December Budget: Wrapping Up the Year with Confidence

 All right, we’re here to do the budget. It’s December budget. And I am wearing, what my bear wears, because I don’t have my Christmas stuff out yet, Vanessa. I was gonna, when you came out with it, I was like, listen, we’ve talked about

this.

Yes, but this is my bear. I have all my bear’s outfits that he gets dressed up in. So I did have that. You had access to it. Don’t have access to the Christmas stuff because it’s not, I’m not there yet. But by the time you’re listening to this, guess what? It’s all going to be decorated. Jingle.

It’s time to make December’s budget.

It is. It is. And so listen, the first thing you have to do when you make December’s budget, guys, is what? We gotta wrap up. We gotta wrap up November. We gotta see what happened and make sure that what you wanted to happen actually happened, right? A little bit, as much as possible.

Hopefully. As close as possible. And then, if you’re using our budget system, you just take those numbers that were budgeted in and you type over them with the actuals. So that way you know next time what happened and you have actual data, not just what you thought was gonna happen.

Yeah, and the way that We like this all to work is we like to go in and update assets, update your debts, and really, again, the assets is really fun, usually. Except for your Christmas savings bucket one. That’s probably going to be pretty Well, it’s going to go down. But, so you can see all the money that you have and see all the progress you made on debt.

Yeah. And then you go, like Vanessa said, you go and update all the actuals on your budget, your November budget, make sure that you, all the transfers happen, everything happened the way that you planned it. And this is important because if it didn’t happen the way you planned it, let’s Get that information to use for December, right?

That’s why we have to do that. And it’s okay if it didn’t like the whole point of this

is to go, okay, what did I want happen? What actually happened? And then how am I going to do better next time? Yeah. Our, there’s no shame here. No. Cause our

friend and volleyball rival, she her, you’re going to know she, her business is called perfect ish or her brand perfect ish.

And we so relate to that. We want to be. Ish like closest, like as much as possible, but there is no shame. It is not necessarily always going to happen the way that you wrote it down. That’s fine. We, but like we said if for example, you spent 200 more in groceries, okay. We need to look at that.

Is there a reason obviously Thanksgiving? Hello. But do we need to add that to December’s budget so that we are more consistent or maybe a payment didn’t come out the way that it was supposed to. And we actually have to put two payments in December’s budget or whatever needs to happen. So let’s just, we’re Wrap it up, wrap up November, I know, we know you’ve already put your Christmas decorations, acting like November didn’t even happen, but we’re going to just take a minute.

Oh, it breaks my heart. Just take a second. You know what I realized, Vanessa? Hey, it’s Budget Bestie time. Jingle. Okay. The reason that you and I really love November is because we have December babies. And I was realizing we need this time of November to just be the calm before the storm.

Because everybody has a crazy December. You have You know, all the things, all the parties, all the different events that, that happened because it’s Christmas, all the church things. But then if you add a December baby, it’s like a whole nother ball game and it’s adding. And so that’s why we’re very stubborn about December not happening until December happened.

And I think too, we live in Florida and like October and November. I absolutely love the best weather. Yeah. It’s amazing. And I host it. Thanksgiving every year. It’s always a big deal at my house. My husband’s family for years, everyone came and I just loved it. I still do, but everyone like skips it.

And I

even saw that our coach, she was like putting up her Christmas tree last week and I’m like, y’all there’s a whole holiday that you’re missing. It’s fine. You can’t do Thanksgiving with Christmas.

Such a good point. And this is obviously important for your December budget, but we’ll get back to it.

We promise. Please hold for infomercial. This is the only time we have good weather. Okay? And I shouldn’t say good weather. We are very blessed, obviously. But it’s 75 degrees right now. We don’t get that a lot, guys. We have to savor this time. And so we need to just be able to enjoy it. There’s no chance.

We’re wearing sweaters yet, okay? We can’t. I’m still in a tank top. We can’t get to that cozy sweater fall or winter vibes yet. We still wearing tank top. So we just have to have a moment. Anyway, sorry rant over. I know. But I did realize, I think that our birthday trauma. December birthday trauma informs a lot of our November separatism that we have.

Okay. One second. We’re not done

yet. I’m sorry. My neighbor, guys, I love it. I love it. But, literally, it looks like the North Pole threw up in his front yard. Yes. I think every year for the last 70 years, he’s bought one, One new outdoor Christmas decoration. And he just adds to the collection. So yesterday I was driving by and he had probably a hundred different decorations and figurines and blow up things and light up things out in his yard.

Oh, I know the house we’re talking about. Yeah. And I do love it because I love Christmas and I understand where he’s coming from. Cause it’s look, it took me probably a whole week to set all this up. Y’all, this is going to last more than one month. So for him, yeah, it does

event. Yeah,

it takes. And I understand people who go all out for Christmas and decorate.

You want it to last. So I do see that, but I just, I can’t.

Yeah. But we’re not those people. Okay. Love you guys. Love that you guys are that way. Okay. So now we’re going to talk about December’s budget because that’s actually what we came to talk about. Hold on. Okay. Sorry. I just want to just get

y’all into

season.

It’s December. Okay, listen, even though it’s December, most of your budget is the same.

It does. It is. Okay. So when we make a budget with you, there are like, it’s consistent. We have Your debts, your bills, your spending, and your saving. And for the most part, guys, you have the same stuff listed all the time.

Now you may have a bonus here and there. You may have like holiday shopping that you have added in there, but like the majority of your budget, you have the same in my payments going out and debt payments. You have the same bills that are coming out and you’re spending. Like your regular, every day to day spending is about the same.

Yeah. So that’s, I think that’s exciting, but just in case, or it’s comforting, I should say just in case you haven’t, what you want to do is list out your income first, just like Vanessa alluded to, you’re going to make sure if you have any Christmas bonuses, holiday time bonuses, we’re going to put those in there.

Any overtime you’re working, any side hustles, maybe, because you can do that how people get seasonal jobs because Amazon stuff. Okay. Put that all in the income count. Yeah. The jingle bell. The Santa’s bringing home your income. Okay. So that’s the first

column. Yeah. And then, yeah.

And then your debts. So we go from the best number, which is all your income to the worst number, which is your debts. And here we want to make sure we only list the minimum payments. Why? Why? Why? What’s the point of that? Because we want to see the budget made with just minimum payments. First, we will come back and add extra on debt later, circle back.

But right now we only want to see what do you absolutely have to pay on debt?

Yes. Okay. Which is so fun, but let’s move on. That’s okay. And Vanessa said, that’s typically going to be similar to what it was last month, but we’ll just, hopefully you didn’t add any more payments.

Hopefully it’s going down by a couple of dollars.

Maybe it

goes down, but hopefully not up. Okay. So then we’re going to list out our bills again. This should be fairly routine by now. Just, you’re going to, and if you’re really feeling fancy, list them in the order that they come out. If this is your first time putting it down, Okay.

And my OCD

clients, this is their favorite thing to do.

I’m not OCD and it’s my favorite thing to do because it makes my life easier when I’m trying to click them, check them off and find them.

And they dim.

Yeah. And they dim all the checkboxes. So exciting. You’re going to have your bills on there. You’re going to be able to check them off. But you, if you’re just starting from the beginning, if you want, you can list them in the order in which they come out.

Otherwise, just get them in there. You’ll figure that part out later. We do in our budget and you should buy our budget. It’s at BudgetBesties. com forward slash budget. That’s shocking. It’s forward slash budget. I know. It’s really shocking.

, if you buy our budget, then you can see that you’re going to put the name of the bill, which is important.

Put the name of the bill to where you would recognize it, right? Yeah. Then you’re going to put the amount and then you’re going to put the date, right? That’s important because it just helps you as you’re going through the month and check stuff off to know like where you should be. Obviously sometimes weekends, whatever, it varies, but it is nice.

And while if you’re setting this up for the first time, you want to just get all the information, you already went to the trouble to go hunt down the bill, hunt down everything. So you might as well put it all on there. So just make sure you also put the dates.

And again, since our budget auto populates, you put it in one time.

And it’s been the entire year for the rest of the life of your budget system. It’s all there. And then maybe all you have to do is maybe adjust the amount. If it, I don’t know, like some bills go up and down and whatever, if you can renegotiate. But everything else will be there.

You don’t have to do it again. And the wah was my sound effect machine. Okay. With your jingle bells. I

hope you guys

love us as much as

we love what we’re doing right now.

We’re high class, y’all. High high budget. High budget sound effects is what I meant to say. Okay. So then after the bills, then we’re going over the spending column.

You guys, we have a mix over here in the spending column. We have stuff that we have to spend money on. And that we will spend money on and we have stuff that we, that’s more optional, right? So you just want to make sure you put that all in there. Gas, groceries, restaurants, babysitters, whatever, all of your different categories that you spend money on.

Obviously, personal pocket money is important. All of that’s going to go over there. Again, just like we said before, you’re going to have the The description, you’re going to have an amount that is for the month, and then you’re going to, on our budget system, you get to decide if you’re going to have it be a cash, something that you pull out in cash, something that you transfer to your spending debits, or if it’s something like what we’re going to go through Christmas party or something that’s one time, then it’s going to tell you on the paycheck plan to transfer that one time versus the automatic transfers that you would set up otherwise.

Yeah. And it has a little calendar to show that it’s one time that you can choose that option. Emojis are important. Oh, it’s really important with our budget system. It’s just beautiful all around. It does so many things. But yeah, so when you set up this system, The spending section of your budget, you want to put at the top, all the things like Shana talked about that happens all the time.

Gas, groceries, spending money, blah, blah, haircuts. And at the bottom, I usually categorize like this month, like what’s happening right now. That’s specific to this month. That isn’t probably going to roll over to January. Which would be like Shana alluded to before holiday parties. Maybe you have some extra teacher gifts that you have to pay for.

You have a little bit more on your travel because you’re traveling and you didn’t like,

Oh wait. Or you have two December birthdays, but then you’re also going to travel for state gymnastics. Yes. If you wanted to add that in there. That’d

be fun. If you haven’t been saving up for those in your savings bucket, or maybe they were, like, She’s shaming me.

No. I’m just saying, they were new. They just came up, right? Or, if you’ve been saving up, but it’s never enough. Not enough. And that was my next part, was like, If you were saving, but you still have a gap let’s put that in there. Let’s put everything in your budget.

We really want to see that.

So with the spending here, what we’re saying is now is the time to think what else is happening this month.

Like this is the part where you really have to use your brain. We said the rest of it, this is

called adulting. Yeah.

And we all love it. So just, I think one of the easiest ways to do it is look at your calendar, talk to your family, just see what, jog your memory. Who wants to take my money this month?

Just come on. It’s like a town hall meeting and let’s stand up and make your request. That’s where you’re going to do this. All of those things that quote unquote come up, right? That’s where this is going to, this is going to be in your spending. Vanessa said, in our budget, in your budget. Just put the stuff that’s very regular up at the top and then on that same column, but go down a little bit so that you can know, as you go to the next month and the next month, like this is the more the things that fluctuate versus the ones that say the same.

And while you’re in spending, if you need to make have more money for groceries or something like that, if you need to figure that part out, like for extra holidays, maybe extra holiday or. or whatever, or you’re contributing something, whatever. Just, this is also the time to just think about that too.

Yeah. So if you get your, once you get your spending section done, remember, this is where you live in your budget. Everything else is pretty automatic. Your debt payments go out, your bills go out, but this is where you can really mess up your budget if you don’t do it right. And you don’t mark everything down and it’s in your spending section.

So after you have that filled out, if you have anything left, or maybe you already know that you are going to have some stuff, let’s set up your savings buckets and you may already. The numbers may already be in there from last month, right? So if you have our budget system, they are, they already populate, which is really nice, which I love because if it’s already in there, then you can really adjust your spending column based on what you already have in there for your savings buckets.

Yeah. Some people like to delete everything and start fresh, like as far as savings, not bills, don’t ever do that. But for savings buckets, sometimes they may need to adjust them based on what’s happening that month for spending, right? Okay. So for savings buckets, look, we have some stuff coming up.

You may have, this is a great time of year to really look at all of your annual bills that you have coming up for the new year. Christmas, let’s start budgeting for Christmas now because we know that you need that money October, November, right? So start putting that new number into your budget.

Spring break, a lot of people forget that spring break is literally in March, which is only three months into the year. Sometimes that may not be enough to budget for three months in advance. So maybe you need to start in December. And don’t forget about those unexpected expenses that come up, that we all know that are coming, that we just forget to put in the budget.

Yeah. And there’s all kinds of different savings buckets that you might have in here, vehicle maintenance, home maintenance, like Vanessa said, annual bills stuff for your kids. And then of course, all the gifts and holidays and stuff like that. The deal is with your savings buckets. We’ve talked about it before is.

If this is why it’s the last thing that we do, because all of the things that we talked about before have to happen, you have to pay your bills, you have to buy gas and groceries, you need to have a little pocket money because otherwise you’re going to steal it from somewhere. And so if there’s money left over, then we come over to the savings buckets and assign it according to what our goals are and what we want our lifestyle to look like.

And so that’s why. And then of course our budget system does the math. For you. So you’ve done you’ve gone from income, debt, bills, spending, and now it says you have 500 left. How would you like to allot it? And then you can start to put that in the savings buckets or however much it is. And so that’s the, why it’s the last thing. Yeah. But it’s not the last thing that you do. It is the last thing that you put on the budget. Then we do the paycheck plan and this is where the magic happens.

So you’ve assigned your dollars a job. Now you’ve got to make them do it. You’ve got to put them in action. And what you want to do is, especially in our our budget, it makes it very easy because we have a paycheck plan to have, but what we’re doing is we’re dividing up the spending.

We’re And the savings that we’ve got based on paychecks. And we’re going to set up transfers to go into our savings buckets and our spending accounts from the bills account. Cause remember should have said this first, the income goes all into the bills. And then from the bills account, we just keep it in enough in there to pay all the bills.

And then we’re transferring out to separate accounts into spending and savings. And then once we get really good, we’re doing that automatically and your budgets all run automatically.

Yeah. So again, our paycheck plan, if you’re using our system, all you have to do is click the box. What month am I in and how many paychecks am I going to divide this by?

And it does it all. All for you right there. And you can go in and check off as you do it. But if you don’t have our system, you need to really pick, if you have multiple sources of income coming in, whatever that looks like, if it’s you, your husband, both of y’all, whatever, pick one paycheck cycle to go in and go, okay, every paycheck, we have this much going to gas, this much going to groceries, this much going to pockets, pocket money, and so on and so forth.

And then your savings is the same way. Now, the one thing that we do recommend you leave as one time things are those things that you have coming up this month that are just one specific day or an event or whatever, like a Christmas party or you’re going to travel. We don’t really recommend you moving that money over until you need it because then it’s going to get convoluted and mixed up into whatever account you, whatever spending account you moved it into.

So the day that you’re going to the event or when you’re going to travel, move that money over. It’s one time transfer all at once. So that way you have it ready to go.

So when you get all of those bills figured out, when you get your budget system figured out.

Okay. You want to automate the payments of all of those bills because what your paychecks are doing, Vanessa talking about it, they all are going into the bills. And we’ve talked about it before, you guys get uncomfortable, money just stays there in the bills account. Some of it, like some of it goes out to your spending, that’s why we’ve done all the math as a whole, right?

Some of it goes out to your spending and savings, but then a good chunk of it just stays there in the bills. Doo, I’m sitting here ready to pay bills whenever they come knocking at my door. So many jingles. Okay, but so it’s just pooling there. Your paycheck is pooling there ready as the payday or the bill due date comes and it automatically comes out, right?

That’s what the system is trying to set up. And you may feel

a little uncomfortable with that. We have a lot of clients that are like, I have money sitting in my bills account for the first time ever, but because it’s literally designated for bills and you’re not touching it because it’s already sending money to your spending accounts, which is where you’re living, which is where you’re spending your money, but you’re not spending money out of that bills account.

So if you’re not used to seeing money in there, like you

have to get comfortable with that first. And get used and getting used to not having to micromanage your bills. Like you’re just, they’re just over there getting paid. You don’t have to worry if they’re going to get paid. You don’t have to go pay them.

They’re just, it’s just happening. And that can, that’s like a totally different lifestyle. It’s very, What do we say? Shocking to the system, but and

It’s so different and you’re you’re not, you’re just not used to it. So you really have to be okay with the person that has money.

Yeah. And we haven’t seen each other for too long or too often lately.

So we have been very talkative today. So we so that’s fun. That’s a good, that’s a bonus for you maybe, or maybe not, but the only the only thing that’s left for you to think about when it comes to your budget for December is what. It’s. Are my specific goals that I want to hit in December when it comes to my money?

Many of you it might be as simple as not using debt to fund Christmas, and that’s a great goal That’s a great goal. We’re here for that goal and then obviously Christmas, right? Traveling whatever all of that just getting through all of that with your finances and check is a great goal.

Yeah. And you may not be paying off a lot of debt this month. That’s okay. The fact that you’re paying cash and using cash to fund everything else is a huge win. So just remember that when you’re making this budget, don’t get down on yourself because you weren’t, or you couldn’t make as much progress either with your savings buckets or paying off debt this month.

Yeah. Now, on the other hand, we do have lots of people that you get that bonus. And if you want to be diligent, if that’s what your plan is, go ahead. The day of I have in two recaps this week, I said, when the bonus comes, this is exactly what you’re doing. We’re not waiting. We’re not saving it up for for it to disappear, basically.

So if you, if that is you make sure you’re very attentional about that. The other thing is to think possibly about. December being a like staging ground kind of deal because you’re going to start nailing it in January if I can just get through December get everything don’t make or stop the bleeding.

Don’t make it worse And then January i’m going to start fresh with this budget. I’m going to start with my savings buckets I’m going to do a really good job That could also be a great goal. And you know what would really help them with that, Vanessa?

Like our budget system?

Or our bootcamp that’s coming up.

We’re having a bootcamp right after Christmas. Okay, so it’s the week after Christmas, when New Year’s is happening, that’s what usually happens the week after Christmas. We’re going to have a bootcamp. And we’re going to go through, we’re going to give you all of our tips, so many different trainings and tutorials.

Not going to be too much because we know you don’t have that much time, right? But you can find all the details about that at budgetbesties. com forward slash bootcamp. And guess what? When you go to the bootcamp, we’re going to set that time aside for you to figure out how to get everything set up for the new year.

So you can feel like a rockstar going in 2025.

And listen, we’re going to take a little bit of your time every single day to be able to set some things up, set a plan, a system in place. So that way, like Shannon said, you can crush all of your goals in 2025. It’s going to be a great way to set the foundation for the new year.