My Money Routine: Budgeting, Building Credit & Financial Wellness

In this episode, I’m sharing how I manage and organize my finances in a way that actually feels freeing—not restrictive. I break down the system I use to categorize my money, the habits that keep me consistent, and how I’ve built and maintained a strong credit score along the way.

This is a realistic approach to financial wellness that’s helped me feel more in control, more secure, and more aligned with my goals.

Thanks so much for listening! If this episode resonated with you, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. New episodes drop every Tuesday morning, and you can follow me on Instagram @Stephanie_Monge to stay connected and come along for the journey.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Here's the deal. You either love it or you hate it. Maybe you think it's taboo. Maybe you have a toxic mindset with it. I don't know what your deal is. Everybody's mindset is very different with this topic. But regardless, whether you love it or hate it, it's going to affect you and it's important in everybody's life. And that is money. Today we're gonna be talking about finances and budgeting. And I know what you may be thinking: who the hell is this girl to be talking to me about this? What qualifications does she have? Not only have I helped a couple of friends in strategizing their finances to help them get out of debt, but I've also helped a couple of friends understand the importance of having a savings account, enough for them to open them, as well as as of today, my credit score is 802, baby. Let's go! I'm so happy. I've been waiting for it to get to 800 for so long. I always check my credit score, like at least every two weeks, to finally see it. An excellent zone was so rewarding. So it inspired me to make this episode. I will tell you a little bit about my mindset with money growing up, it was kind of just that there wasn't enough. It was more so of like a lacking or scarcity point of view on money. I've had to work on that. That is a whole different conversation. However, instead of making me have a toxic mindset with money, it actually did the opposite for me because I just knew that I didn't want this to be something that stuck around for me. And so it actually made me super responsible with my money and learn how to use my finances to their best abilities so that I wouldn't feel like the money I had wasn't enough. I feel like I got a pretty late start on education around this and just about even what a credit score was and why it mattered. So I'm gonna start from the basics and kind of dumb it down throughout this episode. But I remember the first conversation I had around it was around high school and it was around my spending habits. Had a job at that point. My dad had access to my bank account and he was just telling me, like, you are spending so much money eating out. And I remember he had a number for me and I was like, there's no way that's accurate. And I was so mind blown that it had gotten to such a huge amount in a month just because I wasn't tracking it. And you know, eating out all the time, even if it's like, you know, cheap things. Like in high school, I wasn't eating healthy, like I was going to, I don't know, McDonald's and just wherever my friends wanted to go. Like I didn't really care. So it's almost like the interest of time after time that builds up so much to be such a huge amount. And so that was when I was kind of like, oh wow, my mindset of spending got put into perspective, as well as I feel like around high school is when I started learning about like a credit score and what it means and why it's important. So your credit score is what is going to benefit you and being able to open credit cards and being able to put a loan on a house, and obviously just allows a lot of freedom around being able to be more flexible with your money, being able to be approved for rent, down payment on a car, just loans, and that's what the government looks at when they are looking at how good you are with money. So I actually opened my first credit card, probably also around high school when I started learning about it and just knew like, okay, it's important for me to have some type of credit card so that there's some track of my spending habits. I feel like the easiest way to explain a credit score is it's a score that shows how well you manage your money. So I knew that I needed to have a credit card to start building my credit score and start portraying how well I could manage. So I think I started with like a Forever 21 credit card, then I did an Ulta one, just like stores that I knew I would shop at often, RIP Forever 21. I can't believe they closed that. But it was small amounts I would spend on it and then I would pay it off right away. It was never something that accumulated for me. And then my loan for my car, I had to have a co-signer for it, obviously, because I didn't have much credit score. But then having a loan for my car in turn benefited my credit score. So I am going to share with you how I manage my finances and the system that I have found best to budget and how to make you feel more free with your money by managing the finances that you have now to have a better mindset around it, be in more of a state of abundance with it when you have control over your money. Your money doesn't control you. It really is that simple of a mindset shift. So let's begin. So the app that I use to manage my finances is Good Notes on my iPad. And then I bought something from Etsy that was like a planner one time and it had a budgeting part in it. This is how I first started getting my budgeting visual. Visual is so important, but you can do this on anything. You can literally do this on your notes app. I have my iPad pulled up in front of me, and I'm going to give you a rundown of everything that I use. Your most important category is going to be your fixed expenses. From there, I would say the rest are optional, but I'm going to tell you what I have on mind so that if this is something that you're interested in, you can also do. And I will tell you also which ones I use and which ones I don't. But I don't want you to get overwhelmed. So just know that the fixed expenses is the most important part. It's the part that we'll focus on the most and break down. The categories that I have available to me if I want to utilize fixed expenses is non-negotiable. And then I have a category of variable expenses, investments to pay off, subscriptions broken off into two categories. One is variable, one is fixed. And then I have a category of to claim for taxes. This is just because I am my own business. So if there's something that I need to claim, I have that there. So let's begin with the fixed expenses. These are your bills. They are going to be reoccurring, and these are your priorities. So what I have for my fixed expenses is my rent and water, my Wi-Fi, car payment, car insurance. And if you have health insurance, it would go here, your phone bill, this would go here, anything that is a recurring monthly bill that needs to be paid. Okay. So the first and most important thing you're going to do is figure out what your fixed expenses are, make columns of what they are. So, for example, rent, what date it's due, and then the amount that it is. Okay. So go through and make all of your categories, and then you're going to add everything up and see how much it is monthly. I cannot tell you how many people I talk to that don't even know how much their bills cost per month. This is so important. I'm going to pause here because let's say you're getting$5,000 a month, but you don't know how much you're spending, you don't know how much your bills are. And so you feel like you can't get a grasp on your finances. But if only you knew that your monthly bills all equate to$2,500, babe, you're going to feel rich because your monthly expenses are only half of what you make. So you have half of that to spend. So it just helps to put things into perspective. It helps things to stay organized in your brain and your habits and just how much control you have over your finances. So this is so important. Go through your bills. And also going through your bills is gonna also point out to you maybe you have some subscriptions that you forgot about that you need to cancel or implement into your monthly bills. But these are bills bills. These are not subscriptions. These are the bills that you have to pay. Okay, so now that you know all the bills, all the amounts, all the due dates, you are going to go into your calendar and you're gonna put them in your calendar. So I like to put all of my bills in green because I associate money with green. I was gonna put them in red, but red for me is associated like more like with a scary color, like you have to pay this bill. And it's like it makes me not enjoy it. I have so much of a passion for this that I genuinely enjoy paying my bills. I don't know who if like who says that and like what an insane thing to say I know. But it's like satisfying for me now that I have this and I can cross them off ever. Anyways, we'll get there. So all my bills are in my calendar in green. So I have my rent, my car insurance, everything is in my calendar, habitually in my calendar on the same time every day for my whole year. So I use Google Calendar personally, put my bills in and say that I want it to repeat like forever on the same day every month. So all my bills are there. That way, if I for some reason am like unorganized one month and I'm just I don't have maybe my iPod with me, I can just go on my phone, go on my Google Cal and check out, okay, no, I'm good. Like the bill is due this month this day, and this is how much it is. So I also include the amounts that everything is, so it's easily accessible to me at all times. So everything's in the calendar under what day, how much, what it is. Okay. And then we're going to go back into our fixed expenses. This is how I do things, and this is what makes me feel the most flexible with my money is I use a different color on the left side of all of the fixed expenses, all of the names of them. I divide the amount of the fixed expense into two. So on the left side, it's divided by two in pink. On the right side, it's the other half of the amount in blue. So for example, I pay$220 for my car. It says car payment due date the 11th amount$220. On the left side, it says in pink 110. On the right side, it says in blue, 110. Okay. And now after we do that with every single fixed expense, we're going to use and whatever associated color you did. So for me, it's pink. Those are the payments I'm gonna do on the first. So I add those all up and I have a little note on the bottom that says on the first equals this amount. And then I add up all the blue and I put the second is this amount, right? So this is my first paycheck and my second paycheck. So I do not wait until my bills are due to pay them. I pay half of all of my bills the first paycheck I get of the month, and I pay the second half of the bills, the second paycheck of the month. This is the biggest life hack. I don't know who taught, I don't think anyone taught me this. I don't know where I learned this from. I think in in my head it just made the most sense. But I've been doing this maybe three years now, and it has just given me such freedom with my money and just a feeling of control and flexibility with my money. And and really, yeah, the the biggest word I could say is just freedom because I know this is the minimum amount of what I need to have to pay my bills, and the rest is for me to choose where I want it to go, however, I want to spend that. So whether it's shopping or putting into investments, whatever it is, I get to choose that. So that is the most important part. If you take anything away from this episode, please let it be this. Figure out your fixed expenses, figure out how much they cost, and then divide it by two. You have two sections, you have two paychecks, and you have so much freedom. Okay, now we're going to go into the remaining categories that I personally have. The ones that I utilize are my investments. So my fixed investments that I make for myself, I have my savings, and I don't know, this is maybe more niche to being a business owner because I don't have a retirement fund. So I created a Roth IRA, and then I also have to pay the IRS taxes. So instead of waiting until the end of the year to pay the IRS taxes instead per paycheck per month, I have a set amount of estimated tax. So I go on IRS and make an estimated payment. So I have the amount that I want to save, invest, and pay to the IRS per month. I also divide that into two categories. And then I also do an additional calculation of my fixed expenses and of my investment expenses and categorize that into the first and second paychecks so that I have an amount of what it would equal if I'm making the investments that I want to make per paycheck as well. I hope this is all making sense. Never like went through this out loud. And then for each paycheck I get, I will go through and cross off what has been paid in the associated color. So for example, when I pay my car, when I get paid on the first of the month, I have in pink on the left side that I have to pay 110, because that's the half of the car payment. I will go in and cross it off in pink. That way I can keep track of what needs to be paid still. Even though I know it's the first and second paycheck, I just want to extra cross-check what has actually been paid. That way it keeps me super organized. I don't necessarily calculate and I'm not as strategic with this category, and this would be your variable expenses. So your gas per month is gonna change depending on how much you spend on groceries and just like shopping in general is going to vary person to person. I personally just like to know of how much spending I have. You know, these are the categories I have that are optional. Well, I guess groceries and gas isn't optional, but I don't fit that into my fixed expenses, whereas you totally can do that too. If you have a set amount that you know it and you know you want to include that. Okay, so those would be your variable expenses. And then I have a category that says to pay off. And here I just have any loans that I have. So like car, credit card, and I just have the amounts. This is just to help make it again visual for me. How close am I to paying off my car? Am I putting myself in too much debt with my credit card? I'm usually pretty good about my credit card, so I don't let it go over month to month unless, you know, I'm going through some financial burden at the time. Uh, but on a regular basis, I, you know, this this category is kind of empty because I am always constantly paying it off. But is there just any loans or anything that has to be paid off? Like if I invested in a school program or anything like that, that would go here. And then again, a little bit more niche for me as a business owner, I have a category of just things that I I just like having everything and like a one-stop shop in reference to any finances, even though this doesn't have like a due date or an amount date in terms of bills. I just like to know when I'm filing my taxes, you know, I can pull up one sheet and everything's there. So I have a category that says to claim for taxes. Anything that I need to claim for my taxes that is outside my business credit card, I will make note of it here. Just like investments that I made to claim for taxes doesn't have an amount or due date or anything. Like I said, just uh for me to keep track of what I need to claim. And then the last part of this is going to be subscriptions. So I have my fixed and then my variable. I'll share with you for me. My fixed expenses are my aura ring, my class pass, Amazon Prime, and my gym. I'm very, I think I'm actually missing one here because I have a subscription for matcha actually and beef sticks that are not on here that I need to add here. But I try to be pretty minimal when it comes to what subscriptions I have, especially the fixed ones. So I just have it here to keep track of when they come out, how much they're gonna be. I'm not putting that in my fixed expenses of my bills because these can be canceled at any time if I'm ever going through any financial hardship. You know, they're just gonna go. Um, but I just at least have them so I have somewhere keeping track of what they are, when they're coming out, how much they are. And then I have my variable expenses. Personally, my variable expenses are my symbiotic subscription, my seed, which is a probiotic subscription, so supplements, and then my good notes, which is what this is on, which honestly I could probably use a different app, like I said, but it's just like everything's just been on here for so long and it's so easy and it's only$10 a year. So I'm like whatever. And those are all of the categories. I utilize this every single month to pay my bills. Actually, more than that because it's every single paycheck. So I use this twice a month to pay all my bills. I'm constantly trying to update it and curate it better so that it can work towards me. This is the system that I have created myself that has worked the best for me over the past three or four years. I hope that you learned something. I hope that you utilize it as well. It is such an important thing to be on top of your finances and making sure that you understand your expenses. And I know that sometimes it can be a taboo topic, but really it's something that every single person has to deal with. It affects everybody. And so, yeah, this episode was a lot more educational. Let me know if you liked it. Let me know if you would like more episodes like this in the future. We can talk about money mindsets. That's a whole other monster that we will leave for another episode. This one is more tangible tools and strategies to help you feel more free with your finances. Thank you so much for listening. Love you guys all so much, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday. Bye.