In this episode, I'll share my personal experience and unveil seven practical strategies to simplify your money management.
Discover the convenience of automating your payments and the power of cutting unnecessary expenses. I'll walk you through each step, making financial management less intimidating and more manageable.
We'll also demystify the process of building wealth on a budget, showing you that it's achievable with the right approach.
Whether you're new to budgeting or seeking to refine your strategy, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you align your budget with your goals.
You Might Like:
In this episode, I'll share my personal experience and unveil seven practical strategies to simplify your money management.
Discover the convenience of automating your payments and the power of cutting unnecessary expenses. I'll walk you through each step, making financial management less intimidating and more manageable.
We'll also demystify the process of building wealth on a budget, showing you that it's achievable with the right approach.
Whether you're new to budgeting or seeking to refine your strategy, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you align your budget with your goals.
You Might Like:
go back and look at your spending habits and ask yourself are there things that you're spending your hard earned money on that you could easily live without, or maybe even have been living without, but you're still paying for? So cancel those unused subscriptions. Look at how much money you're spending on food and gas and say goodbye to those impulse spies, because ultimately, you'll have more money to spend on what matters most. Hey, this is Allison, and welcome to the Inspire Budget podcast, where we talk all things budgeting, debt and saving money. We live in a chaotic world. Work, media and even our families are constantly pulling at our attention, and it's easy to become overwhelmed, to the point where you don't have the desire or energy to take care of something as important as your finances. Now, this is one reason why I'm such a big proponent of simplifying your budget and money. When you simplify your budget and money, you free up mental space and it makes it easier to stay on top of your finances. And, of course, there are many benefits. First off, simplifying your finances means fewer financial jigsaw puzzles to solve. With a clear and straightforward budget, you'll worry less about money and have more piece of time, meaning you have less problems to solve. When you simplify your budget and money. Another benefit is that managing a complicated budget can be time consuming really it can be. When you simplify, you free up valuable time and energy to focus on things that truly matter in life, whether it's spending quality time with loved ones or pursuing a hobby. Remember those who has one of those. And finally, a straightforward budget makes it easier to make informed financial decisions. You'll be able to see where your money is going a lot easier and clearer. You'll be able to identify areas for improvement and easily make adjustments. Basically, making money decisions just got easier when you're willing to simplify your money and budget. In a world that bombards us with information and tons of distractions I'm looking at you, tiktok Simplifying your budget and money can be your secret weapon to financial success. So let's dive into seven ways you can simplify your money and budget today.
Speaker 1:Now I have to tell you that my husband and I personally have a somewhat minimal home. What I mean by that is our home is not packed to the max with a lot of stuff and knickknacks. We don't have a ton of furniture in every single room, and the reason is because we don't wanna spend a lot of our time and energy. Cleaning all of this stuff and managing all of these items, clutter and items in our house drain our energy, both physically, because we have to take care of it, and mentally. I have ADHD, and so clutter, for me, really stresses me out. It causes me a lot of frustration. I get very distracted around it. And when we're talking about clutter in our house, the same thing can be said when it comes to our finances. By simplifying our money and our budget, we don't have to spend all of our time and energy working on our finances. So let's talk about seven ways that we personally do this and that you can adopt as well. Now, I'm not saying you have to do all seven of these. I mean you totally can. Maybe you say I wanna do one of them for the next seven months, or one of these for the next seven weeks, but even if you just walk away with one thing you can add to your life to simplify your money and budget, I think you're gonna find value in this.
Speaker 1:The first is to automate as much as you possibly can. Automating all of your money keeps you on track. You no longer have any forgotten bills or missed savings. I talked in depth in episode 140 about how I personally automate my savings, and I do this by setting up automatic transfers to go to my specific savings accounts for things that we value. You can do the same thing with your bill payments. Now, I know that if you are paying off debt, maybe you want to manually make these payments because you might wanna send extra money to your principal. I would still try to automate as much as you possibly can because you can always go in later on and make an extra payment. As long as you're not gonna get dinged for that, which I know. Most loan providers won't give you any sort of negative consequence for paying off your loan early. Just make sure you look into that. But by automating everything, you're just spending less time and energy keeping track of where your money is going and making sure all of your bases are covered.
Speaker 1:The second thing you can do to simplify your money and budget is to keep your budget very basic. Now, not everyone is going to like this, but I feel like I'm a somewhat minimal at heart, and my husband definitely is much more minimal than I am, but I think that simple equals stress free. Tell me if you think I'm wrong here, but I feel like a complicated budget is just a headache to maintain. So how do we make a simple budget? Well, when it comes to your budget, just start with the basics. Sort your expenses into two categories, like essentials and discretionary spending. I personally do this when I'm writing my budget, and you'll see me do this on Instagram. I really have three areas of my budget and that's it. We have our fixed expenses those are usually essentials. We have our variable expenses those are going to change and then we have our debt or savings category. That's it. Everything falls into one of these three categories. I don't need 45 categories in my budget to try to deal with, because it's gonna be very time consuming, I'm less likely to work on it and it just takes too much of my mental energy away from me. By keeping your budget straight forward, you'll instantly know where your money is going and where you can make adjustments. You can also keep your budget basic by essentially grouping like categories together. So maybe you group all of your streaming services into one category because you know that they are the same every single month. Let's just group those together to make writing your budget even easier.
Speaker 1:The third way to simplify your budget and money is to cut out unnecessary expenses. Now, you knew I had to cover this, because cutting out any unnecessary expenses means that you have more money for your goals. This is something that, honestly, my husband and I, we should do more often, but we did do this at the very beginning of January, and what we did was we sat down and we looked through our tracking really, where we tracked our money, like our quick end data for the month of December and I looked at every single expense and we asked ourselves are we using this every single month and do we find value in it? And here's the deal not everything we had been spending money on was something that we valued and was using, which means it's an unnecessary expense. So go back and look at your spending habits and ask yourself are there things that you're spending your hard-earned money on that you could easily live without, or maybe even have been living without, but you're still paying for? So cancel those unused subscriptions, look at how much money you're spending on food and gas and say goodbye to those impulse spies, because ultimately, you'll have more money to spend on what matters most.
Speaker 1:My fourth tip for you is to actually monitor your accounts, like your bank accounts. You know that feeling when you check your bank account and it's full of surprises, right. You open the app and you're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I spent this much money here. Or maybe there's a fraud, fraudulent payment and it totally caught you off guard. Yeah, that's not a good feeling. So make it a habit to review your bank and credit card statements regularly. This is something that we do every single month whenever I reconcile our account by catching any discrepancies or unauthorized charges early. It's gonna keep you in control of your finances and save you money. Plus, it doesn't take that long, I promise. I personally spend anywhere from three to five minutes five days a week, every morning super quick to just track my expenses, which means if we have been hit with a fraudulent payment or something looks off, I can deal with it right then and there and it's not this big mountain I have to climb because I'm dealing with a ton of things at once.
Speaker 1:A great way to simplify your budget and money is to actually combine some of your bank accounts. I have friends who have no less than 10 different checking accounts or savings accounts and to me that seems like a lot to manage. The more I have to manage personally, the more time and energy it takes me and the more I just kind of dread working on my money. Multiple accounts can mean more confusion. So are you juggling a ton of bank accounts, credit cards, maybe even a whole bunch of investment accounts? If so, it's time to simplify. Here's what you can do. Consider merging some of those accounts into fewer institutions. So maybe we merge all of our investments into one brokerage, or we merge all of our savings into one account. That allows us to organize the money into buckets, like the Ally Savings Account does. I can have all of my savings in one account and yet within that account I can manage my money into different buckets. So that way I have a bucket for Christmas savings, a bucket for HOA dues, a bucket for our vacation fund, and yet it's all in one account. Fewer accounts means fewer headaches when it comes to tracking your money.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is brought to you by my budget to build wealth. Here's the truth. I do not believe actually I refuse to believe that wealth is just for the rich. I believe that wealth can be built on a budget without sacrificing what you love to spend money on. I fully believe that budgeting is the quickest, most effective way for you to reach your money goals. So, whether your goal is to stop living paycheck to paycheck, pay off those student loans that have been hanging over your head, or find room in your budget every single month so that way you can start investing for your future, you're going to need a guide, a plan, to get yourself there, which is exactly what I'm sharing in my free training budget to build wealth. In this training, I'm gonna be sharing three massive mistakes that people make with their budget and their financial plan, so that way you can avoid them. I'm gonna be sharing with you the secret to freeing up more money in your budget each month, so that way you can send extra money to your goals, and I'm going to be sharing with you my tried and true four step framework to budgeting your way to wealth without giving up what you love. Plus, there is a very special free gift for anyone who stays until the end. You can sign up by going to inspiredbudgetcom slash class or just click the link in my show notes. You'll be able to choose a time that works for your schedule and I'll see you there.
Speaker 1:My sixth tip for you is to focus on one money goal at a time. Now. This is not something that I am doing now. I'm gonna be honest with you. However, when we were getting started with budgeting and paying off debt, I could not have more than one money goal at a time because it felt too overwhelming. It is very easy to spread yourself thin across multiple money goals and the problem is that you don't feel like you ever make much progress on any one goal because you're spreading yourself across a bunch of them and this can lead to, honestly, a lack of motivation. So when you're setting money goals especially if you're just getting started with budgeting or paying off debt and saving money set your goals, but then have a plan for which money goal you want to truly focus your attention on. It's almost like prioritizing those goals. Consider working toward that one goal and once you reach it, you can celebrate and move on to the next one. Now, as our family has continued to budget and manage our money over the years, we now have multiple goals, but honestly, we don't have a lot of goals. We have an investing goal, we have an emergency fund goal and then we have more of discretionary spending goals for vacations and other things like if we wanna get new carpet in our home things that really don't have to happen. By having just a few goals or just one focus goal, it allows you to spend your time and energy working toward that one goal, making actual progress and then being motivated.
Speaker 1:My seventh tip for you to simplify your budget and money is to be flexible with your budget. I am a huge believer that your budget should change even slightly every single month or every single pay period, and the reason is because life changes. No month is going to match exactly what you did the month before, so your budget should change too. Now, obviously, some of your fixed expenses are going to stay the same, for instance, our internet, our mortgage payment, our home security system. All of that stays the same. I know what is fixed and will not change, and by keeping those fixed expenses there, I'm able to very quickly go in and be flexible with our variable expenses. So that way, I can write a budget that matches my actual life. There are going to be times whenever we are in a really busy season, and so we do end up going out to restaurants more or picking up Chick-fil-A on the way home, and I want my budget to match that. So make a date each month to check in on your budget or each week, see how you're doing on your goals and make adjustments as life unfolds. By being flexible and updating your budget, it allows you to spend less time and energy fixing it down the road whenever you realize that you wrote a budget that didn't match your real life.
Speaker 1:Just to recap, the seven ways to simplify your budget and money is to number one automate as much as you can. Keep your budget realistic. Cut out unnecessary expenses. Monitor your accounts often combine any accounts. If you have a lot of accounts, let's combine some of them together. Focus on one money goal at a time and be willing to be flexible with your budget. Now I want to hear from you If you enjoyed today's episode. Do me a favor and go down to wherever you're listening and leave a review. I read every single review and I look forward to reading yours too. I'll be back next week with another brand new episode. Bye for now.