The Better Budgeting Podcast

How to Navigate Unexpected Financial Challenges

• Danielle Reese • Season 3 • Episode 31

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We explore why budgeting is never linear and how to effectively handle life's financial curveballs without derailing your progress or spiraling into guilt.

• Better Budgeting Blueprint launching April 1st, 2025 for $99 with early release rebate opportunity
• Advice for selling collectibles based on expert input from family members in the trading card business
• The importance of staying calm during financial emergencies instead of letting emotions escalate
• Why there are always multiple solutions to any financial problem if you're willing to get creative
• How seeking outside counsel can help you see options you might miss when stressed about money
• The power of mindset in financial problem-solving and avoiding negative self-talk

Check out the Better Budgeting Blueprint when it launches on April 1st, 2025. For those listening before that date, join the waitlist through the link in the show notes. The first 10 people who purchase and complete the feedback form within 30 days will receive a $50 rebate!


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.

Speaker 2:

One more announcement I have for you all is we have the Better Budgeting Blueprint coming out next week, april 1st 2025. If you're listening to this episode, after April 1st 2025, the link in the show notes is going to take you directly to purchasing your very own blueprint to help you with budgeting. If it's prior, you're going to have the waitlist. Grab yourself a spot on that waitlist. This blueprint is going to help you organize your finances, is going to help you find some money that you didn't even know you had, and it is going to help work on your financial mindset so that you can set goals and actually achieve them. So go over there. It is 99 bucks to start for early release, and the great thing about this early release is I know that these systems all work. I just need to make sure the delivery works. So I'm asking a early release option. If y'all could fill out a feedback form within 30 days of purchasing it, complete everything, fill out the feedback form, I'm going to give you a $50 rebate. So really, this brings your total down to $49. That is a steal, and I'm only accepting 10 people to do that. So if you get on that waiting list, if you are before April 1st, get on the waiting list, get your copy on April 1st, submit everything, get your $50 back. You're going to have such a change of financial life just by following the system that I have. And if you're listening after April 1st, no problem, you can still go grab that blueprint. It is still going to give you awesome, wonderful financial advice, also help you create a realistic budget and just really help with jumpstarting your financial journey. And I actually got some fan mail recently. If you didn't know, in the show notes for every single one of these it'll say send a message. At the very top you can send me a message and I will answer your question on our next recorded podcast. So it says hi, I love your podcast and page. It is very helpful and it's been a good push on thoughtfulness of where I want to be.

Speaker 2:

My question is you mentioned on episode January 17th 2025 about a card's worth. Where is good play slash, slight to sell things like this or get our price value? My husband has sport cards. As a kid I have ones. Barbie trolls, ty, um. She said I have a lot of ty beanie baby items, um, from that ty line. You know, when I was a kid, I I had those too. I didn't have a ton, but you know you never rip the tags off ever, right?

Speaker 2:

I've tried to book online sales things for two businesses, not for me, but I would consider selling things sitting in plastic totes for extra money to pay down debt. Have a great day, beth. All right, beth. So this is not exactly my zone of genius. This is not exactly my business either, my business model.

Speaker 2:

But my husband recently has really enjoyed baseball cards and he's been looking them up and, interestingly, my sister and my brother-in-law do have a card business, card trading business, and so I asked them, I sent them a picture of your questions here and I'm going to read to you exactly what they said to me. For cards and really awesome shape, they suggest price chartingcom. Everything else toys, clothes, et cetera. They said go over to eBay, go into the sold settings and look up to see how much stuff has been sold for and then go sell it on eBay for that price. If it's trading card games such as Pokemon, magic, the Gathering, yu-gi-oh, los Locorana I don't know what that is they suggested tcgplayercom. Search the card in the appropriate condition and look at the market price for the cards in those conditions. And then a helpful tip that they sent over here is when you sell online, always, always, always, under promise, over deliver.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes it's better to list a card lightly played and the person get what was in between lightly played and near mint condition and be way happier with their purchase. So there is a great suggestion. It was a great question. Um, yeah, that is a new adventure for us. Interestingly, I we did not get into it because of my in-law, my brother-in-law and my sister. Uh, they do not do baseball cards at all but uh, my husband has really, really enjoyed, enjoyed that lately and so he's just, he just buys them and keeps them all. He doesn't even sell them, which I think is silly. But I would keep the ones I want and get rid of the rest, but he is not that type of person. We we have lots of baseball cards. So hopefully that answers your question and thanks for asking me about it. Today's topic is going to be talking about when budgeting isn't linear. It's never linear, it never has been, it never will be. You can set a budget and say that you are going to spend x dollars amount and it probably won't always come out that way.

Speaker 2:

So we're going to talk about what do we do when we have life throwing us curveballs? Think about job loss, random car repair, mental health slumps, unexpected bills all of that stuff I first have to share. You got to have a budget in order for this to apply, right? So get into either the Better Budgeting Playbook, which is one-on-one coaching, or now we have the Better Budgeting Blueprint, which is your DIY version of the playbook, so you can do it on your own time. You get those great resources, but you need to have a budget in place in order for this all to make sense, because right now, if you don't have a budget in place and these things are happening, it's chaos. Right, your life is probably full of chaos. You are always wondering when is money coming in? Where is it going? What am I going to do to pay for this expense or this bill? It is always something and it's never a good feeling. Okay, so you got to get a budget in place. After you get a budget in place and these things pop up, we need to be flexible, not rigid. Okay, we need to know that our budget can flow with life's unexpectedness. Okay, I always tell my clients that you can change anything that you want on the budget. Every time you change something, though, is it taking you away from your goals or bringing you closer to it? That's really the question that needs to be asked, and you're going to have these just curve balls in life that you need to take care of. Unexpected bills are not fun at all. I think it was about six months ago, I don't know a little while ago that we had an unexpected doctor bill that was about to head to collections because I never got it. It was over a thousand bucks, and you know that can really derail people whenever you're early on in your financial journey, so I want you to know what to do.

Speaker 2:

First off, we're not going to go into a guilt spiral. We're not doing that. We're not going to tell us how terrible we are with money. We're not going to tell us how awful and that we're guilty and just all these things are shameful. No, we're not doing that. We're going to get right into the mess and we're gonna figure out how to fix it. Our mind is the most amazing, complex thing. Anything that you think of is going to come to truth, so if you think you're a terrible person, guess what's gonna happen if you think you're terrible with money, guess what's gonna happen. I feel that our mind is just so strong and when you start thinking these bad basically mojos You're going to experience bad mojo. So we're going to be looking in the windshield, not the rearview mirror for this one, and honestly in life we should be looking through the windshield and not the rearview mirror anyway. But I'm putting it here because it's so important. When this stuff happens, some of y'all are going to just start talking bad about yourselves and you just can't. You can't. We got to find solutions.

Speaker 2:

Me and my husband differ on this, right, I'll, I'll never forget. We're in our house, um, and the washer and dryer came with the house purchase and one day the dryer washer, I don't know something was smoking, like I think it was the washer, because I was like that's weird, why is that smoking? And there was water around it and, uh, I was like, okay, well, youtube, I'm, I'm calm, right, I'm, I'm cool as a cucumber. I'm like just turn it off, like it's, there's no flames, just turn it off. And he is just losing it, right, he is just losing it. And I'm like, okay, well, let's assess and see what the problem is. And my husband don't you understand it is smoking.

Speaker 2:

I'm like, yeah, it sure is, but there's no flames. So I think we're all right and you have to address your finances that way, assessing the situation before we let our emotions just run wild. So me, I'm like pulling up YouTube and he's like this is silly, we are not using YouTube on a washer. That, literally, was just smoking. I'm like I'm cool with it. I'm cool with it. But I think that just goes to show that I've experienced financial pitfalls many times and elevated emotion is never going to get you out of the situation any faster. So I need you to calm down. When these things come in, these bills and and unexpectedness comes in, I need you to breathe and and we need to assess the situation. That's step number one. Now we need to start looking at all of the options. How can we achieve the goal? So, for instance, I have clients that their transmission in their truck has gone out and it was very unexpected. They come to the meeting and the husband's like, well, I guess we're just going to get out alone. And I'm like, okay, well, that is an option. What other options do we have? And I think we took about 10 minutes and we came up with nine different ways to assess this situation, how to solve this problem. Some of them are really great ideas, some of them not so great. Some of them are going to require more sacrifice than others. The point is there is never only one way. There is never, ever, ever, ever. There is never, ever only one way to solve that problem. There's always going to be multiple ways to solve the problem, and in 10 minutes, we brainstormed nine different ideas when they came to the meeting and only had one. So sometimes you have to get really creative. Now, what happens if you only have the one idea and you think that's just it, that's all I have? Then you need outside counsel, right? Whether it's from me, from it's a friend, a family member, somebody that you hold dear, close to your heart, whoever that you trust, you need to go get their opinion about the situation.

Speaker 2:

Now, I understand it's kind of hard sometimes with your finances. You don't want to talk to mom and dad about finances because they've helped you so much or they're really great with money and you don't want to disappoint them. I understand, but at some point you have to stop the chaos, right, and if those are the most trusted people to you, you start with them. If you're still like, nope, danielle, that's a no, that's a no for me, okay, well then you come into my inbox and you and I can talk it out and we can find multiple solutions to help you through this situation.

Speaker 2:

And this isn't just in your finances, this is with all types of things. For instance, I was talking to a friend yesterday and she was like my husband just really needs to chat with you because he comes up with all these business ideas and none of them really just stick. Like he just hops from business idea to business idea to business idea. And I was like, okay, I don't know what I would talk to him about Because, like, he probably has a lot of good business ideas, right. But then I said you know, maybe his gift is that he can come up with ideas and you just need to monetize being able to come up with different ideas. So businesses paying for somebody to come in up with different ideas, so businesses paying for somebody to come in, bring new ideas so that they can revive a business or get it out of a slump or, you know, turn it all around. So what was he just needs to stick to? One was now oh well, maybe I can bounce around and have all these different ideas and start providing new ideas to all types of different businesses, because the brain was wired in a certain way and he's been blessed by God to always be thinking up new ideas. That's absolutely amazing, right?

Speaker 2:

So, jumping back to your finances, when you think you're stuck and these unexpected things happen, you have to assess the situation and then start thinking up new ideas. If you can't think of any new ideas, you bring in outside counsel, because the answer might not be putting it on a credit card, it might not be putting your car up for collateral for a personal loan, it might not be borrowing money from whoever, but when you're in the thick of it, you're having a really hard time processing it. And that's why I'm telling you if this is, you get outside counsel for sure, always, 100% of the time, whether it's me or someone else that you trust. Go do that, because here's the reality your budget is only so flexible. Okay, the money coming in minus the money going out. It's only so much. And if you don't have enough to cover that expense by being flexible, what's the next option?

Speaker 2:

Most people are like oh well, it's just got to go on a credit card, and that's what I'm trying to tell you is get new ideas, find new ideas. That is going to save so much frustration in your finances. But you don't think about those things. When you're like freaking out, right, when you're in that laundry room and the, the wash machine is smoking and and things like, you're probably not thinking about other solutions other than just turn the, turning the washer off, and what I'm saying is you gotta calm down, you gotta calm down and if you can't do it for yourself, get someone to help you with it. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and, as always, thank you so much for listening. Take care.