Budgeting your money | This budgeting system changed my life!

Before implementing the budgeting system I am about to share with you today, I (like many others) felt scattered & uncertain about my finances. Financial decisions often sent me into this spiral of thought trying to consider all the advice I had been given, but I never really found an answer that felt good for me. 

Now, today, I feel so confident. My finances feel abundant - spending, receiving & even the act of budgeting feels fun & financial decisions are made with clarity. I know that you can experience all of that & it's really just comes down to two small shifts. So, what does this look like? I've created a PDF that outlines an example & it's largely based on how I've adopted it. So, if you want an inside scoop into how I organize things, you'll find it in that PDF. 

Download your PDF below!

Send me the steps!

 Scroll to the bottom of this page to watch the video, or simply read the transcript below (edited slightly for clarity).

If you watched last week's video, you know the importance of asking intentional questions so that you don't continue to spiral & rather you find answers that are not only clear, but feel really true to you. That is the approach that this budgeting system takes. I'm breaking it down into two parts. The first is the mindset piece & then we move on to a slight shift in language that literally changes everything. 

So, starting with the mindset. If you're feeling scarce in your resources, if you feel like there's never enough or you don't even know how to define enough, take a step back from the numbers, take a step back from the cookie cutter advice & ask yourself:

What do you value? What do you care about? & what are your goals?

Get clear on these things first. Journal it out, talk it into your phone, tell a friend, give a fake presentation to your dog, share what it is that you value, the thing that you most care about, & the goals that you're working toward right now.

With that goal piece specifically, what are your top three goals you are actively pursuing right now & with your values, not only highlight for yourself what it is you do care about & value, but also highlight for yourself, what do you notcare about & value? Do your best to separate the advice & expectations that live all around us & listen to your heart. What do I really care about? What do I really value separate from everyone else? Once you work through that first part, then we're going to incorporate the second tangible shift in your budget itself.

Using the power of language & the simplicity of language. We are incorporating these elements that you just unveiled into a system that historically speaking, which makes no sense to me, doesn't actively incorporate your values, your cares & your goals.

Instead of setting up your budget into buckets, such as variable monthly expenses & savings. Instead, you have a well-being bucket, you have a quality of life bucket, you have a non-essential bucket, & you have the big goals bucket. Under each of those buckets, all of your lines in your budget can also be personalized. 

Instead of taxes, for instance, you may choose to write community support, instead of rent or mortgage payment, you may choose to write I freaking love this city. & what this does, what these small language shifts do is shift your whole perception on where this money is going. 

These are still covering the same bases such as savings & groceries & gas, but instead of just labeling them with those simple high level terms that don't resonate with you, we are shifting the language so that it's more meaningful & feels intentional. Along with these language shifts & perception shifts on where our money is going & why our money is going that direction, I also added one more layer to link my expenses & my budget with the feelings & the intentions I have behind them - using emojis. 

Emojis make my budget so much more fun, & it seems silly, it seems small, but it really has made a big change. So, next to fostered relationships, I have a heart & it just evokes a different feeling rather than just reading words on a screen next to rent (which I call “I love the city”) I have a mountain because, ultimately, the mountains are what brought me to this incredible city that I do love.

On that note, & before going to the three big outcomes you can expect when you adopt this budgeting system, what emoji would go right next to a line in your budget? If you had a treat myself category, it would definitely be an ice cream cone. 

So, you've done the reflective exercise, you've asked yourself what you value, what you care about, what your goals are, & you've incorporated that language into your budget itself to completely shift your perception about how you're budgeting your money & the intention behind your expenses. What can you expect to get out of this? 

Well, right away, you are creating more balance for yourself. If you have watched any of my other videos, you know, I have a strong emphasis on both intention & action, we need both. & yet, we tend to lean into one side or the other. For myself, I'm very action oriented, so that's why historically speaking (before I adopted this budgeting system), I didn't feel like I had enough. & I didn't feel clear about any of the why behind my budget, because I had not taken the time to incorporate intention into my budgeting. I had just adopted some cookie cutter approach advised to me by someone else. 

For you, maybe intention is your strong suit & therefore you haven't really taken the time to enact a budget. Now that you have a fun system that incorporates your strength of intention, you can take action in a way that feels good & feels aligned with you. 

If you don't yet know whether you're intention or action oriented, take my free strengths quiz, it is linked above. 

The second outcome that comes from adopting this system is that budgeting spending & receiving money suddenly feels fun. It feels fun, because it feels like you, & you are clear on why your money is going where or you get clear on if money is going somewhere that you don't want it to go & have that sense of empowerment that you can change it - either your perception or the action itself. 

Along the same vein, it makes decisions feel crystal clear. So, I mentioned earlier, before adopting this system, my financial decisions often sent me into a spiral. One example of this is that I have always invested in a life coach or business coach, or coaching of some sort. Makes sense, I am a coach, I definitely believe in this work. But when it came to investing in these services, & they're often quite expensive, & I had a hard time grappling with that cost & figuring out where the heck it was going to come from. 

Now, I have a line in my budget under my well-being bucket with that fire emoji right next to it, because I know that this type of support up levels me, both in my personal & business life. 

The third outcome you can experience when you adopt this type of budgeting system is a feeling of abundance, a true feeling of abundance, again, regardless of the number that is in your bank account, although that will also continue to grow with this system. Abundance comes from that feeling of knowing you have enough & getting clear on where you're headed. The goal is in front of you & because now your values, your cares & your goals are interwoven into the budget itself, you can feel clear & confident that there is enough here & you are empowered to create even more in the spaces that light you up & that you know you are in alignment with & get rid of those extra expenses that do notfeel in alignment with your highest self & your greatest goals.

A personal example of the ladder - I created a line with bars & alcohol specifically, because that was something that I knew when I did that first part that I didn't value. Alcohol & bar tabs add up pretty quickly, so even if I'm not doing it that regularly, it could still feel like a big portion of my budget, especially when I don't want any resources heading that direction to begin with. 

On the opposite end, there were some lines of my budget that suddenly felt so good to budget & to spend money from but used to have a bucket. That was wedding expenses for my friends & family's wedding & it didn't feel that good because in my mind, it was linking that money to the wedding industry, which (like anything else) has its faults. When I changed that line in my budget to read foster relationships, it totally changed the game, because that's ultimately what those expenses are going toward. 

I'm flying myself to friend's weddings to watch the greatest day of their life, to celebrate, to reconnect with family members & friends that I haven't seen in a really long time. Suddenly, my mind was linking this money, this expense, to something that did feel in alignment with me. 

If you are saying heck yes to all these outcomes & this new perspective on budgeting, give this video a like on YouTube to close things out. I mentioned my strengths quiz to learn whether you are intention or action oriented that quiz is also linked above. Figure out your strength so that you know which one to balance as you're creating your budget. 

Next week we are continuing with this work with a gorgeous client testimonial from a mompreneur. Using her testimony, you will learn what it means to run a successful small business. I'll see you then.

---