, which brings us to step six, which we are going to break up with debt, right? We want you to swap the credit card for the debit card. This, you guys, y’all make too much money. Mm-hmm.

To be relying on debt. Mm-hmm. Okay. We wanna break the cycle of using debt for your everyday expenses or even for the big things that pop up. Again, we’re building a life where we’re funding our, our stuff ourselves with the amount of money that we have in the bank. Mm-hmm. And the thing about this is, it’s.

We’re not super focused on you like going balls to the wall to get out of debt. We understand that might not be your goal. What we want you to do is get rid of this like love affair that you have with credit cards, credit card points with your credit score. Like instead, you’re gonna fund your life with the money you make.

Mm-hmm. With the. With your own cash, you’re gonna pay for things yourself, and we’re gonna stop relying on debt because like Vanessa said, you make too much money to do that. You don’t need it. Usually you’ve been using it as convenience. Usually we’ve been paying off credit cards and treating that like a budget, and instead you’re gonna take ownership.

We’re gonna get ahead of this thing. We’re gonna set all these things up and then eventually probably pay off the debt so you have more money in your budget. Right. But really, we just want you to break up with it. Stop. Stop the cycle, stop the madness. And what we usually see is people, they’re charging throughout the month and then paying it off at the end of the month.

Mm-hmm. Usually, but sometimes they’re also spending the money in their bank account that was supposed to go on their credit card, so their bank account is going down. But the credit. Um, limit, right? The, the credit balance is now going up. So it, it’s, it’s not working in your favor. So we wanna stop using the credit card.

We want to fund your life in cash, pay everything moving forward in cash. But we understand, hey, listen, there are some people that start this and they’re like, I have been relying on credit cards so much. So they actually can’t stop this month. And they have to wean themselves off because they’re so used to living beyond their means.

So it’s really good to just be able to, um, stop using them. Fund your spending accounts, fund your bills account, fund your, your savings buckets, so that way you don’t have to use them. Yeah. And the other thing here that, we’ll, when we get into this step very specifically, is we want you to know that you can do both.

You can do these savings buckets, you can have spending money, you can pay your bills on time, and you can pay off debt. All of it’s possible, right? And so that’s what we’re gonna teach you when we get. Specifically to step six in in this series? Well, okay, now I have to talk about this. Okay. We are not about beans and rice mentality.

Mm-hmm. Okay. What we’ve seen from our clients is that they feel like you can either pay off debt or you can either live, and we are here to tell you after six years of doing this with our clients. No, you can do both. Like Shayna said, you can live and have a good time and have a good life with lots of money available to you.

Mm-hmm. And then also pay off debt. Okay. We average, I think our clients in six months of working with us, they’re paying off around $50,000 in debt. And hey, by the way, they didn’t stop that vacation. Mm-hmm. Right? They didn’t stop their kids’ travel sports. No. They went out to eat. They weren’t working in a restaurant like no.

They were able to do both, so we just wanna really throw that out there. Yeah

.  Okay. So then the, once we’ve got all of this, right, we just said we have a, we have the vision, we have a budget, we have bills, we have spinning, we have savings, we’ve broken up with debt. We’re not using that anymore. The next step is to make your budget outta magic.

Oh, I did. That was a 40 and flip. Because I was gonna say it’s to make it automatic, but I really want it to say automagic because we had a client that said automagically. Mm-hmm. And, and so what this is gonna do is where you’re gonna set up automatic payments for the bills and automatic transfers. So your debt, your bills, your spending, and your savings are all running on autopilot.

Yeah. Can you imagine? Yes. Doing anything else besides that? Like literally imagine living your life and not having to worry about making manual transfers, paying your bills, paying the mortgage. Like no, we don’t want you to have to do that. We want you, and we actually had a free call today and the lady was talking about like, I have so much extra time.

Mm-hmm. She said, everything is set up on auto pay. I have so much extra time, I’m not stressing about anything because it’s all being paid. Mm-hmm. Spending accounts are being funded, I don’t have to do anything. Mm-hmm. And that is the whole goal. The goal is to take back your time here. Mm-hmm. And be able to spend it on going to the beach or going on date night or watching, being present with the kids instead of worrying about who’s getting paid what and when and how.

Right. Mm-hmm. No, everything is being funded automatically. Yes. And your budget is running in the background on autopilot. While, like Vanessa said, you do literally anything else. Mm-hmm. We don’t care what else? Just don’t do that. That’s all we’re asking. Okay.

 Alright, so step eight is to be bougie on a budget. It’s like the whole point of this is podcast. Yeah. You’ve did, you’ve done all the things that we’ve said. And now you’re just like, woo, you’re riding off into the sunset and you get to be bougie on a budget, which is really exciting because it means you’re, you’re able to spend money, have fun, and enjoy your life.

Your budget is like taken care of in the background. Yep. And all the fun things that you wanna do with your life that make you feel bougie. Are in the budget. That’s the whole point. And that’s where we’re trying to get to this. You can live that awesome, bougie, fun life because you’ve already budgeted for it.

So like we really want that to click in. And we have heard so many times it’s this or that, right? I have to, I can pay off debt or I can live, or I, I can save for a vacation, but I can’t do this. But know what we’re telling you is that when you make the right budget, when you plan accordingly, you can do both.

Yeah. And what you’re alluding to as well is. Everybody’s version of bougie on a budget looks different, but that’s what we don’t want you to have the scarcity mindset, and I have to, it has to be one or the other. We want you to say, this is what I want my life to look like. This is what I find important.

This is what I want to be in my budget. And it can all happen co you know, at the same time. Everybody has a different version of that, but you can do it because it’s in the budget. That’s the main thing to think. One of the things that Shane and I really pride ourselves on is all of our clients’ budget is they’re all very different.

They really are not, one of them is the same. Not one of them does the same thing. Some of them have five spending accounts, some of them have three, some of them have four. It really just depends on what you want. And again, that version of bougie is different. So what Shayna thinks is bougie for her and her life is very different from mine.

Very different from our friends. Some of it’s really the same though. Yeah. Volleyball life is, sports life is the same. It’s private schools, that’s fine. But we big cars and gas tanks. I’m just gonna keep going. Yeah, we do have a lot of things, but. We just want you to understand that we don’t want you to compare yourself to somebody else.

Yeah. We want you to have your own life, your own bougie life. We want you to love it and enjoy it because everything is budgeted. Everything has a purpose. You have a vision, you have goals for your life, and it’s all being funded. Yeah, and here’s the other thing, like this is where at the bookend here, you came to us, right?

Because you make good money and you had nothing to show for it. We’re on the other end of that where you are making good money and you have. Everything to show for. You have all of your goals, all of your dreams, all of your bills all of the have tos and all of the wants. They’re all being figured out.

And you are making money and you have something to show for, where your money’s going. And it’s on purpose. Yeah. And you can save, you can spend with confidence. That is the whole point of this. We want you to know what’s going on with your money. With your money. We want you to be confident in that.

And having a system in place, being able to live bougie on a budget. Allows you to do that. Yeah. And so this all to put together, we’ve, we to wrap up here, we have walked you through our eight steps through the budget besties method. And so the first one you were gonna dream again.

And we hope you really get excited about that. You’re also, then you build your budget. That’s step two. You think it’s step one, but it’s step two. And then step three was to set up a Bills account. And then after that we we’re gonna separate our spending. Yep. And then in step five, you’re going to start your savings buckets.

Step six, you’re gonna break up with debt. Super important. And then step seven, you’re gonna make everything automatic. In step eight, you’re gonna be bougie on a budget. So we hope you’ve enjoyed this this is just the precursor. We’re gonna do a little bit of a deeper dive on each one of those steps that we talked about today every Monday for the next couple months ’cause there’s eight of them. So we hope that you’ll tune in and you’ll get get all the stories and all of the examples that we’re gonna give you so that you can really put this into practice.

Yeah. And if you guys have any questions about each of these steps as we go deeper into them for the next eight Mondays, feel free to email us at hello@budgetbesties.com. We’d be happy to answer those for you.