Financial Goal Setting for the New Year (using a budgeting app!)

interested in doing some goal setting for the new year around your finances stick around in this video I'm going to help you set up your financial goals with a really simple budgeting app and stick around to the end because if you're a mint user I have a really juicy deal for you that you won't want to [Music] miss hey guys this is Justine from debt free Millennials your host here we talk about all ways to crush debt Achieve Financial confidence that leads to more fun and fewer payments if you are into that lifestyle be sure you're hitting that red subscribe button this year 2024 I feel like not only are we going to achieve 100,000 subscribers to the channel we're also going to hit our financial goals really really fast and really easy with the use of quick and simplify this budgeting app is really just a GameChanger in how you view your finances how you're managing them because everything is right there in front of your face so long as you're inside of the app making those changes and adjustments and creating the awareness you're going to go far with your financial goals speaking of financial goals here is how you prioritize them I think about them in five different sections those sections include debt budgeting savings income and investing when I start to think about financial goals there's obviously a lot of things that pop up so when you think about them in terms of these different sections it makes it a lot easier for you to actually manage and organize those financial goals perhaps you're thinking about paying off debt but you also want to really go robust and heavy on the investing it might not be likely that you can achieve both realistically so it gets you in that realistic sense of there is a priority to this how are we going to start working our way through these financial goals with the top priorities in mind now when I'm thinking about prioritizing my financial goals I always start with just basic budgeting whether or not you're using a whiteboard a spreadsheet or an app like quick and simplify where they can quickly access it on the go this is a way that you start creating Awareness on what's my monthly income and what are my monthly expenses and how is my spending helping me achieve my financial goals now if you're ready to set up a financial goal after going through each of those sections thinking about what would be the number one thing that I would like to accomplish out of those sections of my finance then you can go ahead and move forward with setting up a financial goal inside of quick and simplify in fact let me go ahead and hop over into my dashboard and I'll show you how this works you can access the quick and simplify app either on desktop or on your phone which I really like if you're going to spend some time really looking at the numbers I find that doing this from your laptop is really easy so what you're going to do is you're going to go over to this side menu and you're going to click on goals and here is where you can activate a new goal you can already see I completed a goal for Christmas spending that I wanted to do so if you are just coming fresh off the holidays then setting up a budget and a financial goal for Christmas spending and Gifts is such a great way to start the new year so what you're going to do is click on new goal and then you can click on one of these popular savings categories you can do a custom one an emergency fund so let's say emergency fund is what you're working on so you would click on that as your goal and let's say my goal amount is $45,000 you're like Justine wow that's a lot of money well if I'm going after a fully funded emergency fund of at least 6 months of living expenses basic living expenses or more then this is actually a realistic amount for me so let's say that I've already saved close to 38,000 because I think that's what I have really in my my emergency fund so$ 37997 and let's say 44 that way it's equal to the amount that's actually inside of my savings account so I need to save roughly $7,000 more for this particular goal then you click on continue and then you can set your target goal date so let's say I want to complete this within the next year then I need to be saving $538 66 per month in order to hit it within the next year so by the time I roll around to 2025 I would have that goal amount of $45,000 so I love that if you wanted to adjust this and let's say you wanted to hit this I don't know mid year then you can see down here you'll finish this goal if you change your monthly contribution amount to 116710 then you would be able to hit that goal Midway through the year so that seems like a lot and that actually I want to go back to the original goal of $538 this is where I find that the goal setting within simplified is really helpful because a lot of people when they're setting financial and savings goals they want to shoot for the moon the stars the whole galaxy and they realize that they really cannot save that amount of money like they're thinking so if they wanted to save like a $50,000 down payment in the year and they realize that they've got to be putting aside over $1,000 over $2,000 per month in order to hit that goal and that's just not realistic for some this is what makes it realistic and very quickly you can make those decisions because they're doing the math for you I didn't have to come up with 538 66 they came up with that number so if I thought that was actually realistic I can set this aside in my spending plan this is another great feature is that you can set that aside in your monthly spending plan or not and then so here's the kicker they're not actually going to take that money from your financial accounts it's the goal is meant to help you stay accountable so that you can actually see how much you need to be doing now is the the part if you were actually going to go through with this is you're going to have to set that money aside into the right savings account so for me I would be putting together an automated monthly savings contribution into my high yield savings account which is where my emergency fund is parked moving that from checking to that high yield savings account every single month is the 538 and then I'm good to go for the year so then you can go into your spending plan for the month so if we're starting in January then you're going to see that savings goal listed right here and it's going to show not contributed because you're going to have to go ahead and set up that contribution between your checking and your savings account to really bring this whole thing together I love this because when we're looking at financial goals inside of the bigger picture of our monthly budget then you can see it right there as a tile and then you can see what plans spending you have that may reflect how much you can set aside for that particular goal so not only can you set up financial goals you can track your spending you can even create really juicy reports that help you figure out what are some of your spending patterns and habits and how can you reduce those to better reflect your goals for the year or maybe increase and say I want to spend more money on fun and this is how things are going to adjust throughout the year if you can do that for each section of your Financial picture the debt the budgeting savings investing income all of those good things then you're going to realistically hit that when you have something that's keeping you accountable like this budgeting app also I really want to make sure that mint users know what's going on for this year you may or may not have heard that mint is going away for this year rip and a lot of people are feeling like what is the next best thing in my opinion quick and simplify is the next best thing and the best offer that I've seen from quick and simplify is if you are importing your mint data over to quick and simplify they are giving you a free year a freee subscription of quick and simplify that is an amazing deal so yes this is a paid app but if you're coming over from Min you get to test ride this thing for free even if you're not a mint user and you still want to test Rite this they're giving new users 3 months from free access so if you're a mint user 12 months free if you're not a mint user 3 months free either way it's a win-win so that you can test run this bad boy for free if you're looking for a budgeting app and you're not a spreadsheet user this is where you need to be click on the link below to start using quick and simplify thank you so much quick and simplify for sponsoring this video I have been test writing simplify for the past couple of years and as a Avid spreadsheet user I can see how much value this app is bringing because they continue to improve on it literally month over month there are new updates just making it better and better for everyone if you like this video give it a big thumbs up and I'll catch you in the next [Music] one 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