The Better Budgeting Podcast
The Better Budgeting Podcast is your go-to resource for mastering your finances without the stress. Hosted by Danielle Reese, this podcast breaks down budgeting, saving, and smart spending into simple, actionable steps. Whether you’re tackling debt, building wealth, or just looking to make your money work smarter, we’ve got expert insights, real-life success stories, and practical tips to help you take control of your financial future. Tune in and start making your budget work for you—without sacrificing the things you love!
The Better Budgeting Podcast
Are You Willing To Do What You've Never Done?
Waking up at 5am to meet with my Swiss business coach was a game-changer, even though I'm far from a morning person. Tune into this episode to hear how making sacrifices, like canceling cable, paved the way for me to pay off debt and build a thriving business. It's time to challenge yourself to rethink your traditions and cut unnecessary expenses, especially as we enter the busy fall season.
I'm inviting you to step out of your comfort zone and adopt bold financial strategies. Send in your anonymous questions and share the commitments you're making for the rest of 2024. Your active participation is crucial, and I'm excited to hear about your journey toward financial success. Let's use these final months to achieve the financial freedom we all desire. Thanks for listening!
Danielle is a money coach helping women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances FINALLY create a clear plan so they don’t have to worry about waiting to refill their bank account the next payday.
She is the founder of The Financial Freedom Society on Facebook and her signature money coaching program, The Better Budgeting Playbook. You can sign up for her newsletter by clicking here.
Take the first step towards financial freedom and sign up for a complimentary assessment call with me, Danielle Reese.
Grab your copy of "Let's Talk Groceries" Your Guide to Reducing Your Grocery Bill" This is an ebook with over 30 pages of tips, tricks, and guidance to help you save hundreds on your grocery bill!
Sign up for the early release of The Better Budgeting Blueprint for $99 with a $50 refund once completed. The release is scheduled for April 1st 2025.
You can connect with her on Facebook or Instagram.
Hello and welcome to the Better Budgeting Podcast. I'm your host, danielle Reese. I'm a money coach and the founder of the Better Budgeting Playbook, and this is my one-on-one coaching program for women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances, finally create a clear plan so they don't have to worry about waiting on payday anymore. I became a money coach in 2020 after paying off over $60,000 in debt, rekindling my marriage, becoming financially free and wanting others to experience the same. If you'd like to work with me, you can check out the link in the show notes there. Also, we have the Financial Freedom Society on Facebook. It's a free Facebook community focusing on debt payoff, saving strategies, budgeting and money mindset. You can find the link to that community in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for being here. Can you believe it is the first week of September, my birthday is September 1st and I always feel like that is the kickoff for fall. And you know Starbucks is slowly creeping the pumpkin flavored and apple flavored things into August and I don't appreciate that. Starbucks, I want you to go back to September 1st, my birthday not that I even drink coffee anyway, but I really want September 1st to be the beginning of all the fall things, but with that we are in that back part of 2024. I mean it feels like we're going to blink and it is going to be the new year and, because time slips away so quickly, the September. So the all errs right, the errs of the month of September, october, november, december. I had to put it all out there, okay, because it seems that time just flies by with that. I wanted to use this podcast as an inspiration for you.
Speaker 1:Now a little bit of a backstory. Okay, I am a nine hour a night sleeping type of girl. I need a good solid eight to nine hours to feel refreshed, rejuvenated, ready to kick butt for the day. My son, who's seven, he needs 12. It doesn't matter. If he goes to bed at seven, he will wake up at 7 am. If he goes to bed at 10 pm, he will wake up at 7am. If he goes to bed at 10pm, he will wake up at 10am. He needs a solid 12 hours of sleep.
Speaker 1:So when I was building my business, I would get up at 5am so I could meet with my business coach at 6am. I was working a full-time job, I had two kids, I was a wife, Like I was doing all the things. And let me tell you, getting up at 5am is not my favorite thing. I am not a fan of it at all. I don't like it at all. The reason that I had to meet with her at 6am was because she lived in Switzerland. She was actually from the States, but she married a gentleman over in Europe and moved to Europe. So she lived in Switzerland now and that was 1pm her time and 6am my time. It was the only time that made sense for the both of us, where I wasn't working, I wasn't taking care of the kids and it was going to help me build my business. I wanted to leave my job pretty bad that I wanted the help that she could offer. So I went and I met with her at 6 freaking am every week for, I think, nine months.
Speaker 1:I'm sharing this with you because sometimes, when we want to get to a goal, we have to be willing to do something that we've never done or we don't feel comfortable doing Like. We actually have to get really uncomfortable to grow. And I am strategically placing this episode at the beginning of September because, like I said, we are about to hit the busy, busy, busy season. You might already be in the thick of it with back to school and sports and just feeling like chaos is absolutely everywhere in life right now. So what I'm sharing with you is sometimes, in the thick of it, you have to get uncomfortable and you have to do the things that you've never done before to make progress on changing that chaos.
Speaker 1:Let's put it in perspective from a financial standpoint. When I was paying off debt, I decided to cancel our cable. We watched Netflix and we watched Disney the most anyway, and we really didn't watch a whole lot of cable, other than when the Orioles would play. But for six months out of the year we would not really watch cable. So I canceled our cable year. We would not really watch cable, so I canceled our cable. Now I am sharing this with you because some of y'all will never ever consider canceling your cable because you've got this show that you like to watch and that show that you like to watch and yada, yada, yada. Okay, you gotta do something different if you want to have something different, and for me, shelling out $220 every single month for something that we didn't really watch anyway just didn't make sense. It just didn't. I wanted to get into a house really bad. I wanted to pay off debt. I wanted to quit my job. There were a lot of things that I really really wanted to make happen, and I'm cutting corners wherever I can to make sure that I get there.
Speaker 1:Now, for some of you, it might not be cable, it might be going out to eat. It might be giving substantiously and generously outside of your means. It could be that you allow your children to play sports year-round, and it's super duper costly. It could be that you always go on this vacation every single year with family and friends. Even though we absolutely love it, it completely drains our bank account. We go into debt every single year for it. You've got to stop the bleeding. You've got to change something in order to live differently.
Speaker 1:Here's another one that I'll share with you, for my own personal journey is back in 2020, when we got our stimulus money. Instead of going and buying a new car or going and renovating things, we had an apartment at the time, so we weren't renovating a house, so it really wasn't an option. But instead of buying a ton of stuff on Amazon, instead of just like spending that money frivolously, we went ahead and we put it in our savings account. Do you think I wanted to buy on Amazon? Do you think I wanted to at least fly to Florida and like, get out of my dang state that didn't even let us go outside Freaking? Yes, absolutely. I wanted to do all of those things, but what I wanted in the long run was bigger and more important to me. I wanted to get a house y'all. I wanted to get a house. I wanted to quit my job like I wanted these things so badly that I wanted to change whatever I could to make that happen.
Speaker 1:So I want you to reflect back on your life right now. What, what is it that you truly, truly want right now? You can't tell me that it is money in the bank. I don't want that answer. I want you to tell me and I want you to dig deep and say I want more time with my kids. I want to have a better relationship with my spouse. I want to not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out to remember if I paid a bill or not. I want to know that if something happened in our household that I could take off work and I wouldn't have to rely on PTO to cover me, that I would be okay. I want to know what is that deep, why that deep reason down there that you want to fix your finances? And when you find that out, one send me a message. There's information in the show notes on how to do that.
Speaker 1:But also I want you to ask yourself what am I willing to do to make this happen? What am I willing to do differently? What am I willing to cut out of my life? What am I willing to add into my life to make this happen? Because life is so short y'all we all know this especially when you start having kids. I swear, my child was just born yesterday, but here he is almost eight years old. We only have a little bit of time here on this earth and we need to make as much impact and enjoy it as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you we were not put on this earth to work all the time and be miserable. That's not what we were meant to do. But some of y'all you get in the routine that you feel like there's no other way out, there's no other life than what you have right now. And I'm telling you, if you would stop and really focus in on what you actually want and start putting in strategies to get there, which I can certainly help you with. Just send me a DM. But if you put some strategies to get there, you'll get there. But you don't give up. You don't lean into all the trends on TikTok and Instagram and you don't lean into old habits. You get to work and you don't stop until you are done. And hear me out, I know it's uncomfortable, all right.
Speaker 1:I remember telling my mom that we weren't going to go on a family cruise, and it was the first time ever, and my mom even offered to pay and I said, mom, thank you for that. I love that idea. However, I know that that's not the only cost that's going to happen with the cruise. My kids are going to want things, I'm going to want things. I'm going to feel like a little bit strapped in that vacation and we were working really, really hard on buying a house this year and I just really, really don't think it's a great idea.
Speaker 1:Guys, do you know how much I would have loved a free vacation quote, unquote, free but you have to understand that you need to be that focused. You see, it's easy to want the newest stuff every week. There's going to be new gadgets on social media telling you all about how much you need this, or there's going to be family members that are telling you and maybe even you know this hasn't happened to me, but maybe even like guilting you into something like oh, we always go here, we always take that trip to the amusement park, we always have a big birthday party for my grandson, granddaughter Listen, they no, no, they're not paying your bills, girly. They're not the ones that are living your life every single day and are miserable financially, and you are so sick and tired of doing that. Do not let those people get under your skin.
Speaker 1:I'm asking you to be so tired of living this way that you are going to hyper focus in the back part of 2024 and get the things done that you said that you were going to do. You are finally going to have money in the savings account. You are finally going to be paying off debt. You are finally going to have money in the savings account. You are finally going to be paying off debt. You are finally going to be committing to your finances, like you said that you would all year long. That's who you are. You are that person that commits and follows through.
Speaker 1:Because, again, if that hasn't been you in the previous nine months, remember we're talking about you being willing to do what you've never done before to get where you've never been before. If you feel comfortable, go ahead and send me a message. In the show notes it's very at the top. It says send me a message. It's anonymous, so ask your questions. I'll answer them live here on the podcast. And also send me a message and let me know what you're committing to for the last bit of 2024. What are you going to do different in your finances so that you can get to where you really really want to be? All right, thanks so much for listening and we'll talk soon. Take care.