Welcome my budget besties. It's Ashley with the Money Mindset Podcast. And of course, budgets made easy. Today we are going to talk about the five mistakes to avoid with your budget in 2023. If you can avoid these mistakes, you are going to have a very productive and very successful year. Now, before we dive in, I do wanna let you know that I will be going into the this topic more inside of the Money Plan bootcamp and strategies to overcome these mistakes and just make a better plan for your money this year.

It is free, absolutely no Cost. Plus I'll give, I'll be giving away tons of prizes, but you have to sign up, but it's free. So you know it's just one little thing so that you can get the resources you need and remember to show up for the bootcamp. So to sign up, go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp and I cannot wait to see you there.

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 Turn 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 in 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 and 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 guilt and shame surrounding your past money mistakes and tackle your debt,

this is the place for you. Let's get started. All right, let's dive into the five budget mistakes to avoid in 2023. Now these are not in any particular order, so don't feel like there's any kind of ranking system to these mistakes, but these mistakes are ones that I see over and over and they cause you to just feel like you're failing,

like you're not good enough and that you just can't seem to figure it out. So if you kind of tweak these things that you are doing, try and improve them, change that behavior you are going to be and definitely feel more successful with your budget and your money plan this year. Now the first thing that I want you to stop doing avoid or avoid this mistake is not putting a deadline on tasks.

So this includes like your big goal, but it also includes the day-to-day, the month to month. So what things do you need to do this month to get toward that bigger goal of paying off debt? So the payoff debt goal needs to have a date, but so do the tasks that you need to get there. So you need smaller action steps with a deadline.

So what can you do this month to get you closer to that goal? Put a deadline on it. I wanna get this done by January 19th. I wanna get this done by February 1st. And it doesn't have to be big monstrous tasks, okay? It's just small steps in the right direction. So creating your budget for February. When do you wanna have that done?

Saving $500, when do you wanna have that done and how soon is that? So do you have a month and so you need to save so much per week or do you wanna do it within six weeks? And so each week you wanna have a goal with a timeline, with a deadline. So you, it's not just someday in the future because someday is never coming.

Like that's not a date. We need a date on these tasks. Okay? The other budget mistake I want you to avoid, and we all do this, including myself, it's actually something that we talk a lot about in my community and inside Money Success Club because we are all a bunch of overthinking perfectionists, which if you're listening to this, you probably are too,

whether you realize it or not, that's a lot of our problems is just expecting it to go perfectly and you can't, that's life. We have to get used to disappointment and we have to get used to things not going exactly how we want them to go. So we have this expectation of perfection and we can literally never live up to that. And so you're constantly feeling like you're failing because you can't be perfect and your money plane's never gonna be perfect because that's life and we beat ourselves up and we get in this mental cycle of feeling like we failed because we're not perfect,

but we're human. So we literally cannot be perfect. So you've gotta keep going. When bumps come along the way, along the road when there's bumps and life happens, you've gotta keep going. It's never gonna be perfect. But if you keep going, you will be successful. If you stop and quit and avoid, you're not gonna reach your big goals.

So you have to keep going and not expect everything to go perfectly. The other thing that I want you to avoid is not setting baseline and mid-level goals. So what I mean by that, and I actually talked a little bit about this in the in episode one 13, the one right before this one, but you need to have smaller goals set along the way so that you don't feel like a failure when you don't hit that big,

big goal. Okay? And maybe that big, big goal is unrealistic. If you're anything like me, you may set this big audacious goal that like everything would have to go perfect in the world. You would have to show up and work as hard as you have ever worked in order to reach that goal and you still may not reach that goal. Okay?

That's just setting yourself up for failure and we don't want to do that here, okay? Because we want you to be successful and we want you to feel successful because there is no real definition of success. It's what you think it is and it's what success means to you. So if you feel like you're failing, you're never gonna feel like you were successful even though you were.

So we have to set smaller goals that you can reach pretty easily, but then set the next goal because if we don't have something else to focus on, you won't push yourself as hard or you won't keep going the way that you're going now to reach that smaller goal. So what I like to do, and this was not my original idea, but I don't remember who I heard it from first cuz I've heard it from a couple people,

but I love it, has completely transformed my mindset with my business is setting three levels of goal. So you have your baseline goal and that should be something that is relatively easy to achieve. Like it's not a big audacious goal that everything has to go perfectly in the world for you to achieve it. It's something that you can pretty easily achieve so that you feel like when you hit that,

that you've done something and then a mid-level goal. So once you've hit that baseline goal, you're still working to another goal that you can achieve, you may have to put in a little bit more work, push yourself a little bit more to get that one, and then once you hit that one, then you start pushing yourself and working toward that big audacious goal.

But even if you don't reach that big goal, you still were successful because you reached the other goals, right? And so I know it's like the same numbers on paper, but when you mentally prepare yourself yourself for those different levels of goals, it's just transformative. Like it just is so much better mentally. Like I no longer spiral mentally out of control when I don't hit that big,

big, big goal because I hit some smaller, more realistic goal. So I still feel like I was successful, which to me, like who would've thought that something so simple would be so transformative with my mindset, but it has been like it has changed me completely, especially in my business. So make sure you're setting three levels of goals, baseline,

mid-level, and then you can set your big, big, maybe unrealistic your your push goal, your big goal, your stretch goal so that you still feel successful when you don't have just the one big audacious goal that you aren't as likely to achieve. Right? And then the next thing, number four that I want you to avoid doing is not being intentional.

So not being intentional with your plan, not being intentional with your spending, not being intentional with your goal setting and your time management. So when we are not intentional, we're just kinda living in the moment, we're just kind of going day by day and we're not in control or we don't feel like we're in control of what we're doing and what happens to us and all of those types of things we're,

it's cuz we're not being intentional. So it takes practice, it takes time to kind of change your mindset around things, but when you're intentional with your life, your time and your money, you're just gonna be and feel and do way more. You're gonna be way more successful, you're gonna be more productive and you're gonna feel like you are in control of your life.

So if you're a busy mom like me, that feels like we are controlled by this activities and this sports schedule, you know, that can be very frustrating for us. And so we feel like there's so much out of our control and we can't control where our money is going. We can't control our time, but you really can. There's so much other time around that.

And you know, if your kids are playing like travel ball, like I don't know how your parents do it, that you travel ball or afford it cuz it's awfully expensive, you know, it really, it can take up your whole day, right? But there's still things you can do during that day just because you're not at home and you're at whatever event you can do things still,

like your kid's not gonna be playing literally all day. There's gonna be some breaks in there. There's gonna be other people playing, like you still have time to do things. So you just have to be more intentional with the time that you do have control over. And that is really about setting up systems and creating those habits and routines that will sustain you and get you through those busy times.

But I promise you it is doable. And I will be talking more about habits and routines and like setting up systems that are gonna really work for you and your schedule and your life and the season of life that you're in more inside of the Money Plan bootcamp, which of course is free, you just have to sign up@budgetsmadeeasy.com slash bootcamp. All right, number five,

the last thing that I want you to really try to avoid with your budget in 2023 that is trying to do too much. So for those of us overthinking perfectionists, we feel like we have to do it all. But what you really need to try and work on and focus on is prioritizing your time and the tasks that you actually need to do. Cuz believe it or not,

you don't need to do everything and it's okay if your kids don't clean the house or put away laundry perfectly or exactly how you want it done. The important thing is that you are focusing your time on the things that nobody else can do that you specifically need to do or want to do. Let your family help, let your kids help and don't go behind them and start cleaning if that is what you're doing.

You are a perfectionist and we've gotta work on that. And it's hard. It is hard because that really stems from anxiety and feeling like you don't have control and everything has to be perfect. But I promise you it will be okay. It'll be a mess again in like a day. So you know, you've gotta learn to mentally let some things go and time-wise let some things go because you have to prioritize what is most important to you and do that first.

Now if you do have some time after you've done what is most important for you to do, then you can focus on some less important things to do. But let your family help. It is, it will be okay. They don't have to do it perfectly. Try not to have high expectations for them. I learned this early on in my marriage and it has really been extremely helpful is to not have super high expectations cuz that is where we get disappointed.

We feel like we failed or somebody else failed. That's where the resentment builds. But just know that we're all human. Your husband is human, your kids are human, your spouse is human. We're not gonna be perfect and we all are gonna have a different way of doing things that doesn't make one way, one way, right or wrong. And sometimes I have to remind myself of this,

when my husband folds towels, I think after, gosh, we've lived together now almost 20 years, he finally knows how I want the towels folded. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter as long as they're clean and put away. So they're not getting covered in dog hair again when they're clean, that's all that matters, right? Like nobody's gonna come over and look in your towel closet and tell you that you folded the towels wrong and if they do,

they're just a jerk and they need to leave. So you know, just prioritize what is actually important. Is it really that important for you to clean your entire house from top to bottom every single week? Or some of you that clean your bathrooms twice a week? Like is that really an important and use of your time? Like is that what is most important or is once a week good enough?

I mean, let's be real here. I'm busy mom of three with 10 of the activities and trying to do a full-time business in part-time hours. So I don't always have time to clean my bathrooms every single week. Of course I have four bathrooms too, so it's not even like I just have like one or two to maintain. I have four. So that never happens that all four are cleaned all in one week unless I pay somebody to do it.

So prioritize have, you're gonna just have to lower your expectations a little bit because everybody is human, nobody is perfect. So once you do that, it's very freeing. Okay, so let me know which one of these you are doing that you are going to work on this year. Take a screenshot of this episode, tag me on Instagram or send me a message and let me know.

I'm also going to be doing a giveaway soon for podcast. For the podcast, so keep an eye out for information on that. Not sure exactly when I'm going to do it because we've got the boot camp coming up, but what I'm gonna do is the entries will be based on the reviews of the podcast. So if you wanna go ahead and put in a review,

I would greatly appreciate that. So you have to actually like write a review so I can see it and not just, not just like the five stars, of course I want you to leave five stars, but you gotta like actually write some texts. So I see it and let me know which episode is your favorite. So we will have a giveaway coming up soon.

It may be mid-January, it might be mid-February. We will see, but I'm gonna do it soon because we are going to celebrate reaching a hundred thousand downloads on the podcast. So we are getting very close and so we are gonna push to get to a hundred thousand downloads. Can you believe that? I mean, I just cannot believe that I started this podcast three years ago,

but I took a whole bunch of time off because of Covid, so I missed about a year. And so really two years of podcasting and we are almost to a hundred thousand downloads. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I love you all. I greatly appreciate everything you do and I would just love to see your review on the podcast. So I will talk to you soon.

I hope you have a great week.