Episode 205 - How to Create a Budget That Works!
Creating a budget that truly works can be a stressful task, especially for beginners navigating the maze of personal finance. Many of us have never been shown how to budget, leaving us with questions like: How do you plan for groceries, irregular expenses, and unpredictable monthly costs? Is it necessary to make drastic cuts so you can save and pay off more debt? Should saving take precedence over debt repayment in your budget?
If you find yourself confused and stressed about budgeting, rest assured, you're not alone. Each of us on the Debt Free Dad podcast has faced the same challenges. Today, we aim to demystify the process and answer the burning question: How can you create a budget that not only works but empowers you to alleviate financial stress and make significant strides in your financial journey? Join us as we share insights and practical tips, drawing from our experiences to guide you towards a stress-free financial life.
What You'll Learn
- Take control of your financial destiny by creating a budget tailored to your goals. A well-crafted budget empowers you to allocate resources strategically, ensuring your money works for you, not against you.
- Forget the misconception that budgeting means sacrificing everything you love. A smart budget is about prioritization, not deprivation. Discover how to enjoy your favorite things while still making significant strides toward saving and debt reduction.
- Unlock the door to financial freedom with a budget that aligns with your aspirations. Learn the art of balancing spending, saving, and debt repayment, paving the way for a future filled with financial stability, opportunities, and peace of mind.
Resources Mentioned
- Brad's Totally Awesome Debt Freedom Planner
- For more help, and a step-by-step process to get started, enroll in Brad's FREE online course, LIFE WITHOUT PAYMENTS.
Free Tools and Downloads at www.therealdebtfreedad.com
Connect With Brad
- Website - https://www.therealdebtfreedad.com
- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/therealdebtfreedad/
- Private Facebook Group - http://www.facebook.com/lifewithoutpayments
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brad_nelson_debt_free_dad/
- TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@debt_free_dad
- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtbAadBrWLL81CZbA6sI5pg
Thanks For Listening
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Episode Transcript:
Brad:
Hey, creating a budget that truly works can be a stressful task, especially for beginners navigating the maze of personal finance. Now, many of us have never been shown how to budget, leaving us with questions like how do you plan for groceries or regular expenses and unpredictable monthly costs, things like is it necessary to make drastic cuts so that you can save and pay off more debt? And should saving actually take precedence over debt repayment in your budget? So if you've ever found yourself confused and stressed about budgeting, rest assured you're not alone. Each of us on the Debt Free Debt Podcast has faced the same exact challenges as you have Now. Today, we're going to aim to demystify the process and answer the burning question of how can you actually create a budget that not only works but also empowers you to alleviate financial stress and make significant strides in your financial journey. So join us today as we share insights and practical tips drawing from our experiences to guide you towards a stress-free financial life. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2:
You're listening to the Debt Free Dad Podcast with Brad Nelson. Brad and his co-hosts experienced the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck before learning the fundamentals of financial success. They are now on a mission to empower regular people to pay off their debt for good and enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Keep listening for inspirational interviews, tips, tricks and practical advice to gain financial freedom.
Brad:
Hey, hey, hey, welcome to today's show. As I mentioned in the intro, we are going to be sharing some great tips today to help you reduce stress around creating your first budget, but we also have some great tools that have helped thousands of people here at Debt Free Dads save and pay off tens of millions of dollars. So if you want to take this a step further after today's show, I'll be sharing some of those tools here a little bit later on. So, guys, we're talking about the swear word, the big bad B word the budget today.
Kati:
I love the budget.
Brad:
I think we are in the minority when we say that I know right. Do you know how many people just hate that word? How many people just hate it? I know right, oh not people.
Chris:
Not people who are poor, yeah plan your money. Not people who are not stressed over finances.
Brad:
Right, but for a lot of people it's well. Isn't a budget just for broke people, Isn't it?
Chris:
just for people who are penny-pictures and cheap. No.
Brad:
It's not what. No, come on, that's what we hear. That's what they tell us Like, what do you like? When you go into a store, what's one of the first things that you will hear? Like, if you're buying furniture I love this question from the salesperson Well, are you on a budget? What does that mean? I'm going to buy the cheapest one, because that's what they are assuming, right? Do you have a budget in mind? Or like are you on a like? Are you like budget conscious? Like? That means that implies that you're cheap. Right, at least, that's that's the feeling that I get from it. Budget rental car.
Chris:
Budget rental car yes, perfect example, I was about to say we're not talking about a vacation here, right?
Brad:
Well, even same thing, Like if you're, if you're going to go on vacation, are you going to go on a budget vacation? That, because that means inexpensive, right.
Chris:
It's? It's one of those qualifying questions they teach you in sales school. Right, qualify the customer. Find out what their budget is Yep. Find out if they're serious or not, if you should take time to spend time with them or just let them wander around the store looking by themselves, right.
Kati:
I definitely had a job where we had very high end clientele, essentially, and they taught us like, do not say the word budget with these people.
Brad:
Like yep, yep, exactly, but I can't tell you how many people like I've. You know I've been man. I'm approaching what 10, 11 years now being debt free, and when I, when I share that I still do a budget. People are like, well wait, well you're debt free. Like why, why would you need to do? a budget anymore, Well, it's like how do you think I stayed debt free? But it's amazing to me how people feel like it's just, it's just, you don't have to do it for so long and then you're done. Yeah, but but the reality is, when you become debt free, you actually have more money. So you actually have to be more conscientious of what you're doing with it, cause it'd be so easy to waste it on just a bunch of stuff. But right, but guys, take us back like when you guys first started. Can you remember your first couple of budgets? How did that go? Which time Disaster.
Amber:
I was excited I got to play in spreadsheets. That was okay.
Chris:
Now, the first time I started off in spreadsheets and tried to do all these fancy things and it didn't work. About three months into it I'm like just do what work and gave up. Yeah, second time I tried it. I tried with spreadsheets but tried to simplify it, but in some ways tried to over complicated too and I think it lasted three and a half months a little bit, you know, a little bit longer. And then the last time which I don't do it this way anymore, but the last time that, when I got serious and finally figured things out. It's amazing what a pencil and a yellow notepad will do for you.
Brad:
Yeah, I would agree, that's how.
Chris:
I started.
Brad:
That's how I started. Keep it simple.
Chris:
And the more simple that you keep it, the easier it is to do, the easier it is to stick to. Yeah.
Amber:
I mean, it does feel overwhelming when you're first doing it, though, Like oh, where do I start? Yeah, I do Like it is a little daunting.
Kati:
Well, I think it's really good at writing it down but not following it.
Chris:
Well, that's part of it too, but here's the thing yeah. For the audience out there get it out of your mind that there is a perfect way to budget.
Amber:
Yeah.
Chris:
Or that there is a right way to budget. The only wrong way to budget is to not do one Right. Your system is going to be different than mine. In fact and I've probably mentioned this several times on this podcast how I budget now is very, very different than when I first started, and the system that helped me get out of debt the yellow pad and a pencil I have long abandoned. It doesn't mean that that was the wrong way, and it doesn't mean what I do now is the right way. It's just as your circumstances change and as you get better at things, you figure out ways to simplify it and make it easier so that you don't spend so much time on it. But it's still there and you still know about it, you're still aware of it and you still follow it, but there's no right way to do a budget.
Brad:
Right. I think what I'll piggyback on that is, you're also going to be really crappy at it for a while, and that's what I was hoping to kind of get from you guys is that you know we kind of kind of suck at it for a while, but it's not. Budgeting is a learned habit and I think this is the area where probably people screw it up the most is that they just don't stay or stick with it and I think they give up too soon. They might do it for three to six months if that, and they just are like well, this budgeting doesn't work for me. Well, it does work, you just have to keep at it. You just have to keep practicing. I tell our roots members like plan on spending a good six to 12 months until you get like pretty good at it, because it just takes time to learn. You know you have a lot of life. You have all these ebbs and flows. There's always these things coming up and every single month you're going to experience those things and the next year you go about doing it you're going to be that much more experienced. But you just got to keep with it. But too many people just quit right away. They're just not consistent. So I think, number one I think the best thing you can do with getting started is that you are just going to make a commitment to do it. You got to make a commitment. We're going to do it every single month for the next year. That's what our commitment is, no matter what happens, no matter what excuses come up. You just have to commit to it, and a lot of people make the mistake, like I got to spend hours and hours and hours doing this stuff. Yes, there is going to be some time investment on the front end with some of the stuff that we talk about on this podcast, especially if you go back to listen to episode 201 about how to crush your finances here in 2024. You know there is some investment of time, but that's only the beginning. Every month after that should get easier because you've put in a lot of that front end work. But, realistically speaking, you know, working on your finances should really only take about 10 or 15 minutes a day. It doesn't take a lot of time once you get a process in place and things are working.
Kati:
We're looking for effort, not perfection. It's never perfect, ever, never Like. I'm five and a half years into this and it's still not perfect, but the spreadsheet at least does the math for me now. That's a plus.
Brad:
Right, but I think that brings up a good point. I like, how you know, amber is a spreadsheet person. Chris, you mentioned you're like a pen and paper person. You know you might find an app out there that you like to use. I mean there's. There is no right away to do it, it's just experiencing and really experimenting with different methods and finding what's going to work best for you.
Chris:
I mean, I do spreadsheets now, okay, and I, without getting too overly complicated, I do an ongoing running budget for the next year. That's how sort of good I've gotten at it, and you mentioned this a couple of podcasts episodes ago. You've got to think about future expenses and what things are coming up down the road, and so, for me, I budget out. I budget by paycheck now, not by month. I would recommend, if you're starting off, do it by the month, and I'm sure we'll get into that as we go along. But I do it for a year now and spreadsheets help me with that. Okay, but pen and paper. I was just trying to figure things out back then. So you're absolutely right, Brad, it does take time to get good at it. You're terrible at it to begin with and, as I mentioned, I gave up twice before I finally figured it out. It's sort of like sports You've got to learn how not to lose before you can learn how to win. You've got to learn how not to budget, so to speak, before you can learn how to be better at budgeting. And that only takes time. It only takes practice. It only takes one 17 times the first month. How did we forget that. Oh, I didn't realize we had that coming up. Oh, you know, this stuff doesn't work, you've got to keep with it. You're going to have 1720, 25 times in the first month, where you give Well, boy, were we off on that. The next month, guess what, you're going to have 10, 15, 20, maybe again. But by the third month you're gonna have four or five. And you're right, four or five, six months by then. Hey, we got this figured out now fairly well.
Ryan:
Yeah, absolutely yeah and I think that's the one like. One of the biggest things that sunk us, though, is, like you know, a lot of people say you gotta write a budget, gotta write a budget. So that's what people do right away. They go write a budget and then they like have conversations about, like how much did you spend going out to eat? Um 200 bucks probably for the month. Sound good? Yeah, it's probably right. And then your budget don't work and you're like this doesn't work. I'm way. We spent way more money. So for us it really didn't start working until we started kind of where's our money going? Like, what are we spending our money on? Because it was because every time we would write a budget, it was just 100% unrealistic, because we didn't know where our money was going. So when it was time to like budget for certain things, it was just silly conversations about what our feelings were, what we thought we were spending. So if you really got to get a feel for, like, if you're gonna budget money for food or groceries, you really should go back and look your last three to six months of expenses and see what are you averaging spending on groceries, so that you can really be realistic. Otherwise, you're just gonna put a number down and, like Chris said, I mean, and it's fine to fail that way, but if you don't ever get a handle on what you're spending, it's like and for us there were many times it was like this does not work. I don't know who says you should write a budget, but this does not work. But we were never being real with ourselves about what we were spending to begin with.
Brad:
Yeah, yeah, and you hit on. A great point is that you got to understand where you're at and where your money's going. Yeah, before you even start a budget, before you even write it out, it's like go back, print out all the statements Venmo, paypal, anywhere you're spending money at, you know Apple Pay, any of these places and figure out where all your money's been going. So you can be realistic with yourself and everything. Like I mean just, I mean we've had you know people who you know. It doesn't matter. Like, if you're a smoker, make sure you budget for cigarettes. If you're someone who has been gambling regularly on like scratch off tickets, like think about those things. Like those things all need to be a part of that budget. Now, whether you keep them or not, that's up to you, but those things all be a part of it. And, by the way, I'm going to pause. Is that your dog snoring in the background?
Amber:
I asked you guys can hear him? I can't hear him. I don't hear anything.
Brad:
You don't hear it.
Chris:
No we don't?
Brad:
Oh my gosh, I can totally hear it. How am I the only one who can hear Clyde snoring? By the way, guys, if you're listening to this, this is how boring budgeting is. Clyde's even snoring. Clyde the dog oh my gosh, too funny, too funny. So once you've got what your money is, where your money's going, now it's time to actually list out all of your paydays and your expenses. So part of also going through and looking at where your money's going is also looking at your paystubs. You know, I know when I was getting out of debt or before I even started, like I rarely knew exactly what was coming out of my paystub, like I just never really paid attention to it. You know, when you go sign up for your job on the first day maybe you've been with your employer for a while you tend to forget, like what did I actually sign up for? What's coming out, what am I paying for? And making sure you understand some of those things and making sure that you're getting value from whatever it is that's coming out. A lot of them offer extra benefits, disability, things like that. So you want to make sure that you understand what those things are going to be too.
Chris:
But if I can, brad, I want to add one thing to the previous point and then something to that one as well. You know we were trying to figure out where do you spend your money at. Yeah, you can go back and look at your credit card statements, you can go and look back at your bank statements. But another trick I think is sort of old school pen and paper method is get you a pad of sticky notes and a pencil and just sit down or in our pen, and just start thinking through, brainstorm, just the various places that you know that you spend money, each one on a different sticky note, and carry that pad around with you Maybe your spouse carries that pad around with them and every time you go, oh, we stop at this place and write that down. In some ways it's no different than looking back at the credit card statements or at the bank statements, but it's more active in that you're thinking about it, okay, and it helps you become even more aware. But even then, when it comes to budgeting, you can take those sticky notes and spread them out and move them around to try to help you create, maybe, categories and to sort of see it a little bit different way. Now, in regards to the income, here's one thing I wanna point out is how you get paid, or how often you get paid, is something that you need to be aware of. If you get paid every month a lot of teachers get paid that way Perhaps the easiest thing to budget, but the hardest budget to stick to when you get paid once a month. Now, if you get paid every or twice a month say on the first and the 15th or the 15th and the 30th you know that every month you're gonna get two paychecks. So that's 24 paychecks a year, but every month in your budget you're going to have two paychecks as part of your budget. Where things get a little bit hairy is when you get paid every two weeks. Every two weeks and twice a month are not the same thing, they're two different things. When you get paid every two weeks, well, let's do some math here 52 weeks divided by two means you get 26 paychecks. Divided by 12 months means you've got two months where you're going to get three paychecks and being aware of that ahead of time and knowing when those are going to come, and so one of the things I used to do at the beginning of the year is write down every paycheck for me, every paycheck for my wife, so we can sort of map out where are the extra paychecks at. Because she got paid every two weeks. And here's the cool thing. Just to give this example real quick, if you will budget on two paychecks every month, it means two months out of the year you've got an extra paycheck to put towards your emergency fund, to put towards paying off your debt, to put towards your vacation fund, your bigger emergency fund. It's extra found money when you know ahead of time that it's coming and you stop living paycheck to paycheck. It's the same thing when you get paid every week While there's 52 paychecks. That means you're going to have four months that you get five paychecks and knowing those four months are going to be, and during those four months you have an opportunity to put a whole paycheck of savings in the bank emergency fund, pay off debt, whatever your goal is.
Amber:
Yeah, it's a great way to prioritize savings and put those necessities first too, right? So, like the food, the mortgage, the rent, make sure those necessities are first, but also then you have the opportunity to save some money and pay yourself first, essentially, and that's why I like the planner, because you write down when your paycheck is going to deposit and then what are all the due dates for your bills.
Kati:
So you're also not I was always the queen of floating payments, because I'm like, oh, it's due on the 15th, but I'm going to pay it the night of the 13th when it's due, and then hope and pray it doesn't miss the direct deposit and so, yeah, just laying that all out is super helpful. And now, like, obviously that was five and a half years ago that I started doing these crappy budgets and now I spend like 10 minutes every morning kind of just checking it while I'm waking up and eating my breakfast of string cheese and Dr Pepper before I start work.
Brad:
Delicious, delicious Breakfast of champions. But I want to go back to what you said, amber, about prioritizing necessities first, because that is the area that you need to focus on first and foremost. And again, it's really important that you focus on your mortgage, your rent, your basic food necessities, your utilities, your transportation needs, things like prescriptions that you need, obviously, on a monthly basis. You want to make sure all of those basic living expenses are taken care of first and foremost, and then you want to go through the rest of your expenses and then prioritize those. So any money left over after your necessities are covered you want to go through and then assign the rest of your dollars to that, in that order. Now here's the thing if you get to the end of the list and there's still stuff there and you don't have enough money to cover it, well then that means the spending needs to stop, or we need to go back through those categories and figure out we need to adjust some things to be able to afford some of these things at the bottom of the list. So this is an area where you can start to say, okay, we have this much money to work with and we have to live within this amount of money. We can't go, we can't spend over it, we can't. We got to stick within this as much as best as we can. Other things that you can consider is if you don't have enough money as obviously looking for income producing activities. Maybe it's you know, I need to work an extra job for a little while. Maybe it's a you know, get a side hustle for a little while, something in anything to kind of make things better until we can maybe kick that second job where things are improved. So it's not second job for the rest of your life, it's just what can I temporarily sacrifice right now in order to get us to a better place? But the key is necessities first and then everything else after that. Then, once you have your budget and your expenses listed, then it's all about totaling it up, all right. So you're going to total up all of your paydays, so what's your income coming in for the month? And they're going to total up all of your expenses, all right. And then you're just going to subtract the two and that's either going to give you a negative number or a negative number, which means that you're spending too much, or it's gonna give you a positive number, which means that you have money left over. Now we at least me, I prefer like the zero-base budget method, where if there is leftover money, we need to give that money like a goal or some sort of purpose, all right. So, Whatever your priorities are for the year maybe it's, you know, saving more money, maybe it's paying down debt but you got to give that money some sort of purpose, otherwise it'll get spent because of behaviors, habits, right, and we all like to have that extra money. But in my experience at least and I don't know about you guys here on the show, but in my experience, extra money never made it to the end of the mock and it never made it to a place where it actually Benefitted me. It usually just was wasted.
Kati:
I Was like what is this extra money you're talking about and where can I find it?
Chris:
A lot of a lot of people assume well, if I've got money left over, I'll save it. Okay, well, if you've got money left over, go back up and put it as a savings line item here. Your emergency fund or vacation fund or sinking fund or, you know, retirement. Give it a name. Every dollar needs a name, right, sort of like you know George Foreman's got what George one, george two, george three. Well, that dollar year for rent, that dollar year for rent, that dollar for your for rent. So your rent dollar one, your rent dollar two, your rent dollar three, and give everyone a name, so to speak. And no one dollar is more important than the other. My father-in-law used to say he was born and raised in Scotland. All right, talk about thrifty people. Okay, most thrifty person I've ever met in my life. But he used to say it's sure easier to spend a dollar than it is to make a dollar. It's like you've got to treat every dollar Extremely important and that means you've got to give every one of them a name. Treat them like Clyde, your pet.
Ryan:
Yeah, I would and I would say like for, so for us. And this is an area where, so like for my wife. She does not like to like zero base budget. She doesn't like it where that's like every dollar is accounted for and there's like she wants to have a little cushion in this in the account every month. And that's just how we've always done it and that's how we continue to do it. We, we just know Now we don't really spend that like we used to. I mean, years ago we, hundred percent would just blow that money and not care. But we don't. We don't really do that anymore, but we definitely don't. There is a little bit of a cushion every month where it's like we know that there's quote-unquote extra money that Doesn't have a name but for her own peace of mind. That's just. She's just like that's what I want. I want it that way. It makes me feel comfortable, it makes me feel better that that's how we do it. So that's how we do it. So I don't know that there's any hard and fast rule that you got to do it. But a hundred percent you can't use it. I mean that's the big thing. I mean you got to get, you got to break the habit of looking at it as extra money and I'm gonna go spend it on stuff that's not what it's that's for us, that's not what it's there for. Yeah.
Chris:
So, in essence, you've given it a name. It's called cushion. Yeah, it's what it is, and that brings up two other points. One is that's your way of doing it, mm-hmm. Does that mean that anybody else should have one called cushion? No, no. But then it also brings up something that I don't know if we've gotten our notes here, brad, but it's probably important is a lot of people out there have spouses and they're saying this is all great and wonderful, but how do I get my spouse on board? Or Ryan just touched on it. You've got to have that communication, there's got to be some. Here's the budget, and then you know it's okay for one person to do it. You know it's okay for one person to do it, but both people have to talk about it. And if you're sort of the nerdy person, the numbers person, the spreadsheet person, it always helps to force the other person to look at it and force them to change something, even if you don't like it, because what you're doing is you're getting their input and it comes back to something Katie said earlier you can write a budget all day long, but if both of you don't agree it, agree to it and stick to it, it's never gonna work and so both people being on board, and a large part of that is, you got to have a civil conversation. Okay, honey, you want to have a little bit of extra cushion in there? Well, we're gonna build an item in our budget called cushion, and we both know what that's for and we know that we can't spend it, but it's there to make her happy, in this case To make her more comfortable, so that she's got buy-in. I think, ryan, that probably helps. Is that correct? Oh?
Ryan:
Yeah, for sure, I mean that's. I mean that's just how we've, that's how we got out of debt, it's how we still operate to this day. I mean it's just what makes her happy and Happy wife, happy life.
Kati:
Happy spouse, happy house. That does hear this all the time from my married friends. If you're not both on the same page, guess what happens? Revenge spending. Oh, he went out and spent $300 on this whatever gadget. I'm gonna go out and spend $300 on clothes. It's like that's not how this works. That's how you have no money. Like you're both taking it out now You're both digging the holes and you're not gonna get out of the hole. So you have to start talking about what each other is doing and try to come to a compromise.
Ryan:
A revenge budgets. Okay, I'm just wondering, like, could I budget for next month? I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:
I'm just asking someone, I just.
Kati:
That's just me, the single person here. It's also like I don't have kids, so I can tell you how to parent all day long, but it doesn't work.
Chris:
Yes, I opened up a can of worms, but it's an important discussion. I think the topic is how to create a budget that works, that works. A few words there. Right, and if you're married and you have a spouse, you have, first of all, you're both not gonna get a hundred percent of what you want. If you both want a hundred percent of what you want, it's gonna be miserable, right? But you're also got to realize that you both probably aren't gonna compromise 50% either. Sometimes you're gonna have to give a little bit more, and sometimes they're gonna have to give a little bit more, and sometimes it takes time to work to that point. The communication goes a long way.
Brad:
Absolutely. And I think one thing I will add and I want to turn it into a couple show here is that listening to a podcast with your spouse about this is a great way to go about having that conversation, because it's not you two talking to each other and pointing the finger at each other. You're saying, like well, Kati said this and Chris said that, Brad said this, and you're taking what we say and starting the conversation. And that's a great way to start it because typically, for most couples and most financial conversations, it's usually fighting and arguing because it's happening during crisis and it's not during a good situation, and that's why those conversations typically suck. So if you want a better one, use an episode or a podcast or any sort of financial anything you get your hands on that's related to something you want to improve, and use that as a starting point and say, okay, we're going to look at this, we're going to watch this and then we're going to talk about it together.
Chris:
So so you had a couple line just a few weeks ago from North Carolina who paid off. What about $160 something, thousand dollars? Yeah, danny and Lori. Yeah, yeah, go back and listen to their podcast, because there was a lot of. The topic was about discussion and getting on the same page and I didn't want to do this, I didn't want to do that, but when we did it and realized it works, the communication got better, the connection got better and then the real steam started picking up. The train started picking up speed, so to speak, and I would be willing to bet that you've got multiple, multiple podcast episodes with couples who've done amazing things, and if you go back and listen to every one of them, I would be willing to bet that at some point, everyone I'm talked about when we got on the same page, that's when the magic happened, right?
Kati:
Yeah, danny and Lori's was one of my absolute favorite ones to listen to. I loved how he came home after what, listening to the podcast for 10 hours while he was on the road and he's like woman, we're going to listen to Brad. But also way back when, really early, so probably five years ago Ish, christina, I think she would always say she just kind of listened while her husband was walking around in the background and she would have it up so that he could hear it, and eventually it kind of became a conversation. I'm like ooh sneaky, but it's effective.
Brad:
Very much so, very much so. Whatever works, yeah. Now, if you're single and listening to this, the good news is is you get to do whatever the hell you want.
Amber:
We're in your budget. We're in your budget.
Brad:
You don't have another person to listen to. So that's kind of the good news in a way. You don't have to worry about all the compromise and all that stuff.
Kati:
But yes, chris, you bring up a very good point, so one thing I Single people Sorry, I was going to say the single people have to look in the mirror and go. It's me, I'm the problem. Yeah, it's me.
Brad:
It's. We have to become really good account like self account. It's terrible. You have nobody, nobody holding you accountable when you're single. That's tough, that's tough. So last thing I want to share real quick before we get to celebrations. Here is, Kati, you kind of brought this up with the planner. We're going to be sharing this tool here in just a second. But one of the things that helped me out a lot because I'm a very visual person, I like to kind of see things and you had mentioned like the calendar and inside the planner. Now you don't have to necessarily use the planner, but having like some sort of a calendar to forecast your bills. So a budget is great, but it's only going to list all the numbers, right, it's just going to be your expenses, your paydays. But what's really cool is that if you take all that information and put it on like a calendar, that way you can kind of see when the paydays, when the cash comes in, when everything's coming out, and you'll actually be able to visually see where there are any bottlenecks within your monthly budget. This is a great opportunity for you to say, okay, can we maybe move some of these bills around? And then you can send it to the creditors and say do you have different due dates? That are options for us. So that way some parts of the month aren't tighter than others and you kind of spread it out a little bit. This helped me a lot.
Amber:
As much as I love spreadsheets. This is my saving grace, because I got to see I could see everything. I still use it to this day. Like I'm looking at it, it's on my desk Under my blotter. It's always here so I see what's coming, what's going out, and it's helped so much. So I recommend it to anybody who wants to try that way.
Kati:
And I know it's a small thing, but on the planner I also love the little checkboxes, so I write the bill and then when I pay it I have a little checkbox that I can check off.
Amber:
That's a psychological thing, it's real.
Brad:
Hey, this goes right into our call to action here today. So if you want to take this a step further and get everything you need to become a budgeting rockstar, head over to thedebtfreedad. com and get the totally awesome Debt freedom Planner bundle. Now, this bundle includes my Debt freedom Planner, my budgeting workshop, which is the same workshop that has helped my roots members save and pay off tens of millions of dollars over the years. It includes the Debt freedom Dead envelope system, spending trackers, fun stickers, like for really guys. This bundle has everything that you're going to need to take control of your finances. So again, head over to thedebtfreedad. com. Click on the Debt freedom Planner in the menu at the top of the page to get the bundle today.
Ryan:
Let's talk about debt baby.
Chris:
Let's talk about your money. Let's talk about all the good things, all the bad things that may be.
Amber:
Let's talk about that and that's how it means it's time for the celebrations of the show. First we have Susie Kramer Meyer. I put $300 more in my emergency fund.
Brad:
Yeah, that's an awesome chunk of money. Great job, Susie. Congratulations to you, Erin Hood. Today I set up reoccurring transfers to my emergency fund and my other sinking savings. She says it's only $25 each for now, but hoping I can do more once my budget gets adjusted. And, Erin, like we always talk about, don't pay attention to the amount so much, especially as you're getting started. But it's all about creating that habit, which is a great way to get started with sinking funds. So good for you, great win.
Chris:
And Laura Pleichart I hope that I'm doing that correctly. She paid cash for a basement emergency. She had an emergency in her basement that needed to be fixed and she paid cash for it. She also paid cash for a vet bill and drumroll. She paid cash for Christmas this year, so she thinks that's pretty huge.
Brad:
Yeah, that is huge. Congratulations, Laura.
Kati:
Nikki Rumberg started Roots last week, filled out the where Are you paperwork and is working on that first budget and plugging away on the modules. Way to go, Nikki.
Brad:
Yeah, way to go, Nikki. Welcome to Roots. We're glad you're here.
Ryan:
Debt number three was paid off early, along with annual vehicle registration. Working on my plan to wipe out debt number four.
Brad:
Yeah, awesome Way to go. Congratulations to you guys and congratulations to all of our listeners there that are working hard to reduce financial stress and get out of debt. Hey, if you're just getting started with our podcast, or maybe you've been listening for some time and you're interested in how you can get started on the road to financial freedom, go visit our website at DebtFreeDad. com. Sign up for our free Life Without Payments workshop, where I'm going to show you the first steps that have helped tens of thousands of people just like you and I kick financial stress and worry for good. We'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2:
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