How to Break Free from Paycheck-to-Paycheck Living: Transforming Your Finances with Intention

We’re coming to you today with our, like, big, our biggest tips, right? For whether it’s podcasting, whether it is, you know for our live calls, our clients, these are three big game changers that we want to come to you today with.

Yeah, if we only had three things that we could tell you it would be these three things. They are big mind blowing things. They’re not small little things. But either way these things, these three, will 📍 be a game changer for your finances.

All right. So the first tip, Shana, the first financial tip that we have is that you absolutely 100 percent need to separate bank accounts, right?

And yes, we don’t have to bank like we did when we were 18. You don’t know how many people come or respond to us. Be like, I didn’t know I could have more than one account. Well, yes, you can. And what we like to say is. You know, things are more complicated financially now than they used to be. You have ever, ever, right.

Yeah. You have, first of all, credit cards weren’t even a thing. However, you know, a generation or two generations for sure ago. Right. We didn’t have so many bills. Like imagine that we didn’t have cell phones. We didn’t have internet. Like we didn’t have the bills, the subscriptions. We, there weren’t even a thing, right.

The plan that you had or that your grandparents had was like stuffing money in a tin can. That was your great savings buckets plan. So, and that’s all fine. But that’s not what the modern age that we live in is way more complicated. So what we want you to do is use as many modern tools as you can to your advantage.

And that is why we want to open separate bank accounts. It just, it’s going to, it’s going to organize and declutter your finances in the easiest way possible. So think about if you have one bank account, how many transactions do you have going on in that bank account? It’s really, it gets really, really convoluted.

So think about having a couple separate accounts where you can really keep track of what’s going on, right? Yeah. So obviously the ones that we teach, you know, the most bare minimum, you want to have a bills account, you want to have a spending account and then maybe a savings account, right? Okay. And so what Vanessa is saying is when we have only the bills in the bills account, you can very quickly look and see exactly what’s going on with your bills.

Right. And you don’t have to go through a million transactions of when you went to target, when you went to Costco, along with your bills, along with, I hope some of this money gets, is able to be set aside for, you know, whatever random savings goal that you have. Right. So they’re all, the bills are all separate.

The same with their spending. If you know. At least the bare minimum is what we teach. If you have one spending account where all the non bill money is going, then at least, you know, the bills are paid and, and you can try to like live in this spending account without affecting the bills. And you can just try to live within that budget.

Well, think about when you go to the store, you’re usually like. swipe, you’re probably checking your bank app going, what went through? What hasn’t gone through? I see this money, but is it all mine? Can I spend it? What’s pending? What’s coming out tomorrow? Like there are so many questions around the money that’s in your one account where everything is coming out of.

So if you can think about separating it, like Shana said, separate and have one account that just pays bills. Nothing else happens in that account. You don’t, you’re not using the debit card. You’re not spending it. Spending out of there. The only thing that that account, like it’s only job is to pay your bill payments and your debt payments.

Okay. And then you have a completely separate account that you do all of your spending out of. Now we do have some people that, that break it up and have a couple of spending accounts. However, let’s start with one, have one spending account that you transfer a certain amount of money into. every single paycheck.

And you know that that is your budget to spend out of. Like Shana said, this is kind of where you live in your budget. Yeah. And like Vanessa said, it could get more complicated and it does. And we can teach you about that too, if you want to come join us for coaching or in our budget system, but it just, it would be so good if you just started there.

And so then you, you know, imagine just having all this money over here set aside and all your bills are getting paid automatically that all by itself frees up your time and brain calories, like. I hope it doesn’t bounce, or I hope that I had enough, or do I need to wait for this next paycheck? If you can just get that set up and then like Vanessa said, you just have to learn to live within that spending budget that you’ve transferred over.

It is going to be a good, a game changer. And then once we get good at that, we can maybe get a little bit more sophisticated. Yeah. And so the next step of that, you know, the bills account, the spending account, and then like Shana was talking about earlier, having a savings account. If you can have a couple savings account that are designated to specific things, right?

So maybe you have one just for annual bills, all the annual bill subscriptions that come up every year, your HOA fees, things like that. Maybe you have one just for travel, like you know how much money you’re going to spend on travel this year and you want to make sure that that is going to get covered.

So you’re specifically putting a certain amount of money in there. For travel and then maybe Christmas, right? So you can break it down however much you want. Like she said, it can get really convoluted. We can, you can add as many as you want. You can keep it as simple as you want. But the idea here is to separate your bank accounts and have like specific ones that are doing specific things.

Yeah. And, and we want it to be. We want you to use these tools to your advantage, not try to budget like when you were 18, your life is more complicated. Your finances are more complicated. You need it better. Okay. Right. So I want you to know like, that’s, Oh, that’s okay. We’re just going to plan for it.

Right. And you need your financial system to be able to account for all of that and, and we’ll get to it, but we want to also make it automatic. So okay. So the second tip is that you can be bougie on a budget. You guys, you may have heard us say it before, but here’s the deal. We, we, you know, you guys come to us because.

Some of the other opportunities for, but for how to get your finances together, seem a little scary. Maybe they, they seem like I, it’s too harsh. It’s too hard. And so we want you to know you hear it in our intro. You heard it in our intro. You can pay off debt. You can build wealth and have your pumpkin spice lattes.

Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of people that come to us and think that it’s one way or the other, like I can live. Or you have to live off beans and rice. I can pay off debt or I can do this, but we, we have really seen over the last five years that you can do both at the same time, all of our clients have, they don’t want to live on that scarcity mindset and only like only focus on paying on debt or only focus on investing and they can’t really live in the day to day right now.

Right. And so, you know, you’ve heard us say it before, but the budgets don’t have to be the B word, you know, with the bad connotation. It could be fun. Like if you, if you put all of these things into your budget, then you’re excited. You’re, you have permission to spend. Maybe you have, you know, your glam up fund, or maybe you have a, Or maybe you have this family entertainment fund.

And so now your budget is allowing you to live the life that you want to live according to what you find important and what you value, which is the whole point of being bougie on a budget, right? It’s like you can be the version of your bougie that you want to be, but you can, you just have to put it in the budget.

It doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means the budget is going to To reflect that. Right. And so when we talk about the B word, the budget, it’s like a lot of people don’t want to do a budget. They think they make too much money. They don’t want to do a budget. They don’t have to do a budget. It’s restrictive.

I, you know, I’ve always, I’ve only heard like negative things about a budget, but listen, words and numbers on paper doesn’t make a budget. Okay. If you’re not doing anything with it, you’re just putting data on paper and you’re not, you don’t have anything that’s tied to it. What we want you to do is set up this system like Shannon was talking about.

Put it in the budget. You can build wealth and you can pay off debt. Okay. You can have separate bank accounts. All that equates to having a system which gives you the permission to spend, which gives you this lifestyle of being bougie on a budget, which allows you to do just so much more things and it allows you to enjoy your life.

Yeah. So like Vanessa said, you don’t need another budget. You need a budget system. And that’s the third tip here is we want to teach you how to put your budget on autopilot. So what did we say? We said, let’s separate the bank accounts. It’s going to make it easier on your brain. Right. And let’s say, we said, the budget is going to give you permission to spin.

That’s, you can be bougie on a budget.

But now the third tip is you can put that budget, you can get it set up and then you can like not have to lift a finger. You can like let it run in the background while you’re doing all the cool things that you want to do in your life. And that is the, that’s what we want for you.

Yeah. So think about your, your bank, this system being your personal assistant. You’ve set it up that way. It’s doing all the work for you and you don’t really have to do anything. And like Shana said, it’s. It’s paying your bills. It’s filling your savings buckets. It’s filling your spending accounts. Like all of these things are happening and it’s hands off and you can go enjoy your busy life because we don’t have time to do that.

And what we also know is that the more you touch it more manually, you’re in there touching your stuff in the bank account and transfers and all that. You’re messing it up. Sorry. We love you, but you probably are. But it’s just true. It’s fact check. True. Okay. And so to automate it, what are you going to do?

You’re going to set up the budget, right? According to how we teach you. And by the way, go to BudgetBesties. com forward slash budget if you want to know how to do it, right? We can teach you. But the idea is you set up your budget and you have income, you have your debt payments, you have your bills, you have your spending, and you have your savings.

You put all of, all of that on your budget and then we’re going to automate it. What’s going to happen? I’m going to put all of my income into my bills account. All my bills are going to get paid automatically. According to my budget, I’m transferring. automatically transferring to my spending and savings account according to what I put in my budget.

Automatically. So it happens every week, it happens every other week, depending on the system that you set, right? And you know what’s other parts of this automatic system? You can rename your bank accounts. So that’s the best part. It’s so fun. You can rename your bank accounts. You can put notes on your transfers.

You can, your bank can you can set it up to transfer, like I just said, either, You know, the first and the 15th, maybe, or every two weeks starting on a specific date, or you can have it be every week. You can make this budget system automatic according to what you want. And here’s the thing too, guys.

If your bank doesn’t do those things, you need to find a bank that will, because they want your business and you’re in charge here. They’re not in charge. You are hiring them to do a job for you. If they’re not the right bank, then you can find somebody else. So, but listen to like really. The notes on the transfers, setting up the automatic transfers, all of that.

Like, I don’t know if you heard the main word here was automatic, right? Important. It’s a really, really important autopilot, all of that. Anything auto we’re for, we’re, we’re really, really for just because it’s going to make your life that much easier. Yeah. So just imagine. You know, Vanessa likes to say, you know, her husband gets paid on Wednesday and everything that they do gets funded on Thursday. So she wakes up in the morning, right? And her kid’s school account is funded.

Her grass fund is funded. Her groceries is funded. Her bills are, have been paid automatically, maybe while she was sleeping, like everything that’s in her budget is funded automatically. When she wakes up, she doesn’t have to do it. And like she said, The more we have to do it, the more we mess it up. Or we’re not going to do it.

Right. So what happens if you don’t automate it is the money sits there and it accidentally gets spent or accidentally does this or whatever happens. And then you don’t know how much you really have and you didn’t make the transfer and it just becomes a mess. So what we want you to do is automatically.

And then all you have to do literally is spend money. Like it’s kind of, that’s, that’s sign me up. Yes. Shout out to reshark because that’s really all she she, she’s like, okay, just tell me how much I can spend and when I can spend it. And that’s what this will show you. You’ll be able to and our, our client’s favorite part is like logging in, seeing their bank accounts, seeing all their savings buckets went up and seeing that they have money to spend for groceries, for going out, whatever it is they want to do.

And. And then the bills are being paid automatically. My client yesterday said to me, she’s like, I love the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want. And, but, and then she goes, but here’s my guardrails. Yeah. Right. Cause she said, I don’t want you to track your expenses and track your spending. Like nobody wants to do that.

And she doesn’t either, but she loves having the separate accounts. Cause she knows exactly how much she can spend in that category. And she’s, and free to spend whenever she wants, but she said, but right here, like, like I’m putting my hands up like side by side, right here. These are her guardrails and she loves it.

Yeah. And the guardrails are, are, are set by you. Right. It’s again, we didn’t say it’s not restrictive. It’s you, you only get a hundred dollars to spend a week because you’re planning to go on vacation next year. Right. Or because you have this big dream of being debt free, whatever it’s all based on you and what you want.

And it is very freeing to know, like, it’s not that I can’t spend money. It’s just that I’m going to stick with this amount each week So that I can hit my other goals. And I know that while I get to go to Starbucks, I also know all my goals are happening and they’re all being done automatic. Well, and I like how you said like, this is how much I want to spend because that’s what I said.

I want to spend like you are the one that are in charge. You’re in charge of your own budget here. We have so many clients and they’re all, every single one of their budgets is different as it should be. We want them to be, to be not cookie cutter, right? Specifically it’s aligned to their goals, what they have going on, what’s important to them.

And we have some people that have. $50 a week for spending money. We have some people that have $200 a week for, it’s just based on what they have available and what feels good to them. Yep. Okay. So just to recap, these were our big three financial tips. You’re gonna set, have separate bank accounts.

You’re gonna set up your budget so you can be bougie on a budget, and then we’re gonna automate that entire budget. The entire system is gonna be automated. It’s make your life awesome. You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna tell all your friends about this episode because this is like three huge, like Shayna said, game changers.

And listen, you may want to do all of these at once. We recommend do one at a time, like separate your accounts, start there. Then let’s talk about being bougie in a budget. What does that mean to you? Okay. Then let’s put your budget on autopilot. If you try to do everything at once, it is a little overwhelming, just like anything, right?

So just do one at a time. All right. Hope that you find these helpful. And like Vanessa said, please share this with a friend and we’ll see you next time.