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
Organize Your Finances for The New Year- FYI, It's Not A Budget
This episode emphasizes the importance of organizing financial obligations and addressing cash flow issues as the new year begins. Listeners receive practical strategies for managing bills, setting realistic budgets, and transforming their relationship with money.
• Celebrating podcast milestones and international growth
• Importance of sharing financial journeys and testimonies
• Strategies for organizing bills before budgeting
• Understanding and resolving cash flow problems
• Setting realistic spending goals for success
• Encouraging prepayment and strategic use of paychecks
• Introducing coaching opportunities and DIY options
• Engaging with listeners through anonymous questions and feedback
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. Happy 2025, friends. This is the first episode in 2025.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for this coming year. I've got so many things planned for this podcast and I have so many things planned for this podcast and I have so many things planned for my clients and future clients over there in the Better Budgeting Playbook, and I'm just happy to have you here. I just want to do a little roundup here about the podcast. We started this podcast in May of 2023. We're coming up on this two year anniversary, which is really exciting to me. I never imagined it would go this far, but here we are. I really love coming back to you all every single week, hearing your stories, hearing all of your success, all of your trials, anything that I can do to help you, and also your comments, your reviews. I love them so much. So if you could please give a five star review and a healthy comment that helps the algorithm and more people discover this podcast. But also sharing the podcast with people that you love. If you really resonate with one of these episodes, please send it out. I absolutely love when people share podcast episodes. So in 2025, the Better Budgeting podcast had over 14,000 downloads Incredible. I am just so over the moon about that. I love that you all keep coming back. And around January of 2024, that's when we hit the 10,000 download mark. So we're just about to crest over the 25,000 download mark, which is huge. I actually was doing some research and found out that this podcast is in the top 25% of all podcasts on the platform Buzzsprout, which is where I host this podcast, and there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts on Buzzsprout and we're in the top 25%, which is so awesome.
Speaker 1:When the Better Buzzshoot Podcast hit 10,000 downloads, I ended up getting a tattoo to kind of just mark this amazing journey. And it is a tattoo of an open book and in the middle of the book is some plants kind of sprouting out of the spine of the book and it was just something to share and say like I'm growing and my knowledge is growing and I'm growing other people's knowledge through this podcast, and the book actually represents something else which I'm trying to write a book. It is very difficult. I felt like God had led me to go write a book and it has been a wild journey. It has been very difficult, very, very difficult writing this book. I just felt like God started with this kind of story about myself but then I was saying no, I'm going to pivot more towards finances and it just keeps coming back to some of my own journeys, which I feel like is a healing journey for me. So I'm not really sure if this is going to be published. I'm really waiting on God's calling on what the heck I'm supposed to do with this. But it has been a really awesome journey writing out some of these crazy events in my life that have happened and just putting them on paper. It's kind of just releasing that and maybe that is the intention all along. But if you are a person of faith, you'll probably understand this testimony and if you're not, hopefully this may be a testimony for you to follow our Lord.
Speaker 1:I was driving a back road and we had no radio, which was very odd. But we were in the boondocks here in Pennsylvania and I had no radio and it was just dead quiet. My kids were sleeping in the back seat and for me, when I hear God, it's very audible and I heard him say write a book. And I thought to myself, who would ever want to read about my story? And then all of a sudden I saw this like flashback of titles of books that I've read about people, about random people that have done different things in finance, different things just in general their story actresses, actors, philanthropists, all kinds of stuff that I've read and I was like, oh, okay, god, yeah, you're right, people do read random people's stories like me. So that has just been a project that has been on pigeonhole for a bit, because I get in this kind of inspirational mood and I just start writing and it kind of free flows and again, I think this is part of a healing journey for me, but I'm hoping that one day that this is going to be something maybe published We'll see, we'll see. And again, I planned on it being about finances, but so far there's not a whole lot of finances in it. But I did get that tattoo to commemorate the 10,000 downloads on the podcast. That is a big milestone. So we achieved that in 2024, which is really awesome.
Speaker 1:We have been listened to on six out of seven continents. Nobody in Antarctica has listened to us yet. So if you know anyone that goes to Antarctica, please send this podcast their way. Ask them to listen to it while they're down there. This podcast their way, ask them to listen to it while they're down there. We have been in 2,287 cities, with Philadelphia, pennsylvania, and then Sydney, new South Wales being the top two cities. That's incredible. Philadelphia is about two and a half hours east of me, where I live, so that's a very random location point to listen to this podcast, but also Sydney, new South Wales, which is in Australia. Like what? Who is listening to that? That is awesome. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this is very helpful Within those 2,287 cities. That comes with 71 countries, with the United States being the first spot and then Canada and Australia are tied for second. So really exciting that this is now an international podcast. There is a lot of people listening all over the world Europe, africa, asia, australia, south America, north America, all over and it is incredible to me. So thank you so much for being a part of this journey.
Speaker 1:It just goes to show that finances is universal. It does not matter if it is in dollars, pesos or pounds or anything else. The behavior is really what drives our finances and I just wanted to share that with you, because I feel like that's the whole point of this podcast is. I don't go through here and give you step-by-step instructions. A whole lot, a lot of what we talk about is the mindset and the behavior behind your finances. So just to show like it is international, it is universal, it is not changing from country to country. Behavior is what drives our finances.
Speaker 1:So with today's topic, we are going to be talking about what we need to be doing in the new year with our finances. It is new year, new me, new resolution. I'm going to get my finances in order finally, and it never does right. So we are going to change that narrative this year 2025. If you are going to put in the work, you are going to right. So we are going to change that narrative this year 2025. If you are going to put in the work, you are going to get it done. You are going to change your financial life.
Speaker 1:So what I always recommend is organizing the finances, and what that means is we are not starting with savings and debt payoff. We are not doing that. We are organizing. We are taking things and we are putting them out on the kitchen table. We're taking our bills and we're figuring out where they go, how much, what date they're due. All of that stuff we are organizing first so that we can build a budget. And when we go and we build a budget, people tend to go and say, all right, I'm going to go put money in savings right away, I'm going to go ahead and do debt payoff right away, and sometimes we can do that.
Speaker 1:But if you are like a majority of people, you have one side of the month that is just like super heavy in bills and you feel like you are the poorest person on the planet, and then you have the other side of the month where you feel like you are rich, like there are no bills due, barely any bills due, and you've got extra money. And it is exciting, honey, this is called a cash flow problem. A lot of my clients when they come to me they've got cash flow problems. It is just too heavy on one side of the month. I'm going to tell you. It's probably that last week of the month, going into the first week of the month, a lot of people have their rent, their mortgage, maybe even some car payments and things like that. That is the first part of the month and that is the heaviest amount of money that goes towards their bills. It's the highest percentage, I should say, and when it's all lumped together it really just slashes your paycheck significantly. So what we're going to do to combat that is get ahead of our bills. That is step one.
Speaker 1:If you have a cash flow issue like this, your first step is not to save, it's not to pay off debt, it is to get ahead of those bills. When clients come to me a lot of the times it is I am stressed beyond you can imagine I am so sick and tired of paying bills. I'm kind of scared of my bills. I kind of ignore them maybe and I feel stressed all the time, I'm not sleeping well A lot of things that are negative when it comes to the finances. We don't want that. We want a good, healthy relationship with our finances and a lot of the times, as soon as we fix the cashflow issue, we're not overwhelmed by the debt, we're not overwhelmed by the lack of savings. I mean, it's still there, right, it's still there, but now we're starting to get a sense of peace because we are not living that paycheck to paycheck life anymore. It's still there, but now we're starting to get a sense of peace because we are not living that paycheck to paycheck life anymore. It's still super tight. It's super tight until we get some savings in there and we get some debt paid off. However, we're getting rid of that stressor, of that big fat heavy payment on the first part of the month or the last part of the month, and then we're fixing our cash flow.
Speaker 1:That is step one. So you're probably like Danielle well, how do I do that? What do I do? What do I do? It already feels like there's no extra cash anyway. Well, you do need to follow a budget for sure. We need to track our spending. We need to make sure we're setting realistic spending goals as well, such as groceries. If you are a family of five and you spend $250 a week at groceries, it does not make sense to cut that down to $100 a week. It's very difficult. Okay, we need to work up to that. If you really want to go crazy with the grocery bills, okay, but you do need to set realistic spending goals in your budget, otherwise you're just going to keep failing. Okay, so we're going to set realistic spending goals. With that, you're going to have some extra money. You don't think you have extra money until you actually go and sit down and look at your bank statements and you highlight what was actually a need and what was actually a want in the last month.
Speaker 1:A lot of people have extra money. They don't feel like they do, but you do. If you are making well over $100,000 a year, you have extra money. They don't feel like they do, but you do. If you are making well over $100,000 a year, you have extra money. And I will find it. Okay, I will help you find it a hundred percent. So, now that we've got cashflow available because we are setting realistic spending goals. We are going to go ahead and start prepaying some bills for next month. Yes, we are. We are doing it or we are setting money aside for next month.
Speaker 1:Big one to start with is the mortgage or your rent. Let's say your rent is a thousand bucks and every single month, that first paycheck or that very last paycheck of the month is your rent money. All thousand comes out of it. You earn maybe $1,800 every two weeks and all thousand comes out. It leaves you with 800 bucks, but on the back end of the month you earn $1,800 and you only have $200 worth of bills due. So you have $1,600 available back there.
Speaker 1:There's the problem. Okay, so what I'm going to have you do is you're going to pay your rent and then you're going to split your next rent in half. If you can't do half, you're going to do a quarter of a payment and you are going to set that aside in a separate account. That is not your spending account. It can be your bills account as long as you're using only a bills account, but it needs to go away. We need to forget about that. That ain't there anymore. In order for us to get ahead, we cannot be spending this money. So if we're going to win half, we're going to pay a thousand dollars at the beginning of the month for January's rent and then on January 15th, when my next paycheck comes in, I'm going to set aside $500. That's going to be for my rent for February. Now, when that first check in February comes around, I only got to take 500 from my paycheck in order to pay my rent.
Speaker 1:This is how we get ahead, and sometimes people have three paychecks in a month and what that means. Okay, this is not extra money, it just means that there is three times that money got deposited into your bank account in a one month span. So on the 1st, the 15th and the 30th that's a great example. When people have that, this is a fantastic time to go ahead and get ahead of your bills. Y'all be out here spending like crazy and not even realize y'all have extra quote, unquote, extra money coming into the household two times. It's four times. If you're paid weekly, by the way, four times a year. Okay, this is a great opportunity to get ahead of those bills. And guess what? January is one of those months.
Speaker 1:If you are paid weekly, you are going to get five checks between January 3rd and January 31st. If you are paid bi-weekly and you get paid this Friday, january 3rd, you're going to have three checks this month. You're going to go ahead and get ahead of your bills, girly. That's what you're going to do. Okay, you're going to start with your rent or your mortgage. We're going to strive for half. If we can't get half, we're at least getting something. Okay, it's going to alleviate how much we got to pay towards our mortgage or our rent or our car payment for February.
Speaker 1:This is the game changer for all of my clients. This is the very first thing that we work on. If there is a cash flow issue After you have your full month, where you have gotten at least halfway ahead of your rent or your mortgage or your car payment, whatever bill you pick, now we can go and start working on them. Savings goals, girly. Now we can go and start working on those debt goals. But you really, really want to work on the cash flow issue first, because that's what's going to alleviate the feelings behind finances, those negative feelings. That's where a lot of stress is held is that bills are late and the stress builds up and we are just freaking out inside. Let's fix that first. Fix the feeling first, then we'll go do the math.
Speaker 1:I just had a meeting this past week with some clients. They're new for me and they are a fantastic couple, awesome, wonderful couple, and we were talking about that this week. It is so important. Fix the feelings first. Let's get this added stress out of our lives. Get the cashflow down correctly. Then we're going to go and we're going to get into those debts, we're going to get into those savings goals and let me tell you, I probably hurt her feelings a little bit.
Speaker 1:She was really excited to see a big amount of money going into savings until I said, hey, I don't know if we really should be doing that. Because here's, here's the reason why I think that's the beauty of coaching is that I'm going to allow you to do whatever you want. Okay, I can't even say allow you, you're going to do whatever you want. But when clients really look and listen and look at all the options because I can guarantee you they didn't see that option right, they didn't see it at all, because you only know what you've always known, right. So if you can get in front of a coach and you can have them look at your finances and really say, hey, I don't think that's the path, because you're telling me, you're stressing, you're having a hard time sleeping, you're really freaking out every month when bills are due. Let's go fix that first.
Speaker 1:And there's some of you that are listening to this podcast. You're like, oh my gosh, that is me, I swear. Every time I put money in the bank account, I have to take it back out and I always feel like I don't have enough for whenever the bills are due, go fix the cash flow issue. I bet you that is it. That's going to solve a lot of your problems and, as I said, we work on this in the Better Budgeting Playbook. I help you and guide you through this process.
Speaker 1:It probably is going to take a month, month and a half, but if you are in January right now January 2025, and you are listening to this you should get on my schedule. You probably have an extra quote, unquote extra paycheck coming in this month. Let's use that to your advantage. Let's get off to 2025 on the right foot. Do the dang thing you said you want a different right. You want a different. Today is the day we are doing it different.
Speaker 1:I've got three spots available January 2025. Available for one-on-one coaching. One-on-one coaching it is a fantastic opportunity for you. I've only got three people. I usually have more than these, but I am like capping out in 2025. I am making sure that I'm giving myself my me time. So I am really doing some slim pickings here.
Speaker 1:Okay, on people that were coming into the Better Budgeting Playbook, but I do have a DIY option for you. So, if you are like you know what, I really want to learn this, but I don't have the time to do a Zoom call every other week with a coach. I really want to do this on my own, set, my own pace, but I want the guidance and I want the coach availability when I need it, not necessarily a scheduled time. I got you. That's what the DIY option is for.
Speaker 1:I've listened to people over the last four, almost five years about their finances and a lot of the times it's I don't have the time, I don't have the finances, yada, yada, yada. All right, I'm taking that out off the table right now and I'm saying listen, I got the DIY option. It's super affordable for a lot of people. It gives you coaching availability because my clients that use that option. They're able to text me and it's nothing for me to do a video recording explaining something in a little bit deeper detail based off of your personal finances, sending it over or me doing like a just a quick little video check-in but those clients are doing really well with that DIY option. So if you need something but you're like I just don't know if I want to do one-on-one coaching, I've now released a DIY option one-on-one coaching. I've now released a DIY option and it is a game changer for people that can keep themselves accountable and will continually check in when they need help. If you were like, no, that's not me, I need someone to hold my hand the whole time, I got you. That's what one-on-one coaching is for. Okay, so I've got three spots for January 2025 for for one on one coaching, but I do have availability in that DIY course. So if you want help, go to the show notes, sign up, get on my schedule. Let's get the ball rolling here, because it's January, it's 2025, girly, it is time, early, it is time.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want you to know is that we have a anonymous text line here. If you go into the show notes, the very first thing it says send me a message. You can ask me any of your financial questions, any topics that you want us to cover, anything like that. You can send this to me anonymously, which is really cool. So if you have questions, you have topics, anything like that, send me a message. I love that.
Speaker 1:Also, leaving reviews is really cool. So if you have questions, you have topics, anything like that, send me a message. I love that. Also, leaving reviews is really awesome. Like I said earlier in this episode, it really helps this podcast grow and we are looking to grow it significantly in 2025. So, sharing episodes with friends and family, putting it on social media and tagging me, that's really awesome. I love seeing that so much that you're listening to these episodes and they're really helpful. I love seeing that so much that you're listening to these episodes and they're really helpful. So, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode and we'll talk again soon.