Vanessa, today we’re going to tell them all about savings buckets. I think this is where the bread and butter is with our budget. I just had a session this morning with this client and he goes, he just kept saying the word unexpected expenses, all these things that pop, all these things that I just didn’t plan for.

And, I told him, I said, yes, the reality is, We want to have a place to save for those because you’re paying 3, 500 in minimum payments right now, which is not allowing you to save for those quote unquote unexpected expenses. But when we lay all the system out and we show you guys what it’s for, people are, they’re so excited to be able to get to this point.

Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely it’s the final step in an amazing, awesome budget that you’re really excited about. And let’s give a little example just to just start it off. You may have heard us both speak of it before. Both of our girls play volleyball and now travel.

Now they both play travel volleyball up that we went right to the next level of that. And this is a perfect example of quote, unquote, unexpected expenses. So if your club is anything like ours, they’ll give you a little orientation and the coach would be your club dues are going to be 2, 000 a season.

And then you might think, okay, I need to set aside easy. So fine. Let me do that real quick. I’ll set aside 2, 000 all done. But then Vanessa, then what? Then what? Then you have knee pads, right? Then you have, Oh, but the uniform is this much. Normally it’s like the club fees and then they have uniform fees.

And then we have. We have hotel fees, we have food fees, we have entrance fees, parking fees all of that on top of that. So there is a lot more included in just the play fee. Yeah. And so what a savings bucket, the idea of a savings bucket is. We want to plan on purpose for those quote unquote unexpected expenses on purpose So we’re gonna list these kind of things all of these things out and then save for all of it Not just the one little bill that they told us about and we want to apply, you know So our savings buckets is going to include the Jews.

It’s going to include the membership fees It’s going to include equipment that they might need. It’s gonna all of that. It’s gonna be in there So that way whenever those things come up we have the money But, and that’s what a savings bucket does is it plans for a future expense, a big one. And especially when I said all the things that maybe we wouldn’t think of right off the bat.

And because what you want to be able to do is in the moment when all of this is happening, when you’re watching your daughter get that kill, I get the ACE, when they’re, if they’re a setter, set up the right the right person to be able to get that kill. Like you want that moment to be priceless for you.

You want to be able to be in the moment. You want to be able to be fully focused and not having to think about the finances. So I think that if we can get all this money aside in this savings bucket. Then all you have to do from that point on is just like pay for it And you don’t have to think about all that yeah, and it’s okay And just to wrap it up with a bow here It’s like you know a lot of times people use credit card for this right they use credit card because they don’t have a plan For unexpected expenses, and so we’re gonna just take that remember that I think it was MasterCard It’s everywhere you want to be or whatever And they just would have the commercial and be like, knee pads, 35 hotel in Orlando, 600.

Not that I know recently. Watching her get that kill priceless. And that’s what we want to take all the stress out of this. You’re going to pay for it anyway. So we might as well take the stress out of it and let you be able to enjoy These moments. And so we’re basically replacing the MasterCard with the savings bucket here.

And so you have the cash ahead of time because you don’t want to come back from that trip or, the seven hour trip that I just came back from last night and be thinking about that the whole way of Oh my gosh, I just racked up all this debt. How am I going to be able to pay this off? Oh, I have another one in two weeks, right?

We want to know that cash is already accounted for. And like all you had to do is swipe a debit card and you’re done. Yeah. So today we’re talking about our savings bucket system, what we teach and what we want you to set up for yourself so you can feel really good about your finances.

And so savings buckets are just a next level budgeting super tool, right? They are a savings account with a purpose. We’ve heard you say before, I need to save money. We are not here for, I need to save money. We don’t know how much that is. We don’t know what it’s for. A savings bucket tells us exactly how much and what it’s for.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Yeah. So basically what we’re doing is saying goodbye to all the financial surprises. When my client this morning was talking about all these. Unexpected expenses. It’s and he kept saying what did he said things like oil change and car maintenance and something else that there was, but these were all things that we can come to expect.

They weren’t actually unexpected. And when I was explaining to him this is what we want to solve. We want to solve the problem of all these things that are coming up in the moment. And he was like, Oh, that makes so much sense. So that’s what we want for you. We want you to have all that peace knowing that.

All this stuff throughout the year, not monthly, cause monthly stuff is in the budget, right? But all this stuff that comes out throughout the year is covered. Yeah. And I, it’s sometimes you don’t know the date. Sometimes you do, it’s not that you don’t, you may not know the wind, it’s coming and that’s what a savings book is for.

You may not have the wind exactly nailed down, but yeah, no, it’s coming. You’re going shopping for Christmas, all of that kind of stuff. So that’s what they’re for. And really, so what we want you, what we’re going to teach you to do today is to figure out what those are for you, figure out how to fund them and then how to automate them.

Because What we want is that your savings are automatic. So Vanessa will always, tell her clients, look, you have 4, 800 of spending. You just live there. Don’t worry. Everything else is taken care of. And that’s, and so you just have to live in this 4, 800 of spending. When we say that we mean all of your bills are being paid and all of your savings buckets are being funded.

So as long as you don’t touch any of that, or, and you just stay in your spending, your life is good. Your life is planned and done. So that’s what we’re going to do. Talk about today is how to automate those savings. Yeah. And I want to go back to that really quickly. Imagine being able to say, okay, I have 4, 800 this month to spend on gas, groceries, personal pocket money, kids, or whatever.

And my, all my buckets are being funded. Christmas is funded. My vacation in three months is being funded. All my bills are being paid. That’s what we want for you. We want that the automatic of the automation, I guess you would say of your budget happening. And then you all you’re driving to the next level, right?

And then all you have to do is really live your life. Yeah. Yeah. Which is not that’s a big deal. Okay. So what are savings buckets? I really like this when we did this with the spending, like what is spending, what’s not spending. So what are savings buckets? They’re not anything that’s in your spending your spending.

So a lot of times this is where it gets confused. We just had it last week on a call. They were confused about it. It’s not stuff that you’re spending monthly. You’re spending on the groceries monthly. You’re not Saving for that. You’re spending it. Yeah. And I, so when we had a call with the lady and she’s I have savings buckets for my groceries.

And she was talking about having to move money over to spending when she buys the groceries. And I was like no. I felt like we failed. Yeah. I like we, so we want to be super clear on this. Your savings buckets are things that happen every now and then throughout the year, right? So think of all the big stuff, Christmas, birthdays, holidays, travel, right?

All of that stuff that is, it’s not spending. And what we want to do is have a designated account specifically for all of these planned expenses that are coming up throughout the year. Yeah and you will eventually spend the money, but it’s not regularly every month. So that’s how you know it’s not savings.

And then they are what they are designated accounts for planned expenses. So when we go into all of these, we’re going to tell you, you’re going to, you’re going to figure out what it is. Accounts and categories make sense for you. And then you’re going to plan how much you need to spend on them.

And then you’re going to open a separate account for each one of the categories. That’s the idea behind the savings. Yeah. And we don’t get too in the weeds here about like specific categories. Some people are like, Oh, do I have to open up an account for every single different vacation I’m taking?

It’s no, you can, but that’s in the weeds. We just want one vacation account, one Christmas account, one for gifts, just if you can bulk them into those bigger categories, it just make more sense. Yeah. And they’re also not emergency. So I think that, that is a big difference.

So an emergency is something actually unexpected, something urgent and something necessary. So when, if before, yeah. So we’ll just think of like your refrigerator. Yeah. Important. Seems really important. Or some sort of like your window breaks because of a hurricane. Seems like an emergency to me.

Okay. That’s what an emergency is. So we’re not talking about that. That is set aside for things that we actually can’t plan, but we know probably something along the line will happen, right? These are the savings buckets are something that we are expecting. They’re urgent and that we’re going to have to pay for them.

But they’re not like they’re not in the month must happen or else my life cannot continue to go on, right? And again, there are savings with a purpose, right? So you are specifically putting money aside for these things that you know are coming up And they usually happen pretty regularly, right?

You know in our let’s In example, in our home account, we probably have air filters. Those happen. You need to change those out. If you have, if you’re a homeowner, those are important. Fridge filters, right? Batteries are super cheap. No, just kidding. Save for those, right? It’s just things that you know that you’re going to spend money on light bulbs.

If you know that you put weed killer down every year in your yard, Hey, let’s put that in the budget. So that way. When your husband says, Hey babe, I need 200 for spring yard stuff. You’re not like, what did you just say? Hey babe, we’ve been saving for that all year. Go ahead and take it out of the home fund.

Or more likely when he says it at the end of the pay period and you spend all the money and all the, everything’s gone. And then it has to happen this weekend because that’s the only weekend that we can possibly do it. That we don’t want that for you anyway. And so some examples are like when I said was home repairs, she said travel, Christmas a lot of times any annual bills that you have that might go in there.

Whether it’s property taxes or insurance, just some of the bigger stuff. Those are all birthdays. We’ve talked about that before. Vehicle repairs. So those are some examples of that, of the savings buckets. Yeah. All right. And so how do we set this up? So we’ve listed what they are and some examples of some.

So how do we actually set this up. You want to list some categories now, listen, every single person’s budget is different as it should be. It’s your life. Very specific to what you have going on. Some people want, like I said they want to buy a savings account for every single different vacation.

That’s fine. You can, but list out your specific categories. So if you go to budgetbesties. com forward slash savings, we actually have a list there for you to look at. Cause some people get really hung up.

Like we said in the weeds, I’m like I can’t start this cause I don’t have my categories. And obviously it has to be more complicated. No, literally we’re talking about vehicle fund. Home fund, travel fund, gift fund, right? What are they? Pet fund and annual bills. I think those are probably your big five right there.

Yeah. And here’s the deal. You’re going to look at the list and you’re going to see which ones apply to you and which ones don’t. And and you can, and then actually I think a lot of times it prompts people to think of other stuff. One time my client had an electronic repair or replacement.

She didn’t like new computers or whatever. Like I’ve never thought of that one before, but that’s what came up for her as they were going through. The listen and brainstorming. So that’s what you’re actually going to do. You’re going to list out the categories that you think makes sense. Remember, Vanessa says all the time, the object is not to get it right.

A hundred percent. The object is to have something to start with, to have something going on. As you get better at budgeting, you might find some more things that you add in, but don’t let perfection be the goal here. We’re just going to get a rough draft. We’re going to get started. And as we go, we might add or take away some things.

Yeah. So you’re just going to brainstorm that the amounts that are needed for those categories. Again, not about getting it a hundred percent. It’s about just starting. Yeah. Cause if you have, if if you don’t even know how much you spend on Christmas, like I get it. And you’re like, okay I think I’m going to put 5, 000 in this category and then budget that over the next couple of months that is better than having nothing.

So we want to do that. All right. So then the next thing you want to do is now that you have the category the category type, then you have. A close number of what you think you’re going to spend in that category for the year. You’re going to divide it by the amount of months that it’s going to take you. , I’m going to give you an example of kind of what that looks like to brainstorm an amount needed. Let’s talk about pets because it’s like a shorter category. So if you have animals, which most of us do, we love them so much, love and they’re not expensive.

They’re not expensive. They’re so cheap. All these free animals that we get guys are so cheap. Okay. So you’re going to get, you’re probably going to take them to the vet once a year. They’re probably going to get their annual shots as well. You’re probably going to have heartworm if you have a dog or cat heartworm and flea medicine, right?

So there’s that. And then maybe you have grooming, grooming. If you have grooming in there, which you didn’t know was going to be a thing when you agreed to the dog, when you bought your dog. Yep. And then some people also want to a lot, like a certain amount for toys and treats per year.

So they’re like, I maybe spent a hundred dollars a year on that. So we have all that. And then honestly, I really want to add like an emergency buffer in there because. Cats can reach through the fence and poke your dog in the eyeball, speaking from experience, and that just happens.

So we want to probably budget in there a little bit of an emergency fund for pets because they, this does come up. Didn’t your pet, he just had an ear infection, right? Did you have an ear infection? Yes. Love that for them. So figure out, yeah. So let’s figure out exactly what we need in those categories.

And then you probably round about, no, cause they probably stuck out. Cause it was super expensive of how much the annual visits are the flea, all that. So let’s add up all that, figure out exactly how much you need for the year and how much they cost you for the year. Now, what I didn’t say in here was dog food, right?

Or cat food, because that is something you spend usually monthly. So that goes in the monthly budget. That’s what we really want to differentiate. Okay. Things that you are going to spend monthly on do not go in the savings bucket tracker. Yeah, and so you’re going to do that sort of process for all of them annual bills your vehicle maintenance your christmas your birthdays All of that different stuff just brainstorm again, not with the object of getting it perfect, but to get started what you think you spend in a year and then you’ll take that number What you think you spend in a year and you’re going to divide it by 12 And for the most like generically to see what you need to be putting into your savings buckets each month, right?

So if you come up with 5 000 like she said for christmas six is that 600? 600 Seems fine. Twelve, twelve times six hundred. You’re going to have to do six hundred dollars a month toward Christmas, and then that’s going to be your saving bucket amount. So you’re going to do that for all of them. Yeah.

And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to find an amazing bank that allows you to have multiple savings accounts with no fees, no minimum amounts required and balance transfer limitations and all that. And we want to have a separate bank account, a separate savings account for each one of these categories.

And then you get to name them something fun. Yeah, like my pet’s name is, my pet’s account is named after my dog, so I don’t know how fun that is, but it is what it is, and I told you that’s a spending account, but I wanted to rename the groceries Feed the Horde, I feel like that’s fair but what we want to do the only other thing I want, the caveat about calculating is if, let’s say you’re starting, we’re recording this in February, let’s see, say you’re starting a bucket that was due in December, which would be Christmas, right?

in February, then you would divide that annual amount instead of by 12, but I’d be 11, right? So you do need to think about if I need, if let’s say I have a vacation in July and I only have four months to save up for it, then I need to calculate the monthly number by that number of months. That’s why I said generically, it would be 12 because hopefully once you get caught up, then you can, from then on always have 12 months to fund a bucket, but just keep that in mind as you start making these buckets.

Yeah. And I think that the important part here is just to start. So if you divide it, obviously travel is happening. So you 100 percent need that money in four months or whatever. But if you’re looking at maybe you overshot the amount for Christmas and you’re like, listen, I don’t know if I can put 600 fine.

Put 500 do. Do something like we talked about the beginning. Something is better than nothing. So if you divide it by three, four, five, six, and it’s too much divided by 12 and just see yeah, that is more manageable and I can do that. And even if I don’t have all the money that I need maybe, you’re getting a bonus at that point.

So you can supplement with that, for this first year. Yeah. But just get started. And the other thing that we do, and this is like a tip, so maybe we should have waited, but oh here we are talking about it now. The other thing that we do is, let’s say we have that maybe it’s a wedding, right?

And we’re funding, all your budget really can afford because you have other goals is like 200 a month. Right and but when the month of the wedding comes up then we pause everything else and get if you don’t have it all Saved up in the bucket We would use that from the spinning to fund them to fill it out if I need to in the moment If I couldn’t get it all saved up So I think what Vanessa said so important if you can’t fund it fully when you look at that All of these dreams you have for all these savings buckets and you can’t just start with something because that just watching that stack up, watching the discipline of doing it, wanting it, watching it automatically build is going to really be a good feeling for you.

And I think what Shana is saying is important. When she says, if the month comes and you don’t have all the money, you’re going to. You’re going to take it from something else in the budget. Meaning if you were putting extra money on debt that month, we’re going to pause that month, that one month, and be able to fund the rest of that wedding, travel, vacation, or whatever it is for that month.

And then the next month, then you can go back to, and you can divide it by 12 or whatever the next goal is, right? And you can get, get back on track. But pausing that one month isn’t going to really hurt you that much. And plus you have to realize it’s still a win. So maybe that month you didn’t pay as much on debt as you wanted, but hey, you just funded this whole vacation in cash.

That is a huge win. Yeah. Yeah. And then again, with the longterm goal is you’ll be able to do, you’ll have 12 months to fund everything. Once you get on that cycle, then you’re going to, it’s going to be much, hopefully much less of a monthly burden and it’ll feel better. And so then the last thing, once you create those accounts and you’ve named them something fun, then you’re going to automate and we’re going to get detail into this in the next the next episode, but you will, Basically take whatever that amount that you’ve come up with monthly.

You’re going to apply your pay schedule to it. So if it’s every two weeks, if it’s weekly, if it’s once a month, whichever one that is, and you’re going to transfer that amount to your savings bucket, you’re going to set that up automatically. on the pay schedule to start whenever you get paid. And it’s going to be amazing.

So Shannon, why, how is this different when, then when people come to us and they go Hey, I’m actually pulling 300 from my paycheck every month through my HR department and it’s going into a savings account. How is this different than that? There’s a lot of things I think that make a difference different.

But one, you’re planning, you’re saving on purpose. That’s what we said. It’s with the purpose. This random savings is makes it very easy for you to steal from because you don’t know what it’s for your, and you’re not really counting on it being there for something in the future versus when you’re doing this.

You are, we have the joke. If you put your daughter’s name on it and you say Melanie’s wedding, you’re probably not going to steal from it as much as you would. Some random thing that’s just called savings that you don’t really know what it’s for. So it helps with that. And I think that we have a lot of people, and we’ve said this on previous podcasts, they come to us when we go to make their budget and they’re like, yeah, but I’m saving, whatever amount over here every month.

And I’m like, okay, but how many days into the month before you pull it? And they’re like, like five, right? Because Shayna said, you’re literally. Going off of this. I should be, I think I need to be other people are doing this. So I’m going to do a bandwagon of trying to quote unquote, save money, but it doesn’t have a purpose.

So if you stop, and if you guys are doing that right now stop all automatic transfers through your payroll department. Like we’re not doing that. We’re going to do it on your end through your bank because you are more in control. And if you ever need to pause or change the amount, you don’t need to ask permission for that.

You can do it in an instance right on your bank app. So what we want to do is. Stop all that. Create, take the time to create all these savings buckets, categories, the amounts, and then you’re going to set up these automatic transfers. So that way you’re still doing the same thing, but you’re doing it now with a purpose.

Yeah. And I think the other thing that might be missing if people are doing that is one, they’re pulling from that because of the categories that we’re talking about in the savings book. It’s Oh crap. I had to go to I didn’t have money. So they’re pulling from it because they don’t have the money.

And that’s going to solve that on the one hand. And the other hand is we have a budget now, like we have a budget that tells us, what things need to happen and we’re accounting for everything. And when you can’t, when you’re not doing that’s when it becomes difficult to do that. So why, but why?

Tell me why. Why do we love savings buckets? Yeah. Honestly, I think we talked about it in the previously. It just, it stops all the financial stress and it stops all this last minute scramble when you’re looking for money for these quote unquote unexpected expenses that we love so much.

Yeah. And the big thing is it’s not a giant hit to the budget all at once, like Vanessa said when it’s the end of the pay period, you’ve already, you’re already living on the pantry shopping and stuff. And their husband comes and says, Hey, I need 300 for yard supplies. No, we don’t, but also the big ones, like 2, 000 for for volleyball tournament fees or whatever.

So we want to be able to take that big chunk and make it smaller. So it doesn’t feel as scary when it comes in that month. That’s just like this morning when my client He’s I have to pay 1, 400 every three months for my insurance payment because he pays quarterly. And I said, or you could save 480 a month and have it every three months and it’s all ready to go.

And he’s Oh, that’s way more manageable. I’m like, it is. So it makes it simple and clear and visually. Like when you automate that, you set that up and you have an annual savings bucket and you set up the amount of money that you need to go in there every single month it makes it so clear for you to know exactly how much money you need and when you need it.

And you have it available. It’s I just love when we, set this up for clients. And they’re like, I had the money. That’s the number one thing. I think you have a story with a client with her tires, right? She needed tires and she normally wouldn’t have had the money. She went to get her tire repaired.

Oh, by the way, you need all four fine. Great. I have an account for that. Like it just, I think it’s like this massive weight lifted off of your shoulders. Yeah. The thing I hear over and over is I knew where the money was coming from. And that’s cause the money’s always going to be, we’re going to have to find, but like I said, a lot of times it’s a scramble, it’s stressful, but when I go to the vehicle.

Place or when I go to the vet, I know where the, I know I can afford it. I’ve already set it aside . And I know where it’s coming from and that taking away any of that guesswork is really what makes it feel really fan, really fancy. . You know what else is fancy is when you look at it, if it becomes like gamified, when you open your bank app, you start seeing all of these different savings buckets add up.

It feels like you’re winning a game. And you are winning a game, but it’s exciting to see it to all add up, when you know that you can live your life over there and you’re spending accounts and you can watch your savings accounts continuously build every month and know that you have the money.

Like Shannon said, I know where it’s coming from. I can just see it like adding and it is a game. Yeah, it is exciting and you will get more excited about saving money than you do spending. We hear it all the time over and over again, clients saying, I am so much more aware of what’s happening and why I’m spending my money and how I’m spending my money just by having a budget and just by separating the needs, like all your needs, which are your spending stuff from your wants, which are your savings accounts.

Yeah. And then we’re going to talk about this in a minute, but when you add that and you put all that money into a high yield savings account and it’s actually making you money, like that’s next level. You are now super duper adulting. You’re so good. We’re so proud of you. And it’s really exciting.

I had a client one time when the first month, I think first month she made 700 in interest by putting everything into a high yield savings account after we divvied up all her accounts. And she was like, I have never. Never thought that I could do that. She was spending that much money a month in her credit cards.

It was crazy, but watching it all build every single month in her savings accounts, it’s like it’s like free money to her. It is free money and we need all the free money we can get people. Okay. So we went through it, but just in case we missed any and like when I said, budgetbesties.

com forward slash savings to find a list, but common savings buckets, home maintenance, car maintenance, medical annual bill, travel. Christmas kids activities love those pets personal Claire care or as we call it now glam up Car replacement is a big one wedding maybe tuition for college or in our case private school for our kids So those are some common ones.

Yeah. And we just want to talk about just a couple of success stories with this. We had a client who had multiple weddings and graduations, like in one time she had, I think she had six or seven kids. They were, she was amazing, but she had a lot coming up in the next couple of months.

And she didn’t know how she was going to pay for it. And when we really actually just made a plan. She thought, Oh my gosh, I can afford all this. But she didn’t know that she could. So we set up, a wedding fund. We set up a college graduation fund. Cause she had, I think two, two graduating one.

Anyways, she had multiple things going on, but at the end of all of this, she was actually able to fund all of it for her kids. And it was so nice to know that the money was there. Cause again, she. Could not believe that she could afford it because everything was everywhere. She had one account where everything was coming out of and there was no plan.

Yeah. And then we had another client, like you mentioned before, she pulled up to get one tire, fix a flat. I think it’s what she was hoping. And then they were like, nope, you need all four tires, which I know they always say, but she’s pretty smart. So I think she, she knew whether they were getting her or not.

And they were, she was like, okay. And they were set. Wait, what? Because usually people are really stressed. Like how she’s here’s my card. They’re like, why aren’t you stressed about this? Why aren’t you like, having any pushback? And she’s I have the money go take it. I need to get back to work.

And so that was, and we hear that again and again, I knew I had the money and it was such, it felt so nice. And then we had another client, she had an annual bills savings bucket and she, propane. I have these clients that live up North and you have like massive propane bills every quarter or whatever.

And she was really hard for her to fund. And so she put the money aside every single month. And then when that bill came, she was able to pay for it in cash. And she wasn’t scrambling in the winter to try to figure out how she was going to keep her house warm. And I think, I don’t remember the details, but she had a really funny story, like she needed it, but she usually had to wait till like really needed it because she didn’t have the money, but she was low or whatever.

The guy was, it was, she made it sound like an ice cream truck, like he was just driving around giving propane and she’s Oh, I’ll take some. And, but for her to know she had the money, she didn’t have to wait till the last minute because she didn’t have any money like that. And she could just be like, come on over.

I have the money. I’m not scared of you to give me a bill. That was totally different for her. And that’s what a savings bucket can do. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So what are some best practices when we talk about setting all this up? This is probably the thing that makes people the most excited when we talk about setting up their budget are these savings buckets and they do want to do them immediately.

It’s one of the things we hear. I had a client, I think they’re going on almost two years now. And my very first session with them, she’s like yeah, everything’s great, but I want to do savings buckets. I’m like, yeah, that’s all great, but you can’t afford it. Now she can, but at the very beginning she couldn’t.

I think our first best practice here is to start small. If you can only put 50 or a hundred dollars into those savings buckets now, then that’s fine. Start somewhere. And then as you. Eliminate debt and create more wiggle room in your budget or you make more money, whatever, whatever situation you’re in, then that can allow you to build your savings buckets more and just add more into them every month.

Yep. And then another best practice is to use a bank that allows multiple accounts. Remember, we always tell you the bank works for you, not the other way around. So get a good bank. You don’t have to stick with the bank that you’ve already had. Find one that will give you multiple accounts, allow you to rename them, no fees, all of that, because you, and then, and they have a good bank app too.

You need something that has user friendly bank app and then that is the bank that you’re going to go with and they are out there. So do some digging. I know we’ve talked about one of our, some of our favorites and our Facebook group is really great about giving some suggestions as well.

All right, the next thing you want to do is automate the deposits on payday. So we talked about that. This shirt earlier. You want to figure out the amount of money that you’re going to put in those accounts every single month. And then if you get paid twice a month, you’ll divide that by two and then you will put that money in every single time you get paid.

So it is out of sight, out of mind. It’s done automatically and you don’t have to think about it. Another best practice is to involve your family in the planning. So this is going to vary depending on how how your life is lived. But you pro if you’re like me, you’re not going to be the one that plans the vehicle maintenance fund.

You’re going to really have to have a conversation with your spouse about that. Totally fine. But a lot of them, you’re going to want to have a conversation with your spouse. You’re going to want to brainstorm it together. You want to dream together, right? And then also some of these, we really want to bring the kids in on the conversation, especially when it comes to their activities or their camps, or even sometimes like vacation, stuff like that, so that they can see what we’re planning.

We’re here for you. We’ve got a plan for you, but this is the plan. And what do you think about the plan? How do we want to do the plan? What’s the most I need you to be on board with the plan. Yeah. I think that you had a conversation with them one, one year, okay, you can pick from these camps.

We’re not doing all of them, but which ones are most important to you. And then I will make those happen, but I’m not doing every single one or whatever. So this is when you can have that kind of conversation. It’s here’s the amount of money that we’re willing to put towards your camp. So you get to decide how you want to spend it.

Yeah. Another thing is that, you want to be able to allow yourself the flexibility here to adjust as needed. This is not a set it and forget it. Like I did it one time. I didn’t look at it again for five years. Like this is you in our simplified budget system. We have a tab for this and you can update it and just go with the flow.

But you want to be able to add and take away and change things as the year goes on, because, Hey, you may be planning for something and you’re like, Hey, actually, I’m we saved up for that. It’s been 12 months and we didn’t even do it. So you can decide, Hey, I want to put all that money towards debt or I want to put it towards this other vacation, but you have the autonomy here to adjust as needed throughout the year.

Yep. Another best practice is to slowly switch from monthly to annual. On some of these bills. So I just really did that recently with a client and they came in first time and gave me all of their subscriptions and I said, okay, great. Now, I would like you to go back and I would like you to see how much all of those would be for annual and we will slowly once a month, we’ll pick a new one to fund annually.

And then we will put that update that on the the savings bucket tracker. But you can Vanessa was saying about the, yeah. Insurance, a lot of different places. You can get a discount if you pay up front, so we want to, you can start to do that as you do this planning. A lot of people don’t know that.

So look into your subscriptions and look into your insurance. If you do get a discount let’s pay for it annually. Let’s save it in that savings bucket. It just makes it, it makes actually your budget. Look cleaner when you have less subscriptions and it’s all just in your annual savings bucket section.

Okay. Another thing is you do not want to dip into your savings buckets for any other expenses. So as you watch this money build in your account in these multiple accounts, right? You want to know that, Hey, this says Melanie’s wedding fund. I’m not pulling it to go to target. I’m not pulling money out of there to go to the beach.

I’m not pulling money out of there to whatever, go for volleyball, or whatever. You know what I mean? I’m just saying you can have volleyball or a wedding, Melanie. You pick, but we’re just, we want to be really clear on your naming them something specific. You’re we’re trying to name them something that kind of like hits here in the heart deep.

And so that way, when we want something or we’re tempted in the moment, we don’t go and pull and Rob Peter to pay Paul. Yep. So what do we want to do as a result of all of this? We want you to plan. Like we said, list them out, brainstorm the amounts and come up with your monthly your monthly amount that you’re going to start saving.

Alright, so the next thing, obviously plan, Love it! The next thing is obviously name them something creative, because that’s just, it just, I don’t know, brings some emotion to it, it’s super fun. Yeah, and then according to your budget, get a realistic number if it’s the full amount, or if it’s like we said, start small and grow from there.

Okay. Get that number and automate it going into your savings buckets every month. All right. So we hope that you’ve loved this podcast. We’ve been really in deep. I know it’s a long podcast, but we do know that you will get a lot of information from this and hopefully you put this into practice and you guys will have your bank account set up for success for the future.