Budgeting in Your Busy Era: How to Set It and Forget It (Without Losing Control of Your Money)

 All right, listen. We know that you wanna be good with money, but you don’t wanna be tracking and spending hours doing that and tracking every single dollar. But listen, we’re here to tell you there’s some good news. You don’t have to do that. Praise God. That’s exciting because you don’t wanna praise if you love, wait, it’s the hands up emoji.

Hands up emoji spirit fingers. Okay. If you love a good system mm-hmm. As I do, I do love a good system that runs itself. This is for you and if you want to be good with your money, but you don’t have like, you actually want to. It seems like it’s important. Mm-hmm. But you don’t have time. This episode is for you.

Yeah. ’cause we got you. We don’t have a lot of time either. And so that is why we created this system. It is. It’s just for people like us. Hold on, listen a little inside. We don’t have a lot of time ’cause we’re both trying to leave for volleyball here. So. We literally don’t have a lot of time to record this episode, so maybe it’ll be a fast one.

Do you think we’ll be short worded? I don’t know. No. Listen, most of anything’s possible. Most of our podcasts are recorded on Fridays, and then we’re leaving for volleyball tournaments directly after that. So that’s what’s happening right now. Yeah, just help. That’s why we also don’t have time, and we want, we’re budgeting in our busy era, right?

Mm-hmm. Okay. Alright, so traditional budgeting kind of feels like a chore. That’s why you have like this mental block when you hear the word, but the B word, right? You hear the B word. There’s like a lot of categories. There’s so many words like un, un, what is it? Fixed and un. Oh, variable. Variable. Just so many needs and wants and all that, and so many words, and it’s like I’d rather not, oh, no, thank you.

Hard. Well, I imagine when I used to hear the word budget, and when people describe to us how they feel when they hear the word budget, it’s like xmo. Like, no, no, absolute, like just stiff arms, right by. And we understand because there are way too many categories. They make it way too complicated and there’s so much pressure to make it perfect or to be perfect.

Yeah. You don’t wanna start because you feel like you have to get it perfect. And we’re not here for that. We’re gonna, we’re going to help you our, our way. We’re gonna help you with our way. Mm-hmm. Which is to set it and forget it. That’s really what, what we’re gonna tell you a couple tricks to set a budget up and, and then you don’t even have to worry about it.

You can stay on your budget without stressing or having spent a lot of time doing it. Yeah. Okay. So the first thing that we wanna talk about and how to set it and forget it, which y’all, that used to be like a George Foreman thing, and I remember the commercial, it’s every time we say that word, it comes back to me when I was a kid.

Okay. So automate your bills. Mm-hmm. So this is like the number one easy, easy thing that you can do. To pay all of your bills, all your, all of your, your subscriptions, your debt, minimum payments, all of that to just let them pay themselves. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re gonna have a separate account. That and all.

And you’re gonna add up how many bills you pay every month, and you’re just gonna make sure you put that much money in there every month. Then you’re gonna set ’em up on autopay. Mm-hmm. And you don’t literally have to spend any time, you don’t have to spend any stress, any brain calories on it. They’re gonna pay themselves and you’re gonna be a good bill payer.

You’re gonna be good. You’re gonna be so good at adulting. Yeah. But Shane, I wanna debunk this ’cause I can already hear them like, oh my gosh, I can’t do that. I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my paychecks when they come in, how much money I have. Like how can we debunk that for them and like put them at ease.

Mm-hmm. How can, how, how can you, okay, so we always recommend getting a paycheck ahead. So if you guys are, see, okay, the trick there was she thought I was reading her mind, but I, I was thinking about coffee. She’s taking coffee. Like, I need some more coffee in my life for this car ride. I wasn’t reading your mind at that moment, so I didn’t know where we were going, but okay, I’m on board now.

Let’s go paycheck ahead. But here’s the thing, listen. If you are, if your first paycheck for the month is coming in on the sixth, the seventh, even the third or fourth or whatever, that’s too late. That is not your first paycheck for the month. Why, why you ask? Because you probably, you probably have bills coming out on the first and the second and the third, which means you are already a paycheck behind.

Okay? So we have to at some point get you, so wait that way, the last paycheck of the, of the previous month is for your upcoming month. And so once you get there. All of your bills can be auto pay and it’s like, you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Yeah. And you can go listen to our specific episode on bills, on the Bills system because what, basically the idea is all of your income is coming into the bills mm-hmm.

Account. And as Vanessa said, one paycheck ahead. So you’re always gonna have money in there. You and we, I mean, we’re gonna make sure your bills are not crazy when you put ’em on a put ’em in a list to make sure they’re underneath your income. That the, the number. It should be that way, right? Yeah. But anyway, all of your income’s coming into the Bills account, and then obviously some of it’s leaving for spending and savings, which we’ll get later, but that’s why like it’s all in one account.

Mm-hmm. The income’s already funding it. You’re a paycheck ahead, and then you can easily pay all your bills. And you don’t need to, you don’t need to have take time to do that. That is not, you just need, you have things, other things to do with your life. Mm-hmm. That are way more fun and exciting, so we want you to do that.

Yes. Check the box that says autopay. Set me up on that. I want it. And usually you’ll get some type of, don’t a great girl, you can do it. Yeah. You’ll usually get some type of discount if you use a CH or the autopay because they just know they’re gonna, they’re gonna get your money. And so they’re And the paperless, yep.

And paperless billing, they’re confident in that. So they’ll give you a discount. Okay. So that’s way number one. The second way is to automatically fund your spending in your savings. And what we mean by this automatic transfers, ’cause y’all know your budgeting, your banking app does this for you. So, you know, the bills are pretty black and white, right? You know, like whether you like it or not, you know, the bills that are coming and they’re kind of, they’re consistent.

That’s why they can stay over there in their own bills account and just get paid automatically. The thing that kind of sometimes trips people up is spending, and then the things, what we call savings buckets, the things that pop up unexpectedly, and you have no idea how you’re gonna pay for it. We are going to, not only are we gonna plan for those things on purpose, we’re going to fund them automatically.

Mm-hmm. So we’re gonna set it up and say, this is how much spending money I have each month. This is how much grocery money I have this month. This is how much I’m saving for vehicle maintenance, how much I’m saving for travel. And all of those transfers that those amounts are gonna be going into their own accounts automatically, you’re gonna be saving money on autopilot, on automatic, and you’re gonna be giving yourself spending money every payday.

Automatically without having to literally do anything with your hands. You’re gonna set it up now, and then it’s gonna be there on payday, right? So if you’re thinking, well, it’s not consistent, well, it should be like, this is what we’re telling you. You should have a set amount of money that you always put in your grocery account, always in for your gas, the same amount that you’re spending for yourself.

Like every month. We wanna make this as mindless, as an as easy as possible. Mm-hmm. So we want you to set amount. So if you’re thinking, well this month I need toilet paper, but next month I don’t. So that’s a $50 difference. You are going to account for the exact same amount of stuff every single month.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Because you don’t have the brain calories to do it otherwise. And it’s, it’s not worth it. No. So the easier you can make this on yourself, the better. So I remember Shayna we had a client I think she was a live call, and she was like, yeah, but I get that every six weeks. And you’re like, doesn’t matter.

You’re gonna budget for it every single month on purpose. It just take that guesswork out of it. And I think like the permission for herself to do that. Mm. Was so relieving. Yeah. Over. Yeah. No, nobody wants to. You’ve got enough things that you literally have to over. I was talking to a friend yesterday and it’s like we have, we have to be spontaneous.

Thank you children. We, we get to be spontaneous and make like in the moment decisions all the time. Thanks to life. We don’t need to have to do that because of our budget. Like our budget can just be easy, automatic. Like Vanessa said, same thing every month, and Oh no, I have $20 extra in my groceries because it was, I got it every four weeks instead of every si and I only need it six weeks.

Oh, no, that’s fine. Yeah, I bet you’ll find a way you’re winning. I bet you’ll find a way to spend $20. You’ll, you can have a steak night. You can add it to the budget. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. So that’s, Vanessa said, wait, number three. So the third is it, what does it say up here? Okay. There’s nothing. Okay, so the third hold on.

Take that out. Oh, ah, okay. Well that didn’t make sense. It doesn’t. I know. Okay. So the third thing that we want you to do to, in order to be able to set it and forget it, your budget is to use spending accounts instead of tracking every purchase. The thing that takes up most of your time is tracking. Okay.

I said I was gonna spend this and this is what I actually spent No, no, no, no, no, no. We don’t want that. So we want you to have a separate spending account for your gas and groceries, like we said, and then also for your personal spending at least. And those accounts are gonna have their own money and they’re gonna track it for you.

You don’t need to do anything. You’re just gonna look in there and be like, oh yeah, I remember I went to Target every day last week. Oops. I’m allowed of spending money. Right? Yeah. You don’t, you don’t have to actually track or go in and. And put the actual versus the plan numbers. None of that. We’re saving you time.

You’re welcome. We love you. Yeah. And so we just want you to hear the fact of having a separate account so there’s no tracking required. People, I, I had a new client and and he was, you know, they’re. Kind of, they’re a little older and they were kind of resistant to opening up a couple separate spending accounts because they’re like, we’ve been doing banking this way forever.

Mm-hmm. And obviously we’re we’re crushing it because we’re calling you for help. No, they knew, they knew they needed help. But he was like, I did not realize that that separating and having a couple more accounts was gonna be so much more simple for my life. Yeah. And I think hearing it from the husband was huge.

And we hear it from a lot of husbands ’cause they don’t. Really understand the system until we put it into play. It’s one of those things where it’s like, I really can’t tell you, but I can show you and then let’s, let’s do it. And then you’re gonna love it. We promise. And they, they they do. Yeah. But this is really how you allow your bank to be your personal assistant.

Okay. Yeah. And you don’t need another app to track anything. Yeah. You can just use the app you already have. But I like the idea of a personal assistant. ’cause what we’re talking about is budgeting in your busy era, which. I was telling the same friend yesterday, like, I, we hate that word. We’re not, we’re not a fan, but sometimes it’s just the reality of your life and you are busy.

So we are going to give you a bank, a, a personal assistant. We’re hiring a personal assistant for you to take care of your budget for you. Are you still happy? You said, and it just happens to be your bank. Your bank can do all of this. You can have multiple accounts. You can set up automatic transfers. You can set up the bills to pay.

It’s like someone’s going in and doing your budgeting for you. But you don’t have to pay. You don’t actually have to pay ’em ’cause it’s just your bank that you’re already paying. Well, and it’s not another thing, another, you don’t have to download another app to connect your bank and learn how and learn how to use another app.

Oh my goodness, right? To track all this stuff. We don’t need any of that. Like Shayna said, the best thing that you can use is the transfer section of your, of your banking app. Like that is gonna be a game changer. Yeah, and we just had for example, we had a client testimony Lauren on, and she was saying she’d been using Excel forever and and it wasn’t working.

She couldn’t figure it out. And then one year using our system, they paid off $50,000 in debt. They paid cash for Christmas and cash for college, and they went on vacation. So like, we’re just telling you the other ways. You, you don’t, and she’s using our system, which makes it super fast, super simple, automatic, that’s what we want for you.

It doesn’t have to take a lot of time for you to take control of your money. Well, and you know, I’m not gonna throw shame out there, but I am there’s this bank, there’s this budget that’s going on Facebook and I keep seeing it in my feed over and over again. It’s this lady that’s advertising her, her budget system.

It’s literally a tracking system. That’s what the whole thing is. And it’s so like convoluted. There’s. So much stuff going on, and I’m like, this is why people aren’t successful. You’re throwing a bunch of stuff up there, making it look like it does a lot, and Oh, you need this because it’s gonna help you.

It actually doesn’t do anything except require you to do more work. Yeah. And that is not what we want for you. A lot of times, you know, it’s kind of like the cartoon where the, the feeder spinning because they’re trying to move, but they’re not going anywhere. And I think. Our, some of our perfectionist, overachiever, whatever you wanna call it, tendencies are I have to do something.

I need to be doing something or else I’m being, I’m not doing a good job. I’m not, I’m not living up to what I’m supposed to do. And so some of these things prey on that. Mm-hmm. It’s like, look at all the things that you’re doing. You must be doing really good with money. You are doing so many things, you’re, you’re adding and mapping and.

And tracking. Tracking. You tracking, and you obviously are probably like, because you’re doing this equals you’re good, you’re good with money. No, unfortunately it doesn’t. It is much simpler than that. Right? You can make it automatic. You don’t have to have a bunch of things on your to-do list to be good with your money, to know where it’s going to have money to feel good about it and all of that.

Yeah. So the bottom line is that you don’t have to work hard at budgeting. Okay. It shouldn’t be. Hard. You just need the right system. Which system? Our system where obviously. But really it’s not just, I mean, it took us a long time. Okay. It took us, we were in business, what, four years doing everything for our clients and we created a bunch of different budgets and we finally found the one that people love.

That makes sense. That tells you what to do with your hands. And there’s no tracking required. Yeah. And we’ve literally never gotten any negative feedback, so you should probably get it. Like, it’s just, it’s just. That good? Mm-hmm. It’s pretty, it has check boxes. But the other thing I would, I wanna ask Vanessa, is not only to get our system at budgets.com/budget is, if you like this episode, if you’re like, oh, this is interesting, this is helpful.

Mm-hmm this is different, please share it and maybe even leave us a review, that would be awesome. We would really appreciate it. But we want, you know, a lot of times these things, people are like, I didn’t know I could have more than one account. Like, it’s such a mind blowing thing or. There’s automatic transfers, so I don’t have to actually do it.

We want everybody to know. Mm-hmm. And you can help everybody to know if you share this episode. And one of the things that we do here a lot is why isn’t everyone doing this? Like, we’re trying. So we can, we need y’all’s help to let people know that there is a different way of budgeting it. We know that finances is a hot topic as far as like, maybe your friends aren’t sharing everything that’s going on, we get that.

But if there is some illusion that they need help, please share this, help them out. ’cause they could also share it and help another friend out as well.