Okay, can you actually believe we’re about to say these words? No. Yeah. It’s time to make your January 2025 budget. How are we here already? I don’t know, girl. It’s just went by so fast. Because you blink. If you blink, it’s really your own fault. If you blink and you have kids, it just goes twice as fast.

All right. So we are going to set up. We’re so excited to be here to do this with you. We do it every single month with all of our listeners.

 ​. So we are making January budget guys. We’re so excited to be here, but Yes. Before we can do that. Okay.

We got January coming up. We’re super excited, but we’ve got to close out this month. You got to close out December and see what happened. Yeah. Do we really want to though? I don’t know. It may not be the best month to want to do this, but I think in reality, we probably got to. And you know what? Reviewing December.

is actually going to have a bonus in that you’ll be able to look at next year and plan for next year better. So if you’re looking at December and you’re like I went off the rails, whoopsies, that’s fine. Let’s just use that data to plan for next December better. And another great thing, Shana, our budget system at budgetbesties.

com forward slash buzz it. So you can actually. Go to the Christmas tracker and plug the amount in there that you may have spent this year on Christmas. So that way, Shana said, you have a number, you have something to go by. So when you start your savings buckets for January, you know exactly how much you spent this year on Christmas.

It’s going to help you better prepare for next year. Yeah. So when we say reviewed December, what you’re going to do is look at the budget. And make sure everything matched and when it looks like it didn’t that’s usually what Vanessa’s talking about, especially in this month It was probably I forgot about this party that we had or whatever the little extras that the holiday season really bring So go ahead and put those in your Christmas planner and that way you’ll know for next year Okay, and you just want to update Whatever happened to December and then we’ll be able to move on and be excited about January.

Yeah. So what you want to do is just type over the budget number. So if your water bill was 10 more than you thought it was gonna be, go ahead and update that because we want to get the actuals here. And check it off. Yes, check it off so it dims. So we don’t have another column for quote unquote actual numbers because that’s pointless.

Like we don’t, you don’t need that. We need to know what actually happened. Whatever you budgeted, change those numbers out so that we get a clear picture of how December ended. And it also like I said, if your spending went off the rails, put it in the budget so that we know. If you didn’t do your savings buckets the way that you had planned, that’s fine.

Just put it in the budget so that you have that information. And then, when we go to make January’s budget, we can set everything within the budget. With intention of the way it’s supposed to be, right? Yeah. All right. So those of you that have the budget system, go ahead and open up a whole new system. You have a whole new Google sheet document so that way you can start 2025.

You want to bring over all of your, if you still have debt payments remaining, bring all that over, transfer your asset stuff over. So that way you have, so now you have a whole 2025 basically workbook that you can see what’s going to go on for the new year. Yeah, and this is just a really good time when you’re doing all that, when you’re putting your bills over into the new budget, when you’re putting your, you’re spending and it’s just a good time to review and make sure that this is, It’s really what we want the budget to look like.

Really, I want all these bills. I want all these subscriptions. I love all of them. Or Or not. Or not. Or maybe, something happened where your grocery budget needs to change or whatever. It’s a good time to just like overall think about if there’s any changes to my budget that I want to make.

Yeah. And if you start at the beginning of that workbook, there’s a section for goals. So listen we, we did a podcast on that, a year review and a goals podcast. So you have an opportunity to fill that in your new budget. So it’s really exciting. Okay. So the first thing, Shana, when we Oh, when we do your budget is what?

Income. Yeah. We want to type in all of the income you have for the new year. Yeah, so you might be able to adjust this because maybe you got a raise or maybe something automatically changes when you when you go into the year or maybe your benefits change or your insurance or anything. So just make sure your income is correct.

And this is the first number in the budget because it’s exciting number. And guess what? You can’t do math without having something to work with, right? We can’t budget 0. So we put this in there so that we see exactly what we’re working with. And of course, with our system, it automatically subtracts as we go.

through through the rest of the budget. But for you, if you don’t have it, then you’re just going to write down the income. We’ll see what we’re working with and then we’ll go from there. Yeah. All right. So after you have your income, the next section is your debt column. So you’re going to put the name of the debt and the amount of money that is due for the minimum payment only.

And then the due date, which is really nice in our budget system that way. Why are we only doing the minimum payments? St because we wanna see what happens with the budget before we go and pay anything extra. We’re not paying anything extra until we know, one, we can afford it. And two, we know how much we wanna do.

And really strategize what we, which one we wanna play, pay off or how much we wanna pay off. So we want, that’s gonna take a minute to strategize that specifically right now. We’re just trying to build a budget and we’re seeing what the basics are and that includes the minimums.

And that also allows you to look, when I add all of these minimums up, how much am I paying on debt every month? That’s a good number to have a come to Jesus moment with. Yeah. It’s one of our favorite things to do when we first set up like a new client’s budget. So at the bottom of our budget system, it has, it tallies it up for you.

And so we always like to say, Hey, if you’re paying 2, 400 on minimum payments and debt each month, not including your mortgage. What could you be doing with this money? Think about all the things that it could be funding or paying for or investing in if you weren’t paying paying on it on debt.

Yeah it’s a little enlightening. It’s a fun little exercise. Okay. So after debt, then we’re going to look at our bills. Okay. And yes, we do separate. Those two. Why? Because those bills you’re always going to have, the debts can go away, and we want you to clearly see that. We want you to keep in mind that debt doesn’t, is not permanent.

It is not a death sentence, okay? You can get rid of that, and we want to be able to see our bills separately, because that is another opportunity for an eye opener, right? Especially if this is the first time you’re writing down all the bills that you get to pay. This is a lot of times when our clients say, They’ll come back and be like, okay we canceled this and it downgraded this and I whatever because they were like I didn’t I Wasn’t really thinking in the whole picture of how much I’m paying on bills Yeah And we don’t want your debt payments to just quote unquote get lost up in your bills column like no we want to keep them totally Separate and this is a chance for you to just really look at your bills and going.

What do I want? What do I not want? Why am I paying for this? Why do I have to Netflix subscriptions, when was the last time I recorded my auto insurance? Wow, that seems high like this is a chance for you to really Dig deep and see what you’re paying for. Why are you paying for it? And do you even want to pay for it?

Yeah. And so your bills are anything that you’re invoiced for monthly that you it’s like basically you’re paying the same amount, give or take every month. And you’re going to put, any, your mortgage or utilities, tithing, maybe any subscriptions, any of the memberships that you have, like a gym membership or something.

Maybe certain things that you pay for your kids that come out every month, like daycare or dance lessons or whatever, all of that stuff. It’s going to come out of the bills account and you’re going to put it all in the bills. And what has, what happens is now we’ve got the income, okay? And we have a total down there at the bottom.

We’ve got the debt minimums. We’ve got a total there. We have the bills and we can total that. And now we really see how much money I have to actually live with. To budget, to plan. For what I need every day and what I want in the future. Yeah. So the next column guys is your spending section. And this is like Shana said, this is really where you live in your budget.

This is where all the discretionary spending happens. This is where you’re swiping your car, you’re paying in cash. You are physically buying things. And that’s why we have a lot of people that when they first come on to coaching, they’re like my subscriptions go to my spending cause I’m spending money on them.

And we’re like, no, that’s a bill you’re getting invoiced for them. You get a receipt for that. And so that comes under a reoccurring charge. So that goes into your bills. Your spending is everything like gas that you are going in person and paying for, or that you’re going online and clicking add to cart by now for, so that’s how we want to distinguish the two. Yeah. So different spending categories that you might have, obviously gas, groceries. Those are the main things that you probably spend money on. You’re gonna have personal pocket money, right? For each person, fun stuff for each spouse or whatever. You’re going to have possibly have restaurant money, right?

And so why is that a different amount than the groceries? We want to keep the groceries separate so that’s what we need. That’s what we’re focused on. Funding our life with right to fueling. I should say our restaurants are optional, right? And that’s fine. It’s fine. It’s in there, but we want them to be separate.

And so how much money do we want to spend as a family on restaurants? Or maybe you have it labeled family funds. Sometimes I do that. And then you have other things like maybe babysitter money. Maybe you have a kid’s amount that you put in the budget that way. When they come ask you about that field trip fee, you have the money for it set aside, right?

Or whatever it could be, ice cream, whatever. You’re gonna put a kid’s account is usually a good one to have. What are some other spending categories that we see? Haircuts. Dog sitting, we have I have a client that goes out of town, probably like once a month. So they have a regular dog sitter come in.

We have, I have one client that does yard work over there just cause they pay them in cash and it’s not all the time. It’s just here and there. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah. So you’re going to list out anything like that, that you’re like, Vanessa said, you’re swiping for, or you’re paying cash for that.

You’re spending money on not saving for a rainy day. Or saving for a future date. It’s something that you’re spending money on this month. And so those are like the reoccurring spending things, right? So you’re going to have, your budget’s going to be pretty systematic until you get to the month specific item.

So there are, there will be a couple of things that happen. Okay, I have a birthday this month or I have an anniversary I have to pay for. Maybe there’s a gym membership that you want to join, but it has whatchamacallit, a a joiner’s fee, right? There’s something bigger than the regular monthly bill that’s going to come on, so you have to pay for that.

Maybe you have a work event that’s going on, maybe the kids have a field trip. So you want to, after you put in your reoccurring spending items, you want to at the bottom kind of put in what is specific to this month and what do I need to pay for? Yeah. Okay. So at this point we’ve got, we’ve had our income, and again, our budget system, budget besties.com/budget ha does all of this for you, but you’re gonna have to do it manually if you don’t have it. So we’ve added the income, we’re like, yay, party, look at a lot of money. And then we immediately add up all the debt minimums and we subtract that and we say, okay, this is what we’re, what we what we have after we pay debt.

This is the want want part of your budget. Yes. And so then after that, then we have all the bills. We’ve added those up and now. We know how much we had to actually budget. And so now that you’ve taken your spending out. You are either at zero or you’re getting close, right? And or maybe you’re not, maybe you’re just like super duper doing really great.

Whatever that number is, then we can go ahead and assign it to our goals. Now, goals usually are saving money for different things. And we want you to start setting up savings buckets once you get good at the system so that you can fund all the fun things in your life and all the things that you maybe aren’t even fun, but you have to pay for, right?

So savings buckets will be you. Your annual bills, it’ll be vacations, it’ll be Christmas, it’ll be summer camps, it’ll be vehicle maintenance, home maintenance, all of these different categories for things that you know are coming, those quote unquote unexpected expenses, but that but maybe they don’t come at us, they don’t come monthly.

So we’re going to set aside money for them. Yeah. So we’re going to call these instead of unexpected, we’re going to call them upcoming expected expenses, because we all know that these things are coming like Christmas y’all it’s December 25th every single year your kids birthdays Yeah, they don’t change They’re the same time So we want to make sure we put these in the budget Annual bills that you have people always forget about annual bills like they just forget that prime comes up once a month and it’s 140 dollars a year.

Yeah, once a year. That’s a lot of money to pull out of one month’s budget So you want to put these in your budget divide by 12 and set them in there every single month?

The cool thing about January is, with what Vanessa’s talking about, is that 12 months is really is it’s your opportunity to really start fresh and get these savings buckets started. Again, there’s all kinds of savings buckets, right? That you could do. And we have podcast episodes specifically on those that you can go listen to.

But the idea is just to get started. It doesn’t mean you have to get perfect, right? You’re going to open these savings bucket accounts and just start putting some money out according to your budget.