The Better Budgeting Podcast

Master Yearly Budget Planning

• Danielle Reese • Season 3 • Episode 20

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Uncover the secrets to transforming your financial habits with my personal journey into the world of budgeting. I'm Danielle Reese, and today's episode of the Better Budgeting Podcast is all about empowering you to master your yearly budget planning strategy. Join me as I recount the eye-opening experience of aligning our family's finances with our core values, including the unexpected revelation of our $500 Apple services bill. You'll learn why trendy budgeting getaway weekends might not be the magic solution they promise to be and how breaking down your financial goals into monthly, bite-sized tasks can be a game-changer. Let's ditch the elaborate getaways and create a budgeting environment that truly works for you.

As we shift gears, we dive into the importance of self-care in financial planning, particularly for busy parents. I share insights on how our fast-paced lives can lead to habits that drain our wallets, like frequent dining out. By identifying these patterns and committing time to financial planning with the same dedication we reserve for holiday preparations, we can set realistic goals and achieve financial success in 2025. Plus, discover the power of having an accountability partner. If you're ready to take charge of your finances, join our Better Budgeting Playbook and let’s make 2025 your best financial year yet.

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.

Speaker 1:

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. Welcome back to this week's episode of the Better Budgeting Podcast. If you are listening to this on its release date, it is just two days after Christmas and I hope you had the most amazing time, full of family and fun and friends and laughter all the things. But it is go time now. It is time to start planning for our future, the 2025 season of life.

Speaker 1:

Now, the other day, I was absolutely crazy and I went ahead and I just made a whole spending plan for the entire year of 2025. And I sat down with my husband and we discussed it. We really talked about it and this is our first time looking at our spending in the future as a couple. I am the one that usually goes ahead and makes the month to month to plan and I decided you know what I'm just going to like do a year. I'm just I'm going to see what it looks like because the spending plan that I give to my clients it makes it really really easy to do that and I have never done it. So I said I go ahead and just plan out the whole year financially. Now, in the past I have made goals financially and I've gone ahead and I've made those financial goals and broken them down into monthly goals and stuff, but I've never really looked at my budget as a entire year in one screenshot. I have never done that and I will tell you I had no idea I was spending $500 a year almost $500 a year to Apple just for storage and like the family plan, for the music and the games and stuff Like $500 a year. I would never pay that outright ever If it came in a yearly plan and it said $500, I wouldn't, I would never, and I think that when I saw that number it really put into perspective how much we were spending in other areas. That was just not aligning with my values or our family values my values or our family values. So did we get rid of the $40 a month subscription for Apple? No, I was outvoted for that because my husband really does use all of those services and if we would go back to our individual plan, it actually would just cost more anyway to do individual plans and kind of like cherry pick stuff. So we're leaving it. We're leaving it because here's the thought is, it's actually cheaper than going and doing the individual plans. So okay, but I do need the storage for my business on my phone. So that's where a majority of my stuff kind of gets locked up All of these podcast episodes, all of those things that require a business. That's where a majority of my storage is. So that's what I'm paying for. I'm paying for space and thin air.

Speaker 1:

But one of the trending things that I'm seeing on social media lately is budgeting getaway weekends with couples, and I will tell you how magical that sounds for someone like me, but how detrimental to my marriage that would be. For someone like my husband, oh my gosh, would he ever hate that? First off, why are we going away to make plans? Why are we doing that? I can understand if you want to make a date, weekend for sure, but specifically going away so that you could plan out the family year, and you know, I just I don't see it. I don't see where the money well spent would be. So I'm not, I'm not a fan of this trend right now. And people are making it look so magical. And it it's not. It's, it's literally putting numbers to a paper, y'all. So I just want you to know if you think the magic answer is just like taking yourself away from home with your laptop and your spouse so that you can get the budget done for the year. I'm going to tell you right now it's not because that might work, you know, to get the stuff together.

Speaker 1:

It's the follow through that is a problem for a lot of people. The follow through is tough. Let me tell you, when I was putting those numbers together, it was oh my gosh, that's a really big number to have to save this coming year. That's what we're going to do. We decided we're going to forego a vacation unless it can be spent with credit card points. We're going to add in additional expense. We've got our kids that they get a little bit more costly every year, especially now that they're getting into sports. Those numbers were large numbers when it came to a year, but when you start breaking this stuff down by month it's actually not that terrible. But you got to follow through with the month to month to make sure you get to that big number.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, the magical weekend away would be lovely for people like me that love numbers. But people that don't love numbers, you don't need to be going away. Okay, you don't need to be going away. You probably don't have the means to do it anyway. That is not the answer. That is not the magic of getting your finances right. Okay, I'm going to teach you exactly what you need to do. You need to kick kids out for a couple hours and you need to say hey, honey, you need to take the kids out, or you need to get a babysitter, or they go over to a friend's house, whatever it is, and you and your spouse are going to sit down and you're going to just look at your expenses for the past year. That's where we're actually going to start. We're not going to start planning for the future until we know where we've been in the past.

Speaker 1:

Do you have expenses that only come up once a year Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays Do you have car registrations or inspections, or one-time subscriptions like Zoom? My husband has Xbox, okay, what are those things? And you probably don't remember them off the top of your head. So we're going to get a piece of paper and we're going to put all 12 months on them, and then we're going to start going through our bank statements and we're gonna say, oh my, look at that. We've got this expense, this expense, oh, that birthday, oh, all of these transactions are for this specific event. You're starting to get an idea of what that month looks like for your spending.

Speaker 1:

Now you're going to go ahead and do it 12 times, and doesn't that sound like just pure joy? That's why I'm saying, like going away for the weekend, I'd rather explore that place versus go sit in a hotel room or cabin or whatever you have, and just figure out the budget for next year. So, instead of doing this for the entire year which takes a lot of time, by the way like that was a good two and a half hour event for me to put together a yearly budget and kind of encompassing all the things that we need to pay for in a year's time. So instead of doing that, go by quarter, just do January through the end of March. Figure out what do we need to be saving for during that time. What do we need to be, you know, spending our money for? Start with that. Go back to your January, february, march bank statements and see what are we actually spending our money on during this time of year.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people I'll tell you a lot, a lot, a lot of people aren't doing a whole lot of anything during those times. I will tell you, my clients are usually going crazy with debt payoff and savings goals during that time because it's cold, unless you're living somewhere absolutely wonderful and it's beautiful, but it's usually cold. The days are really short, unless you are on the bottom half of the world, which maybe I should come visit you because I hate the cold and I hate the darkness. So it's usually cold, it is usually dark out and you kind of just want to curl up in a ball and stay home. For some people, it's the months January through March, maybe even through April, and then some people it's the months January through March, maybe even through April, and then other people it's the back half of the year or it's the mid of the year. There's some season of the year that you're not doing so much compared to the other months.

Speaker 1:

So once you've looked at the quarter from last year, you're going to make a new one. You're going to figure out what are we going to be spending on all of this stuff for the next quarter. You can even go by the month, okay, which is what we do in the better budgeting playbook. Month by month, we're going to figure out how are we going to get out of debt? How are we going to be saving more? How are we going to stick to these plans? Are they realistic plans?

Speaker 1:

So if you've done this before and it hasn't worked, it's because the system that you're using isn't working for you and your family, and the biggest part is that you're not following through. It's me, hi, I'm the problem. It's me. Yes, that is very true. That rings true when it comes to a spending plan, because if you say, hey, I only want to spend $25 on groceries this week and you're a family of five. That ain't realistic, right? You need to set realistic goals and then you need to follow through with those realistic goals. So if you aren't doing that two-step process of setting the realistic goal and then following the realistic goal, then it's going to fail every single time, and that's why I have the Better Budgeting Playbook. I actually have a DIY version that can help you significantly. If you just want to do it on your own, and that's okay. But if you want somebody to look at your finances and hold your hand through that, I'm going to do that with you. That's the one-on-one coaching, so there's a wide range available for you to help you with your finances.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you are making this spending plan, I need you to be as realistic as possible. I don't want you to say screw it, this doesn't work, I'm just going to go back to my old ways. At least then I wasn't freaking out about it so much, I wasn't hitting my goals, but it wasn't as bad as what I'm feeling right now. Listen, anytime you try something new, it's going to be different, it is going to be hard, it's going to be a lot of unknown, but you got to stick with it to be on the better side of it.

Speaker 1:

For instance, when I started this podcast in May of 2023, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even know how to record anything. I couldn't figure out how to edit, I couldn't figure out where I was going to host it. But I did some research. I just flew the plane while I was flying it. But instead of figuring it out on the way, I want you to come to me and say Danielle, help me out, save me a shenanigans amount of time in order for me to get to my goals faster. I got you boo. I've done all the trial and error for you and all you got to do is come over to the Better Budgeting Playbook, sign up and we're off to the races for 2025.

Speaker 1:

So, now that you've gone through your bank statements and you've got a good, realistic, month-to-month budget for your first quarter of the year, we got to follow through with it. We have to commit 100%, not 95, not 80, not 20,. A hundred percent. We need to commit, and that might mean that we have to change behaviors that aren't even related to our finances, for instance, if our eating out budget needs to be reduced significantly this coming year. This is something that you really want to do, you want to cook at home more, you want to make sure that you are not spending so much on eating out, then we have to change our habits and behaviors when it comes around to food right, and also our time management.

Speaker 1:

Because if you're a crazy busy mom like me and you've got kids going in three different directions and you've got yourself with your own stuff and you're working and you're doing all the things and every other night you are grabbing food on the go, whether it's on yourself going to work, or if you are in between sports after school, whatever it is, we got to fix that, and it might be the answer of meal planning and meal prepping, or hear me out for a second it might be taking things off of your plate, which means that we have to say no to certain things. We might have to say oh, I've got two kids and my husband works 70, 50, 60 hours a week and I'm the one that has to run them all around and I have to work and I have to do all these things. I might only be able to do one kid a sport per season. So, instead of two kids running around and doing multiple sports every season, one kid, one sport that they are playing per season, and I used to hate this rule as a kid with my parents, but they really they had five kids, okay, and we we all range in age, so there was never five kids at one time, there was always three kids at one time, but that that rule was so that they could keep their sanity and there's nothing that I feel like I've missed out on, there's nothing that my siblings feel like they've missed out on. It's just that it was able to allow the household to run more efficiently.

Speaker 1:

Because, listen, ma, if your cup is empty, you cannot pour from empty cups, right? If you are going batty and you are always constantly on the go and you are just draining yourself down to zero, your kids are seeing that. Your kids are feeling that no amount of sports, running and theater and you know, art classes and extracurriculars is going to solve them seeing you deteriorate. So when I say that we have to look at the eating out budget, what is causing the eating out budget to be so high? Is it because we're running ourselves ragged? Is it because we are feeling lazy? Is it because we suck at cooking? What is it? Go dig into that instead of just saying, all right, we're going to eat out less because I guarantee it won't work, you're still going to eat out. That's the great thing about coaching is people think they're coming to me just to solve their financial things, but really we're going deep. We're going in a much deeper level and we're fixing some terrible habits that you have and we're really starting to process and look at things very differently and making sure that it's aligning with your values.

Speaker 1:

That is the most important part of coaching. You probably would have never thought like oh man, I do run myself racket and that is the reason that we're always eating on the go and it's not healthy and I really want to change it. But I can't change it because all my kids are going everything. Well, what if we just simmer down on the things that we're doing? And for a lot of people, they're going to look at me Well, like I have three heads with that one and that's okay. It's not for you to process and do right away unless you are ready to do it. And when you're ready to do it, you can explore that option. You can go ahead and explore it and if it doesn't work for you and you really miss. Running around ragged okay, run around ragged, you know, whatever you want to do, but at least try doing something different. I say this to my clients all the time we're going to throw the dart at the dartboard and we're going to figure out if it sticks, if it.

Speaker 1:

Two days after Christmas and something came to me last night it was you know we spend a month, maybe maybe even more, on planning for the holiday season, right, like we're planning for Christmas. We're buying the gifts, we're setting the menu, we're planning where we're going, what times we're going to be there. We spend a lot of time organizing the holiday season to make it so magical. I want you to take that type of dedication and apply it to your finances in 2025. I want you to take the 25 minutes, 30 minutes a month and put it towards your finances. I want you to set the goals. I want them to be realistic, I want them to have a time frame. I want numbers attached to those things. I want you to put as much planning into your finances for 2025 as you are putting into your holiday season every single year.

Speaker 1:

For some people, this is not magical, this is not fun. This is not enjoyable. This is probably a reality check for a lot of you, but the only way to change the trajectory of your finances is to look at it and then make a plan for it, because if you don't have a plan, you're just going nowhere and you're not going to achieve anything. And another year is going to go by and you're going to look at it and you're going to say, oh my gosh, what happened? We spent that much on Amazon. Oh gosh, I don't want that to be you year after year after year.

Speaker 1:

So come on over to the Better Budgeting Playbook. I've got plenty of spots available for you. I would love to coach you through this year. I would love for you to hit those financial goals. If you have tried over and over and over again, I'm telling you my system works if you work it, and the part is if you work it that part right there.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes people need a coach beside them to make that happen. Sometimes they need the person with the standing appointment. Every two weeks, I'm going to check in with Danielle. I've got a meeting with Danielle. We're hitting these goals because I'm being accountable. If you need that, if you're the type of person that needs somebody to hold you accountable. I'm here for it. I am here for it. I want to celebrate every single success, every single win that you have this coming year. So, if you are ready to make a change, send me a message.

Speaker 1:

All the information is in the show notes. You can go ahead and apply online. You can set an appointment with me. It's a complimentary meeting we're going to figure out is coaching a good fit for you? It probably is. If you're this far into this episode, I want you to win in 2025. I really really do so. Go ahead and sign up for the Better Budgeting Playbook and I can't wait to meet you and talk to you about your finances and the goals for 2025. And with that, I will talk to you all again soon. Take care.