Financial Goals: A Must, Not a Want | QFW Parenting Podcast

The G-Shaped Economy Explained: Why Family Budgeting Matters More Than Ever in 2026

You are not imagining it. Groceries cost more. Rent costs more. And yet restaurants are full and people are still taking vacations. Economists have a name for what is happening: the G-shaped economy. And understanding it might be the most clarifying thing you hear this year.In this episode, we break down why younger families are feeling the budget squeeze harder than any other group — fueled by quiet Boomer-generation support that's propping up spending nationwide — and why the answer is not to wait for relief, but to build the system that gets your family ahead anyway. We cover the LGBTQ+ wage gap, what a real budget looks like at any income level, and how the families who will have something to pass down to their kids are building it now.This is not about being perfect with money. It is about getting honest, getting organized, and making your money work for your family — starting today.

In This Episode:

• The G-shaped economy explained, and what it means for families raising kids right now.
• The LGBTQ+ wage gap: why this conversation matters specifically for our community
• How to understand your real income, including variable pay.
• The 50/30/20 framework and when to adapt it.
• SMART financial goals, budgeting apps, and tools that actually help
• Five habits that make a budget stick long-term.

Stats Mentioned:

• Center for American Progress, LGBTQ+ Wage Gap Report, 2025
• Yardeni Research, G-Shaped Economy, January 2026

FREE QFW Travel Quiz -> https://qfamilyway.com/travel-quiz/

Transcript

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KeisaB 0:05

Oh, welcome back to The Table Builders. This is Keisa B. And today we are talking about money. And before you check out, stay with me because this conversation is not about being perfect with your finances. There is no perfect. But it is about being honest, getting organized, and building a system that actually works for your family because everything is pointing that it isn't an, "Ah, I wanna get my money working for me" moment. It is a must moment. You must get your finances, your goals, everything automated, must in 2026. But first, I kinda wanna put some context on everything that's going on right now because I wanna name something that a lot of us are feeling right now, including myself, um, that... And I just couldn't put it to words, um, and maybe you couldn't either. 'Cause I walk into the grocery store, and the bill is higher than it was two years ago, even a year ago. Gas is up, you know. Uh, rent is a lot higher. And yet restaurants are full. Families are still booking vacations. It's hard to get any type of vacation packages. And the economy on paper looks stable. So what is actually happening? Well, economists are calling it the G-shaped economy. And G is for generational because The term was coined by market strategist Ed Yardini, and the idea is this: that boomers, those Americans born between 1946 and 1964, accumulated enormous wealth over the past several decades through home appreciation, retirement accounts, pensions, and investments. Boomers held $77 trillion in wealth as of 2022, and the more recent Federal Reserve data puts the figure closer to $89.6 trillion. That's roughly half of all household wealth. Yeah, let that sit. And so when younger generations hit that affordability wall on rent, our down payment, our childcare, our college, all of which have swelled the past decade, boomer parents and grandparents are increasingly stepping up to help. That generational support is quietly holding up the consumer economy. So for some of us raising kids right now, that family lifeline is real, and we are so incredibly grateful for it. For others of us, though, it is not available, and that means we have to build it ourselves, and that starts with the B word, a budget. Because the best thing we can do for our children is to become the generation that has something to pass down, and that starts with the B word. So let's jump right in because for many non-traditional families, this conversation carries extra weight We often come to adulthood with less generational wealth, especially fewer financial mentors who look like our families. And there's a huge wage gap that is very real. So for instance, in 2024, LGBTQ+ households earned just 85 cents for every dollar earned by non-LGBTQ+ households, and the gap widens depending on your other identities. So there's only 70 cents for transgender and non-binary households, and 52 cents for LGBTQ+ women-headed households, like ours. That's roughly $12,600 in lost income per year for the average LGBTQ+ family, A budget, that elusive B word, does not fix a wage gap, but it does give you the clearest possible picture of what you are working with. And when you know that, you can build something real. That is exactly how our family was able to pay for reproductive assistance without going into debt at all, and having enough saved to supplement when we were a one household income for the first five years of AJ's life. These goals were important to us, so we made a budget and we stuck to it as much as possible, all while stashing money into our funds buckets. So this can be done, and here are some excellent steps to take, one through five, to get you on that track today. Let's get into it. Step one is understanding the full picture of what is coming in, not just your salary, everything. So your primary income, your salary or your hourly wages after taxes. Your secondary income, maybe freelance work, side projects, gig income, consulting, anything that's bringing in that, that extra G. As well as passive income, dividends, uh, rental income, royalties, anything that comes in without active work. If your income is variable, average it. Take the last three to six months of deposits and divide by the number of months. That number is your baseline, and you plan from the floor, not the ceiling. And there's some free tools that you can track your income. Simple spreadsheets. So use Apple Numbers, you go Google Sheets, both free. Both have templates that take about 10 minutes to set up. That's it. a simple spreadsheet with one column per month is enough to start. And with that, you add what that income is that you are bringing in every month, no matter what it might be. Next, you gotta track where your expenses are going. So everything you're spending, and Now, this one's the hard part because most of us have a general sense of what we spend, and almost all of us underestimate it. And not until we were doing this on a regular basis for a number of months, and now we've been doing it for years, actually for over a decade, that we start to really notice those trends. But the goal here is clarity, not shame. Don't look at your numbers and think, "Gosh, I wish I was somewhere else." Look at them, sit with them, take a breath and say, "Guess what? I'm starting something real for my family. I can do this." So go in there with that goal in mind, and it makes things, looking at those numbers so much easier. Start by sorting your spending into two buckets: essentials and non-essentials. So those essentials, rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance, transportation, childcare, medications. Essentials. All the non-essentials are like dining out, streaming subscriptions, any other type of sub-subscriptions you have that you can cut that off whenever you don't need it. Entertainment, shopping, anything that is a want rather than a need. So there's budgeting apps out there that help automate this. Two worth knowing about that are vetted and have been used by millions are Monarch, which connects directly to your bank accounts, and many find it much simpler than Mint. As well as YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget, and operates as a zero-based model where every dollar gets assigned a job. Both have privacy trade-offs, 'cause you are sharing bank access with a third party. So weigh that against the convenience, and if you prefer to keep things offline, again, that spreadsheet works just as well. The point is to see the numbers in front of you all in one place without looking away On to setting your goals. So when you set your goals, you wanna make sure that they're achievable. A budget without goals is just a tracking exercise which is great. It's always wonderful and highly need to look at your numbers and to track them, but the goals are what give it direction. So you wanna make sure you're giving a direction so that it's not easy to think, "Oh, well then I can spend this extra amount," because you're like, "Wait, no. If I spend something over here going out again this extra night, instead of spending for groceries, then I'm not going to be able to have that emergency fund, or I'm not gonna be able to pay down that really high interest debt which is holding me down in so many other ways, or to be able to pay for, um, a really special gift for your kids." Those are things that those bucket funds can do, and if you have goals for them, then it really gives you, um, a little kick in the butt that you need, um, to keep things in order. So there's short-term goals, and those are things that you wanna accomplish in the next, say, one to twelve months. Think building up a three-month, shit hits the fan emergency fund. Think about paying off a specific credit card, uh, or saving for a family trip. That's usually a one to twelve-month goal, right? Those funds are needed, um, a month from now or twelve months from now. But those long-term goals are bigger and further out. You're wanting to buy a home. You're wanting to fund your child's education. You're building a retirement that lets you actually stop working for someone else one day, or just doing things that you would rather do with your own time, or relocating to somewhere else that's gonna treat you better. So make your goals SMART, meaning that they're specific, they're measurable, they're achievable, relevant, and time-bound. And just saying, "I want to save more money" is not a goal. I've done it before and It does fail, and I failed multiple times before I really started to lean into the automation piece and really saying, "I have a goal. I want something to do." And what really made me focus was wanting to have kids, but knowing that we wanna have kids, but also not sacrifice our other long-term goals to do that. And we're big advocates of not being, debt because we see what debts, especially large high-interest debts, can do to people's lives when it spirals. That one year I could stay home with AJ when he was born, and we only had that one salary. And it wound up being that when I started saving, it was easier to do so, that I said, "Well, we could do this for more than just one year. We could do this for a couple years." And it made it so that we did that, and then the pandemic hit. And so we were able to go through that without getting into debt, not even knowing, of course, that there was going to be this major pandemic that happened And that's why it's even more important now in 2026 to make sure that you have those finances and you have those buckets of funds because there will be things that are coming down the road, and we can't predict what they are. But we have a pretty good sense from everything from the news and economists and just our own gut feelings that something is coming. So to be able to be p- better prepared. that's why we have SMART, goals in mind. Right? Make that a very specific goal. "I will transfer $200 in savings on the first s- on the first of every month for the next six months." That is a strong goal. Maybe that's your goal. So from there you can build a budget. We can pull it all together. A framework that works for a lot of families, especially those starting out, is the 50/30/20 rule. It still works exceptionally well for our family since it works with percentages versus arbitrary numbers. So with that 50/30/20 rule, this is how it looks in, in practice. 50% of your take-home income, however that income looks, goes to needs. So again, that was the rent, utilities, groceries, transportation, and insurance. Those medicines, those things you h- you need, you can't live without. 30% goes to savings or debt repayment. This includes, again, your emergency fund, retirement contributions, paying down high interest balances like credit cards. Those are savings, those are debts. Thir- that 20%, that last amount is your wants. It's the dining out, it's the entertainment, it's the subscriptions. It's things that make life enjoyable because again, this isn't about being painful. It's also about enjoying life, but making sure that you're still having enough to save and enough for your everyday expenses. So this is a framework and not a hard rule. if you are in a high cost of living area, your needs bucket may be closer to that 60, 65%. That is reality, not failure, and you would adjust your other buckets accordingly and be honest about what is actually wants and what falls in discretionary. that's what hiccups more of us than not is the understanding what our needs are and versus our wants and what's gonna fall into discretionary funds. So the last but not least thing we need to focus on when we are crafting this budget, and now we have this beautiful budget, we have everything automated, we gotta stick to it. Because creating an income and expense tracker, that's the easy part. And like I said, there's actually tools out there that can help us do it. But sticking to it is what counts, and here are five ways to help you do just that. First is automate your savings. So set up an automatic transfer to a savings account on every payday. If the money moves before you see it, you will not miss it. Use your bank's online tools, or if there's HR payroll management website provided by the company you work for, they might have a way for you to go ahead and say, "I wanna put 10%, 5%," whatever that amount is that's gonna go into savings. Again, I like that 50/30/20 rule, so it's gonna be 30% going into this allocated savings place. And I find that setting up savings buckets make goal-setting and tracking extremely helpful. So separate savings accounts are typically free and really easy to set up. So you can have one that you can name "My Go F My Employer" account and one is that, "Oh man, the fridge just broke" account. I usually stick to only two or three savings goals, saving goal buckets at a time. The second way is to review your tracker monthly, not just when something goes wrong. You set a recurring calendar event and 15 minutes once a month keeps you from being surprised. You definitely don't need to do it every day. Once a month is enough also to catch if there are, is anything, yeah, a surprise or anything that's fraudulent and be able to reach out to your credit card company or to your bank and be able to have it fixed. The third way is to give yourself a flex category. A budget that has no room for a spontaneous dinner or an unexpected need becomes a source of guilt rather than a tool. And we're not about some shame in here. So you can build in a small buffer intentionally The fourth way is to talk about it with those people that matter. So sharing your finances and reviewing what's going on with your budget and expense tracker, your goals and where they are with your partner, your co-parents, those conversations, they can happen together, and being on financially aligned is relationship work. It is a way to make sure that everyone feels that they are working towards something together. And so that, that one person who might be willing to spend a little bit more, but they understand why, "Oh, wait, I'm not gonna spend." Like as much as I want to spend a little bit more this month on this bag or these shoes or this car and we don't really need a new car because we have this goal and we all are working together to get there. And last but not least, when you get off track, get back on. So every month is a reset. One bad month does not undo a good system. So those are the five ways that can help you to stay on track and making it stick when it comes to working with, a budget and sticking with that expense tracker. Builders, the fact that the financial system was not built with our families in mind is not a hindrance to us. Because the most powerful thing that we can do in response is to take that fact and to understand our own money better than anyone else does. You don't need a large income to build financial stability. You need a clear picture, a realistic path, and the consistency to return to it every month. Those three things, and you will feel more comfortable with your own money, and it will be working for you. Those three things. That's it, and it's been done and continues to be done. So why not by you? And why not by someone else you're gonna share this with? Actually, over at qfamilyway.com, we have a free Where Do I Stand financial snapshot blueprint. It takes about 10 minutes, and it gives you a real baseline before you start building anything. The link will be in the show notes. It's under Guides, completely free. And we are going to keep coming back to money because it matters too much not to. Well, go ahead, hit subscribe if you love this. See you next episode. Until next time, Q fam, be well