Now, should you go further into debt for your daughter's wedding shower, or maybe a camping trip that your family takes every single year. And you really don't wanna miss it today. We're talking with April who is struggling with this decision, but she is going to do the things that she loves to do. And of course, she's going to throw her daughter a wedding shower.

So what should she do when her credit cards are maxed out? She doesn't have the cash today. We are gonna dive into some strategies that she can take to help get through this season of life, where she is spending a lot of money, as you know, weddings are expensive. And so we are going to dive into how she can make it happen.

Now, before we dive into this episode, I do wanna let you know that the 2023 budget planner is for sale this week with some extra bonuses. So if you need help, just getting started, knowing how to start, I've got bonus videos to walk you through. Step by step. The budget planner is set up to help you create a paycheck budget system,

which is what I teach. So if you'd like to check that out, go to budgets, made easy.com/planner. And we are going to dive into this week's budget strategy session. Now, if you'd also like to get your own strategy session, you could go to budget, made easy.com/strategy. Now let's dive into some strategies to help April not go further into debt.

It yet still be able to financially afford a wedding, shower and camping trip and all the things that they love to do, and they aren't going to give up welcome to the money mindset podcast. Well, you'll find a judgment free zone to help you free yourself from overthinking and the fear of doing things the wrong way. It's time to shed yourself of the mom,

guilt, procrastination, and perfectionism. So you can start doing the things that you really want to do with your money instead of just working to pay bills. I'm Ashley, Patrick ex detective turned debt free CEO of my very own business and stay at home. Mom of three, not too long ago. My dreams of staying at home with my kids seemed impossible.

I thought I'd have to stay miserable in a high stress and demanding job just so I could retire someday. After gaining the confidence of my own ability to manage my family's finances and a simple step by step plan to make it happen. I was able to pay off $45,000 in just 17 months, which then allowed me to finally quit my job. Stay at home with my kids and build a debt free business.

Now, my mission is to help moms like you conquer debt and free themselves from the mental load of handling their family's finances. If you're ready to shed the, the guilt and shame surrounding your past money, mistakes, and tackle your debt. This is the place for you. Let's get started. Hi April. Thank you so much for being with us today for another budget strategy session.

Are you ready? Hi, It's great to be here. I Am. Thanks. So in these sessions, we work through some of your biggest struggles. So if you haven't listened to one yet, go back and listen to some others as well. There's been several episodes now look for the BSS on the money mindset podcast. And so we're just gonna dive in.

So April, what brings you here today? What is your biggest struggle with your finances right now? So I would have to say my biggest struggle and what brings us here is we've had a crazy year. We've, we've always carried debt and I've gone through just like, I'm a binge cleaner, I'm a binge like budgeter. And so we've had really good years where we've done the snowball and I have excessive spreadsheets and we're working on it.

And then we fall off the wagon in a really hard way. And this year seems to be like one of the years where even if we wanted to be on the wagon, it just is almost impossible. And it, it started with a tax guy who just didn't file our taxes. And we had kind of banked on that money for other projects. So we charged those projects in anticipation of income tax,

free funds that never materialized on top of dogs that needed $3,600 surgery that we didn't have cash for. And then my daughter's wedding and it just summer camp. And my son went to encampment and every time I turn around, one of the organizations, my kids are involved in. I want my kids to be involved, but it's like, oh, by the way,

you need $300 worth of equipment for this weekend. Oh, by the way, you need $300 in, you know, not necessarily like in new clothing, specific like ABUS and things with logos on them to go away to this. And, and so I just give, okay, I'll just charge it for now. I'll just charge it for now. And I'll just charge it for now.

And I turned around two or three months ago and I went to go buy something and every single card was maxed. And then my daughter came to me and said, no, none of my brides major throwing a shower for me. And I went, I don't have any credit left to max and I don't have any cash on hand and we have no real savings to speak of.

And then my car died. Oh, It's like, when it rains, it pours. Right. It did. It's been one of those years that poured. And so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna really buckle down. I've I've budgeted before I, I have my own kind of spreadsheet that I use, which is basically just a glorified check register,

but I put all of the bills in three or four months in advance. So I can see anywhere that it's gonna turn red right. Anywhere we're gonna go negative anywhere that we're gonna be down to 18 cents before payday. And then I started plugging in all of these big chunks that we have left to pay and all of these plans that we had made, right?

So we had already booked a hotel room down the shore. We had already booked two weekends of camping cuz we go every year and I'm like, where's all this money coming from. And so I tried to put in the car payment. And so for the last, I wanna say month now I've been trying to be really good about saving and tracking. I used to be a coupon and I,

oh, all the CVS box and all of the rewards programs. And we've just gotten so busy is a partial excuse. And the other excuses I, I got got lazy, you know, I, I wanna sit on the couch at the end of the day for an hour and watch television and have a drink. And I don't wanna have to go in there and mess with my budget that day.

And so it's just a lack of time and really a lack of guess what's the word I'm looking for? Motivation, lack of excitement. Like you just don't wanna do avoidance. Yeah. Yes. Lack of motivation on my part to get our finances back in order. And the sad thing is from the outside, there should be no reason where this far in debt,

there should be no reason that I have to tell my kid, no, I'm not giving you 20 bucks for video game this week or that I'm scraping together coupons to buy Halloween. Can't be this week. Other than I just don't wanna overdraft on Thursday because we get paid on Friday. It's just, we've been really, we fell off the wagon. It really hard way this year.

So, and it's no one's fault, but our own, Hey, it happens. And you know, just like life there's seasons and there's seasons with your finances and it happens. It happens to everybody. And so don't beat yourself up about that. The best thing you can do now is just look forward instead of in the past and you know, feeling bad about it,

cuz you're here and you're making the steps that, you know, you need to take to move forward. So when you get paid, do you have enough money to cover the bills and to have some money left over? Or is it like now you're on a really tight rope. No, we have, we have the money left over. So we both work full-time I work full-time remote and my husband works.

Full-time out of the home. My paycheck covers it. My entire paycheck goes into one account and all of the recurring normal charges over the course of the month from credit card payments to car payments to the mortgage are all on auto pay and they all come outta that account. Okay. And my paycheck covers all of those things, his paycheck we use for incidentals,

it goes for human and pet food, gas for the cars, just regular household stuff, kid activities. Right. And so my issue earlier in the year was we were waiting for this money to materialize. And so I said, oh, I'll it borrow $500 out of the bill pay account. And so we can use it for this vacation, cuz well we'll have that money by next week.

And then that money never materialized. And though, since April I've been borrowing from Peters to gotcha. Move money out of the bill, pay account over into the incidental account and then have to put the money back into the incidental account. So things don't overdraft don't quite get lot of juggling enough lot. Yeah. A lot of Juggling. And I I'm like,

I, I, I need to not, I need to just leave that account alone other than to check on it and occasionally update cuz you know, minimums change, Right. PSE and G just told, oh Hey we reassessed you. And now your bill is 90 instead of 1 0 4. So you go in and adjust that for the next few months and gotcha.

Figure out where there's spare to snowball. So are you getting a tax refund or not at all? Or are you still waiting? We are still waiting. I went ahead and did my husbands myself and because I was afraid of not filing at all. And so they were substantially less than were promised to us by our tax guy. And then I tried to do mine and our tax guy said that I was gonna get a 500 federal and a $2,000 state refund.

And when I tried to do mine myself, it said I owed $10,000. Oh my gosh. So I'm like, yeah, I'm not touching that. Nope. So did your Tax guy not file an extension for You too? He didn't file them at all. He, we did our taxes in February. He took our money. He did my mom's taxes,

my sister's taxes. He usually comes to the house and does like six or seven people at a time. And he's been doing our taxes for, I wanna say 10 years and then they never got filed. And so we asked him and we texted him, Hey, Hey, it's not filed. And his wife died. And so we all felt really horrible,

like, okay, okay. So we gave him a month or two to file them and it still wasn't April 15th yet. And he's okay. I'm really sorry. I, there was a problem in the submission and I fixed it and I res resent it. None of them ever got filed 15 people that we are aware of, paid him to do our taxes and they were never filed.

And because he just does it all on his laptop while we're sitting there with him, I don't know what magic he did to make me not owe $10,000. And so I tried to file my own extension and that didn't really work too well. And then I recently figured out how to file my New Jersey by myself. And so I did that and it's substantially less than he said we,

I was supposed to get back, but it's something. And so I plan on putting that towards my 401k loan and just to get it paid off, You might want to, I mean, I know it's, you've already paid this guy, but you may want to go ahead and have somebody else do your taxes and see, especially for in the future,

it sounds like he's got some other things going on and I know this isn't typical of him, but you know, he could have at least filed an extension and then you'd have until October. So yeah, my husband said never again. So you might wanna Sticky, vanished. Yeah. That's a sticky situation. So at least, you know, something is coming back for now.

And maybe if you decide to check with another tax person and have them amended, maybe you would get more cuz you can do that as well. You can amend your tax return and then you might get more. So you've got a plan for that. Right. And you wanna put back on your 401k loan instead of like your credit cards. Yes. So I listened to your first podcast,

your first and second and a couple in there and the 401k loan to be honest is something that wasn't even in my head. And then when I went and I took a look at it, it was pay half of it was already paid off and they're taking $50 per paycheck out to pay it. And I'm like, oh, the money I get back from the state refund is plus my recent submission for my expense report at work covers almost all of it.

And that's a hundred dollars more back into my budget. There you go. Whereas if I paid off a different credit card, it would only be $40 back into the budget. If I spent that same $2,000 to pay a credit card, I would get my $40 minimum payment back. But this is a hundred dollars. Yeah. So I'm like, that seems like a better influx into the budget to then snowball somewhere else.

Yes. And so I call that the impact method. So you're, you are looking at the impact on your budget. So either your budget or emotionally, you know, if there's some people will choose one that they just really hate, you know? And so there's like emotionally, they don't wanna pay it anymore. But so you're, you're talking about impact methods,

so a bigger impact on your budget. So that's great. So if you were to start fresh and we're recording this in September, so if you were to start fresh in October on paper, between your husband and your paychecks, you should have money left over. Is that what you're Telling me? Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So it's more of a right now would be more of a spending issue and getting that kind of under control.

So you can save for those other things that keep popping up right now, cuz you've just, you've had a lot pop up this year. Right. And some of it's still us, you know, I, I'm not at the U stage. I'm not ready to give up shaving cream yet. And I'm not kids you enough that they have to bring,

my kids are mad enough. They're eating fruit rounds and frosted flaky. And they're like, oh, come on ma with a knockoff cereals, you know, Remind them it's, you know, it's temporary get 'em to buy into division. Yeah. Well apparently the cheddar turtles are better than goldfish. So at least we have one happy child In the household.

Good to know. I haven't seen the turtles. My kids don't mind the whales. We have whales here instead of goldfish, but they like those too. That's funny. I haven't seen the turtles. Okay. So We go every year, we've been going every year for seven years, camping to a certain campground and they do a Halloween weekend and last year we walked away with a thousand dollars cash prize.

Wow. And so should I cancel my $300 camping trip coming up this weekend and put that towards something better? Yeah, but I, we're not gonna, should I tell my daughter, no, I don't have the $500 to throw you a shower that so that $400 to go camping would normally be left over at the end of the month. The $500 for her bridal shower would normally be left over at the end of the month,

the $400 I have to pay for, pay for hair and makeup in November for my younger daughter and her and a mother of the bride dress that would normally be left over at the end of the month. Okay. We normally have probably close to a thousand dollars if we were good all month left over. So it's not a matter. It's just that it is.

It's totally it's suspending it's Okay. So we're not ready to pull all the way back yet. That's but we'll be turtles. It takes time. You know, it really does. It takes time to get there and you've done it before. So, you know, you can do it. You just have got to mentally get there. And is there anything that you could maybe sell or any overtime or anything like that,

especially right now with the wedding and camping and different things that, you know, you don't wanna give up. Is there any way that you can kind of help lessen the impact of that? So I thought about that. So we have chickens and apparently people are paying $5, a dozen for free range, chicken eggs. Yes. And my chickens like way more eggs than we could ever eat.

And I've been giving them away to neighbors. So I could potentially start selling the eggs and bring in probably $20 a week just in eggs. Yeah. And that at least helps cover their food if you're buying them extra grain and stuff. Yeah. And my children yell at me cause we have a local buy nothing group. And so I've been giving all of my things away that we don't use anymore.

And the kids are like, mom, you could sell that. I'm like, yeah, but I could sell it for like five bucks. And then I have to deal with the general public over the five bucks and it's fill you there. It's a $5 I'm like I so not worth. I just want the space back that that item is taking up.

I don't want the five bucks, but in hindsight, all of those $5 items probably could have amounted to the entire cost of the camping trip over the last six months. And so we have large ticket items in the basement, American girl play sets like, And now the time to sell that kind of stuff because people are getting ready for Christmas. And so now would be the time to,

or definitely in October or by October in there, I have found really good luck with the toys and stuff before Christmas. Okay. So definitely before the end of November, for sure. Like before December, like if you've got some big things like that American girl for sure. And you're willing to sell it, I, I would definitely sell those. Don't give those away.

Okay. But yeah. Items like, okay, I see what you're saying there. Cause I don't deal with it either, but if you've got yeah. But you know, if you've got a bigger item or if you can make a bundle of some of those things, like if you've got like, my kids have so many Barbies, you know, you mention Barbies,

you could do a pack of 10 Barbies or something or 15 Barbies be like here, just take these 10 bucks or something. You know, if it's five bucks, I wouldn't worry about that. But maybe you could even say, okay, if I think I could get $20 or more, then it'd be worth my time to try and sell it. And if it doesn't sell,

give it away. Like Yeah, Definitely like give yourself the space. So The big giant American girl place, we, the NASA one, like the moon landing one, we looked it up on eBay and it's selling for $500. And I'm like, I don't think anybody's buying it for $500, but Oh yeah, they, yeah. Cuz those things are like $400 new.

So especially if it's a, you know, one that they don't even offer anymore. Yeah. I can definitely see somebody paying several hundred dollars for it. Yeah. Right. I'll have to go through the stacks of play sets in the basement. I started putting together all of the little bits and pieces. I got way into the weeds. Yeah. I'm like,

oh, I'll look for it on fine. And it comes with these 98 pieces. And if I find all 98 pieces, then I'll list it and then you Don't need all 98. Then I was off doing Something else. Yeah. You don't need all 98. Don't put that kind of pressure on yourself. Like if you've got the main, you know,

the play set, like people will pay for just the play set. If you have like the extra, how many ever extra things that come with it, put it with it and just say, this is what is coming with it. Like, it doesn't need to be a brand like what? It came brand new. I mean, people are paying for you stuff.

It's okay. Especially if you can get rid of it and you may just knock off a little bit on, off the price, if you like, you can't find anything. Cuz that's the way my house is. I there's stuff everywhere. And then I'll just randomly throw stuff away. So then when we do go to like find a set, like half the pieces have probably been that way.

Cause I'm just like gave him away. I'm tired of it. Throw it away. He Gave away Aless Darth Vader and somebody was very excited to take him without a hand. And then like two weeks later I found the hand and I'm like, do you want the hands? I've done that before too. And I'm like, you want this bag? They're like,

no, I'm fine. No, if you have Legos, like if you don't throw Legos away, for sure people will just pay for bags of random Legos. Like you don't have to put it together as a set, just bags of Legos. People will buy, Oh, I'll have to try that. Cause we have bins and bins of them, my husband,

all of his Legos, his parents are like, here, here you go. Here's five bins of his Legos. And I'm like, what am I gonna do with five bins? 40 year old Legos Will buy them. Yeah. And just say, here's a bin or take them all for this price. One gallon of Legos Or all of it, you know,

cuz somebody may want all of it. And so yeah. Give them the option. Okay. One bag is 40 bucks. Legos are expensive or take 'em all for 300 or something if you have that much. So Definitely look into that because it would clear out so much room in the basement and my kids are middle school. They're done with the toys.

Yeah, definitely. So, absolutely understand that. So, okay. So you've got some ideas to make some extra money, so maybe, hopefully you can get some of that done before the November stuff. Cuz you said you were going camping this weekend, right? So you probably, you may not have time to do it before the, the camping trip,

but definitely before November and the wedding stuff. Yeah, Absolutely. And then we can talk about some ways to kind of help keep you on track moving forward because I'm the same way. Especially with like, you know, your daughter's wedding, like that's a big event. It's not like you're gonna be able to say no to everything. You know what I mean?

Like right. We're not that extreme here. We're gonna still enjoy our lives. Right. And make memories and things like that. But just like you said with like the off-brand name of some, some other things think about some other ways that maybe you could cut back in your budget. So if you're, if you happen to be eating out a lot,

can you cut back on that? You know, do you have enough in your pantry, in your freezer to kind of do a, a no spin challenge or a freezer challenge, something like that. There are, you know, you could save quite, it sounds like you both work. You probably don't spend that much on gas. I'm assuming anyway.

No. And what we've realized is now that I had to buy a car, right? Cause we live in New Jersey. There's no public transportation here. We live within walking distance of the school. So we don't get a bus. So if it's 10 degrees or raining, I, I have to have a car in the morning, even though I don't go very far.

So we did end up buying a used car for me. But because we have the camper, my husband drives a big giant truck, which we got a really good deal on the day the dealers opened after COVID. So that like that one is golden. The truck's worth like three times what we paid for it. Wow. But so what we've been since I've bought my new used car is he's taken that to work and that has saved us $150 a month in gas.

Awesome. That's only this month and we only bought the car halfway through the month or like, yeah, like a week, two weeks ago we've had the car, but he was spending a hundred dollars a week in gas. And now I fill my tank for 40 bucks and it lasts him all week and I go a whole whopping three miles in the truck.

So even though the car payment was an additional expense, we're kind of offsetting it by half by, by having him take that as his daily driver instead of the monster truck. Yeah. I mean, if you need two cars then yeah, definitely. It sounds like it was a good option for you to kind of switch that up. Okay. So some ways to kinda get motivated,

kind of get more excited about your bigger goal. And I've talked about this on the past. I feel like I've talked about it on almost every of one of these budget strategy sessions, but like what is your bigger, you know, having that bigger goal, that bigger vision of like, what are you working towards? Like why do you need to do this instead of just,

well, I don't wanna overdraft anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean that's a given, but that's not exciting enough to motivate us. So, you know, you gotta have that other, that bigger vision that you are excited about because the number one indicator of success with paying off debt is how excited you are. So what are you excited about that you can do once you kinda get this all back on track?

I would love the ugly brown bathroom, both of our bathrooms to get redone. Like we bought a flip and the one bathroom has a pink tub. And my bathroom was definitely designed by a man. It is brown and there is no place to shave your leg. Like it is brown floor to ceiling brown, brown cabinets, brown tiles. But I look at our budget and on average we spend $1,700 a month on minimum payments for credit cards.

Imagine what we could do in the span of six months. If we were to get almost $2,000 and that's just credit cards, that's not talking car loans or the camper or the mortgage or anything like that. That's just credit cards. And none of them, one of them is big because we fell into the, oh, look that the 0% transfer deal.

Yeah. We're we're gonna do it this year. We're gonna do it. We moved everything to these 0% transfer deals and then Nope. Yep. So now I have, that's what happens? Five cards that have no purchases on them at all. Just 0% transfer deals that ran out of time. And so most of our cards are anywhere from 500 to 3000,

but we have one that's 12 grand and it is entirely transfers. Gotcha. Which we then charged back up the original cards again. Cause right. And, and unfortunately that's what happens. That's why I try to give people not to do that because you feel like you did something and you paid off debt and you're saving this, but then, you know,

if you haven't actually changed like your behavior and things. And then when things come up and it's just long term, that's normal. That's what happens all the time. So I don't want you to feel like bad about that cuz you know, you know that you, that it's happened me too. And so there's no reason to like keep beat yourself up about it.

Right. So, and you've got a plan. So I want you to think about what can you do in the next 24 hours to help you stick to your budget? And this is, here's what I'm thinking. Cuz we're running outta time here are you, well, let me ask first, are you planning for what is left over in your budget,

in your spreadsheet? So I know you've got your bills and then you've got your husband's account, but are you saying, okay, we have $800 for food, 400 for gas and then so much for the wedding. So like are you planning what's out or are you looking at the bank balance and saying, okay, we have this much to spend. I'm basically looking so at the bank balance at this point.

So I have all of the bills put in here through November 25th. Right. And so I have every week I have the money for gas, the money for food I put in, you know, a couple bucks, Friday, we always eat out. But we realized last week, if we could just order a pizza, that's only 30 bucks rather going to red Robin,

which cost us $150. The last time we went 20 bucks in there for school lunches, which they don't really use. So they could go back into something else. Okay. But then when there's money left over, I'm letting it accrue because then I get down to October 17th and I'm gonna need $700 in cash for cuz my goal is to not put anything back on cars.

Okay. For the wedding shower. So Kind You have planned. Okay. That's what I wanted to know is so you have planned like lunches and pizza. I, and you've got all that stuff planned. Okay, good. Okay. So you're not just looking at the bank balance then you've got, Okay, Awesome. There's Stupid things. And they're like this month that cuz cuz of this weekend,

I'm like, oh I just need one more set of lights. Or I just, I had, I was so proud of myself with the Halloween candy. I found a deal on Amazon and I had points on a card that was already maxed. And if I used my discover card, I returned three things. That's another thing I suck at returning everything.

I'm like, oh it doesn't fit. I'll put it over there. And, and then it's outside of the return date and then I give it away cause I dunno what to do with it. So I was good. I went and returned like four things to Amazon. Awesome using that and like three deals and some points I got all of our Halloween candy for,

I got one weekend worth for free and the other weekend for half off. Cause I waited for my target birthday coupon. It's Candy. Look at you. No, you are getting on track. You should be proud of I'm I'm Trying you're Cause it was like, I know this is ridiculous. Like $200. We had budgeted for candy for both weeks at the campsite.

Cause we do the full size candy bars and I got all of it for 50 bucks. Wow. So I mean that's awesome. It's, It's a ridiculous amount to have budgeted for candy, but in the end it ended up being like the normal person on now For it. And no one comes to our actual house on Halloween. So this is the only way we get our,

our Halloween thing. Oh, that's fun. That sounds fun though. So I can see why you wanna so yeah. And we still have that last year we came home with a thousand dollars in prize money. So I'm, I'm kind of hoping just once we would win and then it'll offset the entire week, it'll pay for the whole weekend. That would be awesome if you did,

that would be great. That would help you with yes. November or the 700 in cash that you need to. Yeah. So, so, and maybe you'll get your tax refunds, what partially whatever you're should be getting soon as well to help cover that as well. So yeah, it's processing. Yeah. Hopefully it won't take too long. Okay.

So I'm trying to think of something that you could do in the next 24 hours to help you make progress. Cuz it sounds like you know what to do and you have started to do it. So I'm wondering, let me know how this feels because I feel like you need to just get excited about it. And I feel like maybe that's kind of,

what's holding you back right now. We've we've got several actionable steps so we could come up with a couple ideas. One is, one idea I have is for you to either listen to one of the debt payoff stories on the podcast or read some debt payoff stories. Okay. To kind of help. I found, at least for me, I found that helpful.

And it said, you know, just from talking to you, it sounded like maybe you could relate to that as well or look for, or work on taking pictures of the American girl doll house. It doesn't need to be perfect. Okay. Have some lighting on there, just take a picture of the house and post it as is and see, okay.

If you can get anybody to, you know, snag it right away, if not take it down, find other pieces for it or whatever, and then put it up when you get back from the camping. But I'm trying to think of something for you to do before you go camping that you can do quickly. How does, what are you thinking?

What do you think about those? I think that one, cuz I think I already have all of the pieces collected in a box up here from what I was doing, my big basement purge. Okay. And Then there there's two other like knockoff sets down there that sell for like 50 bucks. So if I put them up for 10 and see if someone takes 'em,

What if you sell 'em for 20 or try and sell 'em for 20. Okay. And what if you sold all that before you even go camping and then you have your money for camping. Wouldn't that be awesome. That Would be fantastic. You have to tell me if that that would be I'm So excited and I have a bunch of Barbie sets that I found all the little pieces and put together in a box in my office somewhere.

Like I prepackaged them all and I just, I, I binged again. I went downstairs, I cleaned like a crazy person and gave a bunch of stuff away and then I got tired of doing it. And then I went back and did something Else. That's totally normal. So there's a bunch of half done stuff. Like, so what's one thing you could there.

Yeah, because it does, it gets, but are you going camping for two weeks or are you coming home and then going back? No, we're what the campground does this special. Where if you, you can leave it there in between and only pay a dollar to leave it there when you're not in it. So the kids have off for, I think it's,

Rashana the Jewish holiday they have off Monday and Tuesday next week. So we're going from Friday to Tuesday and then be home during the week. And then we're going back on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and coming home again. Okay. And it's only an hour from home. Oh, okay. So if you went ahead and posted stuff then, okay. I just wanted to make sure you weren't be gone for like two weeks and then people couldn't come get it.

Okay. But it sounds like it should be fine. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what's your one let's clarify and make clear. What's the one thing that you're gonna do in the next 24 hours. I am going to gather at least two American girl do sets that already have the pieces pre collected and post them on my,

at least my local yard sale. Yeah. Your local page Group and see if I get it. Yeah. See if anybody is looking for early win for Christmas, this set is no longer available in retails for $600. Make me an offer. Look at you. Yes. I love it. It takes up so much space in my basement. How great would that feel to get that out of your basement and make some money?

Oh, okay. You have to tell me when you sold it. I'm gonna follow up with you in 24 hours to see if you did it, to make sure that you followed through. And do you have any last minute questions before we wrap up? I, I don't, I, part of me feels guilty that I'm not more all in, you know,

like I, I pick on you for the, the, the shaving cream. I'm not at the shaving cream level yet. And I keep telling Myself January after Christmas, after the wedding and the in January and it's cold and I'm stuck in the house I'm really got, and we have nothing to do and nothing on the horizon. I'm really gonna start beating this down.

I already started going through and dropping Amazon music and dropping Netflix and maybe we'll drop Hulu down a peg and finding recurring charges and trying to get rid of. And so like I'm nickling and diamond myself down. So I don't have to take away the big ones, but the big ones kind of go away on their own in January. Right. So in January,

my plan is to really buckle down. But part of me feels really guilty. I can't get more done in the next three months while I have the fire in me right now to do it. So Well, what you could do is if you feel like it, like if you're really like getting antsy and you wanna start, you could start working on your plan for January because you know,

the wedding stuff will be done. That season will be over and you could start focusing on the new year, but actually to have a better successful next year, it starts in November, December. Like it starts at the end of the year. So yeah. I mean, if you really are like wanting to do it, go ahead and start making your plan for next year.

There's nothing wrong with that. Just cuz you can't start implementing it yet, but you are. Yeah. And give yourself credit for that. You've done a lot. Like I feel like I know you just like, you wanna get it done now, but you are making progress and you're really gonna be able to make a lot more progress after this season is over.

Yes. And you just have to remind yourself that like this it's a season, right? This isn't what it's gonna be like in a year from now, you're gonna be in a completely different space. So You keep telling the kids that too, they're like, well I don't have, how come you can't find me new sneakers this week. I'm like the big kid needs all the money for the next two months.

The big kid needs all after the big kid has taken all my money. I will focus again on YouTube and I wanna get new sneakers and the things that you're asking for. But right now big SIS is she's the focus of mommy's funds. So don't be mad. You guys have been the focus for the last 12 years, you know, she's 27,

give her two months and then we'll, you know, we'll get back to buying new sneakers and I need a video game And just keep reminding of them of that. Cause I mean they're kids, of course they're gonna keep asking for things. So yeah. Just keep reminding them and yourself in the process that couple more months, couple more months. And then you'll,

you'll have some breathing room and you can really start making a ton of progress. So I am proud of you. I feel like you're not giving yourself enough credit cuz you have done a lot. Like I'm talking to you, like what am I even gonna help you with here? You know what you need to do? You just need to get through this season so you can really get it going.

But I mean, you know what you need to do, so you're good. Yes, you are good. You just gotta give yourself more credit. All right. I'm gonna go in the basement and find American girl parts. Now I realized do my actual job I did too now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now the American girl stuff is the squirrel.

I have to go take your Yeah, well that's a big squirrel. So I would definitely go chase that one. Okay. Well I appreciate you taking the time with us today and sharing your story cuz I know it's gonna help other people as well. So thank you so much And thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I feel very pumped now.

Awesome. I'm so glad. Thank you so much to April for sharing her situation with us today so that we can all learn and come up with some creative new ideas on how to make some extra money. When there are things we don't wanna give up, but we need some extra cash. Now, if you'd like to have your own budget strategy session,

come join me. Sign up today@budgetsmadeeasy.com slash strategy and I will talk to you soon.