How to Create a February Budget That Actually Works

 It’s time to make your February budget. Can y’all believe it’s already the second month of 2025? I’m excited. Like February, I feel is when the real, like the real new year starts. And so I’m excited for that part. But, and then the hangover of the holiday and then your birthday, I figured out I saw somebody say, January, how to handle January birthdays because it’s like after you just went through Christmas, it can feel like whatever.

So I was like, okay, and then the February we’re going to restart, reset. We’re going to get everything perfect this month. I believe it. Yes, absolutely.

So the first thing you guys hear it all the time, what we want you to do before you start the upcoming month is that you have to close out and put any changes in the budget that happened to the current month.

Yeah. So January, go back, close it out, make sure everything got paid. Like actually what we do specifically with our clients. We go update the asset tracker. We go update the debt tracker. Then we go click and make sure everything got paid, the amount that we talked about it getting paid. All the transfers happen and then nothing additional, which can be a fun thing.

And that’s how we close out the month. Update the amounts if the electric bill is a little different or if the paycheck was a little different. And make sure that we’re still at zero. Cause that’s actually can be a fun thing. Maybe at the end of the month, everything, you actually had a little bit of money left over.

And maybe there’s something we need, a decision we need to make. So we definitely want to make sure we wrap up January before we move on. Yeah. What if you kept your heat at 67 instead of 69 and you save like a hundred dollars in electricity instead of what you got? Yes. Okay. Hey, I got you this fleece line leggings.

So between that and sweatpants. Yeah, I wore them for six days. Yeah, you can, you just don’t need heat anymore. It’s fine. They’re so good. And I have that little space heater, so I just need to clo close my clo my office and ta da. And then it becomes because I don’t touch, I don’t touch the, it does immediately come July.

I don’t touch the thermometer. Thermostat is what it’s actually called. But when I get cold, I know I have my little thing. Yeah. It’s just really important to make sure that you know what happened in January because listen, Things change, stuff comes up, but if you’re using our Simplify Budget System too, guys, the best part about all this is you get to go check all those boxes.

That’s important. And dim those lines, okay? And then you know, like Shana said, that it is still zero at the top. Maybe you had 50 bucks left over, move that over to savings, move it over to debt, move it over to a fun trip or something that you have going on. And then you can feel really good about starting February fresh.

Yeah, and it’s really good to, to do that and then see what’s in your bills account versus what when your budget is closed out like that’s the fun thing to do. Okay. So then we’re going to move on. We’re going to move over to February. Okay. And the first thing in February’s budget that you’re going to want to focus on is the income.

What, when are my paydates? That’s a good one to look at. And then how much am I expecting on those dates? Yep. So again, if you’re using our system, everything auto populated for you, it’s really great. You don’t have to type in anything. or write anything down. All you really have to do now is adjust numbers or delete some stuff or add things based on the new month.

So again, income, every single thing that you have coming in, if you’re doing yard sales, probably not in the winter. I’m just saying, maybe if you have a side hustle, any money that you have, if you have refunds, reimbursements, bonuses I know a lot of people are doing, they have a year end bonuses for their business coming in.

So make sure we put all of that in there. We want to get a total amount to see what. What we can do with all the money in the month of February. Yep. Okay. So then the next thing that you’re going to do is set up your, or like Vanessa said, if you’re using our system, it’ll do automatically, but you’re going to put in your debt minimums.

Okay. Now we’ve told you this, we’re going to tell you again, we’re only putting the minimum payment for debt in the beginning of the budget, because what we’re doing is we’re taking the income and we’re subtracting everything from that to see what’s left over at the end of the month to possibly put extra on that.

But if you’re already putting extra, then we won’t be able to do that correctly. List your debts, list the minimums and list the pay dates. If you are the due dates, if you have them. And the next thing you want to do is list all your bills. So bills are things that you’re getting charged for on a reoccurring basis.

So monthly subscriptions, your mortgage, your utilities, anything that you’ve signed up for gymnastics, that’s monthly jujitsu. If you’re getting charged for that monthly, like all of that is your gym membership is a monthly bill that comes every single month. And so we’re going to put that into the bill section.

And if your daughter moved up in gymnastics level, then you can increase. Increase the amount that you get to pay them. It’s so fun. And then I also have a client that I don’t know how, but his golf membership decreased. I was like, yay. It’s very rare that bill has decreased, but that’s a good one. You might have different, like your daycare preschool, something might be different about that since you’re in a full regular month of February.

Just look at those bills, get them all listed, and and then the next part is fun. . This is probably a really good time, if you’ve not done it in a while, to go back and look and how, and see how much am I paying for cable?

How much am I paying for internet, my phone bill insurance, all of that. If you haven’t tackled that, it’s a slow month, it’s the dead of winter. Let’s Maybe call those companies and say, look, do you have a new promotion? Do you have something else, a different plan, or maybe that I’m not, you’re not utilizing all the benefits of the one that you’re currently on.

How can we get some of these decreased? Or I have subscriptions that I haven’t logged onto for months. Can I cancel it? I was thinking, and it’s a little ugly, so please love me anyway. I was like, if you sign up for a gym, And didn’t use it all in January. This might be a good time to go ahead and cancel that.

sign. Yeah, go ahead and cancel that. And you’re just going to start, you’re going to start small with a good 5000 step walk every day and then you’re going to build from there. Okay, but if there’s anything that you can decrease out of the bills, we definitely want you to do that and look into it.

All right. So the next section is your spending section of your budget. This is where you live. This is where you’re swiping the card. This is where you’re buying gas groceries. So we want to list in there everything that is consistently happening. Like I said, gas, groceries, pocket money, haircuts what else?

Dog grooming. Yep. What else we got? Yeah. I don’t know. More things like that. But what I was going to say is make sure, like for January, we had five weeks. A lot of those spending had to get changed up because there was five weeks. So make sure you go ahead and fix it for February if you’re using our system or doing it the way we tell you.

Because in February, you’re probably, if you’re doing weekly transfers, you’re only going to have four. So just make sure you adjust that. Make sure your grocery budget is correct. So if you one, like we said, one of the first things that we do is look at the assets and we look at what’s in your accounts, which gives us, as your coach, an idea of your amounts that you have set up in your budget are working.

If there’s negative dollars, it’s not working. If we have a week until your next transfer and you have 5 for groceries, then we know it’s not working. However, yesterday. When I did my people, they were getting trans, they were getting their transfers today on Friday. They had a hundred dollars in both.

And I was like, good job. That’s really great. And so that’s what we want to do is just make sure that the amounts that we’ve set are actually working. Yeah. And if this is the first time that you’re doing this, you’re going to get it wrong maybe even a couple months. So don’t automatically say Oh this transfer thing’s not working.

I can’t do the spending accounts. Don’t start shaming yourself for all that. We don’t get it right as coaches, because this is the first time that we are doing it with new clients and they don’t know. They’ve never added it up before. This is the first time we’re putting on paper specifically how much they spend in gas, groceries or on themselves throughout the month.

So it is okay to tweak it over time and eventually you will get it right. Yeah. And I just want to say I have the, our new clients and they have the same pocket money for the husband and wife and they’re like competing. And she spent it all, but it was stuff that she had been working like waiting and waiting on and she finally felt good that she had the money.

And then he hadn’t spent any, but one weekend of golf will take all of his away. I’m pretty sure. But then she returned stuff. So now they’re like, Like she was really low, but now they’re like neck and neck again. So it was just funny to see them competing over it. Who’s going to, and they’re doing great.

They’re doing such a, they’re going to literally live on half of what they make by the time we’re done. I love that. I think it’s so fun to just bring some comedy into it. And just see okay, by the end of payday, Right before our next transfer goes in, who’s got the most money? Like, why not? Why not just bring some fun into it?

Okay. So the next section we have our fifth category is our savings buckets. All right. So you’ve done your income. You’ve listed your income. Now you’ve written out how much debts, how many debts you have. Your minimum. Oh, goodness gracious. Okay. Yeah. Start the whole thing. So you’ve listed out your income and you’ve listed out now your minimum debt payments, all of your bills, what it costs you to live in your spending section.

And now we have our savings category. And so here you may not have anything left and that is okay. Cause you may have a lot of debt payments that you’re paying on right now. But if you do have money left over, let’s start saving for future purchases. Yeah, and when you use our simplified budget system, it does it for you automatically.

But what we want you to do is do the math as you go, right? So like Vanessa said, we have the income, which is the positive exciting number. And then from there, we’re subtracting. So after you get to spending, like Vanessa said, what do you have left over? If it’s zero, then that, then we’ll deal with that.

But if there’s a little bit left over, people always ask us, what do I start with? You have to start with what you’re going to spend the money on anyway. The point with savings buckets is to not have to use debt or not have to wonder where the money is going to come from for stuff that I’m definitely, we’re going to start with stuff I’m definitely going to spend money on.

And then we’re going to add the fun stuff like vacations or whatever else. If, unless you have it all already available in your budget, but So you want to list out what’s coming up, what do I need to, what do I need to fund and you’re going to balance that with if I want to pay any extra on debt, right?

You’re going to balance the savings versus paying off debt with whatever feels best for you and makes the most sense. Yeah. And if you have a big expense coming up, let’s say spring break and you have two months to be able to fund it. And you’re like, listen, I want to focus on debt, but I can’t right now.

I really want to just pay my minimum payments for the next two months. And then I can start. Hitting debt hard in April. That’s okay too. So then let’s fund and build that travel fund for you and your savings bucket section. So that way you have. By the time spring break comes, you’re paying cash for the first time.

Maybe you’re ever paying in cash for a vacation and not going further into debt for it. So that’s really important. Yeah. So once you get your savings buckets, now remember, these are things like annual bills, travel, pets, vehicle, home, your kids medical, maybe personal care, all kinds of stuff like that, that you might need to be saving up for because they’re bigger expenses, savings buckets are savings accounts with a specific, I’m going to spend this on this purpose.

So then when that’s all done. Maybe you still have money. Maybe you don’t. We don’t know. You have to tell us, do the math. But they’re the last thing that we want to look at, because all of that for the most part each month should be similar, should be pretty much steady the same. What we want to do is look at this month, February.

What is going to happen in February specifically? Guess what we get to do? Go to Orlando and Mobile. Oh yes, both of us. Yeah, we both get to go both places for volleyball and for basketball. So for us in February, it’s a very busy month. We also have, my daughter has her first hoedown. Oh, it’s the first time she’s able to go.

It’s seventh grade. It’s the first hoedown. Oh, I’m going to tell you Catalina. The first thing she did was pull up her volleyball schedule to make sure she didn’t have a volleyball tournament that weekend. And she said, mom, I get to go. And she’s so excited. Yeah, I know. It’s a big deal. So anyway, those are for us.

That’s what we’re, we have on the radar. And then, obviously, it’s Valentine’s day, maybe birthday, anniversary. Different stuff like that. We talked about saving up for spring break. Don’t wait till March to save up for a 2, 000 spring break trip that you probably can’t save 2, 000 for in that month, right?

Travel sports, we mentioned that. We are huge fans. We’re in the middle of it. We, this is prime time right now for, I believe, travel, soccer, volleyball. I believe basketball is coming up here soon. So just make sure you’re accounting for all that stuff. When you think you have it all down, something’s going to, something’s going to jab you in the side and be like, Hey, wait, don’t forget about me.

Yeah. And then, the other thing that might be month specific is if you are trying to pay off debt, there might be a set number or a specific card or something that you’re going to be able to pay off this month. And that’s your goal, which is really great. Yep. All right. And then what we want to do is set this up.

So now you have the whole month. You have a view of what’s happening with all of your money. Now we’re going to break it down by paycheck, right? So we’re going to use the paycheck plan and the simplified budget system to go, okay, if all of this is happening, how much do I transfer into my spending, into my savings accounts?

on payday. So that way I can make sure that everything is like Shayna said before, consistent and always happening the same way every time. Yeah. So you just want to set up those transfers so that you can just live your best life while everything’s happening for you. And that’s how you just have that steady state of money where it’s not the ride.

And so then think about as we close. We want you to think about what your goals are for February. Because chances are you just made them, right? Like you just made them in January. They’re fresh and very vibrant in your mind. So keep those dead center. Yeah. Whatever goals you made in January, you need to make sure that you have them in the budget.

But for example, I have a client that they’re going to fund all, almost all of their savings buckets with their. February bonus, basically. And then I have another client, she’s going to, that will be the first one that she’s able to set up savings buckets at all. And just think about it’s not just, this travel that I want to do or this, whatever, like systematically with my money, I’m going to cut up the credit cards.

I’m going to, I have another client that I told you that she’s going to have a cut. She’s closing on her house on the 24th. And so I guess on the 25th, she’s going to have a credit card closing, cut up party where she cuts them all up and closes them. And so whatever your goals are, they can be big, but they can also be tactical.

Like, how am I going to get better at budgeting? Yeah, absolutely. So we want you to put those in the budget. And again most of your goals rely on money to use as a tool, some way, shape or form. So why not put it in the budget, make it tangible. And so that way it is actually something that you can achieve.