Oh, welcome back my budget besties to another q and a. This is number four. If you haven't been keeping track, I love the questions that you guys have sent into me and if you have a question that you would like me to answer, you can go to speak pipe.com/budgets made easy and I will link to it in the show notes so you can submit your own questions.

Now these questions are from the Money Plan Bootcamp that I did in the fall of 2022 and there was so many, it's taken me a while to sort through them all. But the great news is I am doing the bootcamp again in January. So we start at the end of January. If you would love to sign up, it's free. And it was such an amazing bootcamp.

I teach my five step framework to creating a money plan that you can actually stick to. We have giveaways and live trainings and oh my God, it is just amazing the support and the community that we built during the bootcamp. So I would love for you to come join me if you've done it before. Come and join us again, like it's gonna be so much fun.

And of course I will do the big giveaway again and probably some small ones along the way too. So if you'd love to sign up and come join me, we start on January 29th, 2023. And I won't do this again until the fall. So, and that might be your last chance to do the Money Plan Bootcamp. I don't know, I might create a new training for us to do.

So if you would like to create a plan with your money that you can actually stick to in 2023 so that you can actually reach those big goals, come join us by signing up@budgetsmadeeasy.com slash bootcamp. So don't forget to go sign up. Like I said, it is 100% free. There is no cost to this money playing bootcamp. I just wanna set you up for success for this year because all it takes is an intentional plan and getting over that fear or that overwhelm,

that anxiety and perfectionism feeling like you have to do things the right way. And if you don't know the right way, you can't even start. So let's get unstuck and get you moving towards your big goals this year. It's early in the year so let's get it done so that you don't have another year at tax time, which is coming up by the way,

where you look at how much money you made last year and you're like, where did it go? I made good money. How am I so broke? And where the heck did it go? So come join us again@budgetsmadeeasy.com slash bootcamp. The link is also in the show notes as well. So let's dive into some feedback of what some people said about the bootcamp last time and some great questions that we have today such as getting over the guilt when your plan doesn't go as you plant.

Cuz that's a big factor, right? We struggle with that a lot and how to save and pay off debt at the same time and your living paycheck to paycheck. So I'm gonna dive into that as well. And also how to set up your paycheck budget system when you get paid on the last day of the month. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about that,

give you a sneak peek into how I teach the paycheck budget system and we will dive into that. So I hope to come see you inside of the bootcamp. I am so excited to kick this off and go sign up so you can join me too. I'll talk to you soon. Good morning Ashley, this is Josie Powell. I have enjoyed this budget plan so much.

I really don't have a lot of a lot of questions but the, I guess the question would be using the Google spreadsheet, but I know I'm gonna learn that a lot in the Money Success Club, which I do appreciate you having. You are wonderful. I thank you so much and God bless. Hi, this is Melissa Honor and I was wanting to know how do you pay off debt and save at the same time while you are basically living paycheck to paycheck?

This is such a great question cuz I know a lot of you have this same question because I actually get it quite often. And so let's break this down into two parts. So the paying off debt and saving at the same time, that's not what I want you to do because it splits your focus and it makes you feel like you're not making progress on either goal.

So what I want you to do is just focus on one or the other and give that your full attention until you meet, you know, maybe a smaller goal and then you can go, like if you're wanting to pay off debt as an example first, then you know once you pay off $500 then switch to saving. But I only want you to do one thing at a time and I really want you to save first,

but I know you guys get excited and you just dive into paying off debt, which is great too. But saving first will help you when things come up so that you're not having to use debt as often. Now you may still have to depending on the amount of the emergency or the setback or whatever, but I really wanna encourage you to save some money first and then focus on paying off debt.

So I don't want you splitting your attention to both. Now the second part of that question is doing that while at the same time living paycheck to paycheck. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck, I want want you to save first and I want you to follow the budgeting process how I teach it. Because if you are and if you are very intentional with the money that you have,

then you're not as likely to feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck because you have a plan for that money and you're able to set a whole, generally speaking, people that follow my budget systems save on average. So keep in mind average that means some people save a lot more and some people save less. But on average save around $500 a month just by creating the budget itself because you see where your money is going and then you can be more intentional with it.

That's without cutting costs drastically or you know, being extremely frugal. That's without working a bunch of jobs. That's just by putting things down on paper and creating the plan for your money in seeing where it's going so that you can make those smaller changes, it adds up fast. So create a budget focus on saving. Now if you just have an income problem where you're not making enough income to pay all your bills and that's what you mean by paycheck to paycheck,

then we have to figure out some ways to cut costs and or make extra money. Those, generally speaking, those are your two options when you wanna save, pay off debt, quit living paycheck to paycheck. Of course there's different strategies and ideas on both of those general categories, but you either have to save money, like cut expenses, cut spending,

or increase income. Now how you do that and how that looks is gonna be different for each one of you. But you know, we're talking generally here. So if you don't have enough income, you've gotta find some ways to find some money. So what can you cut back on? What can you do to make some extra money relatively quickly? There's lots and lots of things that you can do and I have more resources in previous episodes on those topics and of course at my website,

but just made easy.com. So remember, focus on one thing at a time. Budget comes first, saving, then paying off debt. I know you wanna just dive in head first into paying off debt and get it out of your life. I love it when you are that excited about it. But you've gotta really cover the foundational stuff first so that you don't go back into debt later.

Cuz I see that a lot too. People you know, refinance their house or move around debt and they feel like they paid things off but they didn't. They didn't, first of all the debt just got moved. But the biggest thing is they didn't actually change their behavior. And so what has happened, I have seen it over and over and over and over,

is that they just end up in more debt. So they still have the old debt cuz they just moved it but then they rack up the credit cards and everything again because they didn't change their behavior and now they're drowning because they have even more debt. So what we focus on here at Budgets Made Easy in the Money Mindset podcast is changing your behavior, changing your mindset so that you can have long-term success,

not just the short wins, which are great, I'm not, I'm not saying they're not, but I want you to have long-term success. So we really have to work on changing the behavior to get out of that cycle and then focusing on one thing at a time so you can feel like you're making progress and being successful cuz that that plays a huge part into changing your behavior.

Right? Hi, this is Kate Reeder and my aha was when I looked at my expenses for the past month and saw how much money I was basically spending without thinking about it and how much I need to really be more proactive about planning how to spend my money, How do you get over guilt when you are trying to stick to a budget? You go over or you really plan it and it doesn't work out the way that you wanted it.

I see this a lot with my community and especially my budget besties in Money Success Club. We're all a bunch of overthinking perfectionists so when the budget or the plan doesn't go as planned, we feel like we failed. So there is a couple strategies that we used to kind of help us overcome this mindset issue because when we feel discouraged and feel like we failed because the plan just didn't go like we wanted to because that's life,

it can really set us back mentally and keep us stuck and off track for longer than we want to. So you know, the biggest thing is to realize that our plan is never going to be perfect because life like we're not perfect and life is never gonna go exactly how you plan. So you've gotta have a little bit of flexibility in your mindset and one of the things that has been extremely helpful for even myself and for my community is to set smaller milestones that you can still celebrate.

So maybe you have this big goal of this month I am going to save $500 and let's say you did really well but you only save 350. See when I say only it feels different like you failed, like you didn't quite reach that goal but you did really well to save $350, right? Especially if you're not used to saving at all. Or you know,

maybe you had a budget of a hundred dollars on eating out but you spent 150 so you overspent, but normally you spent 200 or $300 eating out so you still made really good progress but you didn't hit your goal and so mentally you feel like you failed. So what you can do is set smaller goals. So three levels of goals to hit that you're focusing on.

So you don't need to have this for like every single bill in your budget, but like let's say you're focusing on saving money so you really wanna save 500 in the month like I just said, but you only hit three 50. Well if you set a more reasonable goal that's easy to achieve as your minimum, so let's say 150 and you hit that you feel like you are doing something right and then you have a mid level goal of two 50 or 300,

well if you save three 50, you're still doing really good even though you didn't hit that big goal of 500 and you, you can feel it when you even just say it to yourself as I'm saying it now versus like I only saved 350 or just three 50 when my goal was 500. But if you had a minimum goal of a hundred and then a mid-level goal and you hit that,

you still feel like you did something and you made some progress even though you didn't hit that big goal of 500, right? And so having those kind of intermediate goals is very helpful mentally and then having a big stretch goal that you can keep working towards. Cuz I love having different levels of goals that way that you can still feel like you are achieving something and once you hit a goal you keep pushing to reach the next goal.

Cuz a lot of times if you're like me, which most of you are overthinking perfectionists just like me, we're all so much alike inside of Money Success Club and so we laugh about that as well. So you know, we need that next goal because if you don't, you kind of start to feel lost cuz it's like, okay well I hit that goal,

now what do I do? So then you gotta set another goal to reach in, something to work toward, to keep yourself moving. Cuz when you don't know what to work on, you waste your time and your mental energy trying to figure it out. And so you can get a lot more done than you realize if you're really intentional about what you're working on.

And so that's why we focus a lot on our goals and our budget and the foundational things as we're working to improve our finances. Yes, this is Rhonda Atkins and my question is, can you start the month on the very last day of the month as that is payday for me? I get paid twice a month the 15th and the last day of the month.

And the other thing I would like to say is that I've really enjoyed how positive and upbeat everybody was and it's so nice to be encouraged instead of beat down. Thank you and you have a good day. Thank you so much for those kind words, Rhonda. Yes, we, we are very encouraging and supportive in this community because guilt and shame does not work in the long term.

It may work for some people in the short term, but it doesn't work long term. And then you know, the shame and the guilt just, ugh, I don't know, it's just not good for people and it's, there's just so many reasons and I could talk about that in a whole other episode. So I'm gonna jump to your question. Thank you for the kind feedback.

But yes, that is exactly what you should be doing with the way I teach the paycheck budget system. So that is perfect. You can absolutely start your month whenever you like. I do not start my month on the first. I started on the first paycheck, but since your first paycheck is really the last day of the previous month, that makes total sense to do it that way because that's the paycheck you're gonna be using to pay those bills in the next month.

So yes, totally makes sense. Completely do that. That's the least complicated and the easiest way to lay it out on paper. So yes, love that question. That's a great way to do it. So thank you so much for submitting your question. All right, that's all the questions that I have for today, and these questions came from members of the Money Plan bootcamp.

So if you would like to join us for the next bootcamp, which starts at the end of January, go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp to sign up for free. We start in just a couple weeks, but I want you to go ahead and save your spot so you don't forget. So we will have live trainings and giveaways and as they said, a supportive and encouraging community to help you create a money plan that you can actually stick to this year.

So come join us. I'd love to see you there and I will talk to you soon.