109. Budgeting Hacks for Busy Families: How to Make Your Money Work for You

Feeling overwhelmed by family finances? You’re not alone! Between juggling kids, unexpected expenses (hello, surprise spinal surgery!), and competing financial priorities, budgeting can feel like just another stressor. But it doesn’t have to be!

In this episode, I’m sharing simple, effective budgeting hacks to help busy families stay on track without spending hours crunching numbers. You’ll learn how to:

✅ Use the right tools to simplify budgeting—whether digital or good old-fashioned pen and paper.
✅ Schedule a weekly budget check-in to keep everyone on the same page.
✅ Create a "Fun Fund" to keep motivation high while working toward bigger goals.
✅ Meal plan smartly to save money (and avoid the dreaded "What’s for dinner?" panic).
✅ Automate savings & bill payments so you never miss a beat.
✅ Incentivize financial responsibility in your kids and make money lessons fun!
✅ Keep the budget visible to encourage accountability and celebrate milestones.

Plus, I’ll share my personal experiences (like how we’re navigating a big medical bill this year!) and practical ways to align your budget with your family’s values—without the stress.

👉 Ready to take action? Download my Family  Meeting Template and start leading your family with confidence.

🎧 Tune in to Episode 101: Christmas Club Account Advantage

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

.        Join the Facebook group Legacy Builders Network.

·        Book a Clarity Call. Learn more here!

·        Checkout the resource library here!

Want to ask a question Laura can answer on the podcast? Connect with her here!

Want to receive a live money or career audit? Apply Here

Send an email to Laura@AccelerateYourLegacy.com or send a DM on Instagram @accelerateyourlegacy

Elevate your coaching with daily devotionals and prayers from 'Seasoned with Salt.' Get your copy HERE!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Laura 0:02

hello and welcome to money and career mastery from overwhelmed to ownership. I'm Laura Sexton, your abundance and legacy coach here to help you navigate the world of money, debt payoff, and career growth with confidence and clarity. In this podcast, we'll tackle the financial and career challenges, holding you back, optimize your income and build the freedom that comes with true ownership. If you're ready to break free from overwhelm, create a budget that aligns with your values and design a legacy that empowers future generations. You're in the right place. Well, hey, Accelerators. Today we're going to be talking about budgeting hacks for busy families, and I know that a lot of you are going to be very excited about some of the information that is coming up on this podcast. I know that because I know what it's like to be in the middle of a busy, busy family. In addition to my for children. I am pregnant with number five, and my husband just had spinal surgery. It's almost as if I have five Children right now, and I'm pregnant with the sixth. It's kind of what it feels like. So if you are a busy family, and you want strong team dynamics in your family. I have the perfect podcast for you. Let's dive in really quickly to talk about budgeting hacks for busy families. Look, I know you're busy. One of the hardest things when it comes to family budgeting is time. Crazy, right? We need to make sure that we have the time to sit down and budget as well as the time to have conversations. I know that there are varying financial priorities. My children, their financial priority is for me to take them to Disneyland. And unfortunately, that does not fit with our financial priority of buying a home. And we also know that unexpected expenses come up all the time. You know who wasn't expecting spinal surgery to be on my bingo card this year? Me. So here we are with unexpected expenses that we have to face head on. Creating a budget that fits the unique dynamics of your family is incredibly important. You want to make sure that whatever budget you make is based on the values that you have set, and the things that are important to you. You see, if I were to make a budget for my family, and then I were to make the budget for our friend Jack's family, it wouldn't fit for them because Jack and his family put a strong priority on Dodgers baseball. I love how much he and his family love going to see the Dodgers, but I would never think to put Season tickets in my budget. Your unique family has unique dynamics and unique values. So you need a unique budget. You may be asking, why is budgeting as a family important? There are many reasons, but first of all, it teaches financial responsibility. It shows your kids the value of money and how to prioritize spending. I have been working recently on a book. That is a picture book for children, and I cannot wait to get it out into the world. Hopefully this summer, you will be able to make the purchase and have this picture book in your hand, where we talk about the value of money in a home for children. What does it look like for kids to earn money? What does it look like for kids to spend money? And here's the thing. We don't talk about money enough in our families. We just don't. If you're anything like me, you grew up in a house where people just didn't talk about money. We swept it under the rug, we pretended like it wasn't there, One of the worst things for me was that I had no idea that you had to pay back your credit card. These were things we just did not talk about. And so I want to change that. I want to change that for you. I want to change that for your children. Let's show our kids the value of money, how to earn money, how to prioritize our spending with money. But I also want you to encourage them in their giftings. So if you have a child that is a natural saver, let's celebrate that. If you have a child that's a natural spender, let's celebrate that. If you have a child that's a natural giver, let's celebrate that. But also remember, there are three things we can do with money. We can spend it, we can save it, we can give it, and we need to be doing all three. Budgeting as a family also matters because it will reduce your financial stress. Aligning your family goals minimizes conflicts over your finances. And don't tell me you don't want to minimize conflicts because I know you do. I work with Couples all the time that fight about money because they're misaligned on what their goals are. They're not aiming for the same thing. And if you're aiming for the same thing, we might have different ideas about how to get there, but at least we're going to the same place. And this, of course, will build a stronger team dynamic inside your family. It fosters unity. It's shared accountability, which we all need. These are reasons why budgeting as a family matters. So let's get into those hacks, right? Hack number one, use the right tools. This could be every dollar. This could be YNAB. This could be Monarch. Things you can use for easy budgeting and tracking. But if you are like me and you are a physical pen and paper kind of person, There are budget binders. You can use the envelope system, which I love, especially with children. They need their hands on cash because they need to be able to see it. They don't understand numbers on a screen the same way that they are going to viscerally understand cash in hand. Numbers on a screen, they're ones and zeros, zeros and ones, and sometimes our transactions haven't come through and we forget and we haven't put something into our tracking and so we go over in a category that we should not have gone over on. Those are the times that you want to have the envelope system, the cash in on hand so that you know how much you actually have in that category. I also highly recommend not looking at your bank account to find out how much money you have that you can go out to eat with, but you're looking at your budget. What does your budget line item say? How much do you have left in that category this month? Hack number two, schedule a weekly family budget meeting. Now look, your budget meeting weekly, you can keep it short and engaging, like 15 to 20 minutes. Are we on track? What was the previous week's spending looking like? Do we need to adjust for upcoming expenses that we hadn't planned on this next week? But I also would like for you to consider having a family business meeting where it's a little longer than the 15 to 20 minutes that's just for the budget. Instead, this is a chance for us to look at your calendar, a meal plan, the budget, give yourself 60 to 90 minutes every week. And you do this behind locked doors with the kids not around. And let me tell you, if you were able to go over the calendar and the meal plan and the budget and you still have time left over, well, that door is still locked and we can do other things that help us become unified as a married couple. So budgeting hack number three, create a fun fund. If you are out of debt, I want you to allocate a small percentage of the family budget for entertainment and treats. This keeps everyone motivated to stick with the budget. When you are working on getting out of debt, this is going to be a small fund fund. For my kids, they are really happy. We have this one restaurant near us called Tarantula Hill. And they love going there for ice cream. We spent 10 on ice cream for the whole family and everyone is thrilled. That is part of our motivation to sticking with our family budget. When you get further along on your debt free journey and you are out of debt and all of your money gets to be allocated towards other things that are important to you, your family entertainment or your treats, your fun fund may look a lot different. In the beginning though, keep it small. Remember what it's for. It's for keeping you motivated. It's not for buying love and affection. Hack number four, meal plan together. Plan meals for the week as a family to control your grocery spending and reduce food waste. This is actually a really fun way to get your kids involved, not just on the spending plan, but on your meal plan together, getting them to try new foods. If they help make it, they might be more likely to try it and they might be more likely to enjoy it. Again, we have a lot of children, we want to make sure that. Each of them gets at least one thing per week that they love to eat. So I let each of them pick a dinner one night a week. What are they going to want to eat? And I think that it's so incredibly important to bring them in together make this plan for food because we want. Our family to have healthy foods and we want to be able to continue to bring those things into our home and make it a priority. But if we go to the grocery store and we're just buying whatever and then we get home and we may or may not use that food, then we're overspending with the grocery store and we're wasting food because there's going to be plenty that we're not going to actually end up using. There are apps that you can use to help you meal plan. Or doing something like HelloFresh could be really great for you if you have a smaller family. If you have a big family like mine, that's not so great. Hack number five. Automate to simplify. Listen, you don't have time to go in and manually pay all of your bills. It's annoying, but also, you should be automating your savings and investing, and here's why. First of all, with the bills, you don't want to. If you miss a deadline or mess something up, if you have your budget set up correctly, you don't have to worry about automated bill pay. You do want to be paying attention because there are months where things go up and down. And obviously we want to be on top of things and making sure that we are making the smart decisions in our life. If your electric bill is going to be very high because it's summer and your air conditioner is on, you want to make sure that you adjust in other areas. However, for the most part, you can just automate your bill pay and not have to worry too much. Automating your savings and investing, on the other hand, is done for a totally different reason. You automate savings and investments. So that you never miss the money. If it comes into your account and then you move it to savings or it comes into your account and then you move it to investments. Sometimes we spend that money on other things. We don't necessarily prioritize the saving or investment because that is a future thing and right now feels good. And sometimes we just go ahead and use the money for right now, as opposed to for later. So automating your savings and investing is going to help you avoid the temptation to spend. This also will help you use recurring transfers for your sinking fund. Things like holidays. I don't know about you, but I no longer get surprised by Christmas. You go back a couple episodes to episode 101, the Christmas club account advantage, you will learn why it's important to go ahead and create a Christmas club account or other holiday accounts to make sure that you have money. for Christmas. This can also be for back to school shopping. I don't know if you've heard, but school starts in August or September and we need to make sure that we have money because your kids are growing and they are going to need new clothes and they are going to want a new backpack and they are going to need pencils and All of the other binders and calculators and things, go ahead and save for those things every month. Also, great sinking fund accounts would be car maintenance, home repair, things of that nature. Hack number six, incentivize good financial habits in your children. Now, You can do this in one of a few different ways. First of all, go ahead and introduce the concept of earning money. I know that some families have allowances and some families don't. Our family chooses to allow our children to live here and we have a commission based earning system. There are things around the house that our kids do not get paid for, and that usually includes cleaning up after yourself. When you use a toy, you put it back. When you eat dinner, you put your plate in the sink. When you sleep in bed, you make it look nice. And then there are money making activities they have, which Are beyond the normal tidying up. This would include putting dishes away after they're washed, washing the family dishes, putting siblings laundry way, dusting, vacuuming, watering plants, washing windows. All of these things contribute to the family as a whole and are beneficial to keeping it running. And it's really nice since the kids can't go to work like you and I can to show them the dignity of earning money. Now you can also introduce the concept of earning interest by paying them small amounts of saved allowance. So if they save their money, you can give them something on top of it. However, I feel like this is a very difficult thing to implement until they are much older and those amounts are bigger. But I think it is great to reward them for saving. So what if you go Habsies on some bigger items with them? I know my daughter was really interested in a Nintendo Switch and her dad said well if you pay for half I'll pay for the other half. Unfortunately for her Santa brought her one for Christmas. So She no longer has that goal, but the goal she does have now, which is smaller and easier for her to obtain, is to buy a different game for the Nintendo Switch, and she and dad are going habsies on that. So we're going to pay half, she's going to pay half, and she is working hard to save up her money, which is really hard for her because she is a spender. If she has it, she wants to, she needs to go to Target or Five Below or somewhere that she can spend it immediately. It is very difficult for her. We also want to go ahead and offer rewards to our children who make smart decisions with their money. If they're saving, we want to make sure that we are encouraging that. We also want to encourage them to spend smartly. So like I said with my daughter who is just a natural born spender, we always encourage her to think about her purchases ahead of time. So we don't allow her to go into Target and just buy whatever whenever. If there's something specific she wants, she has to tell us about it, and if she's still talking about it a week later, we go ahead and make the purchase. So hack number seven is keep the budget visible. This can be hard. But if you have a shared family calendar or a visual tracker like a whiteboard you can track your goals on there. These are great. Ways to show off the success of your family. Celebrate your milestones as well. When you're paying off debts and one small one gets paid off, celebrate it. Find a small way to do so. When you're saving for a family trip, get everybody involved. Make sure it's exciting. By keeping it visible, you're also keeping it top of mind and the children will be able to go, oh yeah, that's something that's important. Or when they're at the store and they're begging for something, you know, mommy, please buy me this extra cereal that we don't need and it's not good for us, but it's sugary and delicious and we love it. You can say, well, would you like me to buy you that cereal or would you like for that money to go towards our trip? Sometimes putting it in perspective like that. Really allows the children to understand the value of a dollar and understand great decision making. Keep it visible, make sure they can see what is going on and make sure they are part of it. Let them color in. We had a savings tracker for a while when we were trying to get to our first 10, 000. And every time we say 50, we let our daughter color in another square and she just colors Would eat it up. She's like, did we save any money today? Do we save any money today? She asked me the same thing now with my business. How much did you make on your call today? How much did you make? And when I get off, she's like, did they, did they sign up? Do we make any money? She's so excited to earn money. Part of that's because she's my spender, so earning the money means she gets to spend more, and she loves that. Here are some common pitfalls that I want you to avoid. You have to allow flexibility for unexpected expenses because you have children. Unexpected expenses arrive. Sometimes They forget to tell us that they need something for a class project. Sometimes they forget to tell us there's a field trip coming up. Sometimes they forget about pizza lunch. There are so many things that they forget to tell us that we need to allow for flexibility. Or you have a child that's accident prone and you end up in the ER with a broken bone and that was an unexpected expense. Give yourself some wiggle room. Inside every single budget that you make, you need a miscellaneous column. Things are going to come up that you weren't prepared for. Especially in the beginning, when you're not really dialed in, you haven't been tracking for three to six months, you're not 100 percent sure what your expenses are going to be, throw in a flex spending option. This will allow you to stick with it longer. Another pitfall that's really important, especially for my nerds out there, You cannot neglect your family's input. When you are married, one of you is a nerd and one of you is a free spirit. That's just kind of how it goes. I want you to ensure that everyone feels heard and involved. That means if you were the nerd and you make the budget, give it to your free spirit and ask them to make a change. Ask them, is there something that's coming up for you that we need to put in the budget? If the kids have things that they know are coming up, sports, for example, there's something they really want to be involved in. Let's make sure that gets put in the budget. Money. It can be simple. It can be easy. So stick to these simple actionable steps that I have given you and I promise it's not going to be that hard. You don't need 47 accounts. You need a checking and a savings and that's really it. If you want to throw in an extra high yield savings to hold on to your long term emergency funds, that's fine. But you don't need to overcomplicate things. You just need things to be easy, and it can be. I'm curious if anything I said today really resonated with you. I would love for you to reach out and let me know. Tell me what step you're going to take. Which of these hacks was something that you were like, yeah, that's really important. I'm going to go ahead and implement that into my family. I would love for you to share that. With me, just so I can know what kind of things are resonating with you and what kind of things are not. I also want to go ahead and encourage you to download my family business meeting template. This is going to help you kickstart your weekly meetings. It's going to help you stay on track and it's going to help you win with your money. If you are tired of living paycheck to paycheck, if you are ready to thrive with your money, this family business meeting template is going to be a great way to get started. All you have to do, scroll down the show notes, click on family budget meeting template. And hopefully you're going to be able to implement some of these budgeting hacks for your busy family. That's going to help you in your unique dynamics, create a life that you love. That's it for this week, Accelerators. Go out and make a difference. thank you for spending time with us today on Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership. Remember, your legacy isn't just about financial freedom. It's about living with purpose, taking action, and building a foundation that lasts for generations. Don't just listen, implement what you've learned and share it with someone who could use a financial or career breakthrough. If you found value in today's episode, help us grow by rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you master your money and career. Until then take ownership of your future and build your legacy with intention.