Break the Cycle: Bonus Q&A Live – Your Budgeting Questions Answered! 2024-01-30 23:08

[Music] what's up guys and welcome to a very special bonus live Q&A I am your host George camel joined by the wonderful Jade warshaw Jade this is going to be cool I feel like this is a high five moment this is so rad we are post ramsy show thank you all for joining us from around the world we got some folks internationally Venezuela Vietnam world people are ready to budget Jade that's right and here's what we're here to do answer all of your money and budgeting questions but in a really different way because we have access to the screen so you guys are watching visually we can actually pull up the every dooll budgeting app which I hope you already have if you're in the US uh and we can actually show you and answer your your problems very tactically and Bobby from our every dollar team he's running the show he's The Wizard of Oz behind the scenes and so we're always Bobby back there doing it's always Bobby and so we uh Jade we had a huge live stream called Break the cycle and so many of you tuned into that and we thought we need to answer some questions and behind the scenes and show them what this looks like tactically as they wrestle through this in their budget so we are here for you here's the two ways you can interact with us live right now if you're watching live you can call in there's a special phone number here it is are you writing this down guys and it's on the screen below as well 844 28393 79 you can call in and our phone screener Austin will patch you through and we'll answer your budgeting question there if you're so brave and you can also for the very first time interact with us with the YouTube chat and just to prove to you that I'm live right now I just see hello Susie from Texas way to go Bobby they're giving you a shout out joining from Rhode Island that's wonderful hello from the UK g rock said Jade your glasses are fly AF that's true that's true that's real talk I don't know what that means but thank you I'm just proving that this is live so if you have a question you can also put it in the chat and our team is going to be pulling some of their favorites so don't you don't ask stupid questions because they're not going to pull that but if you have a legitimate question it can be fun just don't let it be stupid you know don't be trolling us out here okay George let's hit him with the number one more time here's the number if you want to call in triple uh 844 283 9379 love it that's it don't get it twisted and it's also posted and pinned on the YouTube chat from our Ramsey Show highlights crew so that's what we're doing um we both we're longtime budgeters that's right that's right and want you guys yeah we want you to become a long-term budgeter if you have any objections as to why you haven't been doing your budget or why it's not working for you we want to make sure it's working for you and you know sometimes you just need a little help you need somebody to come alongside so let's do that I'm pumped for this I'm going to we get more people coming in the chat Jade this is so wonderful Iowa Minnesota Michigan Fort Lauderdale Kentucky New York SoCal thank you guys so much for see now this is the that was the Ridiculousness I was talking about what are your views on polygamy that you're in the wrong chat like you're in the wrong one we are build you link you clicked on my friend we are here building budgets so we can see you guys in the chats um these are some great but there's actual some real questions com in people are asking hey how do we plan expenses to be taken from a fund without busting the balance these are the kinds of things we want to hit so we have our first caller Jade this is very exciting Ethan in Evansville what is going on Ethan you there buddy are you all right hello yeah yeah what's up you I thought you were getting emotional I was like this is emotional for me too we're going to get you through it how can we help hey so I am trying to like navigate through budgeting and figuring out like where I should be putting in moving money with my small business all right um I've I came from a family who didn't even have a bank account growing up wow uh so yeah I I have like I said I'm trying to navigated I have no idea what I'm actually doing aside from making sure that like so let's say you're you're a firsttime budgeter would it be helpful for us to walk you through this visually uh that would definitely help okay let's do it and this is let's start with your personal budget and then we'll get into how to do this for business okay does that work do you have a personal budget right now um not so much a budget as just like an idea of what I have to keep paid okay yeah budget's gonna give you a much more tactical plan so Bobby pull up an every dollar budget we're going to start from scratch Ethan to show you if you just started using every dollar for the very first time you went to every dollar.com you created your free account got started we're going to pull up this screen and show all of you watching what this looks like so it's got my name on it we got hello Jade from Rachel our friend Rachel Cruz is welcoming you so we're going to hit get started M get started I already feel like we're making progress here this is great so every dollar is going to show you and ask you hey what's important to you right now are you trying to pay off debt are you trying to travel save for a home so we're going to say we're paying off some debt we want to stop living paycheck to paycheck great Perfect all right so next it's going to go into lifestyle tell us a little bit more about you do you rent do you have a mortgage do you have a car do you have kids are you married this is going to help us understand who we're budgeting for so we're going to just answer these questions Ethan um we're going to make the answers up right now so next up we're getting connected to our bank now if you don't have every dollar premium you're not going to have the Bank connectivity so I encourage you guys to check that out but we're going to say skip for now we're going to stick to the free account and now it's time to enter our paycheck so Jade income minus expenses equals zero that's why we call this a zerob based budget and that's the method that every dollar works on so Ethan how much do you make with each paycheck um so my my small business is the only income I have and it it ranges from like 6 to 10,00 ,000 a month amazing depending on my clientele how often do you take how often do you take your paychecks is it just one chunk or do you take a couple of different payrolls throughout the month uh so what I do is right now I'm taking basically everything I get that's not cash goes through my business account of course and then I try to pay what I can with the cash and then like as we have other bills come up I just move it from the business account to the personal account and then just pay what we need paid so let's say pay yourself 6,000 a month is that fair okay okay so let's lay that out in the budget and you say you do this once a month okay so you have one paycheck a month a lot of people might have two paychecks so they would list those out separately it'll help you over time if you can kind like after you do the budget and you really realize how much you need it'll probably help you to make that payroll kind of a set thing like pay myself $6,000 a month until you see that next big increase and then maybe you up it to 7,000 or whatever that is as opposed to kind of it sounds like it's kind of flying by the seat of your pants if we need it we take it if we don't we don't but just a little just a little something there to think about okay so Bobby let's pull up that budget again and let's walk through the next step so we enter in our income on our every dollar budget the next up is all of our expenses so that's the other half of the budget so we're going to start entering in the mortgage or rent your water bill your gas bill electricity bill we're going to make up some numbers Ethan just you can customize that like you don't have to use what's there for anybody watching if you don't have natural gas just hit the little trash can on the left side it'll delete it so it's really easy to customize your budget but what's nice is you don't have to think about and burn all the brain calories of what is every single category our team knows what the basic categories are and you can always add or subtract to fit your lifestyle yeah so we have our phone bill we have our insurance bills and this is important to note Jade a lot of people may be looking up this information for the very first time and choosing it's okay to choose an average of what your electric bill is we know some of these are variable expenses versus the fixed expense that's right yeah I think when you're building your budget for the first time be as detailed as you possibly can be like think about as where it says down there Bobby where it says add item be be realistic like if you're like if you know you have something on there that's probably part of your life like the kids gymnastics or you know whatever it is just be sure to add it and don't don't think oh I'll add it later or I don't want to add that yet add it so that you can really see a clear picture of what your numbers are and you're going to thank yourself in the long run and the nice thing is Ethan you only have to do this whole setup one time with every dollar once you have all of that you're just going to see your budget after that so Bobby let's go through this and uh we have the rest of spending so we kind of have the other categories this is beyond your food shelter utility Transportation uh so now we have gas groceries clothing and George these are the categories before I said be detailed these are the CATE categories where you really want to be realistic right because these are the ones where we go in and and we act like we don't spend what we really spend right we're like groceries 250 like how do you see this Jade because it's not truly aspirational or like I want to spend $100 on food but it's also not the reality of we've been spending $1,200 on food we have to i' rather I'd rather you start at the reality like I'd rather you go back and look at some statements and see what you've been spending and then you'll see cuz when we finish this you're going to see if you're either in the green or the red and I'd rather you see the reality of what you were doing then you can kind of go back and go okay what changes do I need to make because realistically I can't keep spending $100 a month on takeout like and you'll see that but it's great start your statements first so this is going to start to show you the reality so Bobby as we continue on with our expenses and our budget uh let's pull that up and go to the next step as we create our every dollar budget so once we finish off these expenses we are now inside of the budget Ethan if you're watching on the live stream so we have your income of $6,000 we're going to be giving uh so we're going we have church we got 600 bucks there we have savings goals do you have any debt currently uh so we do have a little bit of debt what's a little um we so I paid off most of our debt last year I actually sold four properties wow and paid almost everything off because I went to school uh for three months okay so what's so together we owe 27,000 in student loans okay so let's just say student loans 27,000 in medical how much in medical about a thousand okay so Bobby let's add a debt of $1,000 in medical on there so this is an important part because as you lay out your budget you're not done yet if you have debt we have to add these and you're going to you can select the type of debt the current balance and you want to include the minimum payment as well and the interest rate just so you can keep up with um all the details of your debt but what's fun Jade when it comes to the debt snowball method that we teach is you get to ignore the interest rate because this is not about the mathematics of how much we're paying an interest we want to make progress so Ethan the debt snowball said says pay off your debts from smallest to largest balance ignoring the interest rate so what is your smallest debt right now as far as the actual loan balance uh so the smallest debt is I think one of the Medicals like three or 400 and the other one 600 or 700 awesome so you have it would be medical debt number one medical debt number two student loan number one student loan number two student loan number three and so you would list those all out separately don't lump it all into one giant debt cuz it's probably broken up right into a bunch okay yeah yeah yeah so you're going to list all of those out on the debt section of your budget and that's going to now show you if you're on track are you are you underne under every month where you owe 600 bucks you're in the red or do you have money extra money to throw at your debt and so that's really going to help show you the reality of your finances and it may make you go oh boy we have to cut some expenses I have to cut that nice gy membership what what is an expense in your life that you think you could cut right now that feels a little bit luxurious uh so the only thing that we have right now outside of like just our regular stuff uh is we do have our TV subscriptions uh we pay right around $100 a month is that for like a YouTube TV or like one thing uh so that's split up between we've got Netflix uh I think the felo and then the Disney for the kids ah okay Disney is non-negotiable that one's you got I keep the kids occupied at all cost my friend so what I would do if I was you Ethan as I set up my every dollar budget go set up yours and as you go through it sit down with your spouse and do a budget audit and go hey could we do better on this are we overpaying for insurance we're going to shop it with our friends at Xander hey are we overpaying for can we cut this subscription for six months as we tackle this debt because the truth is you guys make great money there's no reason for you to be in debt true that right don't you agree well so the great money has really only been in like the last six months okay uh so I I do hoof care for horses I'm a faer wow so building my business over the last two years uh when I first started I was actually working four jobs to make sure I didn't go back to a real job okay uh and now it's finally getting to the point like we're we're making money we're getting ahead I just want to make sure I'm doing the right things with the money to stay ahead that's good well I I hope that helps you to create that first budget Ethan again that budget audit's really going to help obviously we don't have all of your numbers to lay out here but I hope that showed you exactly what it's going to look like as you get through the experience of creating your first every dollar budget and remember income minus expenses equals zero that means we've given every single dollar of that6 or $10,000 coming in a job to do and right now your one job is to pay off debt and that means we're bringing our savings down to a th000 with baby step one then we're going to tackle all of our consumer cons debt with baby step 2 and then we're going to get a fully funded emergency fund and that might mean hey we're going to pause investing to get some money back in our budget every month or we're going to sell that thing laying around to get some more margin and so we're looking at the every dollar budget right now let me walk you through Jade walk them through visually what they see where things are kind of laid out on this yeah so obviously right in front you've got where you can enter your incomes in and by the way you can enter as many incomes as you want it doesn't have to be one check or two checks you can add as many incomes so if you know I get two checks a month my wife works here she gets two checks a month so we have four things listed and then miscellaneous income I make about $20 a month from my music streaming Jade yeah Okay add that to the budget George add that 20 bucks that's some coffee money right there and here's what I like um I want to show them uh Bobby when you add your paycheck you can also say when you get paid and that's helpful so very helpful you you want to add that in there because we're going to use that later on uh when you start planning out your paychecks so see where he's clicking over there to the left there's a play a paycheck planning feature there that you can actually go through and plan out when you get paid and then decide when you're going to spend your money because so many times people build their budget and then they get frustrated because they're like Jade I still feel like I don't have any money like I go I go to do things at the grocery store and I don't have the money there and I'm like are you planning when to spend your money so paycheck planning if you look over there on the left there's some really cool features there and paycheck planning is one of them it's part of the premium version of every dollar so don't sleep on that um actually George I feel like we should take another question and then and then I'll keep we'll keep showing them throughout the let's take one from the chat remember if you guys want to be interacting with us you can leave your question in the YouTube chat and we'll get to them there you can also call in with your question at 844 28393 79 what is our first question Jade it says I'm starting off fresh budgeting with no real historical data tracked how much should a family of six budget for food oo I love this I wish I could just be like $483 I know listen there's the right response is what you can afford and what makes sense with your budget and don't get me wrong there are some statistics out there like I think the last one I looked at was for a family of four you know a realistic range was somewhere between 8 $800 and $1,200 and that's kind of like median like I'm I'm not I'm not shopping at Aldi and Walmart every day but I'm also not shopping at Whole Foods right it's like right there in the middle and so you can kind of Base it off that but I think the most important thing is to look at your budget and you said I have no real historical data tracked but you can go back and look at your transactions like you can go back and pull up your bank statements for the month of December and and go I mean this requires work but you're going to go through and Mark write down and add up all the times you went to Walmart or Whole Foods or Publix or hi ve wherever it is that you shop and then you're going to go oh my gosh in December we spent $1600 on food or we spent $900 on food and that's a good place to start and then like I said go ahead and do the rest of the budget and you're going to see Bobby if you pull the budget up right quick um I want to show her how we can see whether our budget is in the green or if our budget's in the red because this is really important when you build that first budget to to see okay what changes do I need to make because here's the thing uh Christopher if you put it into your budget that you're spending $1,200 on food and you're in the green and you're still doing all the things that you need to do if you don't have any debt if you're still s you know and you're still able to save or let's say you've already done baby steps two and three and you're investing 15% and you're doing that then what you're spending is reasonable and it's fine as long as you're doing the things that you need to do within the baby steps your location matters the age of your kids matters you know the food you have access to matters but the key is we want to keep this limited especially if we're broke right now we're on those baby steps one through three we're trying to get the emergency fund get rid of debt we need to limit all of this so that's an important call out there and as you get out of debt you're in baby step four you can up that you can start eating out again and enjoying life now you got a lot of kids so that's going to put a damper on your ability to eat out it's about $400 every time you leave the house listen and yeah so budgeting budgeting by percentage is not what I would aim to do you can't just go well everyone should just do 10% towards food it doesn't make sense cuz some people make 400 Grand some people make 40 Grand that's right yeah so that's a good question though you you can afford what you can afford and you know what baby step you're on if you're paying off debt cut it back if you're trying to save for a house cut it back like and if you really want to get nerdy you can go to the usda's website and look up their food plans they have like Thrifty food plan and for this size family and age the USDA website but you know they also recommended that we all just fill up on milk and carbs on the food pyramid so what do they know all right next question should we take one uh one more from the chat yeah let's do it okay here's one from tree can I increase my monthly budget spending if I just got an increase in pay at work I love this no debt except my house listen I love this question it is a fun problem to have because I think the buzzword here that we're looking for for is lifestyle creep everybody's like I don't want to be a victim of Lifestyle creep and the way I think of it is if you are if your income goes up and you are practicing I call them Five Pillars of personal finance if you are budgeting if you are out of debt or getting out of debt if you are carrying the right insurances if you have saved up for you know uh retirement and you've got your emergency fund saved and you're practicing generosity and you're doing those things and you've done those things and it's like listen I've got extra money that is your green light to say I can start doing a little bit more like I'm I'm a fiscally responsible adult and I'm doing Financial responsible things so if you want to add certain bump it up a little bit be my guest because I'm like you're taking care of your retirement you're taking care of your savings you've done those responsible acts and so I think that's the fun part of everything that we teach is you do get to live and give like no one else at some point so love that all right let's go to the phones we've got Katie waiting in New York Katie what's happening hi Hi how are you guys we're doing great this is very exciting for us I got a question I just became a new mother in November and one of my goals is to definitely pay down my credit card debt so that my child care is not a burden when I return back to work um because my employers allowed me to work from home for the first year so cool that's nice my goal is that I get paid weekly and I usually set my budget up on a weekly basis versus monthly but what is the better benefit to pay down the credit card is to do a large payment lump sum monthly or do a weekly and just tackle it that way well again your budget is is going to inform what you can do so let's have Bobby pull up the budget and let's let's plug in your number and just so you can see what it would look like and at the end of the day you do want a monthly landscape of what your month looks like because if you are only planning a week at a time and you say all right I've got you know I got paid on this first week and you know I paid I don't I don't know for gas and I bought groceries but you didn't do much else and you're thinking you have extra money and so you make this giant payment and then the next week comes and you're like oh yeah I forgot I also have to do this this and this that big Bill falls on the 22nd every month and I didn't think about it so what is your weekly income is it stable and static yes it's very stable I get um a net of 650 a week great so let's add 650 a week Bobby and do paycheck 1 2 3 4 does that work for you Katie mhm and what and what you're going to benefit from so much here Katie is that paycheck planning tool because what you're going to be able to do once you enter all those paychecks in and then once you fill out the rest of your budget then you can go back in and essentially what you're doing at that point is budgeting by week because you can go through each paycheck and say okay I get my first paycheck on the 1 and then I get my next paycheck on the 10th and then I get my next one on the 25th and my final one on the 30th and you can go through and say on the fifth what you know on the first which paycheck what can I spend until I get paid again and then when I get paid my second check what can I spend until I get paid again and so it's essentially what you're asking for it's exactly doing that it's budgeting your your money by paycheck but you're also getting that full month view so that you know what's going on so Bobby if you click that see how it has your paychecks lined up there underneath that whenever you put in all of your line items you can denote okay I want this to go out like Bobby uh pick groceries or something so let's say you've got a line item on there for groceries and you click it and you're like all right I I have $100 planned I want to spend that on my first paycheck you can plan that for January 1st or if you want to split it up and say I want to do half of it on my January 1 paycheck and I want to do the other half on my next paycheck you can split it up like that so you get to plan it per week does that make sense yeah it does so you're kind of making the money digitally available and every dollar is going to show you hey you get 100 bucks every week to spend on groceries to add up to 400 a month and then you'll be able to avoid this risk of overspending which it's showing us that's the best part of paycheck planning it's going to show you hey you're going to run out of money before the month is over based on where your bills are at and so it also helps because you can go oh I'm going to call my internet provider and say hey can you move this bill a week later because I need to make sure I can cover this at the right time every month so it helps you get a plan for that Katie and I highly recommend you check out the paycheck planning uh feature that's on the every dollar premium section and so uh uh make sure you check that out and can I'm going to gift that to you for 3 months to check out so that you can actually uh use it and get a handle on it and what's Cool J much yeah absolutely thank you so much for the call I hope that helps what I love about paycheck planning is one of the biggest problems with people getting started on a budget is them going yeah but I keep I can't get out of this cycle where I'm paycheck to paycheck because I I'm going to run out of money before that next bill hits and that's where this our team belt is featured to help people avoid that problem yeah and the thing is I want to clarify that's it doesn't come with the free version so if you have the free version and you're on here you're like I've never seen that before it's only on the premium version but the good news is it doesn't cost that much to get premium so what's cool is during this live stream we've got a special deal on every dollar premium $64.99 you can go to Every doll.com bonus to check that out it also has a lot of other features like we talked about Bank connectivity yeah I got to tell you the problem with budgeting for me was manually tracking transactions was such a grind so what's cool Bobby if you can go up to the every dollar page here uh you can see that we have some transactions that came in from our bank so these are some samples and so all I need to do on my phone or on the desktop is drag over Shell gas to the gas category drag over Chick-fil-A to the eating out category and then I'm done and the cool thing is it starts getting smart after a while like it'll start suggesting Chick-fil-A and it'll put like restaurants underneath there to kind of tell you oh this is probably the restaurant category so it's just one less thing you have to think about and you can just click it right there you don't have to drag and drop it which I really like um on desktop yes I love you know and I'll say I before before I had every dollar premium I did paycheck planning on paper like I would go out and like try to write down all the dates it was such a pain in my butt yeah so this is let me just say this is good it's worth it you want to take a few more questions from zitat all right this is fun we got one from Gloria Gloria how do I know how much is enough fun money for myself M treat yourself well again guys this all goes back to your budget you can filter it through the baby steps like where are you in the baby steps and that's going to help you see how much fund money you should have and then of course when you do your budget are you in the red or are you in the green because you can't up your fund money if you're in the red and if you're right at a zero doll budget you might not be able to up your fund money because there's no more money left to spend so it really is um going to keep that fund money minimal until you're out of debt with an emergency fund then we go from intense to intentional in baby step four so what this is what my wife and I do and this is I want to call out if you guys have separate bank accounts as a married couple and you venil each other you you have a roommate you don't have a spouse so combine bank accounts and guess what you don't lose your freedom on autonomy and Independence as a person here's what my wife and I do she has a line item called Whitney's fun money and I have George's fun money and then we just know she can spend that 200 bucks on whatever she wants and get her nails done and I'm not going to go what you spend money on she said nope I got my fun money remember we talked about this and so it clears up so many potential fights that could happen when you have those line items and the fun money line item makes the budget fun and so if you don't have a fun money line item and you've been doing this plan for a while add it back in yes okay budgets can't just be vegetables we got to have some dessert in there I like that George and if you're married make it equal listen if you're make it equal because my house Whitney gets more because that's I'm a man of chivalry that's something you know listen if Sam warshaw tried to ask for more and like be like listen yours is 300 and mine is 350 you might not see him again dang I'm just saying he disappear called out let's take another from the chat you ready for this one yeah here we go oh this is a good one from Carl a call out she said how do we ask questions without calling is there an email and there is if you want your question answered on a future live stream or on the Ramy show you can always email in your question here's the email write this down ask ramsy solutions. ask ramsy solutions.com and we can get to it that way I love this one hey let's look at Matt l i just glanced at it and I related hard to that question I think it's a question a lot of folks have he says if you buy something on the 30th and it doesn't clear until the first or second which month do you count it against I love this question this is like a common core math riddle it's like a train from Phoenix is traveling at 140 miles you know well you know a lot of us get paid on like the 15th and the 30th or the 15th and the final month and the way my husband and I do it you almost have to count the 30th as the first of the next month because it's the 30th like you're you can't save all of your monthly bills for the previous month until the 30th so it really does count towards the next month and I think that if you approach it that way it's a lot easier and for some people it takes a moment to kind of get on that Rhythm because most of us we're behind right we're just like fighting to stay alive so it's hard to do that but if you can get to the point where you're saying okay my first technically my first check of the month is on the 30th and then I spend the stuff on the 30th for that month I feel like that's a lot easier because then you've got the full chunk of money to spend and then your second check is the 15th you're first 15th person say you went to Chick-fil-A on the 30th the it was over a weekend and the transaction didn't hit the bank and every dollar until the 1 yeah so you're saying track that for February 1st I more mean it instead of back in January yeah and I more mean it for when you get paid cuz a lot of people are like how do I do that I'm like well if you get paid on the 30th count that for the first he's saying if I buy something on the 30th and doesn't clear I just do whatever if every dollar in my bank shows that it hit on the first I'm going to budget like that transaction happened on the first oh really cuz I might have put that one on the previous month I would put it on the month that I did it yeah I mean you're technically spending but on the I don't it hurts my brain I just go when does it when does it say it says February 1st I'm going to use it in February 1 and so my budget you know we we talk about this Jade that a budget should be a little bit flexible and a lot of people don't do a budget because if they think I didn't get it perfectly right I got to give up and I will call out if you're just getting started with a budget it takes 90 days to get this thing dialed in the first month you're just trying to figure out where all your crap is and what all the statements are and what expenses are the second month you're like okay like all the stuff is in there we just we were outside of the bounds on a few categories by the third month you're getting excited because you feel the progress and you have the margin and you're paying attention and it gives you some confidence in the money plan but I will say listen if you're budget is tight like if you're like don't have that kind of margin it might work for you to keep it kind of r because you know when you're right up against it sometimes a $15 thing can really throw you off and a good call out cuz we're you know every dollar is a digital app but if you're doing the envelope system you can cash that out and actually get cold hard cash for groceries and then you go all right I'm going to take that out the $300 I withdrew I'm going to track that against my food category in every dollar and now when that when that food money runs out and that cash you're out you got to figure something out move a different category around and so I like that plan if you're just getting started and you're broke like cash envelope system really works agree agree agree all right let's see what we have here uh Rebecca says every dollar lets you plan how much you plan to have in a syncing fund but if you know that you are going to be using money from a sinking fund like a birthday how do you indicate that oh I like this question so let's let's see what it looks like Bobby you know that you're going to be using money from a sinking fund how do you indicate that okay so Bobby's going to show us for anybody who's not birthday gift so we're adding it in there right now it just looks like a normal line item but he's going to go over here to the right so if you click inside of that on the right side you'll see the word fund you'll hit that and that's going to help you you say make this a fund that's what you want to hit the nice blue button there and so you're going to hit the original balance let's say you start at zero Jade you got zero in this fund and our Target amount is $1,200 for the year okay for birthday gifts so now we're going a nice birthday listen we got to go big at the camel house all right so now we have our goal of $1,200 we're starting with zero and we have 12 months let's say let's make it easy 100 bucks a month you tracking yep I'm with you and so for this month we're going to plan $100 mhm and so every dollar is just going to assume that you make good on your word and that you're putting away $100 and it's going to track it with you and let's just say you're a person who's like listen I I take my fund money and I move it to another account you might see the transaction pop in there for funds that's the one thing that you don't have have to track as a normal transaction so if you happen to see the transaction where you transferred it over you can actually just delete that you don't need so let's say she's saying how do I if I actually want to use this fund what happens to it and so if I'm going to be using this how do you indicate that so let's say you actually buy the birthday gift well you can then drag that transaction into that fund category and it'll say hey you've got less remaining so we're going to add expense let's say we spent 50 bucks and uh where do we spend this Mone birthday Place yeah that's where we shop spend on the birthday gift great and then you can choose what category comes out of so we're going to drag that expense over to birthday gift and you see where it said remaining 100 now it says remaining 50 so it actually the remaining is what your balance is and that should be a reflection of your bank account that's right so you spend 50 and you drag that transaction in that will mark it against the fund that's a great question easy peasy I love it funds are meant to be used and so what I also love about funds Jade is you can Mark like the date certain dates of when things hit I love to add notes so for insurance premiums I pay annually to Save A Buck that's what I like to do good job George I get a discount if I pay in full for you know Auto and all that yeah so I'll mark on my fund the exact date hey it comes out on February 21st every single year and so I know and I'm looking at my budget oh that money's about to come out and I can drag that transaction against my fund bada bing bada boom B bing bada boom I like should we take a call should we do it call all right let's go to Bailey in Knoxville Bailey how are you doing I'm doing good how are you good how can we help so my question is how do you recommend keeping money in different uh I guess funds for my budget such as um emergency fund or car maintenance do I keep it in separate accounts or how do I how would I do that yeah okay so let's let's cover emergency fund because that's a different kind of fund do you have that already funded or are you working on it working on it okay so how much do you want to save up in that emergency fund 25 to 30,000 all right and then car maintenance how much per year are you wanting to save we'll say 3,000 okay so Bobby pull up that every dollar budget we were just looking at funds and let's switch it up here and let's add one for Bailey's emergency fund under savings because that's a savings goal so we have emergency fund there Bailey and uh we're going to click into it and we're going to add some fun details here so how much do you have right now in that emergency fund anything I'm around 2500 great okay so original balance is 2 200 the target amount is 25,000 and how much are you able to put away into that emergency fund every month right now every month around 300 great so under the plan section right next to emergency fund we're going to put put 300 and that's it and so that's going to allow us to track that you'll see remaining let's say you actually allocated that 300 and so on the Tactical side this money may get transferred over to maybe a high yield savings account that you have which I would do by the way and so if that's the case if you transfer that money Bailey it's going to create a transaction in every dollar right it's going to come in as plus you know minus 300 from your checking account plus 300 from your saving to your saving account and so you can just delete those transactions like Jade was talking about because we not nothing really happened you just moved some money around the balance never really changed it just sort of got your eyes off of it in your checking account so that's one way to keep it separate and if you wanted to Let's so instead a birthday gift Bobby let's make that a car maintenance fund and you said you wanted to save 3,000 do you have any money put away for that already uh yes how much around 1500 okay so under fund details in the balance we're going to add 1,500 your target amount is 3,000 and how much are you putting away every month for that or would you want to put away uh 50 bucks great so we're going to put 50 bucks there yeah and that's it and so if you wanted to move that you could have that in a separate savings account even a separate high yield savings account uh some people have it in savings connected to checking there's a lot of different ways to do it I always like keeping SE I always like keeping savings very separate from checking just so it doesn't get confusing and so that when you look at your bank account it's kind of a reflection of your budget yes and you're not like wow I have all this extra money um I love I love a high yield savings account and I love Ally because we don't sponsor them or they don't sponsor us but I use Ali bank and I love it because you can separate it into buckets so let's say you have you know $30,000 or $20,000 in your account it shows you clearly separated which is your emergency fund which is your car fund and which is your you know vacation fund which is very helpful in my opinion does that help you out Bailey yes definitely awesome thanks so much for the call man good stuff love it awesome and by the way funds are a it's a really easy tool to use in every dollar whatever version you're using and it's one of the best because that's delayed gratification and discipline just learning how to save up for something over time whether it's a car upgrade you're doing everything with cash and that's a very different muscle to flex and so funds helps you stay on track for that let's go to the chat and see some questions we have here Bernardine Lee I like it she says how do you track payments that come every 3 months or are annual payments I'm guessing you're talking about like life insurance or things like that this is like the funds segment right here because that's is how I treat an annual payment as I create a fund it depends if it's something that you're saving up for as a fund or if it's something that you just cash flow month to month like I think we're separate on this I just cash flow stuff like that month-to month so if I know the great thing about budget buting Bobby if you pull it up and I kind of want to show them Bobby how easy it is to take your previous month's budget into your next month so we always teach that you should do a budget every single month because every month is different before the month begins so Bernardine let's say that you don't have that life insurance payment in January but actually Bobby let's do this let's add life insurance to this January budget and let's pretend you're like listen I have life insurance this month I'm going to add it to my budget but I know I'm not going to have it again until March right it's on there so let's go let's pretend January is no longer and now it's February when you go to February it's going to copy this month's budget to the next month start planning for February and it'll all be there just the way you left it and so now it's easy to just go in there and tweak it and say okay it's February I don't have a life insurance payment in February I can mark that down to zero and let's pretend that that life insurance doesn't come back again until April then when April's budget comes you're copy and pasting it and you're always going okay is it due and then when it's due you can just add it right back in there again so I think that that answers your question and if you're like George if you're a funds person then it's kind of just like what we just showed you where you're adding that fund and that money is stacking up and it's just there when you need it and again you're adding it to your budget on the month that it's actually due yeah yeah there's a lot of ways to to skin that cat and I I find for the the bigger the payment's going to be the more I want to plan ahead for it in case you know that paycheck doesn't cover the full amount plus rent plus all the other things happening but it's a good note that if you've got a spouse you need to be having a budget meeting before the month begins to talk about hey what's coming up in February what happened in January that we can delete from the budget for February what do we need to add oh we got Val we had that Valentine's Day date all right let's put that money in make sure we have that covered and so there's a lot of things that you just need to be thinking about as far as what upcoming expenses do we have holidays birthdays whatever the thing is yes very very good and by by the way as a reminder you know that life insurance category I never delete it because if you delete it you might forget about it but if you just move the the amount to zero then at least it's at least the line item is still there to remind you as the months go on oh I think life insurance should be coming up soon so that's kind of just a one way to think about it there all righty all right here's a good one from Tori from the chat trying to convince someone to use every dollar now that mint is going away he loves the trending feature that tracks average spending per category to forecast future month planning can every dollar question mark yes period was that easy was that easy enough that's it yeah every dollar has got some awesome features and that's one of them it'll attract all that average spending and it you can have some cool customized reports as well to help you understand your spending habits so be sure to check all of that out and a lot of these features you can check out in the premium version um there's some really cool stuff our team has been working on financial road map as one of them to help you really dream about those future goals when you're going to hit certain baby steps what can do to accelerate that so uh some really good stuff there let's go to Sierra on the chat I'm really struggling to give any perc of our income uh our every dollar budget is maxed out due to debt and monthly expenses what would you advise I feel guilty for not giving oo listen um you shouldn't feel guilty for not giving this is like a heart issue this is a heart issue this this is less of every dollar issue and more of a heart issue you shouldn't feel guilty for not giving if you want to give you got to figure out a way to give if you want to but you shouldn't feel guilty cuz you're not so if that looks like you lowering how much you're putting towards one category so that you can give that's your prerogative to do that but um the purpose of the purpose of giving is not to feel guilty if you don't because at the end of the day if you're listen I'm g go there right quick if you're a Christian person you want to give God's looking at your heart too and if he sees what's going on and you you you see that you're trying listen that counts for something so and what I like when you look at your every dollar budget our team made giving a priority it's right there under income giving is the next category because giving should not be an afterthought that's right you know and I think unlock something is unlocked when you begin to give whether you're a person of Faith or not that's not what the discussion is about but there's something really magical when you see giving as a a necessary part of your financial plan we took some calls on the show today Jade and this guy had a flat tire he was great at saving and investing he was really good at spending but he was giving nothing and felt kind of empty I could tell on the call he was like what am I doing man like what else is there I'm like you got to give or else you're going to have a flat tire and I've never seen people regret giving and so I love what Rachel Cruz says about this give a little until you can give a lot I like that don't feel guilty about it just give what you can and remember it's an issue of the heart rather than a financial amount that's right if you give a dollar that's good but I I wouldn't feel guilty if you're feeding your kids at night and you're not giving 10% you know what I'm saying like don't beat yourself up in that way take care of your family first all right Austin is in New York on the phones what's going on Austin how's it going good how are you good good um so I got a little bit of a unique situation um my fiance and I uh we are musicians content creators and streamers love it um thank you and uh over the past two and a half months things have picked up uh very considerably um to the point where we're making considerable money especially for the situation that we're in in terms of being you know content creators and stuff um we have a mortgage um we've got $275,000 left to pay for the mortgage um we do have some considerable credit card debt how much about 50,000 okay um we've got $116,000 in car payments and our monthly bills are about $6,000 um right now in the bank we've got $36,000 and so I guess the question that we have is you know we're at a point where we are making more considerable money but it's it's inconsistent it's hard to tell what we're going to make this year because it's only been the past you know two and a half months that it's jumped up considerably I mean at our low we were probably making from this $3,000 last month we made about 22 Grand so far this month we've made about $116,000 now do you have months where you can't do you ever have months where you can't make your bills um I mean we've there's been months prior that we have gone through that situation but we've had money in our bank account to be able to you know pay for our our monthly bills exactly so you know right now basically of that $50,000 in credit card debt this is the this is the biggest situation really um there are a lot of that is you know very high interest you know 29% interest because they were 0% interest start off with um we are uh in the process of taking out a heck to can you stop that process I mean it hasn't been it hasn't been done don't do it Austin the answer to your problems is not more debt you tried that with the credit cards what you need to do is cut up the cards and get on a budget and here's how you're going to budget let me walk you through this for anyone with a regular income out there which is a lot of people contractors Freelancers commission based jobs I mean Jade and I are basically commissioned and so this is us we got to know like what the bills are coming up this month and you know what's a bad month for you guys going forward you think it's six grand would that be a bad month it probably 3,000 okay so you're going to budget based on the lowest estimate of what you normally make you can always adjust it later in your every dollar budget if you make more so then if you're a regular income you're creating a prioritized spending plan of what gets paid first and so this is going to be your four walls food utility shelter Transportation if nothing else gets paid you got those covered okay yeah beyond that we need to cover the next important bills probably things like insurance premiums MH right and uh you the key is we don't want to go further into debt we don't want to dip into the emergency fund just because we have a lowincome month so if you have a if you have a great month put some money aside this is kind of the you know the Peaks and valleys fund if you will so if you make 22 Grand in a month let's put away a bunch of money for the leaner months so that we know we're going to be covered so if you had a no income month temporary layoff an injury a short Gap in in between gigs or something like that you're going to be okay or if the invoice didn't come through from the client and so that's the key with your irregular income folks you got to focus on your needs and priorities first You Want to Have No Interruption of income and you want to stick to the plan and the Peaks and valleys method will help you okay but please do not do this elot can can you promise me and everyone watching on this live stream that you're not going to do this I I I will I just have a quick question about it okay so I guess you know the the primary thinking was you know right now I'm paying you know minimum monthly payments on a lot of my credit cards um and you know I'm paying $200 and you know the interest on One credit card is $180 okay um you know I've got I've got about $2,000 in monthly bills just from credit cards you know so my thinking was to get rid of 30% interest on so much of this debt to you know a much lower percentage that would then a make my monthly bills less and then B allow me to have more you know a 36 ,000 of monthly s of having money in the bank that might be you know six months of of um cushion might now be nine months worth of Cushing because there's just less but dude you just told me you guys are making 22 Grand a month on a good month you could knock this out in a few quick months my My worry is that it hasn't been consistent enough to even know it's only been two months that we've done that we've never even made anything close to yeah but when you're making 36,000 or when you're making 22,000 a lot can happen in two quick months and you're GNA be you only have 50,000 of debt CU what I'm you got 36,000 sitting in that account right now you said your bills are 6,000 you could pay off the whole car which is 16,000 today and make put another 8,000 or so towards this car the credit cards that's giant and still keep a little cushion for the next month just in case like you that's huge what are you paying every month to your car I I pay whatever the you know the monthly minimum is yeah what is it uh 400 okay so if you pay that bill off today you're you're freeing up $400 month to month already so that's how quickly this thing works if I'm you tonight I'm paying off the car at the very least and Austin go set all this up in your every dollar budget and actually lay it all out it's going to lay out your debt smallest to largest for you you need to have a real plan of what's happening with all this money cuz right now it's just kind of floating out there and you're taking out more debt to cover this debt and so call into the ramsy show uh this week for more help on that but um thank you for the question and avoid this heck at all costs let's go to the chat we got Desiree who's asking does every dollar premium work if you have two different bank account I have our social security going into One bank and retirement going into another would I need two premium apps no you can set up multiple Banks through your one every doar premium a lot of people do this they have a checking connected their savings connected a different bank connected you got account over every does it easy and by the way it is very I saw some questions in the chat about that we use the top tier the same grade security your bank is using we use that as well and so uh you're covered there we got you can we show her anywhere yeah there you go there we go can search for your bank and click one and let's say if you have another one It'll ask you if you want to add any any additional ones so you can do that as many times go ahead and enter your personal banking info Bobby let's all see it live I'm just kidding I'm kidding guys he said nope he's got jokes is what just happened there that's a great question okay emlin asked U my husband starting a new job in sales with only commission I know in the future we'll base our budget on the lowest income but how do we plan our first budget with no real idea of the first month well you got to cover the bills for the first month so either have a buffer that can cover those bills in checking or you all got to be busting your butt and hope we get some money in the door but and this is a really good conversation on those four walls again of making sure that no matter what he brings in you guys have already decided your top priorities are making sure rents covered making sure you have food transportation and keeping the lights and the utilities on and if you can just focus on that this first time going around then you'll start to see um you know what the regular is and what the norm is and build that into your budget let's do a speed round Jade we have a few more minutes uh this this live stream we told people it's going to be about an hour I want to Value their time and respect it so Joshua in the chat said what do I do with extra money that's left over from my budget at the end of the month that's a great problem to have listen I I'll tell you what I do if there's there might be a right or wrong answer but let me tell you what I do so like free money let's get our nails done well Bobby pull up the budget let's say that we're at an every dollar let's say we've created an every dollar budget for the so right now income minus expenses equals zero it's a perfect budget but let's say that we were under on a certain category Bobby and we we have some money left over where do we want to do that usually it's going to be like groceries Maybe some a few B that were lower and I mean this is a perfect time cuz it's actually the 30th so that's true let's say like what I would do is I'd add all that money up and then I just add it to my next budget as extra money yeah that's what I do is that what you do George yeah well when there's a transaction let's say I dragged in all my transactions already and I we came in under on eating out for example so he's going to add last month and so let's say it was $75 that's what I do and then it just feels like income and cuz I'm not girl mathing it all right I'm not going to go in and be like well this is found money I don't have to budget this this is a reflection of your bank account cuz if you didn't spend that money it's not taken out of your bank account so we have last month's balance still in there as income you can George ma the girl math is math girl math says that's 75 bucks to spend a Target yes getting that new Stanley Tumblr and Cosmo pink especially especially if it's from a category that you already pulled out in cash cuz let's talk about that if you're a cash envelope person and you pulled out Bobby pull it back up again um what do you have budgeted for grow groceries in January let's say you're Bobby eating good Bob eating good listen if you 450 and you pulled it out in cash as a you know true over and you had 50 left over do not be like I'm going stuff that in my pocket that's just a little me time don't do that add it back to your budget deposit back deposit it back in the account like keep real track because especially baby steps one through three you got priorities so that's going to go toward that baby step if you have extra money that's right and we think that it's a little bit here or there oh it's just $15 or it's just 25 listen that adds up month over month category over category so do yourself a favor and and and give yourself all your credit in your money so that you can really spend it wisely that's a win okay Brandon in the chat says we are on baby step two and just found out we're pregnant yay should we pause our baby step to save up for birth and medical bills this is a great one and it might shock some people but we tell everyone if you're pregnant pause the baby steps pause the debt snowball we got to stack up cash until mom and baby are home safe we call it St mode there's only two times to pause the baby steps storm and St mode and storm mode is like you had a big life crisis happen a layoff whatever it is where you need to just stack up cash for a second and so the same is is true with the baby uh until mom baby are home safe and the medical bills are all covered then we can unpause and usually people have a big stack of cash and savings that they throw at the debt and you get a big win right there that's great yeah I love that that's a great one all right last one cine Katherine Salvatore o I like that name that's like a vampire I like it all right I'm not a creative cook and the kids are super picky and gluten-free and dairy free suggestions for saving for food absolutely list you chose the right people I love that number one I'm a proponent for meal planning you know a meal plan does for your food what a budget does for your money so it just gives you a plan and that way you're shopping for a purpose because when you make a meal plan you're saying this is what address this is what I want to cook for each meal and then you're only shopping for what you need in order to make those meals happen and I just find that going into the going into the week with a plan you're less likely to be like you know what tonight's a Chipotle night you know what I mean when you go in and have a realistic plan and it's like listen I'm not going to make a four course dinner but I can make sub sandwiches like there's part of that that really does help you save money so meal planning is so good and there's a lot of good sites out there to help find you know spark your creativity for good gluten-free and dairyfree recipes which yeah I mean we eat gluten-free I try to stay dairy free it's how I keep my physique it's how I fit in skinny jeans Jade and so we you know shopping at Aldi instead of getting the name brand gluten-free stuff and eating out they will upcharge the heck out of you for these kinds of options so be sure you're meal planning and you're finding out hey do the cost per ounce at Costco wherever you're buying in bulk and ALDI Trader Joe's if you have one nearby has some great gluten-free options but it's going to add to your budget versus subtract if you have dietary restrictions and so you just got to budget for it and do your best to meal plan that's great love it last one Elizabeth ask how do I justify purchasing the every doll premium version if I'm living paycheck to paycheck trying to get out of debt o this is a fun one Jade it is a fun saying how do I justify you know the gym membership you know I see it as any other thing that's adding value to your life that's right how why would I buy Jade's book for 10 bucks when I'm in debt I'm like well if it's going to help you get out of debt and become a millionaire I would think it was well worth the purchase it's going to pay for itself it's going to make your head spin how fast it's going to pay for and we know that people find the first month of budgeting they find over 300 bucks just by doing a budget and so to me doing the budget is going to save you the 65 bucks for the whole year that you paid for it and if it helps you pay attention to your money it helps you get out of debt we find people following the Ramsey plan in the first 90 days they have an $8,000 turnaround where they pay off you know 5700 they save up 2,300 and I'm like and they're paying 99 bucks to go through the class or whatever and so this is a this is definitely worth your money I if you use the free version that's great we want you budgeting but man the premium version with all of the transactions coming in from your bank accounts the paycheck planning I think there's a lot of value there and if you can't afford it and that's not a part of your world that's we're not mad at you listen you can find three things to sell on Facebook Marketplace to get $64.99 that's all I'm saying I want sold we can justify about any other purch I sold bath mats used yes and I sold them for $4 a peace I just got hives Jade listen I wasn't the one that bought them somebody else bought them that's that that's their that's their hygiene issue but I sold those jokes those Jokers and I'm telling you there's something you can sell in order to make this happen if you really want it that's all I'm saying I love that well hey this has been a lot of fun guys I hope you enjoyed it if you did let us know in the comments if you want to see more things like this you know bonus live streams all that goodness and we've got some great resources for you if you want to learn more about budgeting our team created a hub at ramseys solutions.com budgeting you'll find resources guides articles our team has written that will really help you take the next step if you have technical problems as you're going through every dollar you need help you can always go to Every doll.com help and fill out the form and you've seen that B that that deal we talked about $64.99 for premium if you're watching this live stream go to everydollar.com bonus to check that out this has been fun Jade this is the first ever and I'm honored to be a part of it fun hanging out with you glad you guys joined us and uh we will see you soon on the Ramy show will be here all week so call us or email ask ramsy solutions.com shout out to Bobby for helping us out today in the whole every doll team we love you guys we'll see you guys soon have a good [Music] night [Music]