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  It’s such a common thought when somebody goes to swipe or pay for something, they don’t know what’s happening, where it’s coming from, how they’re paying for it, if it’s even going to be there, how much longer it’s going to be there. There’s just a lot that goes on. And, I had a call with a client this morning and she’s there’s money everywhere from my account. And it’s just, it goes to show you that when you organize your money, when you pay attention, when you plan it, when it’s on purpose, like how much more you can do with it  Hey Budget Besties! Today, listen in on our Office Hours where we help you with specific questions and problems!  One that I just saw Vanessa says why she was interested in coming into our group was to not feel like I have no idea what’s happening to our money every time I make a purchase. Oh gosh. It’s such a common thought when somebody goes to swipe or pay for something, they don’t know what’s happening, where it’s coming from, how they’re paying for it, if it’s even going to be there, how much longer it’s going to be there. There’s just a lot that goes on. And, I had a call with a client this morning and she’s there’s money everywhere from my account. And it’s just, it goes to show you that when you organize your money, when you pay attention, when you plan it, when it’s on purpose, like how much more you can do with it. I think if she can listen to the podcast, if she can be involved, if she can hopefully have enough money to buy the simplified budget system and do the course, like it’ll really help her organize it and know what’s happening with her money. I think what happens a lot of times, I feel like it’s I’ve never maybe I have, I shouldn’t say I never, but I feel like I’ve seen on the movies, the game, the crap shoot is that a game where you throw, it’s like literally call a crap shoot and you just throw stuff and hope it works and hope you get the right colors or whatever. I feel like that’s what happens when people swipe. Sometimes they’re like, It’s a, it’s I don’t know if it’s going to work for me. I don’t actually know what’s happening with my money. And I think that’s the thing there with with this is every time I make a purchase, I don’t know what’s happening as in, I don’t know what’s left. I don’t know how much I have. I don’t know if it’s going to go through. I don’t know if I have money for the next thing. It’s just that is a very unsettling feeling. And To your point, a lot of people are feeling it. It’s not just this person that came in the group. And I think that’s the whole point of just separating the accounts. Like we’ve heard over and over it’s so brilliant. And we’ll just pat ourselves on the back. It is very brilliant. Okay. But it’s so simple. If you just separate the accounts all by itself, like if you, so if you just separate your accounts and your bills are coming out of here and your spill spending’s coming out of here, then you have, you immediately have such. A better grasp on it. In clarity, right? It’s like now you absolutely know for instance, the client right before I jumped on he, I said what’s going on in your account? So he had, his personal account, his wife’s personal account, the gas and groceries account, and then like they’re miscellaneous, but where they purchase subscriptions and dog food or whatever else out of, and and he’s do you want to know the charges? Like what we. What we paid out of there. And I was like, no, I just want to know how much you transferred in there. What let’s track, how much did you transfer in? And it’s as long as you’re only transferring the amount of money that we said, you’re going to transfer, then you’re good. And I think the simplicity of that too, is knowing that’s the only thing they have to quote unquote tracker really. Yeah. Are responsible for knowing it’s nice because then all you have is that balance as a, as your Your guardrails, right?   📍 So let me get to another one. This person said pay off debt and budget better. And I just thought that was funny, not because of the alliteration budget better, but budget better. Vanessa, how much do you think they were? Budgeting. If they like, how, what percentage of budgeting was actually happening? If your goal is to budget better, do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you want to go with 0 percent and here’s why. And I think it’s what we’ve said on our podcast before writing numbers out on a piece of paper is not a budget. And a lot of people will go and they’ll try to find budget templates and then They write all this stuff down and then they say now what? What do I do with my hands? And, I’d like to think that we proud pride ourselves on our budget template because it tells you exactly what to do. It’s categorized exactly how you would handle your money. It’s very easy to follow. It’s very easy to understand. And it actually does set up a system for you, which is something that most budgets don’t. Yep. I agree. I think that’s. We all have this idea that of what a budget is, and we think that we’re like by not spending, we’ve said it before, sometimes your credit card balance or just your entire paycheck, that’s your budget. That’s how I budget is I can spend 3, 000 and then wait till the next thing, and unfortunately that’s not a budget, but so you can budget better. If you just use our budget system and it will budget. And I would want up that budget automatically. Okay. It’s not, they don’t get the double B alliteration there. We can come up with something, but budget on autopilot. That’s what the system sets up because we all know if we do it, what happens to Vanessa? If we’re in it, we’re messing with it. Oh, we’ll jack it up. Let’s not go as well as we would. My client right before this, he was like, I set up one, payment on auto pay. That was a huge move for him because he couldn’t think he could not even fathom doing that before. And he was like, just like you said, I did the one. And I’m like, okay, we got five to go, but we’ll get there. But that was big. That’s so funny.   📍 Cause another one of the questions that, or one of the things that came up was, Facebook group. , they said they want to get be in control of my debt and be accountable, which made me think about, or I thought of that when you said that Vanessa, because A lot of times we’re like, we’re doing the head in the sand, or if I don’t look like if I just don’t look at it, it’s probably gonna be okay. It’s probably gonna be fine. And that, that situation that, that doesn’t work. And so what you said with your client putting one payment of auto, of debt, yeah. Minimum on auto pay. That is a big deal. That is a that is the step in the right direction So I think people have this debt monster They feel like chasing them or behind them this monkey on their back, but they’re avoiding it And so be they but they that I want to be accountable I think that’s what we hear a lot like it’s time. I’m ready to put my big girl panties on maybe not Maybe this was a boy. I don’t know but in general they’re ready to do it but And they’re ready to maybe face the music and get responsible, but it’s a little scary, but we, we can help them on how to do that, step by step. And so what was the full question again? Remind me. Oh, it was just that they wanted to be in control of my debt and be accountable. So how do we help you be accountable and be in control of your debt? I think that when I hear it, be accountable, the first thing that comes to my mind is separate your accounts. Number one, like that’s really going to hold you accountable to your money. So you have your spending account, however many you decide to have for that. And then you have your bills account. That’s going to hold you accountable. And then paying off your debt, being in control of paying on your debt. I think then there’s no better way to do that besides putting it on. Okay. What better way to hold you accountable to making those payments than that? Yeah. And because you have the bills account set up and not only that, so we put the debt minimums on auto pay and that holds you accountable because the money’s Devoe was mentioning, It’s over there. I can’t, as long as I don’t mess with it, it’s all gonna take care. It’s all gonna handle itself. And then, and I set up that system. But then the other half of that, that we teach to be in control of your debt is to make those extra payments on payday. So let’s say sometimes people will be like, I have 500 extra. If I put it, the numbers in the budget, I have 500 extra this month and they’ll be like, I’ll keep it like my client yesterday. I’m going to put it in savings. I’m like, Oh no, you’re not girl. Oh no, you’re not. You’re going to make that payment right now on payday before you watch it. Slip away. And that is one way that you can hold yourself accountable because if the money’s gone, you literally can’t spend it like, congratulations, you’re now accountable to yourself because you’ve made the extra payment. And so that’s what we teach. Set it up, set up your bills account, put your minimums on auto pay. And then with what if paying off extra debt, which sounds like for this person, it is a goal or is something you want to do, go ahead and make those extra payments according to the budget on payday, and that will hold yourself accountable and make you be, feel more in control. Funny thing when you first get started and Mary, I want to get to your question. You see the number in the account because you’re just used to like, Oh, there’s money. Therefore I should spend it. That’s what that means. One plus one equals two. And so not only do we want to get out of that habit, but this also helps you like in the, with the toddler. The toddler training wheels, that’s what I meant with the training wheels. Let’s just pay it when we get it so that we don’t have to see it there. And another hack, quote unquote hack, that my husband and I did when when we were getting out of debt is we, not only did we pay it the minute we could pay it, we had a little tracker up on our, um, and we would just line through it together. It was like this thing that we did together. We’d line through it and say, we just made this payment. Here’s the new, here’s our new total debt. And and so it was like this whole ritual, this whole thing, which did make us feel accountable, did make us less likely to spend that money on something else because we were one doing it together and doing it in the moment. And then we were tracking it. So it was like exciting to see the number go down. Yeah.   📍  So yes, first of all, I don’t think you even have to go talk to dad. If he’s ever been a member of USA, you should be able to call him and get set up, but that’s fine. I understand that you would that might make more sense for you to do it in person. Second of all, I, we would, if you can do set up there, like we, we mentioned on the podcast, we’re trying to start a bank, but it’s like harder than you just talked about that with a client this morning. She’s are you serious? And I was like, yes, I really believe that. 25 goals. Like I believe that like longterm because I just feel like God is leading us in that direction. There’s no other bank that’s doing what we want. So it just makes sense. That being said USA is a good, is a great second option. And for now I would recommend just transferring to the other checking your savings. So yes, it takes a couple of days, but if you can get yourself in the habit of not like the goal here, guys, is that we’re not living this like dying gasp of breath for spending money between paychecks, right? So you’ll be like, Oh, I still have 40 bucks and now I have 200 bucks or whatever. That’s the goal that we’re going to get to eventually, hopefully. So these couple of days won’t matter. Yeah, the first time you do it, it’ll be a couple of days behind, but then it’s. always going to be the same amount of time behind, right? So it, it’ll get, it’ll catch up and be consistent, but it’s just nice. Nice to be able to like. Know that all your money is coming into one place first. Then it spreads out from there and to your other accounts. And plus if you do direct deposit, you’re still accountable to your payroll department, right? Like you have to go through a third party to ever make the change if you ever want to do something. I want to take them out of the picture.   📍 It is going to be okay. That is definitely, it’s going to be fine. It’s, anything that we do that’s new is always a little well, when it’s your money, it’s definitely definitely, as a layer of that to it. But what Vanessa is probably already going to say, but I’m gonna steal it from her is if what you were doing was working, you would say, So do that. So right now, like just encouraging you that you’re doing something new because this is going to work. It’s finally going to work. It’s going to be the thing that worked. We actually just aired an episode today called you don’t need another budget, you need another budget system. And that’s the difference. So that is the point here is like this system is going to be finally, hopefully like Devo was saying earlier this is the thing that’s finally going to make it click. That’s going to make it work. I feel like I can actually, get some progress and get ahead with the system, so yes. Any other questions you guys? What else y’all struggling with? What else you thinking about? 📍  because mortgages, that is where everybody, not everybody, but a lot of our clients come in and they’re like they’re so high now,  mortgages are so much higher than they  used to be usually  the highest bill that you have in your budget. And so it’s that’s the one that you’re always chasing to make sure you have enough money. You make sure you have that. Yeah. And so that is the, all by itself just having the money set aside and then, you know what you’re talking about. We can’t spend money this week, well over here, the spending money, so we know if we can spend  money, whatever. But  you’re right, it is like the last one that people put on auto pay. I just had a client yesterday and she, I was like, okay, pay your mortgage. What? Stop the money is in there, and so definitely you’re not alone with that one. Yeah. Okay. Vanessa. I have one more for you and then we’re going to, we’re going to call it for now. 📍 She said he wants to buffer for vacation and house spying. Okay. I like house buying. It’s a new way to say it for vacation and house buying. So what do we got to tell her to do? Open up some savings accounts, girl. That is the best way I just sat down with the client yesterday and she was like we’re going on this trip in October and this trip and this trip and this trip. And I was like, okay, what we need to do is have a conversation with hubby and go, how much do we normally spend on vacations in a year? We need to divide that bad boy out and stick it in your budget. Cause she’s relatively new, so we haven’t really set that up yet, but if you can find out around about amount of money that you’re going to spend on travel in a year, and then divide that by 12 and just start sticking it away monthly in a savings bucket. And for the house, the down payment, how much, how long do you have to get that money? This is just a dream and you’re like, okay, five years, I want to have 20, 000 or whatever. Start that now and see if you can start saving even a hundred dollars, 200, 300, some putting something away is better than nothing. So if we can have a little bit of money put away every month, and it’s basically like a bill in that savings bucket, and it is. It’s not negotiable. You don’t touch it. It’s not extra money. You don’t dip into it when you want a pair of shoes or whatever because when that day comes and you want to buy that house, when that day comes and you’re going on that vacation and you have that money there for that, it’s going to feel so good. Yeah. And I think the clear distinction is it’s not a buffer. It’s a plan. We’re not like hoping, like we were talking about with that earlier, we’re not hoping that we have enough leftover to put towards a vacation. We are on purpose planning to afford the vacation. And again someday we’ll air our, my story on the podcast, but we started with like we, my husband, we went to Disney that I cash flowed. It was the first time we’d really gone on a family vacation and I cash floated using the system, right? Like setting aside a little bit every month so that we would be able to do it. And on the way home, we were listening to Dave Ramsey and my husband like came home and he sold his car and we got, we went into our debt journey, jet free journey and all that stuff, but vacations. Is literally I put face on Facebook. What’s the one thing that you wish you could afford more on your budget or do whatever. And everybody says, travel, vacation, travel, vacation. And so we have to on purpose get to the point where we can go on vacation, not an accident. So we do need to set up a budget. We do need to see what, like what we can do. The other thing is again, planning it on purpose, not hoping for it. So saying with the, with this vacation and this, Her client apparently want to go on a thousand. So that stresses me out. I’m not worried about that, but for example, for one vacation to Disney, we need tickets, we need lodging, we need travel. We need food while we’re there. We need souvenirs, whatever. So we want Sunscreen’s a hundred dollars right there. Okay. You need to list those out. Not that you have to get it all perfect, but that’s how you get into this. It’s not a dream. It’s a reality. Here is exactly what the numbers are. I’m going to divide that by the amount of time that I have until the vacation. I’m going to set it aside every month and it’s going to happen. I think that’s why I just love math so much because it’s so black and white. It is. We have, we need this much money. This is how long it’s going to take us to get there. This is how much we need per month to make it happen. And it’s voila, then you can set that up on auto transfer right from your bank. And then you never have to look back. Like it’s just done. It’s done for you. It’s really nice. Yes.