We’re excited to come tell you everything you need to know about what we say when it comes to spending the spending part of your budget.

So just remember this is where you live in your budget, right? You’re spending money, you’re swiping cards, you’re paying for things in cash.

Like everything else is happening automatic, but this is really the part that you’ve got to pay attention because it’s probably the most not want to say complicated, but it’s the most where you’re involved, right? Yeah. And you really, you have to plan your spending. It reminds me of my son who he gets his he gets his paychecks and then some of them most of it, let’s be honest, has to move over to pay for his insurance into his.

Savings account, because he doesn’t pay it every month. He doesn’t really have a monthly bill. He has monthly spending, because he’s 16. Isn’t that a fun life when you only have bills? It is fun. And and so he just has a set amount for spending every month. And he I found out he went out with his he took his girlfriend on a date.

It went to Olive Garden. It was like 52 whole dollars. Oh my gosh. But anyway, then later that week or the next week they went to dinner after after basketball. Yeah. After the basketball. And and we love, it’s our personal favorite that the every, after every, Sporting event. Everybody thinks they need to go out to eat.

It’s our favorite. Anyway, he got water or something when he, or he didn’t eat and I said what? And he said I didn’t know if I didn’t want to spend the money. I didn’t have, I don’t want to spend all my money. I didn’t have enough money. And so that’s when I told him, I will reimburse you anytime they make you go out to eat and you need dinner because you have been, you left the house at seven o’clock and you aren’t going to get home till nine.

You need some food. And I said, I will reimburse you. And so that gave him the ability to understand that I have basically as a basketball. Restaurant budget. And then he has his own spending money and he can manage it because he has to buy gas every week and then he buys the little bit of stuff that he ever spends money on, which is not much.

But he didn’t want to spend it because he didn’t have that restaurant budget set up. And that’s that’s a very kid version of what we’re going to talk about today. But his mama had that kid fund. Yes. So she had the money. Yes. Which is ever increasing, Vanessa. Yes, it is. Just keep topping that bad boy right off.

But you had the savings or I’m sorry, you had the spending account, right? To be able to fund that for him and knowing that he had that coming was the relief and the peace of mind. Like he had that freedom to spend. Yeah, it’s good. And so that’s really what we’re all about today. We’re going to give you a plan for your spending and it’s permission.

It’s giving you permission to spend money.

 That’s, a lot of times with budget people have this connotation, it’s fast, whatever, it’s restrictive. Your spending plan is giving you permission to spend it and enjoy it guilt free. And I would say, I think this right here, this topic of conversation is why people don’t want to budget.

Okay. Yeah. You’re right. Doing a budget for bills and your debt payments, like whatever, that’s fine. But when you tell people that we’re going to now budget your spending, they like, hold on. Like the wall goes up. It goes in one ear, out the other, and they don’t want to hear about it, because this is where they feel like you’re telling them no, when in reality, we’re actually saying yes.

And we can’t wait for you to hear the rest of this podcast so you can hear why. I just have to stick it in here that it makes, that makes me laugh that you say that. And I know you’re right. I never had that. The reason I never had the hackles go up with the word budget is cause I never, I know, I always knew I didn’t have money to spend.

So I was in a question I remember when we, when we got married, I was like, Oh, there’s no money. So there’s, I don’t need to worry about like a budget. It’s not going to make that change. It’s just already true. And so now it’s actually, we’re the opposite where now we really do need a budget cause there’s a lot of money and we could all go away very easily.

If we didn’t put it in the right bucket. Oh, super fast. I know you just hit something, but this is going to resonate with people. You said, now there’s a lot of money and now we have to budget it. Okay. A lot of people think because they make good money and they make so much money, they don’t need a budget.

What’s the point of budgeting? It’s always, there’s all this money there to spend. This is when you need to make a budget because it is so much fun to make a budget, to see where all your money is going. Like your son’s basketball food. That’s where it’s going, if you didn’t know. And here’s the other thing, we were, we just had a bunch of group coaching calls today, so it just really hit in because there’s so much anxiety, but when you plan your spending.

Not that you don’t get to spend. See, don’t hear that. When you plan what you’re spending, you have peace. It’s all of the random spending that is bringing you anxiety, or maybe you’re regretting it after the fact because you weren’t sure if you could do it or not. So that’s what we’re working on. We want you to feel good about spending money.

Yeah, because you literally have no idea what’s going on. And, and most people, they don’t know how much they need for spending. They don’t know how much there are spending. Yeah. And it’s just, It’s become a problem. And so what we’re trying to do is reign it all in. We’re not don’t hear what we’re not saying.

We’re not saying track anything. We don’t want that, but we’re just saying we want to put some type of guardrails, some type of number on the amount of money that you’re going to be spending. I want to say it every podcast, eliminate the word track from your vocabulary. We’re not tracking nothing. Okay.

And we just Facebook group say, Hey y’all, what kind of budgeting app are y’all using to track your spending? And we’re like, none. Yes. Zero, none of them, okay? Let me know where you’re at. Okay. Okay. But like Vanessa started to say before we went on a rant about tracking, nobody’s worried about that, is that they’re, the basic problems with spending is most people don’t know what they’re spending or what they need to spend.

A lot of people are like, Oh, there’s money in the account leftover. That’s what my spending budget is, or worse, my credit card limit. Once everything’s paid, I still, whatever that leftover credit card limit, that’s what I’m going to use as my spending budget. Yeah. And both of these are unreliable. Let’s Whatever’s left in the account, that’s not like a number.

It’s not tangible. We have no idea what’s going on. Your credit limit, no hard pass. We don’t want to use that at all. And so what does this allude to? It alludes to overspending. So instead of us not knowing, or instead of us knowing what we have to spend, we don’t know, so we’re just swiping the card. going through or just praying that we don’t hit that credit limit.

Yeah. And also the not knowing, I think also leads to overspending because we talked about like the scarcity people have like they feel like they don’t have any money to spend. So they spend money. I know it’s all, it sounds like a oxymoron, but it is true versus what we find. And we’ll get to this later is.

When you know you have money to spend, you’re actually going to spend less because you don’t feel that like gnawing thing at you that you never get spending money or that you don’t know when you’re going to be able to get that immersion blender. I’m just speaking from personal experience. When are you going to get that?

Oh, did it come in? Oh yeah, it was good. You didn’t even show me. And it’s teal so exciting. I’ll show you after this. Okay. Anyway. All right. So what is spending? Yeah, we should talk about what is spending. What does it mean? And here’s the thing is we just had, like Shannon said, a group coaching call and people actually were confused.

And so we realized, Oh, we didn’t do a good job. We have failed. on explaining clearly what the difference between spending and saving is. So we really want to, we really want to dial that in. Yeah. I love like the overall thing that you usually save and answer is it’s where I’m swiping. It’s where I’m living.

It’s where I’m going and spending money. I know I’m going to go spend it on purpose. But generally spending is everything. That’s not a bill. That’s not a debt payment. And it’s not savings. If you look at our budget, those are the columns. It’s literally everything. That’s not those things.

So just in general, we’re talking about haircuts, right? We’re talking about groceries, gas, pocket money, Starbucks runs, Target, things like All of these things when you’re going like Vanessa says, is to swipe your card.

You’re going to pay for something. You’re going to pay for it on purpose. Not, it’s being invoiced and comes out automatically, like that’s not what, that’s a bill, right? Yeah. And then the other thing, what you were saying is where people get really tripped up is savings. When you’re saving for something, it means you’re going to save up money and spend it later.

In the future. Not this month. I’m not saving up money for the doctor this month and then spending it. That’s not what we’re doing. I’m not saving up money for groceries and then spending it later. I’m spending it this month. So that’s how you know. Savings is in the future. Yeah, something that I need to spend money on this month.

That’s what’s going to go in my spending category. So to recap, anything that is monthly, if you are always spending monthly, so you’re always going to the grocery store, you’re always getting gas, right? You’re always going, you’re have pocket money. That’s an always thing. Restaurants, all that, like haircuts, things like that.

Anything that is happening right now in this month is spending anything that you’re saving for in the future. Like summer camps, birthdays, Christmas, travel, vehicle maintenance, like oil changes and things like that. Those are all things that happen every now and then during the year, right? So spending happens in the month, in the day, savings, the savings buckets are for things that happen during the year sometime in the future.

Okay, that’s the difference. And then the only, another like nitpicky thing that people do, Vanessa, is they put the subscriptions that they may have into the spending category. Okay. Because they are like I don’t have to it’s not a need well, it’s still a bill We’re gonna still put it over in the bills account.

There’s plenty of Spending that happens. It’s not a need. It doesn’t mean it’s not spending or it doesn’t mean it, right? So don’t worry about that. That is a bill. It’s invoiced. It’s due. It has a due date. It’s the same. It goes over there. You can still look at the subscriptions and be discerning and say if I want to cancel some of them or whatever, but that’s over in the bills section.

We even had a client, Shayna, he said a bill is anything with a due date. And You know if you want to differentiate like what is spending versus what is a bill if it has a due date it goes in The bill section and Shayna said there are plenty of things that you have to spend money on that go in the spending section That are a need that are a need it doesn’t yeah And we don’t categorize our budget is not broken up into needs and wants we don’t do that Broken up based on how you use your money.

Yeah, what do you do with your hands actually gonna help you? So okay, so that’s generally what spending is When we want you to make your budget and focus on spending, we have the categories that we find works best for most people. Now we will, when we work with you, one on one or whatever, we’re going to coach you based on, it’s going to be customized to what your life is in general though.

Still, even though we’ve done thousands and thousands of budgets, these are the main categories, which is groceries is the spending category. Gas has a spending category. Personal spending as a category. Entertainment, and we’ll get into what that really means. Kids, that’s always gotta be one. And then there’s all those once a month kind of random things that can come up.

Yeah, so let’s break this down really quick. Obviously, groceries, gas, pretty self explanatory. Some people like to have these separate. Some people like to have them in one account, gas and groceries. Cause it’s pretty systematic. Like you’re getting this, you’re usually spending the same amount on gas and groceries every month, right?

Personal spending. This is that judgment free spending. separate account just for you and, or your spouse. If you have, if you’re married, you each have your own spending money account. It’s really important, but this is where you get to just go blow money. Go to Starbucks, go to Target, go get your nails done, whatever.

If you want to spend money on you, this is the account that you put that money in. Yeah. And we always say it’s non negotiable. So no matter what is happening in your budget, we want you to at least have some, because even if right now it feels like there’s not a lot, we want you to get used to The feeling and the emotion of having money to spend on yourself because that is really there Yeah, there’s some money baggage really money relationship stuff that we have to work on and so it’s very important because also you work hard.

So yes, you have goals. Yes. You’re going to do great things with your budget, but we also want you to be able to enjoy some of that money. And so that’s why personal spending is non negotiable. Can we talk about the mom is really quick. Yeah. Okay. Mom, your personal pocket money is not for your kids.

Okay. And so when we coach people, a lot of things, a lot of times they say, I’ve never had. Personal pocket money before, because every time I go to take cash out, I spend it on my kids. This is not what this is for. This is your money for you. Okay. Just want to reiterate that. Yeah. And honestly, this is really important because I think it happens to moms a lot when it comes to kids, but it also happens to dad.

Some, like if something needs to be fixed in the house and he’s going to Lowe’s it’s coming out of wherever he’s doing, or maybe he’s usually been on the pays restaurants. Everybody has what they’re paying for and they never get any money for themselves. So then that’s when, credit cards might start racking up and different things happen.

So we want to make this a non negotiable and just to go backwards with the gas and groceries. I just A lot of times people get confused about how much to pay how much, like they think they should have the same amount. Really what we want you to do, and we’ll tell you is to do an audit and figure out how much you actually spend, your family, which you guys are, because we did we’re doing our own research study, but the most recent research was people spend 600 or what was it?

700 on groceries a month. And I said that a family of four, and I said, that’s a joke. That is an absolute joke. We look at budgets every day. It’s at least double that, if not triple that, right? So don’t get caught up in it has to be a certain amount. Go with what you’re doing, and if you can, get better, right?

Just go with what the numbers you have, but if you can, get better. And I like what you said about it’s the same. Some. So I usually do a once a month big shop and then I do spend the same general amount on the fresher things, right? That have to be restocked weekly. That’s what Vanessa means when it’s like systematic is the same.

So you really want to see, okay. When I go to the grocery store, I usually spend two or 300 a week. That’s what I get. And then I come up that’s what we’re looking at. And it’s the same for gas. To help you figure out those numbers because there’s, you usually spend about the same amount every month, except we’re going to get to those like in the month expenses and things that happen.

So we’re trying to form a habit here. So we’re trying to do. Okay. So we’ve gone over the first couple of categories, entertainment. This spending category is really for Going out to eat, goofy golf, ice cream with the kids, movie tickets. It’s like all the extra things that you do with the family or with your spouse.

Yeah. All, hopefully all the fun things. And so we do actually have a lot of clients that just rename it family fun because for Vanessa and I, if we go out to eat, first of all, can we go for business? Can we, okay, just kidding, but not really. But then when we go out to eat separately, it is going to be out of our personal money, right?

Cause we’re going out with our girlfriends or whatever. We’re just going to go get some food, but as a, but that, and that’s how we distinguish it doesn’t mean that’s how you have to, but how we distinguish it. And when we’re going as a family, that’s coming from the family fund, right? It’s not coming from my personal pocket money and I’m not using my family fund money for anything personal, right?

So that’s why we have them separate. So the family fund. Vanessa said, going to the zoo, going bowling, going to the movies, also going out to eat together. All of that is coming out of the family, fun or entertainment. You might not have a family yet, so it’s entertainment. And it means for you, like I had a client, she gets concert tickets almost every month.

Like little ones. She goes to the concerts, festivals with their friends. Like all of that kind of stuff is going to go in entertainment. And don’t get caught up here on what category is this going to? And I had a client one time was so stressed out about every transaction or every purchase that she made and she couldn’t figure out where to put it.

And I said, think broader don’t get stuck in the weeds of it. If it’s for anything for a family, like Shana said, going out to eat, it goes in that fund. If it’s anything for yourself, like Shana said, then it goes into the personal spending. It doesn’t matter here. Like however you decide, everyone’s budget is different.

It’s very specific based on their lifestyle. Whatever decision you make, decide and then just stick with it. That is going to be the easiest way to run with this. Yeah. And so the other one that we really want you to have, if you have kids, is to have a kid’s spending category line item, right? So this is like Vanessa is saying, it’s Oh, I have 50 to get me through. And then here comes somebody. I need Valentine’s things for my Valentine’s party. And I need a hundred. It’s a hundred day of school celebration.

And then all your money’s gone. We’re going to take that away. And so First of all, we do talk about saving for the big things for kids. Like we want to save for those on purpose, but if you want, what we think is maybe, some people use allowance, but maybe you just have a certain amount that you know that I’m going to designate toward the kids every month.

We might not use it all. We don’t have to use it all, but we know we’re not going to use more than that. And so that is when we’ve taught our clients to have these conversations. Okay. You’ve got, we’ve got a hundred bucks to play with this whole month. Yes, I really love this Chick fil A trip with your friends right now for you.

I love that for you, but that means we’re not going to do this other thing later this month, right? That gives you a way to teach them about budgeting, it keeps you protected to have your own spending money, and it allows you to say yes when you want to say yes to the kids. And it brings them in on the conversation.

It allows them to make the decision like, Hey guys, so if you have three kids, let’s say you put 50 bucks a month per kid in your kid account. So you have 150 bucks that month for three kids to spend. They get to decide Hey, this is what we got. What do you guys want to do this month? And this is for them, right?

This isn’t like family, that’s not entertainment. So this isn’t for goofy golf, golfing or whatever. This is for things for them. I think it’s so good to bring them in. We started this conversation with our kids when they were younger and it’s great for them to grow up knowing that there are guardrails around it.

Yep. Okay. And then the last thing that’s going to be a category in your spending. So you’re going to have those five that really stay consistent every month, and then you’re down the ones that are the ones that usually things that are going to happen. And those might be there, especially before you really get established with their savings buckets.

But there, it might be. This work potluck thing that just or it’s like we’re going to have an extra massage appointment this month or whatever, like whatever’s in that you’re going to, that comes up that month that you need to spend money on. That’s not part of your savings buckets. It’s not a bill.

That’s what’s going to go in here. One thing I want to add here is that If you’ve started your budget and you haven’t had a chance to build your savings buckets yet. Okay. Some people, they see our system. They’re like, I want to do it all, but you can’t. Okay. We get it. So if you haven’t had a chance to build your savings buckets and you don’t have any money in them yet, then this section of your spending, right?

The things that happened this month, if you have a birthday this month, then you need to budget for those things in the moment. If you haven’t had a chance to budget ahead of time for Valentine’s day and Easter and Halloween and all that. then this is where you’re going to go. Okay, this month we have this going on.

We have to budget for it right now because I don’t have any money to pull from. Okay. So that’s where it differentiates of Is this gonna, is this coming from a spending account or does this, do I pull this from a savings bucket? You have to decide that based on where you are in your financial journey.

And we’re going to get into the next, into the savings buckets in the next podcast. But what for example, on that call today, She had one of the ladies had to pay dance competition fees. I think she said they were 600 bucks Maybe I made that up. Maybe that’s just my own life. I don’t know. Seems cheap But she had to pay that this month and it was quote unquote unexpected.

We hear you. I understand it was actually expected but she didn’t have her savings bucket set up yet for it So what we said is you’re gonna pay it this month You’re going to pay it out of your spending category, in your budget, you’re going to put it in the budget and then we’re going to go do some homework and see everything we spend in a year on dance.

We’re going to put that over in the savings bucket and then I’m going to start setting aside money every month so that whenever these moments come, when I have big bills or even little bills for dance, I have a savings bucket set aside for it. But like Vanessa said, until we get to that point, which happens often, we have to put it in the spending and we have to plan for it.

This month is this thing and here’s the deal. You can plan for it. You do know those things are coming. We just have to get on top of it. And then we had another person that was saying he had a chiropractor appointment that he didn’t plan, he didn’t know was happening, but we can, for the most part, we can plan those.

It doesn’t like, there may not be something that happens every month, but I can put that in the spending and say, I’m planning to spend money this month only on this weird chiropractor appointment. We don’t usually have that, whatever the rest of the time it’s covered by insurance. You know what I mean?

So just understand that most of your spending will be consistent and then there’ll be random things. And as much as possible, we’re going to plan for those. And one thing we didn’t really talk about, Shayna, was adding a buffer. Especially at the very beginning of this, like we really, it is okay to add like this miscellaneous line of your, in your spending section to go, okay, I want to just get started.

I want to get started, but I’m afraid because I think I’m missing something. So I’m going to add this 100 or 200 buffer in here just in case. That is fine. But when you’re adding like. Four to five hundred dollars as a buffer line as a miscellaneous line Something’s wrong. Yeah, we got to dig a little deeper there Okay, and then we really need to move on but I just I also want to say one thing and maybe this is supposed to go somewhere else but One thing that people do is they try to be really stingy or frugal.

I’ll put it frugal, that’s the right word, in the beginning with spending. And they’re like, Oh, we’re only going to spend a hundred dollars on gas. I’m like, no, you’re not. What do you never leave your house? Because that’s not going to happen. So it’s better to overestimate if you are, if you can, obviously if you can’t overestimate how much you’re going to, you think you’re going to spend and then later.

You can take it down the next month if you didn’t spend that, but don’t go we’re only going to spend a hundred dollars on eating out. Okay. Nobody believes you. Okay. We don’t believe you. I love you. And sometimes they need a coach to tell them that’s like the freedom. So we’re telling you now, consider that what you do not have to go for bare minimum, go.

a little extra and pull back if you, if we would always recommend to over budget. And then instead of underestimate, because that is where people, I think when people underestimate, they’re like this doesn’t work. I’m terrible. I can’t do this. It’s not for me. The reality was you just didn’t give yourself enough money and that’s, nobody’s failing here.

You failed yourself, but you don’t want to do that. You want, you don’t want to Set yourself up for failure. So over, overestimate the amount. And then like Shana said, you can pull back and then that is going to feel better than going the other way around. Okay. All right. Okay. So now how do you do this? We’ve told you what it is. We told you how we want you to think about it deal, but how do you do it? First of all, you want to identify which one, which categories.

We told you what we usually do, but we want you to think about what you spend in a month and what you spend your money on. And you’re going to, Identify those spending categories. That’s the first step. Yeah. And then the second thing you’re going to do is you’re going to set a budget for each of those categories.

So we talked about before groceries, gas whatever your categories are, set a budget for each of those categories based on real habits. Okay. And how do you do that? The first thing we recommend is doing a 90 day audit, which is going back three months. Don’t go back and like into a holiday month because that’s never right.

Go and do a three month audit on a regular month for you. And then just look at, Hey, how am I spending my money? And then the next question you want to ask is from that data that you’re looking at. Don’t, there’s no drama there. Don’t be upset of what was happening, whatever. Another thing that people they get stuck. Yeah. Okay. They don’t do a budget because they don’t know how much money to put in their grocery line.

They don’t know how much to give themselves on personal pocket money. So pick a number. Like we said, don’t let this 90 day audit. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. We get it. But put, a number in there, overestimate like you just heard us talk about. But don’t get tripped up on what amount should I quote unquote put in here and what are other people doing, right?

Just start the budget. Yeah. Okay. So another, the next step to decide. So now we’ve got categories and we’ve got amounts. Hey, we’re getting really close here.

 Okay, so now we’re going to decide whether we’re going to use cash or debit cards for this.

Now, the whole system where we’ve created accounts is the idea of a digital envelope. So you’ve heard the idea of using cash envelopes for each category of spending and savings, and you would have a little cash envelope, you’d write the category, the name on it, and then you’d stuff some cash in it. We understand that’s not super realistic.

And also that’s not like the modern way of doing things. So you might even call it old school. It’s fine. We hit, we’re not taking it. I love you. We love everybody. Okay. But so what we’ve said is think of that concept, because it’s a really good concept, it really helps people like organize their money, understand, see it, and visualize what’s really going on.

We want to take that concept digital, and that’s what these accounts are for. Each account is a digital envelope. Think of it literally like a paper envelope, but it’s a digital envelope, and it has the name of what you’re spending your money on. That’s what those are. So then, once we decide So once we decide what the amount is, we want to decide if we’re going to do that in cash or we’re going to use a debit card.

So we used to always say cash as much as we could. And then we realized you weren’t going to do that anyway. And also we understand. We’re all in the modern world. We’re swiping. We’re going. We understand. So for the most part, you’re probably going to, you’re going to choose a debit card. But some of them might be better for cash. We just had a call, a lady come in and she said, if I don’t do cash for my spending, I don’t do it right. And I know that. So I have to make it a priority to get cash. And I get that. So if that’s who you are, that’s fine. Otherwise, you want to use a debit card and you want to have those accounts set for each category.

We also think if you’re the type of person that is just, struggling with being accountable. Okay. I don’t want to say that with money, but if you are like, I just have a hard time holding myself accountable to digital because it’s easy to perform an account or whatever. Then we would say, yes, let’s, yeah.

And we have we’ve had a lot of clients who say who we’ve started them off on the digital envelope system because that’s just, where we’re going with this. And we’ve had people say, look I have to do cash because if I walk into the store, With 20 in cash, I cannot spend 21. I will only, I can only spend 20 and it holds me really accountable and I do really well.

And half the time they don’t want to spend it because they like, it’s tangible. Yes. It’s in their hands. So we get it. We’re not for or against either way. We see the benefits on both sides, but we’re just saying, we’re going to give you a tip here. If you really find yourself having being tempted to transfer money into your digital envelope to spend it.

go with cash for a little bit, get that under control. Have the tangible cash in your hands, and then you can maybe move on to digital later. Okay? And then, so once you’ve decided all of that, you’re gonna open up the accounts for these spending categories that you’ve chosen. So you’re gonna actually go open a checking account, you’re gonna have a great bank that doesn’t charge you fees. Absolutely not for having as many checking accounts as you need and also as many transfers as you need with no minimum balance. Like those are the three main ones. And so you’re going to open each spending account.

You’re going to rename it. to whatever its job is and you can make it fun if you want, but that’s the next step. And so to reiterate, every single one of these spending categories is going to have a separate account. So you will have a gas and groceries account. You will have a fun money or personal spending money account.

You will have an entertainment account. You will have a kids account if you have kids. Okay. Those are the main ones. We do have some people that like want to glam up fun for all their. Facials and things like that, whatever. But those are really the main ones that we have. And if you so if you, there’s a haircut or a birthday or something that’s happening this month, you will just transfer that money from the bills account to your spending account when you need to, when you need to buy that thing, but those don’t need separate accounts, right?

We’re talking about the main categories that are happening over and over again in your budget. Yeah. If you need to get cash out, so if you’ve decided, listen, I want I’m going to do half of my pocket money in cash and half digital. Cause I do have a lot of clients that, that look, I want to buy something on Amazon and how do I do that?

So what you want to do is transfer all that money to the spending account, and then you will withdraw it from the ATM from there again, we have to get out of the habit. of carrying around that bills debit card. We do not want that bills debit card on you at all. You’re not using it. You’re not taking money out of it at all.

You’re only, if you are taking cash out, it’s coming out of the ATM, but it’s coming from your spending account. Okay. So now what you’re going to do is you’re going to set up transfers based on, first of all, the budget that you set. You’re going to set up transfers from the bills account to go into each of these spending accounts based on what the budget was, right? And they’re usually, those transfers are going to be based on your pay scale or pay schedule, depending on, maybe you get paid every week, they go every week, maybe you get paid once a month, they go once a month or every other week, whichever way you decide, you’re going to say, let’s say you have a thousand dollars for groceries set in your budget and you get paid twice a month.

500 is going to go in there one time and then 500 is going to go next. And you can set that all up to happen automatically. Yeah. This is a wonderful feature that your bank app allows. We really want to take advantage of all the features that, that it allows.

If you are using our Simplified Budget System, you go to the Paycheck Plan.

This is where all the magic happens because you’ve entered in your budget, you go to the Paycheck Plan, you say, Hey, it’s March. I want to divide this budget by two because I get paid twice. It’s going to tell you exactly how to set up those transfers, what amounts go where and when. And if you get paid weekly, it’ll do that too.

So you get to decide that on your budget. Yep. And then, hey, guess what? This is the last step. Spend money. There you go. We helped. Just go spend your money because you’ve got the money in the accounts. You can always look at your bank app and just, your bank app, not a different app. Not some other. You look at your bank app and it says, Shane is spending money.

And it says 90 and you’re like, I have 90. Look at me go. As long as I don’t spend more than 90, I’m good. And I can’t spend more than 90 because it will say no, you’re declined. Thank you very much. You can’t spend that. But anyway, that’s all I have to do is spend money. It’s a fun time. The freedom of looking at your bank app.

And having money for groceries. Having money for, but it’s saying gas and groceries and having an amount. And it’s saying personal pocket money and having an amount like you, it’s laid out there for you so crystal clear. And it’s so freeing to know. I have all this money to spend in all these categories, and I just have a couple debit cards to keep track of.

That’s it. And it’s so organized. You will love it. It is. We have people who we first tell them about the system. They’re like, I don’t really know if I’m going to love this. This sounds like a lot. It, and then they come back a couple months later and they’re like, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Why is it not? Why isn’t everyone doing this? Yeah. And we’re like we’re trying really hard through this podcast. That’s all we’re doing. We’re just really trying. Okay. So some fun features, some benefits or whatever of doing it the way that we say to do it, other than we will love you because you listen, you’re a good student, you’ll be a super fan, super gold star.

Is you get to do a bit, you get to work with the habit of bank account balancing. This is what we’re already all doing. We’re looking at the bank app and saying do I have money? But the difference is you didn’t know if you have money. Now you will look at it, be like, ah, I have money, I’m so excited, I have so much money, I have so much money.

And I have money and I know exactly what the money is for because I labeled and it’s so exciting. Yeah. And like Shannon said, you’re going to bank account balance anyways, or you’re trying to do mental math in the moment at the store. If you have one account with all these transactions now, all you have to do is just open your bank up and you see it is all right there in front of you.

And the next thing to do is naming the accounts. That is probably the next most fun. Yeah. And I was just, while you were talking, because that’s what I do. I was thinking I’m going to rename my grocery account, feed the horde. Like I feel like that. That’s the vibes I’m in right now as so you can rename it and it’s just something fun.

It’s not like you have to rename it anyway. Do not let us see it say checking, checking or numbers like that’s not for fun. So you have to rename it anyway so that you know what is what, but you might as well make it fun. Why not? We’re here for it. So name, rename your gas account, your groceries account, your personal spending whatever it is, just rename it, have fun with it.

Okay, so now you may be saying I have to carry three debit cards in my wallet.

Girl, you probably had six credit cards in there before. Let’s be honest. All we’re really doing now is swapping out your credit cards for the nicely neat credit cards. Organized very nicely labeled debit cards. That’s it. Yeah, and really you are gonna have probably two for the most part maybe three you’re gonna have Your gas and groceries.

You’re gonna have a personal spending Maybe you have one for family fun, and maybe you have one for kids Although you know personally I just transfer that money from my bank account when I go to spend, I just keep a Canvas account, but I don’t have a separate debit card necessarily. You don’t have to have a separate debit card for that.

So you really, it’s not, it’s two, maybe three. And they’re like, I think it’s three at most. So they’re going to be in your wallet. They’re going to be labeled. It’s perfect. And people will start asking you questions and be like, This is really smart. We have, we hear it all the time. Yeah, we do. And the last thing here is no tracking required.

Yeah. Okay. So many people are like, yeah, but how do I track how much I spent at the grocery store? Who cares? I don’t mean that to be ugly. We obviously care, but I’m just saying if you budgeted 2, 000 for groceries and you spent 1, 995 nobody cares that you didn’t spend that last 5. Or what?

I don’t care what you spent the 9, 000 on. As long as you fed your Right. That’s exactly what I tell my clients. I’m like, you have this amount of money for spending, have a blast. Just don’t go over. And that’s the idea here is we want to get away from this concept of having you track and account every single expense that you made that month.

We just had a lady on a group coaching call. She’s I have to have my husband give me all his receipts because. I need to I need to track it for groceries and gas. I’m like, okay, hold on, you’re doing it wrong. So we explained the system again to her and she was like, oh, now it makes sense, right?

We do not want to track anything. We’ve been talking for 30 minutes, but I want to remember, remind you that in the beginning we said, we’re going to delete tracking from your vocabulary and we’re still there. We’re still at that. We’re still on that vibe. Okay, now in real life, what this is doing is instead of you not knowing if I have money to spend or spending money and one, not caring or two, being scared or regretting it or whatever, you have now the freedom and the permission to spend money.

You have the freedom To have the money there. We’re giving you permission, spend money. Like Vanessa said, have a blast, just stick within the budget that you set for yourself, which as we said earlier, hopefully it’s stretchy. Like it’s not restrictive. It’s like a little it’s enough to never feel like you’re like, White knuckling to get through.

And so that’s what we’re after is helping you feel the freedom to spend. And we’ve had clients go from spending every single money every month because of like scarcity. They just kept swiping the card because they never knew when they were going to get money again to having cash.

Completely separate in their spending account and like barely spending it because now they’re more aware of what’s going on. It’s their money. They’re being really, I’m not cautious, but they’re like, I don’t know if I want to spend that on, you know what? I don’t know if I want to go to do 20 target runs this month or something.

Yeah. And they just, I don’t know. They just, they have money and they know it’s always going to get replenished. Yeah. And we have, we’ve said it over and over, like you’re going to, you’re going to get more excited about saving money than you are about spending. That may seem really far away, but it is what happens with every, with all of them.

And that’s what happens. Like Vanessa said, they feel scarce. They feel like they don’t ever have any money. So they spend it all. But then when they get on a plan, they see what’s possible. They feel confident. Like I’m actually making this happen. Then all of a sudden, nobody’s spending any money.

And we’re like, go spend some money. This money is not supposed to roll over every single month. Go spend some money, have some fun. So that’s where you’re going to go. We believe in you to get there too. Yeah. And one of my clients and she was like, this is the first time that I knew that I was going to get money in two days.

And I didn’t feel like I had to go blow all that money. Like I, it was so nice to know that it was going to be replenished. And I think that is just huge. I think it’s huge to, to always know and have that confidence that cash is coming. Yeah. And so the basic, like main thing that we’re trying to tell you here is to adjust this system, adjust what we’re teaching you to fit your life, not the other way around.

All these other budgets are like, Hey, you have to spend this much money or it’s 13 percent of 30 percent of what you make and whatever. Okay. Nope. You’re going to do the budget based on your life, and then the system is going to work with that, and it’s going to be amazing. Yep, exactly. Again, listen.

Spending without restriction. That’s what we’re going for. It is about the freedom to have the cash. I know we’ve hit that nail on the head. We just want to remind you this is not about being restrictive. That is not what this budget is about. That’s not what we’re about. That’s not what our clients are about.

Okay. So just remember that. Yeah. And because your bills are going to be separate from your spending, and even your spending from there is all going to be separated and categorized, you’re always going to know exactly how much you have. And you’re always going to, it’s going to be easier for you to spend it and not feel bad.

Yeah. And the goal here is to spend with confidence and not ever wondering whether you can afford something because you’ve made that plan ahead of time. You have your spending categories ready to go to spend whenever you want and you know that you can afford it. And remember, we’re trying to make sure that you understand that you can be bougie on a budget.

We’ve told you before, we have the client that came on the call and she’s look, I’ll do what you tell me, but I’m not giving up my restaurants and I’m not giving up travel. And I’m like, girl, I’m not here to make you do that. I want you to do that. Please take me with you to the restaurants and the travel, but you can be bougie on a budget.

A budget is not about being restrictive. It’s about putting what’s important to you, what you want to do with all your hard earned money. into the budget and then go on and be a bougie girl. We want that for you. So you’ve listened to this very long podcast. It’s probably one of our longest ever. So sorry about that.

We had a lot to say about spending. It is the most important and I think the most convoluted part of our budget. So we really just wanted to make sure that Of everybody’s budget. Yeah, we wanted to give you the most information. Okay, so what are you going to do? What are you going to do with your hands now that you’ve heard us say all these things?

You’re going to go open some accounts. Yes, girl. Okay. You’re going to have gas and groceries. You’re going to have a personal spending account. You’re going to have an entertainment account. And if you have kids, guess what? You’re opening up a kid’s spending account. Yes. That’s what you’re going to do with your hands right now.

And then you’re going to make sure in case for some reason you didn’t do your budget, you’re going to go back on your budget and figure out how to fund them, but you’re going to open them up right now and you’re going to get ready. To have the system work for you. It’s going to feel really amazing. And you need to find a bank.

Remember, find a bank that’s going to allow you to have multiple checking accounts, multiple savings accounts without any restrictions. They are out there. You just have to find them. To sum up, we’ve been talking for about an hour. It’s fine. And you’re fine. Everybody’s fine. And we’re all good, but here’s the deal.

We want you to feel the permission to spend. We know like it’s all, it was all convoluted. We’re going to separate it. We’re going to make it very clear. You’re going to enjoy your life. You’re going to have spending money. You’re going to have money for all the things. And it’s gonna be great. I think that’s really the summary of it.

I think so too. And I do want to sum up like most of our clients, guys, at the end of all this, they’re like, I have money everywhere. Oh yes. Yes, you do. We see that they do. They see that they do. It’s never happened before. Yep. I just, that little emoji, that little gif, that’s yep. If you didn’t, we’re just.

Sending bills out like the Kim Kardashian. Yeah, it’s the Kim. We are the Kim Kardashian. All right, guys, bougie on a budget. That’s what we want for you. We’re so excited. Come back and let us know how it’s going. We’re going to stop saying words now.