Why Your Budget Keeps Failing — And the Automatic System That Actually Works

Budgeting has a branding problem. For a lot of people, it feels restrictive, shame-filled, tedious, and honestly kind of like financial punishment. But what if the problem is not you? What if the problem is that what you’ve been calling budgeting is really just tracking where your money already went? In this episode, Shari Rash, founder of GWA Wealth, talks with Shana and Vanessa of Budget Besties and the Financial Coaching for Women Podcast about why traditional budgeting fails so many people and what actually makes a money system stick. They explain why tracking every transaction is not the same thing as budgeting, why checking your bank account and hoping for the best is not a plan, and why separating your money into spending and savings buckets can create more freedom, not less. You’ll hear how their digital envelope system works, why annual and irregular expenses are usually the things that blow up your budget, and how automation can help you stop relying on willpower. They also get into the credit card points debate, why using a credit card can make it harder to stick to a budget, and why nobody built real wealth from points alone. Cute perk? Maybe. Financial plan? Absolutely not. Check out Shana and Vanessa's Free Money Stress Quiz You’ll hear: Why budgeting feels so shame-filled for so many people The difference between tracking and true budgeting Why your budget needs to include annual and irregular expenses How digital spending buckets can replace old-school cash envelopes Why separating bills from spending can create more clarity How to automate bills, savings, spending, and investing Why credit card points may not be worth it if they keep you disconnected from your numbers The simple first step Shana and Vanessa recommend if your budget has never worked before If you’ve tried budgeting and felt like you failed, this conversation will help you see that maybe the system failed you. Budgeting should not be about obsessing over every transaction. It should be about giving your money a job before it disappears. If you want help building a financial plan that connects your cash flow, investing, savings, and bigger life goals, learn more about working with Shari Rash and GWA Wealth at gwawealth.com. Follow Everyone’s Talkin’ Money on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode, and keep the conversation going on Instagram @everyonestalkinmoney Shari Rash is a financial planner and Investment Adviser Representative of GWA Wealth, a Registered Investment Adviser. The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Listening to this podcast does not create an advisory relationship with Shari Rash or GWA Wealth. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Any references to specific investments, strategies, or securities are for illustrative purposes only and are not recommendations. You should consult your own financial advisor, tax professional, or attorney regarding your individual situation before making any financial decisions. The views expressed by guests are their own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of GWA Wealth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:17Speaker 04

  Budgeting. If that word immediately makes you want to close your laptop, abandon your bank account and emotionally relocate, I get it. Because for a lot of people, budgeting feels like shame. It feels like restriction. It feels like someone is about to tell you that your entire financial future depends on never going to Target again, which is both rude and unrealistic. But today's conversation is not about budgeting as punishment. It's about budgeting as a system. My guests today are Shanna and Vanessa of Budget Besties and the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. And they have a very clear message. Tracking is not budgeting.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  And honestly, that distinction is huge. Because so many people think they are budgeting because they have an app, they have a spreadsheet, or a very vague habit of checking their bank balance and hoping for the best. But tracking where your money already went is not the same thing as deciding where your money is going before it leaves. In this conversation, we talk about why budgeting has so much shame attached to it, why traditional budgets fail, how a digital envelope system can work in real life, and why separating your spending money from your bills can create way more freedom than trying to track every single transaction.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  We also get into the irregular expenses, annual bills, Christmas, kids, groceries, Amazon, credit card points, and why nobody built wealth from rewards points alone. I apologize to all my points people. It is what it is. This episode is for you if you've tried budgeting before and thought, I must be bad at this. This is a me problem. Maybe you're not bad at it. Maybe you just never had a system that actually matched your real life. So here is my conversation with Shayna and Vanessa of Budget Besties. Shayna, Vanessa, tell me where we are when it comes to budgeting. When I'm working with my clients, it's the B word, right?

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Like, we don't say it too often because it's hard to find a budget that works for you, I think. Budgets can fail so often for people. So what do you see when you're working with your clients? What makes it stick and what breaks the budget concept?

• 3:44Speaker 05

  Well, I want to say first that we also call it the B word. And we have earrings made for that as well because it is. There's a lot of jargon out there. It's a very negative conversation around making a budget, having a budget, using a budget, budgeting in general. And we have really tried to change that space. So, and there's a lot of shame around it as well.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  I talk about all the time, like, we attach emotions to our money, where budgets are like the least emotional thing when it comes to money. It's simply money in, money out. So why do we attach all this stuff to our budget? Well, the why is a great question. I think part of it is obviously going to have something to do with how you grew up. You know, I think a lot of people have money baggage that they're carrying over into adulthood based on whatever, whatever happened, you know, maybe the answer was always no, or we don't have any money, or you know, you're, you're, you're spending too much money or whatever. But also, I think there's a lot of jargon. And you know what? We've been calling it like financial bro nonsense, Sheri. There's just a lot of words out there that are shameful.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  When it comes to talking about money, so everybody just starts to soak that in. And that's what they, that's what they've been hearing. So obviously, all of us, all three of us are trying to change the conversation, make it not shameful, make it not judgment, make it just math, make it kind of lighthearted, right? But there's been a long, a lot of talk, uh, right in the opposite direction about how, you know, you shouldn't, you shouldn't even be allowed to go in a restaurant if you're not working there, if you're in debt, and all this just really kind of shameful talk that has been, you know, what do they say, the squeakiest wheel gets the grease? That's been what we've been hearing about budgeting and about money. And so I think it kind of soaks in after a while.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Well, and also, you know, people can say that they're budgeting, but they're not really budgeting, or they really don't know how, so they're calling it budgeting. Cause what, we did a national research study, and what we know is that 61% of Americans are using passive methoding forms, right? So, um, whether that's like checking their bank account balance or, and hoping for the best, or they're putting, putting it on a credit card and, and hoping that

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Calling that a budget.

• 5:50Speaker 05

  Calling that a budget and hoping they can pay for it later. There's a lot of ways that they're saying that they're budgeting, but it's not actual true budgeting.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  What then is true budgeting? Cause I'll, I'll talk to people and I'll say, oh, I have a spreadsheet and I track everything. Or what is like budgeting 101? So that's another part of one, why people are not successful at budgeting. And but also why they're, why they're not budgeting, because tracking is not budgeting. Tracking is figuring out where your money already went, right? Budgeting is coming up with a plan before it goes anywhere, right? Obviously, John Maxwell's famous quote is a budget is telling your money where to go, not wondering where it went. That's what budgeting is, but most people are using these apps and these spreadsheets where they have to track every transaction and assign it and reconcile it to what, what category. All of that is nonsense. All of that is unnecessary.

• 6:41Speaker 06

  And it's also not helping you budget, but you feel like you're doing something.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  It's busy work.

• 6:46Speaker 06

  You're, you're, you're being a good girl. You're checking a box because you're doing things with your finances. But you still feel frustrated because you're not making progress. It's still, you don't know where your money is going. You don't know what's going really happening. And so that is like, if we had one like flag we would plant in the sand, it's stop tracking. That's not budgeting. Just you can, with our, the way that we teach to budget, you can totally get rid of that and, and not have to spend all that time. One, it isn't productive, but two, just makes you feel the same. You don't feel any better after you've figured it out where all your money went, right?

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Well, and we don't have time. Like we're very busy. We have a lot going on with our family, our kids, our, you know, maybe our church, our community, our careers. And to sit there and tell somebody in order to be successful with your finances, you have to track every single expense and transaction that went, that happened throughout the month. And these, all of these apps are connecting to your bank, right? And so they're wanting to track every single line item. You don't have time for that and that's not going to make you be successful. What it's going to do is stress you out because we have had, but people tell us that their apps are be, uh, dinging at them. They're, they're like vibrating their phone. They're yelling at them, telling them when they're doing things wrong and when they're not doing what they said they were going to do and all this stuff. That is not making you feel successful or making you feel like budgeting can work for you.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  The tracking and like, I'm, I'm tracking, I have the apps, I'm categorizing. It's kind of like empty calories. You're doing all of this stuff and it, you, you feel like you're doing something, but it still isn't satisfying at the end. Because I think in my opinion, you're not doing the most important thing, which is like reflecting. Okay. What went wrong? What went right? What made me spend the money I spent or why did I spend it here? Why did I go there? So it's like, it, it, it's missing, I think that reflecting, but we're so fatigued from doing all the tracking and we just think we did something good.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Yes. Reflecting back on what happened is important in some, in some way, shape or form. But when you're going through your bank account and you have one account that is a black hole of transactions and every single month you're having to scroll and scroll and scroll and. See what happened. Nobody wants to do that. The way that we have our, our clients and our, our community budget is by separating your money out. So when you think of the cash envelope system from a long time ago, the way that grandma used to save her money and she used to have this for mortgage and this for groceries and this for gas. What we want you to do is take that and turn it into the modern era of having digital envelope system where you have multiple accounts. Okay. And so you have a checking account for gas and groceries. You have a checking

• 9:18Speaker 05

  account just for you, girl, to get your hair done, to get all the stuff that you want, to go to Amazon, go to Target, whatever you want to do. Go get that coffee with that girlfriend at Starbucks. Right. You have an account for your kids that, that pays for all of their expenses that they need. And so your spending is separate, but you have a bills account that does nothing but pay bills. And so it allows you to only see truly what you cost with your bills and your debts, and you can see all your payments there. And then once you transfer the money out into spending on the, in the different categories, it allows you to see what you're spending your money on, and you don't have to track. All you're looking at is the bank account balances in those accounts and in those categories. And it, it just allows you the freedom to spend without trying to scroll through one account with all of these transactions in them.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  I think that makes a lot of sense because I say, you know, where budgets fail is that it, it can account for your big bills, right? Your mortgage, your rent, your utilities, your car payment, all of that stuff. Where budgets fail us is that it doesn't account for those random things that come up every so often, or maybe once a year. So you mentioned like the getting your hair done. Well, I don't get my hair done every month, but I get it done every six weeks. So it's not an every month expense, but it's a every, every other month, if you will, expense, or a facial, or, or a mani-pedi. It's not an every month thing that I have to account for,

• 10:45Speaker 04

  but if I know I have X amount of dollars each month for my self-care, I can spend it however I'd like. Is that what your envelope system essentially is telling us?

• 10:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. So we basically took the concept of our, our mentor, Jay Ramsey, of, of cash envelopes, and moved it over to online, to digital, because it's just a modern age that we live in. But

• 11:11Speaker 06

  So we have spending buckets and savings buckets, right? So the spending, you're just gonna have categories of your personal spending and gas and groceries, right? Those are set budgets. You put the money over in those. But then what we hopefully really try to tackle is a lot of people think monthly when they think their budget. They only think monthly. They think their monthly bills. They think their monthly, how much do I spend on gas? All of that. We want you to take a bird's eye view of your, what you cost in a year, what your household costs in a year. Whether that is glam up, whether it's. Which can be scary. All of these things that are.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  That could be very scary, right? You know, we think it's, it's, it's more scary to not know.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  And to just keep, because that's usually what's blowing people's budgets up or derailing their efforts to budget correctly. So what we want to do to do is, is go look at, we call them savings buckets. Whether it's annual bills, whether it's Christmas, whether it's, um, you know, your kids' sports or travel, whatever your big things that don't necessarily happen Monday or monthly. Whatever those are, we want you to plan them in a year. And then you can start setting aside a little bit of money each month. That way, when the big expense comes, you have it there and it's not something that, that derailed or, or you don't have to come up with a thousand dollars this month to figure out how to pay for your property taxes. Because you've been saving for it a little bit each month and that takes the scariness out of it.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I think people forget that these one-off expenses that happen random throughout, randomly throughout the year are just as important as your monthly bills. You can put words and numbers on paper and call it a budget, but then what do you do with it? You know, we really talk about having a system in place. You need a budget system to be able to not just, to be able to take the words and numbers you put on paper and make it work for you. Bring it to life. You know, put the money in your spending accounts so that way you know exactly how much you have there to spend. Then put your money into savings. So you're saving for all these unexpected expenses that are coming up. Because your annual bills that pop up, that six thousand dollar auto insurance bill, if you're a family of four and have two kids on it, is just as important as a monthly bill that you have. You know, Christmas, if that's really important to you, you need to be able to save that.

• 13:06Speaker 05

  If you're putting five thousand dollars a year on, on credit cards during Christmas time, you should be taking that money and putting aside a little bit every single month. So that way, when Black Friday happens, you have the cash and you're not just, oh, by the way, Christmas is December 25th every single year. I totally forgot. And I haven't saved for it. We just want you to be prepared. And you know, as far as investing, people talk about, I want to be a good investor. I want to be able to invest. And how do I, can you get me in touch with someone? But like, if you can't budget and have your budget set for a year as far as being able to fund your life on a regular basis, monthly for what you cost in a year, if you can't do that, and you're going to go into debt so that way you can invest, that's the wrong answer. That's the wrong order. So we want you to be able to have in your budget,

• 13:50Speaker 05

  how much you truly cost, and then also put investing in there. So that way you don't ever stop investing, you become a lifelong investor.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  If this conversation is already making you realize that your budget is not really a budget, it's just you looking at where all of your money is going, that is exactly why having a bigger financial plan matters. Because cash flow is not separate from the rest of your money. It connects to your savings, your investing, your debt payoff, your retirement contributions, your taxes, your emergency fund, your ability to actually enjoy your life without constantly wondering, can I afford this? That is exactly the work I do through GWA Wealth. As the founder of GWA Wealth, I help women who are doing well on paper, build clear, personalized financial plans,

• 14:42Speaker 04

  so they can stop guessing and start making confident decisions with their money. You can learn more at GWAWealth.com or through the link in the show notes. Because money should not feel like a pile of disconnected transactions. It should feel like a plan that actually supports your life. I love that because when I'm working with my clients, I'll have the conversation with a woman comes, I want to start investing, and I want to do $400 a month into a Roth IRA, or whatever it is. What, you know, kind of like whatever they heard last on a podcast or read in an article. It's like, okay, I want to do that.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  Right, sure.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  And I said, that's great. But first, we need to start looking at where your money is going. Because if I were to just say, yeah, no problem. Let's set you up with $400 a month into a Roth IRA. How do I even know you can afford that? How do I know you're not then putting expenses on a credit card in order to invest? So I, it's so that, that, I think that concept gets lost on a lot of people because they just hear, I need to start investing, I need my money working for me. But we don't even know how much you can afford to get working for you. And so by reviewing your spending, setting a budget, automating, saving, but like you said,

• 16:03Speaker 04

  saving it first, like sending it to a savings account so you get used to the money leaving your checking account so it doesn't exist, you get used to that. See how much you can afford, then get it working for you. I say a lot that money likes automation. And that, that's, it, it doesn't matter where it's going, as long as something's automated. I think is so, such an important point that you hit on, that I just wanted to double hit on it. Because you, you can't start investing without knowing where your money is going first. Well, we love, like, we're all, we're all nerds and besties here. But we love the automation part. And I just wanted a quick caveat because we also think you can automate your spending too.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  And that's where, when you, you need to have this clear bird's eye view of everything so that you, to your point, you can, you know, you can invest correctly. But the clear bird's eye view allows you to automate everything. So if you, especially if you're having these spending challenges, or you're not sure that or the other. If you have a separate spending account and each paycheck, based on the budget that you filled out, a certain amount is automatically put into your spending account. And that's really all you have to worry about, right? You're just living in that little spending bucket and you don't, you don't go over that, whether, or no matter how, whatever amount you assign to it. Your bills are over here getting paid automatically. As you said, your savings buckets are getting funded automatically. Your investing is coming out of the bills account at that set amount every month. Then you could just like live your life and you don't have to have this consternation. It can all actually happen automatically.

• 17:33Speaker 05

  You know, we have our special system that we have designed because of this, because we are modern women. We don't necessarily want to use cash. I don't want to have to do a million transactions in my head to make sure if I can buy this purse or whatever, or go to coffee, you know, with my friend or brunch or whatever. I want to just know that I can look at this one account. This is how much I have to spend. That's the only decision or like math, mental math that I have to do, and it can all be automated.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  It really does give you, it actually gives you more freedom because you, then it gives you the ability to spend that money. And if everything was piled up in one place, and you had to look at transactions or everything went on the credit card, when it came to buying the purse, like you said, or even buying the cup of coffee, you could be having that internal struggle of can I afford this? Should I spend the money? But when you can see, oh, I have XYZ amount each month to spend on whatever it is that brings me joy, it creates a freedom, and it removes that whole second guessing, questioning, wondering, beating yourself up element of money and spending.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Right, because you know, what, according to our research study, a majority of Americans say that money is the biggest source of stress in their life. It, we want it to be a tool. Unfortunately, it controls our decisions, and it tells us yes or no on different things, especially these big life decisions, like career changes and stuff. We want your money to be able to tell you yes on these things. We want them, we want you to be able to move into these different seasons of life, knowing that you feel comfortable doing that because you've been able to use money as a tool and be prepared for it. And, but a lot of people are avoiding it. One of we have a stat that says 40% of Americans avoid even checking their bank account balance because they know it's going to stress them out. So if you're not even looking at your bank account, you're not even pulling up the app, you don't want anything to do with it.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  It's 40% of Americans are doing that. You're not going to be able to be successful. And again, we don't want you to be in it every day. That's not, that's not the other part of this is, we actually want you to be as hands off as possible. So we have you build your budget, separate it, and then set it up for audit, for the automation part of it. And it really just allows you to be the CFO of your, of your finances after that. You're just checking in on it to making, just making sure that everything is working the way that you set it up to work.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  What do you think most people leave out if they were going at it on their own, trying to set up a budget? What's not included that you all make sure is included when setting a budget?

• 19:57Speaker 06

  Every one of those unexpected expenses are definitely not included. So, you know, whether it's Christmas, birthdays, you know, the HOA dues that you forget about, all of that stuff is usually forgotten about. They're unexpected, quote unquote, but they're expected expenses. So those don't get included. Also, personal spending money is one that doesn't get included. And people, people, so this is why we like spending buckets, like spending categories. Because you're going to spend the money, like, so don't, don't. So sometimes people will push back and say, I don't need personal spending. And it's like, well, we know you're going to spend it. Like, that's actually going to happen. If we can put a, put a name to it and put an amount to it, then, then we don't have any of this consternation.

• 20:39Speaker 06

  And instead of having like all these other apps and stuff that Vanessa was talking about where it's shaming you to say, well, what you went to, what was it? The lady was at AutoZone and it was mad at her for buying taillights.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  She also needed to get her daughter medical.

• 20:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  Like medical.

• 20:52Speaker 06

  It's like you, this isn't authorized spending or whatever. It's like, no, no, no, I don't need that in my life. So that's why we like categories. So you have a gas and grocery category that you set up however much, and that goes into a separate account. And then you can just live in, in, live in that for gas and groceries. And then all of these things become very apparent because it's separate. So there may be some stuff coming out of your bills account that you didn't realize or that you're spending money on or that are billing you, but you won't know that. It's very hard to, to see it because there's so much going on until you separate it. And then you're like, oh, I forgot that I get charged for the tools once a month. Oh, I forgot that my dry cleaner comes out automatically. And these are all the things that they forget. But really separating it and organizing it really helps you to see because there really should only be 20, 30 transactions in that bills account.

• 21:35Speaker 06

  And anything else you can really start to see, this is where my money is going and I forgot and I didn't realize it.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Well, also say that they underestimate the amount of money they spend in a month. So a lot of people will say, oh, I'm only going to spend a thousand dollars on gas and groceries this month, when naturally they're spending around 1,600, 1,800. And so then they'll think that they're the problem. They'll say, well, this is a me problem. We have to cut, cut, cut. And it's, that's not it. It's just you're being unrealistic on the amount of money that you really cost. You to live. And so we, you know, we have people do a 90 day review, which is just go back for and three regular months. Don't do it during Christmas or a holiday, but go back and just look at three regular months and see what is your natural spending habits. What are you doing? And there's two questions you want to ask yourself there is, what am I doing and what do I want to be doing? So, you know, maybe you're going, we had a client, she was spending $2,000 a month eating

• 22:24Speaker 05

  out. And she said, I wanted to throw up. And so it's

• 22:28Speaker 06

  When she finally looked at it.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  When she finally added it up. So it's like, maybe you, maybe that's a high number for you. And you're like, I don't want to do that. So we're going to knock that down to maybe a thousand or 500. But your groceries needs to be higher because you need food. Turns out, everybody has to eat in the household.

• 22:41Speaker 06

  Every day.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  It's kind of expensive. It's kind of rude. But we want to make sure we have a healthy amount of money in those spending categories, which allows you the freedom to be able to buy what you need when you need it.

• 22:51Speaker 06

  Well, and I'll just add to that. We were actually just talking to a lady on our podcast who's retired. And she wanted a savings bucket for Amazon.

• 23:02Speaker 06

  Because, or I guess you could call it a spending bucket, whatever. She, when you're asking what, what doesn't get put in the budget, it's all of this stuff. And there's no, no one is telling you, don't have it, but let's put it in there on purpose and realize that that's what we're having. And we have a lot of people that are like that. You know, they just like, they're like, I know I'm going to need stuff for the house, or I'm going to want stuff. And so I just want to set aside a little bit of money for Amazon for every month, or, you know, shopping or whatever. And that's fine. That works really well for a lot of people. But really, it is the organization, the separation really gives you that clarity. Like, you wouldn't even know that you're spending $2,000 on eating out until you do that. And you really get to see your numbers and know your numbers.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Do you subscribe to using a debit card for everything? Or what about, this will come up a lot with my clients, like, well, I want the points. And I could go on and on about that. Like, is it a bank account you use? Is it that that has the envelopes? Is it take money and just pay off your credit card from that envelope, quote unquote, if you will? Walk, walk me through kind of the mechanics of it.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  Here's, um, yeah, so what we would say is you're here for a reason because something that you're doing isn't working. So if you're wanting to get credit card points, what you may get 1, 2, 3% on points, you know, cash back or whatever. But people are paying 28% on their credit cards a month that they can't afford to pay because they've racked up their credit cards. And now they're a month behind because they're racking up their cards and they're quote unquote paying it off. So they're a complete month behind and you're overspending naturally because you're using a credit card. That is a known fact that that is happening and they know that. Your credit card balance or your credit card limit is not a budget. Okay. So you need to be able to set a budget and know how much you want to spend in each category. But the way that we really talk about this is we don't want you to rely on credit cards.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  We don't want you throughout the month to feel like you have to use it because you don't know your numbers, because you don't know how much you can spend, because you don't know what's left in your account. Because what we see is people will use the credit card for points, but they're also depleting their debit, like using the debit card so they're depleting their checking account. So both is happening throughout the month. And at the end of the month, when their, when their next paycheck comes, they're paying that off. But again, now they're a complete paycheck behind. And we, there's so much more we can, we can talk on credit card points and all that. But something's not working for you and you don't, you're obviously want to do something different. So we would say if you can use a debit card and use a checking account to be able to make these purchases, that would be better for your, on your end.

• 25:50Speaker 06

  If you're using a credit card, you're not budgeting. Period. Period. We have never seen someone using a credit card that was budgeting and sticking to the budgeted amounts that they said when they're using their credit card. So if you want to budget, if you want to get a hold on your finances, if you want to tell your money where to go, that's what you want to do. Credit card points don't matter to you. And, and here's what we really say. It's like, well, give, give, give actually using cash and figuring out your own, your own numbers, six months. Give it a year. And then if you really feel like you want to go back to using credit card points, do it. But those two are not the same thing. You're not budgeting. That's fine. If you don't want to budget, then go listen to the credit card finance bros. That'll tell you how to get a new credit card every six months so you can get the perks and then you can make a second job out of taking full advantage of all these points and stuff.

• 26:34Speaker 06

  You can, that is a path. That's just not something that we are teaching.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  I mean, you've heard it too. I'm sure you, people will want to use credit card points for travel. We get it. We understand that. But nobody ever built wealth off credit card points. Like, it's not a thing. And so if you can take that money and put it in a money market savings account and you're making four, five, six percent interest on it that way, that's way more than any credit card points that you're going to be getting throughout the month. Plus, you're using a budget, like Shana said, and you're staying within your categories because you're using a debit card, not a credit card, that you're going to get further faster with that.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  I agree. I don't know if this is happening where you live, but it's happening where I am, that every business, every organization that you're using a credit card for, they're also charging a processing fee. So they're charging a three percent processing fee on top of what you're paying. So those points aren't free. You're paying for them. That free flight you got, quote unquote, a lot of it was paid for either with interest, right, that you paid on your credit card, if you didn't pay off the balance each month, or on that processing fees that you're paying. So, and, and, but, I don't, I don't know if that gets put together. You know, this is the way our minds work, but I don't think that's always gets, that that doesn't connect with everyone.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  They just see, well, I'm getting the points, the flight, whatever. But you're paying for it one way or another.

• 27:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, and to your point, you know, and I'm sure that you, you've told that they know what they're doing. They're not messing, they're not, your nothing is for free, as you said, and they know what they're doing, and you're not going to outsmart them, you're not going to outwit them. This is working because they're making a profit. Like, that's just the bottom line. And so maybe I might sound a little perturbed about this, and I kind of am, because the idea is if you're in this position where you never have to look at your money, then fine, whatever. But you're, like Vanessa said, you're here for a reason, you're listening to, everyone's talking money for a reason because something's not quite working and, and you need, you need a little, you need something to get a little bit better. The credit card is not the answer. It's not. It's another way to avoid the actual solutions that you need.

• 28:41Speaker 06

  It's just another avoidance of not looking at my numbers, not taking control of my numbers.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  So as we wrap up, obviously, you know, my listeners, I'm sure many of them have tried a budget, it hasn't worked. What can they do, or what can they take from this episode today to get a budget to start to work for them?

• 29:01Speaker 05

  Well, I'm gonna do two things here. So if there's one, the first thing I want you to do is to separate your budget into five categories. So we have your income section, you have your debt section, your bills, your spending and savings. So when you make a budget, make it into those five columns. And then the next thing we want you to do is to separate your spending from your bills. So if you could open up one checking account and call it spending, and put all of your spending money over there, even if you're not ready to break it down into, you know, gas and groceries and personal money and restaurants or whatever, have one category for spending, and get it out of your bills account. Your main account that you have right now should be only to be paying bills, which include minimum debt payments. Groceries is not a bill. Okay, gas is not a bill. A bill is

• 29:43Speaker 05

  something that you owe because you're being charged monthly for it. Okay, so if you can separate your spending, your discretionary spending throughout the month versus the things that you're getting automatically charged for throughout the month, you will just automatically make huge progress in budgeting.

• 29:58Speaker 04

  Okay, that was my conversation with Shayna and Vanessa of Budget Besties, and I hope this episode helped you rethink what budgeting actually is. Because the takeaway is not that you need to track every transaction until your eyes glaze over. The takeaway is that budgeting should happen before the money leaves. That's the shift. Tracking tells you where your money went. Budgeting gives your money a job before it disappears. And what I loved about this conversation is how practical their system is. Separate your bills from your spending. Plan for expenses that do not happen every month, but absolutely are coming. Automate what you can, and give yourself spending buckets so you can actually

• 30:41Speaker 04

  enjoy money without constantly second guessing every purchase. And I especially want you to hold on to this. If your budget has never worked, that does not mean you are broken. It may mean the system was too complicated, too shame-based, too manual, or just completely disconnected from your actual life. So start small. If you want help building a financial plan that connects your cash flow, investing, savings, debt, and bigger goals, you can learn more about working with me at GWAWealth.com or through the link in the show notes. Follow the show on your favorite podcast apps so you never miss an episode, and leave me a quick rating and review because it helps more people find these conversations.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  And please keep the conversation going on Instagram at Everyone's Talkin Money. Remember, money should not be something that makes you feel behind, ashamed, or controlled. Money should be a tool to help you live life on your terms.

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