But that’s me, and it’s not you.  It’s so hard to just stare at a bank paper and then try to make a budget out of it — one that you can live by.  The living by it is the thing that you need to emphasize.  There is NO REASON to make a budget that you literally can not do.  Check out my post about advice for that one.

First off, I thought this post that shows a lot of different advice on budget percentages.  I compared it to my own budget, and it comes out pretty similar.

Our own budget is pretty hard to do because our income varies so much.  Do the rest of you have pretty consistent income, or does it vary a lot?

For us, it’s really important to have a good budget that allows all our needs (and a few wants), so that we can flux when the income is high (put money in savings because we’re not over-spending) and stay strict to the budget during lean times (and possibly withdrawing from savings).

For us — ours looks like this:

• Mortgage & HOA 29%
• Utilities (which includes cell, water, trash, internet, TV (Netflix, Electric) 10%
• Insurance (includes car, life and health) 21% {sigh}
• Charity 10%
• Health Savings 3%
• Groceries 15%
• Household needs 1%
• Gas 5%
• Dating 2%
• Personal Money/Allowance 3%
• Wiggle Room 1%

I did a deep dive into this when I initially wrote this post in 2016, but the numbers are fairly the same — I’ve noted below if they’ve changed.

Let’s dive into a few ways to save in each of those areas:

Mortgage & HOA 29%

Most people say to keep your home under 30% of your budget, but I have to be honest that when we lived in California it was closer to 50%.

Of course, make sure you have:

• A good mortgage rate
• Use an insurance broker to make sure you’re getting the best rate on your homeowners insurance.

Utilities (which includes cell, water, trash, internet, TV (Netflix, Electric) 10%

Sure, you can not use your A/C or heat, or limit showers to 5 minutes — but this category often just “is what it is.”

I do think it’s smart to call your cell phone or internet provider now and then, maybe try to cancel and see if there’s a better plan they can offer you — but sometimes you’re on the best rate.

Man, when we had cable TV I bet this was more, but we really like to pick a couple of streaming services and rotate among the ones we like.

I think a lot of people get stuck always having Netflix, when we have a few through our cell phone bill and then rotate among Max, Apple TV and Netflix to always have something new to watch.

I love what my dad and I had to say about streaming services in this podcast (he’s an economics professor).

Insurance (includes car, life and health) 21% {sigh}

Health insurance can really tackle a family. I know this percentage is higher than it is now.

We actually switched to using a healthshare which lowered this a LOT.

We also have a couple of young drivers on our car policies which raised those a bit (not to mention a tiny accident).

Again, make sure you’re using a broker to make sure you have the right pricing…

BUT, if lowering your health insurance bill might help, check out these posts:

• Is a Health Share Right for You? Discover If You’re a Good Fit.
• Zion Healthshare Reviews & Why Left Liberty Healthshare
• Finding a HealthShare for Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
• How Does a Healthshare Work? with Heather Eden from Zion Healthshare
• Using a Direct Primary Care Membership with Dr Bradley Shumway

Charity 10%

We give 10% of our income to various charities. There’s a lot of good our dollar bills can go to elsewhere.

Health Savings 3%

We USED to put money into an HSA each month towards healthcare. We aren’t allowed to do it anymore because, currently, you can’t use an HSA with a Health Share. It’s annoying, and I’m sure groceries has gobbled this line item.

Groceries 15%

The more teens we’ve had I’d guess this number is a bit higher.

Shop the ads, try to coupon, try to pick meals that are cheaper. We all know how to save on this one, it’s just that beans and rice doesn’t really satisfy….

Household needs 1%

This is stuff like clothes, fixing small things around the house….

We contribute to a “household improvement” fun with some of our excess cash each month that is sitting there for big things — like a new roof, etc.

Gas 5%

Gas really just is what it is. Plus the price seems to vary quite a bit. We try to combine trips and use the most gas-efficient car as often as we can.

Dating 2%

Now that we don’t have little kids at home we don’t date as much but as I’m looking at this category we should. We should date more, it will save us from the cost of a divorce lawyer.

Personal Money/Allowance 3%

We each get a little money to just use on our own, and we do pay our kids (under 18) allowance each month. Instead of giving them money time to time to do things with friends we give them a lump sum once a month they can budget.

Those are life skills they’re definitely going to need soon!

Wiggle Room 1%

I tend to fund the month (because we pre-fund our budget) a little over what we ACTUALLY need in the budget.  I feel a little less tight that way.

And somehow, when I feel less tight I think I spend less.

But, that’s me.  You’ll have to decide if you just want to fund that account to the dollar.

For families facing unexpected expenses, lenders like CreditNinja.com can provide quick financial relief with flexible online loans tailored for variable income situations.

Again, I think it’s SO important to be honest about what we’re spending.  It’s important to be honest with YOURSELF and I’m happy to share with you what we spend.  Between my data and the %’s listed in that post above, it should give you a great idea for yourself.

Make a budget, it will free you.

If you liked this post, sign up for my newsletter (you can even do it below)!  Be sure to follow my Cheaper by the Me board on Pinterest.

The post Family Budget Categories Amounts appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Today’s guest is Lauren Peterson. She is a Certified Financial Planner and, in addition to her work with The Wealth Edit, runs a boutique, full-service financial firm, HighTower Somerset Advisory, in Birmingham, Alabama. Lauren has designed and crafted hundreds of financial planning scenarios in her decade-plus career in the field and is deeply committed to the clients she serves through her work. After years of drafting hundreds of plans for families, Lauren saw the deep need for women to have a space of their own to understand wealth outside the context of a traditional advisory relationship. As important as her work is to her, her faith and her family come first in her life – her husband, Andrew, and their three smart and brave daughters are the No. 1 priority in her life.

The Wealth Edit is an online, membership-based community that educates women on how to develop a modern skillset for their personal finances. Women of all ages gather, learn, and plan their financial journey through virtual courses, weekly guest speakers, and educational content. They are the opposite of stuffy and stodgy. They are relatable, approachable, and anything but uptight. Visit them at wealthedit.com or on social media @wealthedit!

Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines getting into a routine can help save you some cash and it’s a great place to get started!

Other things that might interest you

My Episode on Saving for retirement

The Economy of the Home with My Dad, an Economic Historian

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.130] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on Episode 192, we are talking about recession proofing our budget. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:18.870] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary Erickson, the curly head behind the Pulling Curls Podcast: pregnancy and parenting untangled. There’s no right answer for every family, but on this show, we hope to give you some ideas to make life simpler at your house. Life’s tangled, just like my hair.

[00:00:40.020] – Hilary Erickson

I’m excited for today’s guest. She is a certified financial planner. She runs a full service financial firm called Hightower Somerset Advisory. But I found her on the tikkety tok under the wealth edit where she was just talking about recession proofing your budget. I thought what she had to say was so simple and easy to understand. I invited her onto the podcast. I want her to introduce today’s guest, Lauren Pearson.

[00:01:02.540] – Hilary Erickson

Do you ever just feel like it’s unfair that some people can have company over at a moment’s notice? Their house is just super easy to clean up and they can relax on the couch with Netflix while you feel like you always have things to do around your house. That can totally be you. The Organized Home is here to help you simplify organizing. We’re talking about decluttering zones, organization systems that actually work. We’ve got assignments and challenges. I hope you’ll join us. You can use coupon code Untangled. Look for the Organized Home link in the show notes.

[00:01:32.820] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, Lauren. Welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:01:35.530] – Lauren Pearson

Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me.

[00:01:37.500] – Hilary Erickson

I am so excited. I love to talk about money, even though a lot of people don’t. My dad was an economist, so money was always a talk at our house growing up. I think it needs to be more open and out there because I think everybody sees on Instagram that I’m on a cruise 24 hours a day because that’s the only time I post.

[00:01:56.280] – Lauren Pearson

Sure. Yes. Online images can be deceiving sometimes.

[00:02:01.480] – Hilary Erickson

Yes. You are seeing when I am spending the largest quantities of money. I did not Instagram last night when I was pieing through my dried bean collection to decide what to make for dinner. Okay, so I loved your video, Lauren, about just a shifting your budget, like you would shift your diet or you would shift other things. When you’re in a recession, you just might change the way that you look at budgeting.

[00:02:24.260] – Lauren Pearson

Sure. Yeah. It’s hard because for a really long time, the government has been signaling to us to spend, to invest, to grow. Interest rates have been low. So we’ve been taking the cues and living in a low interest rate environment for a very long time. It starts to skew your thinking of reality. You could afford more if you were looking to buy a home.

[00:02:53.290] – Lauren Pearson

There’s all of these things that we just got. You could grow a business. Everyone’s feeling very… The sentiment was really good around growth of the US and what we’re supposed to do. But there is also a good bit of stimulus happening, again, from the government saying, grow, grow, grow. And when all of that stops, which it has, starting at the beginning of last year, we got a very clear signal from Fed chairman Powell that we are going to raise rates until inflation is under control. I am one of those people that always believes the Fed.

[00:03:29.280] – Lauren Pearson

There’s a saying that says don’t fight the Fed, and that’s real. And so the signals change. But if you spent 13 years in a low interest rate, let’s grow environment, post financial crisis or more, really closer to 15, that’s when it gets a little confusing because things have to change beyond what you could potentially afford in a house.

[00:03:50.150] – Lauren Pearson

It’s everything. Things are ridiculous. Everyone’s talking about how much eggs cost right now, but that’s just an easy thing to point to the larger issue where it’s like you just have to cut to make sure your family or you as an individual can adapt to different market conditions.

[00:04:08.840] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. And I think that’s so important because I think, I mean, my son… I Was explaining to him about interest rates when I was little because I was born in ’76. So when I was little, ’80s interest rates, and he was like, What? He just had no idea. And I think really for the vast… I probably only know about this because my dad’s an economist. For the vast majority of people, 50 and below just literally have no idea that anyone was ever paying more than 5 % for their mortgage rate on their home.

[00:04:37.390] – Lauren Pearson

Truly, nobody saw that. I remember my mom and dad talking about 18, 19 %. That seems unfathomable to us. But they really do have to use the errors that they have in their quiver. And interest rates going up is one of them, and it’s an important one. So fair point.

[00:04:56.900] – Hilary Erickson

What do you do? Because there are still things you still have to… We’re all still buying eggs. We’re probably buying less eggs because I’m like, breakfast for dinner, we’ll have dried beans instead. But we all still need to make eggs for our family. So what do you do? What tips do you have for us?

[00:05:13.940] – Lauren Pearson

Sure. The first thing I do, and I’m not sponsored, so you can just take this for what it is. But the first thing that I did, because I’m not admittedly even being in wealth management and doing this all day and helping other clients with cash flow, your own cash flow is different. I think that the reason people hire advisors is because it’s very difficult for you to have realistic perspective on your money.

[00:05:34.180] – Lauren Pearson

And so you have to condition yourself to do that. So the first thing that I did was use what’s called Rocket Money. It’s a new name. I can’t remember what it is. I think it used to be called True Bill, but I use it and I give them access. They have a back end system called PLAD that basically can link all of your credit cards, checking accounts. So it’s basically studying what you do as a monthly household as far as spending, income, all of the things that would make up who you are financially. So I started doing that and I found that that was an extremely helpful efficient system for our family because we have five people in our family, everyone, to some degree, is spending money.

[00:06:18.970] – Lauren Pearson

My kids have what’s called a green light card so I can control what they spend, but they’re still learning good money habits. But Rocket Money has really taught me, okay, this is how much you spend on a monthly basis, and this is how it’s different from last month. The longer you use it, the more in tune it gets with your spending, which I think just the idea of really, truly the idea of just watching your money, becoming a student of your money, I think is number one.

[00:06:47.790] – Lauren Pearson

So whether you have a little tool like Rocket Money that helps you, whether Excel is your best friend, whether some people use You Need a Budget, there’s all these different things that you can use that can be helpful and powerful to help you become a student of your money. But you really need to know what you spend. That goes for anyone. It doesn’t matter how much you spend. A lot of times people, I think also getting into the… And this is going to be my second point. But the behavioral aspect of money, there’s a lot of guilt around money, whether you have it or you don’t or you were taught good money habits, or you weren’t.

[00:07:24.120] – Lauren Pearson

You just get a lot of people that I know when they come in to see us for the first time as advisors, they say, Oh, my gosh, I just spent so much money. I started looking at it since you asked me that question, and I feel so embarrassed. It doesn’t matter if they’re spending $50,000 or $450,000 or a million dollars. They all feel something about what they spend, whether that’s valid or not.

[00:07:48.280] – Lauren Pearson

I guess my second thing is, once you become a student of your spending, really get in tune with what you’re feeling around that. I think that’s where people sort of ostrich. If they’re going to, that’s what I call it stick their head in the sand at that point. There’s a wonderful woman who is a friend of the wealth edit called Helen Owen, and she calls this facing the tiger. So really saying, Okay, this is where I am financially.

[00:08:13.400] – Lauren Pearson

And the good news about being an American about… You can be a different person today than you were yesterday. You can make different choices today about your health, about your resources, and there’s no judgment there. So I think it’s just acknowledging you don’t have to be the person today that you were yesterday financially and really living into all of that.

[00:08:35.440] – Lauren Pearson

I guess those are my two main points and I have some other ones, too. I think the next thing to focus in on is separating out your need to have expenses versus like to have expenses. And people approach this differently, too. So in our family, we’re doing what’s called a no spend year. Now, this is very difficult because we’re going through renovations. You have to decide what that looks like for you.

[00:09:03.100] – Lauren Pearson

For my family, because we’re going through renovation, house expenses are still allowed because we just have to. That’s just where we are in life and we allow ourselves to replace. So I had a pair of tennis shoes go out and so I’m able to buy something to replace something old.

[00:09:16.990] – Lauren Pearson

But even that act has really given us so much power in that we spend a lot on conveniences, at least my family did, on things that we don’t actually need that have become habits but aren’t necessities. And I think separating out habits and necessities, when you get to that point, again, it’s going to take you a few months. Rome wasn’t built in a day. So it’s going to take a few months for all of these things to become something that you really enjoy doing or really want to pursue.

[00:09:47.520] – Lauren Pearson

And I always say it’s like landing a plane. So it’s not an overnight process. And that’s how I really would hope people would frame these discussions in their head, realizing that for most of us, a situation like what’s happening nationally is going to cause us to have to pull back in some way, shape, or form. So going with that versus getting paralyzed or feeling like, Oh, my gosh, I can’t do this.

[00:10:15.310] – Lauren Pearson

That’s all going to be very important. The fourth thing I would say, and this is an important one too, sometimes when things are contracting, it’s very important to think about worst case scenario. What if I lose my job? Recession proof yourself, your personal finances.

[00:10:35.100] – Lauren Pearson

How long could we go if that was a reality? How long if you’re married, could you go if that was a reality for one of you to be out? And then you need to have an emergency fund if you can to figure out that math backwards. Like, okay, I would more than likely be out of work for three months, or I would more than likely be out of work for six months. Typically, the more money you make, so over $100,000, those jobs typically take longer to replace if you’re truly out of work.

[00:11:04.870] – Lauren Pearson

So really estimating that. So if you’re a dual income family, both people are making over $100,000. A typical CFP would say three months net savings would be enough. I would propose maybe it’s more like six. So take that for what it’s worth. But really recession proofing. And we have that. We have a wealth edit guide book we actually do a recession proofing of both your personal and business finances in the book. It’s very important to know that. Yeah. So that’s four. What questions do you have from there? I can keep going if I need to.

[00:11:38.570] – Hilary Erickson

I love the idea of a no spend. Now you’re going a whole year, but people could start with just even a no spend week. This week is not going to spend. Because obviously you’re still buying groceries because everyone’s going to eat. Correct. So what are some basic rules that people make in that no spend week?

[00:12:00.570] – Lauren Pearson

Sure. So maybe they say it’s a cutting back. So for example, my daughter’s dance. And so because of that, there’s one night a week where it’s like, we actually have to eat out. There’s just not another… Unless we pack a snack and then it’s going to sit in the car for a little while. It just doesn’t make any sense.

[00:12:16.410] – Lauren Pearson

So maybe saying instead of getting take out three nights a week, you really look at where you might need to eat out, or maybe as a special treat for your family. If you’ve had a great week, you get pizza on Friday nights, whatever the ritual is, maybe we say rituals are in, but ancillary, just lazy spinning around meals is out.

[00:12:34.500] – Lauren Pearson

One thing that we really took, we are big Costco people, so we build on our Costco. I’ve almost figured out a map of what I need to replace every two weeks at Costco versus every week at Costco because you’re buying more bulk. And so maybe we’re getting yogurt for lunches every two weeks versus just not thinking about it and having the habit of putting it in your cart. So yes, groceries are still a mess. We cook in more.

[00:13:01.080] – Lauren Pearson

And it was amazing how quickly you could get down that miscellaneous category of just target runs. We just don’t do target runs anymore. I always say target has a $200 cover charge. I love you, target, but I just don’t need that right now. I think if people were to start with the week, then what would be good is to say, okay, we’re not going to eat out. That’s a big one. No, just ancillary spending on cute shirts, things that I might see on Amazon or an influencer that has this great thing that’s 47 % off this week.

[00:13:34.260] – Lauren Pearson

Anything like that, I think you can just cut it out. The other thing that’s incredibly helpful as you’re beginning this, this is what we say in our Financial Minimalism course, is to write down what you’re spending twice. So have a little notebook. If you do this for a week, it’s much easier than a year because it’ll be like a novel. But have a tiny little notebook where it’s like, okay, 57 bucks on gas, 25 bucks at the grocery store if you’re just picking up stuff. So write it down while you’re spending real time or in your phone or something, and then write it down again at night so that you can log everything that you’ve spent.

[00:14:10.450] – Lauren Pearson

That exercise of writing it down twice is so powerful because you’re actually giving yourself the mental margin to say, this is a commitment I’m making to myself and I’m going to get better at this. So that’s a little fun trick that we found that works really well for people. It’s pretty powerful.

[00:14:27.180] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah, just like what you’re eating. Even if you just write down, I had three Snickers bars, it just makes you rethink, was that my best choice? Could I have just had one?

[00:14:37.140] – Lauren Pearson

Yes. For me, the funny thing for me just habitually is I’m a snacker and just cutting out a lot of the snacks where I just pick up something at the gas station or whatever just because I’m a busy person. Just being slightly more thoughtful can actually have pretty powerful ramifications when you’re spending.

[00:14:58.350] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. All right. I think this was great. And I think people immediately pull back. They’re like, Oh, I don’t want to spend less. But sometimes I have to remind myself that a lot of times I’m not even noticing that I’m not spending these things, especially in my happiness level. If you think of your happiness level is on a graph, right? My dad was always like, Are you getting the same benefit of that the 10th month of Netflix as you got in the first month of Netflix? That first month, you’re overjoyed.

[00:15:23.550] – Lauren Pearson

Yes.

[00:15:23.800] – Hilary Erickson

The world is your oyster. You have everything. And on the 10th, you’re like, Is there really anything to watch? And he’s always like, Just cancel it for a few months, save yourself the $45 or whatever. And then when you’re missing it, then that joy comes back and you get a happiness boost again from that back to the first month.

[00:15:41.920] – Lauren Pearson

I love that. And one thing that I’ve done with my girls, which has been fun is I’m doing a lot of free advertising on your podcast today because, again, I’m not sponsored by anybody, but you can also play little games with yourself if you’re going to do an extended no spend year. So we’ve been giving out of our closets to this service called Thread Up, and then we get a little credit.

[00:16:01.930] – Lauren Pearson

And so we’ve allowed ourselves to use that credit. We’re like, okay, A, it’s more sustainable just for the Earth and the environment. But it also gives us a little incentive to clean out our clothes that we don’t want anymore, get paid for it, which is an incentive to do that. And then you can shop a little because we’ve got a little bit of cash. Or if you sell things in your home, there’s all sorts of ways that you can learn to be resourceful and just do some fun things that actually are so much more rewarding to your point than just the wine spending that we get in the habit of doing on certain things.

[00:16:33.940] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. You know what is most disappointing to me is to get home from a target trip and be like, Oh, I have to find places to put all these things? And then I’m like, Why did I buy this? If it wasn’t directly like, I know exactly where I’m going to use this. I know exactly where I’m going to use this. I know exactly where I’m going to put this. Why did I purchase it? Because now I’m decreasing my happiness. Where am I going to put this? Where am I going to store this until I might need it? Right?

[00:16:56.720] – Lauren Pearson

Right. Exactly. And really, we don’t realize how much mental margin all this stuff that surrounds us. I have a friend who’s a Minimalist just by nature. It’s the way that she is. I’ll tell you, it is amazing how she… I just feel like her life has a greater sense of calm than mine. And I think especially if you have children, children often are little hoarders. To help them create these habits where they’re able to be in a wonderful space.

[00:17:25.020] – Lauren Pearson

And I don’t do this well, so do as I say, not as I do. But really, we’ve worked on for one of my daughters, she’s not naturally very tidy. She just doesn’t have a lot of stuff. It’s easy to tidy her room because she doesn’t have a lot of stuff. Contrast that to my third child, my little creative bug who has all the things, saves all of the beautiful artwork, all the pictures. And it’s really difficult and demotivating to clean her room because she has too many things in there and they don’t fit to your point. So really being mindful of where is this thing going to go and where am I going to enjoy it for life?

[00:17:58.560] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. Is this purchase actually going to make me happy? Because we all think back about the week, what did you buy that made you happy? And then all the other things you bought, I know there’s always going to be the can of beans, whatever that’s not going to make you happy. Paying my mortgage probably didn’t make me that happy, but living in a house when it’s raining is amazing.

[00:18:18.840] – Lauren Pearson

It’s pretty great. Yeah, I love that.

[00:18:21.460] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. I just think we need to be more open on the things that we’re spending, how we cut back, which is why I love people should follow your channel to just show that families can still have splurges, like remodeling their home, but can still cut back on other things to make that life possible, right?

[00:18:38.930] – Lauren Pearson

Yeah. That’s another thing. I think most people that come into our private practice really have a deep desire for their children to be good with money, especially if they’re people who are overfunded for their lifetime. It’s like they feel the burden that their children are going to grow up and have a lot of privileges and things that they… I don’t know the right word to say, but they’re going to just inherit a bunch of things.

[00:19:07.660] – Lauren Pearson

So how do you make sure that these people are still great contributors? How do you make sure that these people… And you really don’t want your children to be rotten tomatoes. That’s how I think of my kids in my head. If I’m giving them too many things, they’re like a tomato that’s rotting on my counter. That’s not what you want.

[00:19:22.880] – Lauren Pearson

You want your kids to be healthy and good with money and to feel a great, deep confidence that things aren’t going to fulfill them. Really, there’s so much more than what we can spend our money on out there to invest our time and our talent and, yes, our treasures. But I don’t know. I just think that when you start to get kids involved, that’s when things get real because you do. You want them to be good with money, too, and you want to teach them great habits. And I think just the open dialog around, yeah, we’re not spending as much this year because we’re doing this kitchen renovation or whatever it is. They need to know that money does not grow on trees as our parents and grandparents and great grandparents said.

[00:20:02.860] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. And I will say, so we’re pretty churchy at our house. And I don’t know that my oldest has taken a lot of my churchy thoughts, but that kid has taken every single financial lesson I have taught him. And it is deep in his heart. He is very much like, this is my time to put money into retirement. He talks to me about that all the time. And nothing has been more fulfilling to me as a parent as me talking to him as I was like filling out my retirement sheet at a new job or whatever and just saying how important retirement is. It stuck. Like, yeah, I did one thing right. Yes.

[00:20:35.270] – Lauren Pearson

Well, good job, mama. And you really do with anything in parenting, you want to be that first cloud. You want to be that first concept that a child is introduced to and some of these great habits. I think that’s wonderful.

[00:20:48.770] – Hilary Erickson

Yeah. So great. Just think about it more. Think about your happiness, follow the wealth at it, because a lot of times when she comes up, it just reminds me to be, is this money making me as happy as I could? Are there places we could cut back without impinging on the happiness? And the answer is yes.

[00:21:03.580] – Hilary Erickson

So. Stop being so lazy in my purchases, Hilary, is mostly what it reminds me. So thanks for coming on. I hope this gave some ideas to you guys. If you guys have ever done a no spend day, week, month, year, tell us in the comments on Instagram. We would love to chitty chat about it. Thanks for coming on, Lauren.

[00:21:19.400] – Lauren Pearson

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. This has been fun.

[00:21:21.610] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, we didn’t talk about it in the show, which is just how unsalesy Lauren is, but she actually has an online membership based community that educates women on how to develop a modern skill set for their personal finances. I think that a lot of people just really are not good at finances. And so if that’s something that you’re lacking, I would encourage you to check that out under the wealth edit. I think she’s very realistic and very helpful. She also has a co founder who is a young widow. So you get a lot of advice from different sides of things. And I think that’s really important and exciting. So if you’re looking for more financial information, be sure and check that out. Thanks so much for coming on, Lauren.

[00:21:57.790] – Hilary Erickson

Be sure and stay tuned. Next week, we have a Deja vu episode on splitting up chores. And then the week after that, we are talking about pregnancy nutrition, so we have some great episodes coming up.

[00:22:07.940] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode. The Pulling Curls Podcast grows when you share us on social media or leave a review. If you do, please tag us so that we can share and send you a virtual hug, which, frankly, is my favorite hugging. Until next time, we hope you have a tangle free day.

The post Recession-Proof Your Family Budget with Lauren Pearson from The Wealth Edit – Episode 192 appeared first on Pulling Curls.

We have been married for over 16 years… man oh man.  Budgeting is HARD.

(Sidenote: This post was written in 2014, and I have updated it since then — but have kept the original framework, but we’ve been married 24 years now — I also include a free family budget worksheet/calculator)

Also, be sure to listen to my recent podcast on your home economy:

Also, finances have ALWAYS been part of our routine. If you’re looking to get your home into workable systems this is a valuable tool that moms love!

Family Budget Examples

The Road to my Real Budget

I also have a podcast all about this subject!

The Spend Nothing Budget

I think we initially started with a newlywed budget that was just “spend nothing” — which, for the most part, worked.  I worked part-time for a pediatrician, Drew taught trombone lessons. He often had sob stories from parents as to why they couldn’t pay.  They bartered with us for items.  Seriously.

Then, I started working full time for a nursing home and Drew worked as a Teacher’s Assistant at BYU.  Again, budgeting was something we lacked.  That continued through Drew getting a teaching job and me changing men’s catheters once a month (yeah baby!).  I don’t think we ever had a concrete “spend this much on ______ ” type of a budget.  We still tended to the “spend nothing” budget but leaned a bit further from that because we were both making money, although not much.

At this point, I decided it was REALLY important to start tracking. Initially I used Quicken, but it became too expensive and painful to use. I have recently switched to Moneyspire, and I tolerate it.

Mix of a Budget and Spend Nothing

Then we moved to CA and we were both working.  I was also getting sign-on bonuses and I was SO busy I didn’t have time to budget.  At that point, I realized that having a lot of money wasn’t making us happy.  At. all.  When I was finally able to cut down my hours I realized that budgeting was important.  There was indeed a happy medium between “spend nothing” and go crazy and go to Costco weekly. {I should say we have never had a “go crazy” period of our marriage, but we were not very careful when we first moved to CA — no couponing, just trying to keep our heads above water — and I would guess a lot of couples where both of them work AND they have small children, lie in that same boat}

Full Budgeting

I would guess around the time our second child was born, we came into this budgeting system.  It is somewhat like Dave Ramsey‘s, but here it is — our actual, real-life family budget! (please see my addendum at the bottom):

Example budget for a family of 5

Our monthly income is really variable (because as a nurse I pick up different shifts each month) — so, we place extra money in a savings as buffer for months I don’t work as much. Figuring out how to mange your irregular income is important for you to do. Knowing how much money you have is a big win.

This is our real-life budget — and I’ll split it into

• Bills
• Household Money

Bills {this is an average and includes: Mortgage, cell phone, water/trash, internet, Netflix, Car insurance, electricity, HOA, life insurance, lunch money preschool tuition and health insurance — which we pay out of pocket for me and the kids}.  I’m not sharing our mortgage costs, as it is INSANELY low (thank you Arizona real estate downturn just as we moved here), but I will share the rest.

A breakdown on that money (this is our 2018 update on the monthly expenses #’s). If you have things that aren’t paid monthly, I would recommend counting your annual expenses in that category (possibly by looking at bank statements) and finding the monthly average you’ll need.

• Cell phones $125 (we split a family plan with my parents and I just send them a check every month)
• Water/trash $85 (again, an average — but this is fairly constant)
• Internet $75
• Netflix $10
• Car insurance $190 (2 adult and a teen driver)
• Electric Bill $150 (it’s fairly less right now and way more in the summer, and while this is hard to budget for it is what it is)
• HOA $38
• Life Insurance $50 (we each pay quarterly, I just took our payment and divided it by 3, we each use different carriers because it was cheaper that way)
• Lunch Money $25 (my kids get to get school lunch once a week)
• Health insurance premiums $529 (this is down from $950 we were paying on traditional insurance — we are now on a Christian Health Share for our health care).
• Mortgage Payment is around $1300 for the mortgage, insurance and property taxes

All of this money is pre-funded from the month before, and covers our basic needs.  I will talk about that a bit in a later blog post.

Then we have household money each month, that totals just about 1k (much of this is variable expenses, but I try to average them here)

• Weekly money $360 ($90/week) — this pays for groceries and any incidentals
• Costco $200
• Gas $200
• Dating $100
• Clothing/Household $100
• Personal Money $100 – discretionary spending of 50/person
• Allowance $50

Sidenote — using a grocery price comparison list saves us a ton on groceries!

On top of all that we pay 10% of our income each month to the church in tithing
We also contribute money to our savings which is included in our monthly budget.
Child Care (while I am at work)  is not actually part of our budget because I feel like it’s a bill, I will talk more about it during my “pre-funding” post.

Every month, I put about $5200 to cover expenses in our bank account.

We also contribute to a retirement account for long-term goals, and have a few accounts with short-term goals (travel, car care). We also have a savings account for unexpected expenses, so we don’t have to go into debt.

Remember YOUR first step is figuring out your personal finances, the budget categories you want to use, and possibly how to use extra money. That will really help you take a closer look at your financial situation.

For us, we really made a go of our side hustles, and that gave us more sources of income for greater financial stability.

Sample Budget for a family of 3 (or 4)

A lot of a family’s costs are fixed costs.  Mortgage, like power & garbage, will all stay pretty similar.  Just adjust my budget to fit your numbers.

So, there it is, black and white. That’s what we spend each month.

Clearly — there are other things not covered in this monthly budget but these are the majority of things (we have savings to cover car servicing, etc).

I am a part-time nurse, Drew is a teacher.  We are putting a fair amount into savings each month to cover the masters that Drew is getting, but we still make ends meet at home.

I’d love to know what your thoughts on this budget are.  Do you think we spend too much?  Do you think it’s too little?  I will say that we utilize Goodwill QUITE a lot.  Much more than most people would find comfortable.  I will say it has been my saving grace while shoveling that money into savings for Drew.  I haven’t felt deprived and I truly think God has taken care of us by the things we have found there.

One week I REALLY wanted a biscuit cutter.  The can trick just wasn’t working.  I brought it up on Amazon, and while it was only 10 bucks or something, it wasn’t in the budget so I left it alone.  The next week, it was sitting (literally, the same one I looked at the week before on Amazon) in a bag at Goodwill.   God looks out for us.  He truly does.

**I should add that the only debt we currently have is a mortgage. We do not have a car payment, and we do not carry a balance on our credit cards (we pay our credit card bills in full each month).  We didn’t have to take any student loans, and while I thought we’d have to take them for Drew’s schooling, we have somehow made it without.  If you have debt I am sure that will affect your budget in other ways.  We are funneling the money towards a tuition fund, instead of to a loan payment. Staying debt-free (besides a mortgage) is one of our financial goals.

Family Budget Worksheet

So, now that we’ve talked MY finances — it’s time to make your family budget template to help you take control of your finances.

This is the first in my budgeting series.  You can read more at my family finances page.

2018 Update:  My husband left his job and we sort of shifted how we budget — to more of an abundance budgeting, but these are still our rough numbers.  Some months are higher and some are lower, but by opening ourselves up to more — I found I had to nickle and dime us a bit less.

Another link you might like: Doing Disneyland on a Budget

*I am not putting these budget numbers out there to be “woe is me” or “woo-woo look at me!  We’re rich!” type feeling.  I really think if people were more transparent about their own expenses it might make people re-think what they are doing with theirs, and help them think about their long-terms goals.  I am sure we spend more and less then many readers on my blog.  I hope this is helpful to some of you.  I would LOVE to see other people’s.  There’s really no reason that our budgets have to be hush-hush.  I didn’t give you my social security numbers, or how much we actually make — this is just our goal to spend.

Family Budget Example FAQ’s

A lot of the ways we have done this is by getting into routines — be sure to check out my courses Family Routines — if you want to get your family into a new lifestyle

The post Family Budget Example: Sample Budget for a Family of Five appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Re-doing a kitchen takes a lot of time, money and attention — not to mention all the inconvenience of being without a kitchen can cause. How do you pick what to change and what to invest.

Kitchen Redesign on a Budget

Big thanks to our sponsor The Organized Home — if you’re looking to have your home support you (rather than you supporting it) it’s the thing that can help you out!

In this episode

How we decided what to change in our home (and no, we’re not getting white cabinets — even though we felt like we should)

The pricing of the things we did (I meant $500 for the drawer inserts)

How we picked out tile (and how crazy it is to ship it) — this is the tile we picked out.

Other things that might interest you

Kitchen organization post

Kitchen organization podcast

Producer: Drew Erickson

Check out my other household tips podcasts:

Check out all my podcasts:

Transcript

[00:00:00.175] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys, welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast today on Episode 83, this episode has been years in the making. OK, I don’t know if it’s been years, but we’re talking about my kitchen redesign. Let’s untangle it.

[00:00:22.095] – Hilary Erickson

Welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast, I’m Hilary, your curly headed host on the podcast, where we untangle everything from pregnancy, parenting and home routines. I want you to know that there are no right answers for every family. And I find that simplifying my priorities is almost always the answer. It’s tangled just like my hair.

[00:00:46.195] – Hilary Erickson

OK, friends, before we get started, I would love it if you would leave a review. It really helps my podcast get seen. I think to you you’re like, what could a review even mean? Right? But Pulling Curls gets lots of listens and hardly any reviews. So I understand that you love me, but could you show it with a review? Thanks. OK, guys, I live in the realm of bloggers, right?

[00:01:07.395] – Hilary Erickson

That’s what I spend most of my time doing. I’m in giant blogger groups. I’m in a giant blogger group that has a ton of food bloggers which, huzzah to food bloggers like that. It’s not my role. I have like four recipes on my site and it was a struggle just to do those. But I cook just don’t want to photograph it. So I was thinking that I wanted to re-update our kitchen. Our kitchen had Formica countertops. It has your basic maple like builder-grade cabinets.

[00:01:29.335] – Hilary Erickson

We had slowly, like updated like the faucet and things like that, but we knew that we wanted to upgrade it to hopefully sell better because we… This is not a forever home. Our plan is probably to stay here through our youngest graduating high school, although if we stay in virtual school much longer, I don’t care if she loves her friends. It don’t matter because we never see them anyway. Story for another day. We just wanted to update the kitchen so we knew the countertops was on it because aumann formica countertops.

[00:01:53.515] – Hilary Erickson

Not a real sales point, guys. So Countertops was on our thing and I was looking at the kitchen and I was talking to these other people that had updated their kitchens and they were all like, white cabinets are amazing. It will help your household better. And I was like, oh, that would be so pretty. Now, mind you, we live in Phenix or House has sort of kind of a southwestern flair. We have some arched doorways.

[00:02:13.915] – Hilary Erickson

It’s tile, it would remain tile. I think that helps keep it a little cooler in the summer so that but then our kitchen is tied into our living room, tied into quite a large area of space. So we’d have to retile kind of like all of that. Are you sensing the pain here?

[00:02:29.455] – Hilary Erickson

We did carpet like last year and it was really painful. So I’m pretty sure the tile would be even worse. I digress. I was just looking at it and I was like, well, obviously we need to update our cabinets to white cabinets. And then I started to think about it and I was thinking, our kids are not white cabinet people. Like we’re clumsy. We bonked itself a lot. You know, I’m not worried that my kids are going to draw on it because we’re old at this point.

[00:02:51.565] – Hilary Erickson

At the recording of this episode, my youngest is eleven. My oldest is twenty one this summer. So we’re not young. We’re just… We’re just kind of clumsy, myself included. I’m just saying I am not a white cabinet person either. Also, I’m not a white, I’m white, but I’m not like white isn’t my signature color. I don’t know. I would much rather have Navy cabinets, but that really doesn’t fit into this whole Southwestern flair.

[00:03:14.305] – Hilary Erickson

And my husband would definitely raise an eyebrow. So we were looking at this and we were thinking, OK, so we’re going to put in new cabinets because that’s obviously what you do. Everyone puts in new cabinets. And I was like, you know, how are we going to knock out walls? And I was like, of course we are. And then I was just like, oh, my gosh. Like, this is going to be so much work for not only whoever we hire, plus all the money.

[00:03:33.355] – Hilary Erickson

And… And in reality, I think our kitchen would have a very similar footprint because I’m not you know, it’s not a forever home. I don’t want to invest four billion dollars into this. So slowly, I think we came to the realization that our kitchen redesign would just make it a little bit more functional, a little bit nicer looking long gone would be the Formica countertops. Kissing them goodbye. But it was just time for an update that wasn’t going to cost a billion dollars and it wasn’t going to put me out of my house and kitchen for quite a while.

[00:04:00.835] – Hilary Erickson

So these are the things I thought about. Let me just put in a little gripe for ripping out an entire kitchen that’s still fairly functional. I just that’s a lot of, like, product that goes into a landfill or whatever when it’s still pretty functional. So another thing we might do is resurface the cabinets, but that is going to be an episode or a thing for another day. It’s not happening anytime soon. So but today I wanted to tell you what we did do in our kitchen.

[00:04:22.645] – Hilary Erickson

I’m going to tell you our actual dollar amounts. I posted something on Instagram and the thing that got the biggest raise was like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea how much that would be. Thank you so much. So I’m going to tell you what we did, kind of how much it cost. We did go for higher end appliances because I was like, if I’m not updating these cabinets, I want to get appliances that are quality.

[00:04:39.355] – Hilary Erickson

We’re definitely I mean, definitely who knows what definitely is at this point in time. But we are planning to stay in this house for at least another eight years at least. My youngest graduates, high school, barring any further complications from our lives. But so let’s talk about what we did, how much it costs.

[00:04:56.185] – Hilary Erickson

Do you ever just feel like it’s unfair that some people can have company over at a moment’s notice? Their house is just super easy to clean up and they can relax on the couch with Netflix, where you feel like you always have things to do around your house that can totally be you. The organized home is all new in twenty twenty one. We’re talking about de cluttering, zones, organization systems that actually work. We’ve got assignments and challenges. I hope you’ll join us.

[00:05:20.245] – Hilary Erickson

You can use coupon code UNTANGLED, look for the organized home link in the show now.

[00:05:26.185] – Hilary Erickson

And before we get started into all that excitement, let me remind you that the organized home is brand new and we have a kitchen section coming up soon. We filmed areas of my kitchen that totally work for us. There’s some video of the actual kitchen redesign like what it looks like now, all that kind of stuff. We’re. Talking about zones, how you can de clutter, your kitchen, all that kind of stuff is coming up in the organization.

[00:05:46.455] – Hilary Erickson

So take a peek at it. You can join for just a month or two and then pop out. That’s how I kind of like to do courses, especially like this. And if you did that, it’s only fifteen dollars a month. So it’s really cheap. Also, you can save 50 percent with coupon code untangled, so that makes it even less than 15 dollars. You know, that makes it more in like the twelve dollar range for just a month.

[00:06:03.365] – Hilary Erickson

So you can pop in, do it, join the Facebook group for a month and then pop back out. I don’t care. You do you! Anyway, it’s coming in. All right. What did we do? We put in the first thing we did is we did new drawer insert. So that means we had drawers and the guides were just not working as well as they used to. Some of them were difficult to put in. Some of them the guides have fallen down.

[00:06:20.735] – Hilary Erickson

So we had to like put them back up. And also the drawer itself was kind of falling apart. Some of them, the bottoms were falling out, things like that. So we had new drawers made. We also made some pullouts for some of the larger cabinets we had. I think we only ended up doing two pullouts. But, man, that’s like night and day functionality. I absolutely love those. Pull-Out So those were about sixty five dollars each.

[00:06:41.255] – Hilary Erickson

And in total for our kitchen, that was about eight hundred dollars installed. So really like those we could have had inserts made, like if we wanted something for our silverware or something like that. But we chose not to do that because we want to leave it kind of as functional as possible. We can switch out utensil organizers or things like that at our whim. We did get a new dishwasher. We went with a bosch because all of the food bloggers that I know totally recommend the Bosch.

[00:07:03.245] – Hilary Erickson

I absolutely love it. It was about eight hundred dollars, I think. So, just in case you’re wondering, how much a higher end dishwasher is that? There you go. We did buy our appliances at kind of a local appliance store, was trying to shop local during the whole pandemic. And I will say that during the pandemic, getting appliances was a big fat pain. So you’ll see that as we come to the appliance sections. OK, then we got new countertops again, almond Formica countertops that stained when Raspberry’s looked at them or enchilada sauce or really anything.

[00:07:32.195] – Hilary Erickson

Not a fan. Also, the corners of the Formica was kind of peeling off. So sometimes when you would walk by your pocket would catch on and rip off some of it. So then I just use some masking tape to like cover the corners or so classy here. Anyway, new counters was about twenty eight hundred dollars. Now we went with a cheaper end fabricator. A friend of ours recommended him. I don’t know that I loved him. Part of me wishes we had gone with like a more of a mid grade fabricator, but it was fine.

[00:07:59.015] – Hilary Erickson

And then we found our slab. There’s apparently Arizona is like the birthplace of stone countertops. So there’s a lot of discount countertop areas around here. I’ll see people who put in their countertops in Utah and they got it from this company. So this company has a place where they’re like all their extra countertops go and we got ours there. We went with kind of a grayish with some specs so that it wouldn’t look as bad. I will say I was thinking that things would look better than the Formica.

[00:08:24.935] – Hilary Erickson

This doesn’t stain. So that’s it. And it’s not peeling up. But you can still notice crumbs and you can notice like water stains and stuff like that. That’s just the way it’s going to be. We went with quartz, honestly, our kitchen, if it had been any, like, less crazy, granite would have been a great option. I wouldn’t have shied away from granite because I like the idea that it can handle the heat and I wouldn’t have to put a pad on or anything.

[00:08:45.125] – Hilary Erickson

But we went with quartz just because we needed kind of a lighter countertop. Our floors are gray, our cabinets are that yellowy maple. So we have a lot of different colors that we’re dealing with. So I just wanted something a little bit lighter and more neutrally than crazy granite countertops. And again, if you go into the organized home, you can see it. Oh, OK. We then got a new microwave which took nigh on to forever during the pandemic.

[00:09:06.845] – Hilary Erickson

We went with a microwave that had convection cooking along with microwave cooking. Do I find the convection cooking to be amazing? It is nice to have it. We have shied away from getting like a tiny toaster oven. We don’t have one of those. We don’t have a ton of counter space. So anyway, it does give us another oven. So I was hoping to have it during Thanksgiving this year. It came after Thanksgiving, so I haven’t used it for like a big cooking event, stuff like that.

[00:09:32.345] – Hilary Erickson

But I have used it when my kids just want to, like, heat up some pizza rolls. We don’t want to do the whole oven. I am looking forward to maybe doing it in the summer where we don’t have to heat up the whole oven. Arizona. Hot. So verdict’s out. If you ever wonder if you’re listening to this podcast like a year later and you’re wondering what I think, ask me in the comments in the show. So I’ll tell you what I think.

[00:09:49.415] – Hilary Erickson

OK, so once the microwave was end, because you have to have your microwave Ours is above the stove and we had to have that put in before we could get a new backsplash. So we had bought the tile for the backsplash back when we bought the microwave in September, and then the microwave didn’t come till Christmas. So, yeah, pandemic crazy thing about the backsplash. So we went to floor and decor and we went to Home Depot. Didn’t really like any of the tiles because again, we have all these kind of colors that we’re dealing with, gray tile, yellowy cabinets, this grayish countertop that we put in.

[00:10:18.725] – Hilary Erickson

So we found a tile that we really liked that they only sold it online. So we got the sample. We really liked it. And then I was like, well, shipping can be that much. I think Amazon has ruined us all for shipping. So I go in to plug it in and the tile was about twenty dollars per box of tile. So I needed like four, maybe six. I think we ended up buying six because I didn’t want to not have enough.

[00:10:39.965] – Hilary Erickson

So I was like twenty a box. Maybe 10 bucks shipping was 15 to 20 bucks to ship, but when you go to the Florida court website, when you plug in that you want six boxes of TYL shipping was like someone saying, no, I want to say like 400 dollars for shipping. But if you split it into boxes of just two, it was only twenty five to ship the two boxes. So anyway, you could do the math in your head, but they didn’t do the math for you.

[00:11:05.365] – Hilary Erickson

Yes. So that’s just something to check out. When I tried just two boxes of tiles, it was actually cheaper to ship it that way and they actually have a giant truck come and drop it off at your house. They were like, can we cut in your cul de sac? And I was like, it’s two boxes of tile. Like, I don’t really need your semi truck in my cul de sac, but I wish you the very best.

[00:11:20.605] – Hilary Erickson

Anyway, it turned out fine, but something to look at. You know, because of all of these colors, we didn’t really want to do just a white subway tile, although we probably could have. I really like how the tile ended up looking. I will try and put a link or a picture of the tile in the show notes if you guys are interested. So in total, the tile was about two hundred sixty dollars total for I think six boxes.

[00:11:40.045] – Hilary Erickson

We went with giant hexagons. They’re pretty different and fun and it was six hundred and fifty dollars to install the tile so it was about nine hundred dollars total for the whole backsplash. Prior to this it was just painted and it was painted kind of a dark tone because again we have this kind of Southwest fare going on at our house. So it’s just added a nice big difference to our house. I really like it. It really ties everything together.

[00:12:00.715] – Hilary Erickson

So we’ve actually never had a tile backsplash before. So it is easier to, like, get your spaghetti sauce or whatever off of that tile than it was for a painted wall with a bunch of texture. So I don’t miss that. OK, and finally now we are waiting on a new fridge. We again bought kind of a higher grade fridge during covid. Maybe you guys know this, but fridges have been on way back order. We ordered it.

[00:12:21.025] – Hilary Erickson

And I want to say October and November and they’re hoping maybe March. So we ordered a kitchen aide. So we’re just waiting on that. But we can live with a fridge that we have. And I’m grateful that our fridge is still going. It’s starting to make some funky sounds, though, and our fridge is up. I think it’s about the same age as our youngest. So about 11 years old. One of the weird things in Arizona is that when it gets super hot in the summer, the tap water also gets very hot.

[00:12:43.555] – Hilary Erickson

And that’s really gross. So we have to have like a separate water thing. So I really want to have water in the door. That’s one of the main reasons that we’re getting a new fridge so that we can have cooled water through the fridge. And also the water sometimes tastes a little weird, especially during the summer. I am a full on tap girl, Auldridge tap water all day long, but if it’s warm and it’s gets kind of a summer, let’s do it.

[00:13:04.765] – Hilary Erickson

I just can’t deal with it. So we wanted water in the door, which I would normally not want. But we have to have water somewhere so as we’ll be through the fridge plus we can get ice there anyway. So if you total all of this up, we’re about nine thousand dollars and about half of that is the fridge because the fridge is about four thousand dollars. It’s not quite that much, but it’s a fair amount, I think.

[00:13:21.625] – Hilary Erickson

I think I rounded that up. But if you look at the other things, you know, it’s about eight hundred dollars for the drawer inserts, which was a lot we definitely could have cherry picked which drawers we did, but we decided to just do them all so that they would all be the same high quality. You could definitely go with the lower end dishwasher. I’m sure that we paid in part for the name Bosz because the counters I feel like we went low.

[00:13:42.235] – Hilary Erickson

I think we probably could have spent up to five thousand dollars on counters alone. So that’s something to consider. I do know that there’s lots of counter options, so check those out. We had looked into resin. We had looked into concrete. Having new countertops was great. It definitely changed the looks of our kitchen. I love that they’re not falling apart or staying easily, but it’s still just a countertop. You still have to keep it clean.

[00:14:01.165] – Hilary Erickson

And all that kind of jazz tile backsplash. If you went with tile that was in the store, that probably would have been about two hundred dollars less, which would have put us around seven hundred dollars for tile. So you definitely could do this for more in the three thousand range for the things we’ve gotten done so far without the fridge. So mostly why I’m doing this episode is that I really just wanted you guys to understand that you don’t have to just rip out the kitchen.

[00:14:20.935] – Hilary Erickson

I feel like that’s where a lot of people feel like, oh, I just need the white countertops so that it sells better. We’re really happy with how things look now. I do think we’ll probably refinish the cabinets or do something with them before we sell the house. But in the meantime, our kitchen is much more usable. Thanks to the backsplash. It looks a lot more tied together and polished. I really like how it looks. So do you.

[00:14:40.555] – Hilary Erickson

Do you don’t feel like you have to do whatever the popular trend is right now? I don’t feel like you have to throw away what you have if you feel like it’s pretty much working. And I felt like our layout was pretty much working for what we had, you know, try and make it work for you, save some money, get your house paid off before you redo the kitchen. Something to consider.

[00:14:56.755] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope we help smooth out a few of the snarls in your life. We drop an episode every Monday and we always appreciate it when you guys share and review. Until next time, we hope you have a tangle free day.

The post Kitchen Redesign – Episode 083 appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Organizing your finances is a really important step towards gaining wealth and having a vision for what you want to use your money on. I’m excited to have a guest that can give us all some good ideas on what to do!

Organizing Your Finances

This week’s guest is Nicole Rule from The Greastest Worth Website & Podcast. Her tagline is “make a life you love, start with your money.” Money is just the start for a great life! You can also find her on Instagram. She is part of the Abundant Life Virtual Summit which you can sign up for right now!

She also has a ton of free items that can get you started organizing your finances!

This post is inspired by my family budget posts — and you can also get the free download to work on your own budget!

[thrive_leads id=’32968′]

This episode is sponsored by The Organized Home. We aim to organize your whole house in that course. You can jump in for just a month or a whole year! Up to you!

Items mentioned to help you organize your budget:

How to prioritize your budget

Tools that you use to organize your finances — she uses You Need a Budget

How I organize my own finances

Why NOW is the best time to get organized

Nicole’s Worksheets & support

How budgeting formulas don’t always work!’

The tough part of managing finances together in a partnership

Other finance things that might interest you:

• My abundance budgeting post
• My other family finances posts
• My blogging for income series
• The episode where I talk with my husband about money

Producer: Drew Erickson

Check out my other household tips podcasts:

Check out all my podcasts:

Transcription:

Hilary Erickson 0:00
Hey guys, welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast today on episode 54. We’re talking about money. It may not be your favorite topic, but today I’m having a guest on who’s going to talk to us about creating a life we love and just, you know, using money to get there. Let’s untangle it.

Welcome to the pulling curls podcast. I’m Hilary, your curly headed host on the podcast where we untangle everything from pregnancy, parenting and home routines. I want you to know that there are no right answers for every family and I find that simplifying my priorities is almost always the answer. It’s tangled, just like my hair.

If you’re listening on a podcast platform, leave me a review, thanks. Okay, today we’re talking about money. And if you guys have read my blog for a long time you know that I’m super super transparent about our money. I have a whole budget worksheet and I shared our actual family budget when our kids were a little bit smaller that you guys can check out.

I’ll leave all of that in the show notes. But today’s guest is the writer and owner of greatest worth blog and all the social media channels surrounding that I love her tagline though. She says make a life you love. Start with your money. Isn’t that awesome? So I want to introduce my guest today Her name is Nicole Rule.

This episode of The pulling curls podcast is sponsored by the organized home the realistic way to manage a home, reduce clutter, and clean less.

Ever wished you could relax with Netflix rather than worrying about the state of your home or that last paper you need? No more needing hours to prep for company. Be prepared for any doorbell. Let’s simplify organizing so you can enjoy life more save 15% with a coupon code untangled you can find it at point curls calm and the menu under courses or in this episode show notes. Hey Nicole, welcome to the pulling curls podcast.

Nicole Rule 2:02
Hey, Hilary, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Hilary Erickson 2:06
guys. I’m super excited to have Nicole on to talk about organizing your finances because it is something I one hundred percent am obsessed about. Yeah.

Nicole Rule 2:14
Oh, good.

Hilary Erickson 2:15
It’s my Saturday morning ritual.

Nicole Rule 2:17
Really? Oh, I can’t wait to hear what you do.

Hilary Erickson 2:20
Yeah. So what has been your biggest struggle and keeping your finances organized?

Nicole Rule 2:26
Definitely motivation. So that’s why I’m actually excited to hear your story because when I was first starting, it was my husband who was all about the money and I literally ignored him, I would avoid it at all costs. And I had no motivation at all to get going with the money.

So I used to just see money as like boring numbers, and numbers that would like restrict me and not allow me to do the things I wanted to do so… and on top of that, it would cause like money fights. So it was like motivation to even… Get started because I felt like anytime I would engage with my money, it would lead to all these other things frustration, shame, guilt, fight with my spouse, all the things.

Hilary Erickson 3:11
Yeah. So it was just something you ignored,

Nicole Rule 3:13
Yep, totally ignored it.

Hilary Erickson 3:15
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s fair.

Nicole Rule 3:19
I think it’s a real struggle for a lot of people. When I hear people, you know, they asked me like, how do you keep going even right after they’ve like, gotten started? How do you keep going? Yeah. And it’s, it’s, there’s a lot we’ll talk. We’ll talk about that in a minute that that kind of changed it for me. But yeah, the motivation to get started and even start paying attention was, it took a lot for me to do that.

Hilary Erickson 3:42
Yeah. And I think a lot of people are probably sitting at home thinking Me too. I don’t even want to look at it because it’s overwhelming. And it just restricts me like you said, I really liked how you said that. Because Yeah, I did end up taking a class about how I look at money.

So I grew up with a bunch of popular rich girls, and I viewed money as just mean girls, you know? Yeah. And so I really had to change how I looked at what money can do to us and what money could turn me into and that I wouldn’t have to be that person. Even if I gained money, you know?

Nicole Rule 4:12
Yeah. Even if it’s not like a mean girl thing. I think a common belief is that money is evil, right? So if you have a lot of money, then you must be a horrible person, because you’re taking that money from other people when I- you know, the truth is there’s a lot of super generous rich people out there doing amazing things in the world with their money.

Hilary Erickson 4:33
Right, yeah. And I think you just have to realize that it’s not just buying fancy cars. Yeah.

Nicole Rule 4:38
Yeah. And it’s it’s not a thing, right? Like it’s not good or bad in general. That was one thing that had to come to grips with money is it’s just an- it’s neutral. And it’s what we create with it and what we do with it and what we use it for, that creates the energy around it.

Hilary Erickson 4:55
Yeah, I love that and definitely had to learn that in my own life too. So.

Nicole Rule 4:58
Yeah.

Hilary Erickson 4:59
If anybody out there saying, me too. Yeah, I was in your boat. Yeah. Okay, so how have you turned it around? How have you turned around just wanting to ignore it?

Nicole Rule 5:08
Well, the thing that really turned it around for me is when my husband kind of came to me and rather than saying, hey, let’s talk about money, which was like a weekly thing, just like you guys did, or do, he would come to he came to me, he was like, Look, I have this dream.

Basically, I have this vision of what our life could be if we didn’t have all of this debt. And so then he like poured out this whole vision. And honestly, that really changed everything for me to know that like to hear, like your spouse, be dreaming and telling you these ideas that they had for your life together, in itself is a beautiful thing, right? But then when you start tying it, you’re like, Oh, my gosh, I see how you know, changing our habits for one year or six months with our money could put us in a completely different place than if we just stayed where we are.

And I can Continue to avoid it. So I knew at that point, so it was creating a vision together. He helped me to do that. And then also we through this kind of happened as we started paying off debt. But we had we started realizing that you have to know like what you want. So not only a vision, but also like what are your values and this is kind of a buzzword these days, values based spending, but you really need to know like what is important to you in order to know how to create a budget.

So once we created a budget that was based on our values, and our vision for the six months, year, 10 years, I like to make big giant dreams, then budgeting doesn’t feel so restricting because you’re like, Oh, sure. I’m saying no to this dinner out tonight so that I can say yes to that vacation that we’re going to take in six months. Yeah. So it, it completely can change your perspective on what money can do. Do for your life.

Hilary Erickson 7:01
Yes. I love that. Because whenever we’re saying yes to one thing, we’re saying no to something else and happens with money. It happens with our time.

Nicole Rule 7:09
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s such a good way. I think for me, so whatever what happened with greatest worth, and when I created this business is I found that really, our whole life is tied to money. Like it’s all kind of intricately interwoven. And so I created these pillars. So it’s, you know, money is the foundation, but then there’s health and relationships and work and your home.

And so money can kind of really either adversely or amazingly like affect those, those pillars, basically. So those other areas of your life so the way you said like, it affects our time, you know, all of it is interrelated. And if we’re not paying attention to our money, then you know, like, You’re what I found in my life is I knew I knew I was stuck.

I knew that if Did it change something that I would be in the same place forever? There was literally no getting out of it. I had we had $100,000 in student loans, like literally, we were getting nowhere. There was no progress month to month, we were actually going backwards. And so we knew that like money was the key to getting to making progress in all the areas and in starting a business in all these areas that I wanted to make progress in money was the key to them.

Hilary Erickson 8:30
Yeah. And it is just a key. Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s lots of keys to the areas Also, sometimes I’m like, Oh, I’d like a new kitchen. But in reality, I don’t want to deal with new tile, so I really just want countertops, maybe you know what I’m saying? Yes. Like you decide what keys you’re gonna put in to make it? Yeah, but sometimes money isn’t the answer.

Nicole Rule 8:49
Yeah, it’s just kind of using money to figure to figure things out. That’s what I ended up doing. So I hear what you’re saying money. Yeah. Like you don’t want to just throw money at things. For sure. And the other thing that I really like my mission in life is to help women see that I want them to find like clarity and confidence with their money.

I don’t want them to come to me and be like, What do I do? What is the formula? How do I- how do I invest? How do I do all of these things? And the truth is like, I want them to figure it out for themselves like what makes them happy? Like what will be what will be the investing strategy for them that will get them to where they want to be in 10 years?

Hilary Erickson 9:33
Yeah. Yeah, and I think as women I don’t know maybe men think this who knows but I see other so ours is our kitchen we thought let’s redo the kitchen and obviously a huge chunk of money right? We wanted to pay cash, not totally redo it, but the more I thought about it the pain of like ripping up the tile and how it would disrupt my entire life for like a month. Would that be worth it in addition to the cost of the money and then my husband and I thought about it, we just like I just like I want a new sink and new counters.

That’s what I really want. And so I think like I have it in my head because I’m a blogger and there’s all these bloggers with beautiful kitchens and I’ll never have that beautiful photo, but maybe I could if I just had quartz countertops, you know what I’m saying? But yeah, what did I really want and I think it’s hard to be like I really just want something you very utilitarian that my family can enjoy. That doesn’t inconvenience me. Yes, yeah.

Nicole Rule 10:25
Hilary,` I think that is like the perfect example because kitchens in our in our niches right are like buffing everyone has these incredible kitchens and these kitchens are so I mean you can spend like $50,000 on a new kitchen easy especially like a Pinterest or Instagram where the kitchen and not that there’s anything wrong with that if that’s really truly where like your happiness and joy lies but I’m with you.

We moved into this house two years ago and we haven’t touched our kitchen even though we both cook a lot and really enjoy Nice kitchen We both are like you we don’t want to spend the time and energy on it right now. It’s very functional the way it is. It’s not very pretty. I really don’t think it’s pretty at all but you know, we can spend time in there are our children are learning to cook and they’re just fine.

Like all the things that actually matter to us are happening within that kitchen. And so it’s really asking yourself the question, what is important to me is the Instagram were the kitchen the important part or, or is the wife what is important? You have to know those things because if Instagram kitchen is important to you, then you’re like, Okay, well, I need new tile then. On top of

Hilary Erickson 11:37
it, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think we really have to add my husband and I had to come together because I think each of us was kind of thinking Oh, he wants the kitchen or I want the kitchen you know, and I was gonna say that I kept thinking well, we need white cat white cabinets. We do not have children that are white cabinet, people. clumsy, they bought And I am not a white cabinet person either. Let me not just blame my children. You know, we’re gonna chip those babies within minutes probably.

Nicole Rule 12:08
Yeah. That’s perfect to know about yourself.

Hilary Erickson 12:10
Yeah. So when my husband and I really thought about it, we would much rather go on a vacation or just have money in the bank for just in case but other than that Pinterest kitchen, and yay, yay for figuring that out. I love it.

Nicole Rule 12:23
Yes, I’m so proud of you for figuring it out.

Hilary Erickson 12:27
Yeah, we just did a new roof, which is not exciting at all. But way more important, because my roof needs to really function really.

Nicole Rule 12:38
Okay, so what kind of systems I love systems. What kind of systems do you have for your finances? Well, it sounds like my first thing sounds very similar to yours is we do weekly budget meetings. So I even have a freebie people can download on how we do our budget meeting. But it’s basically like communicating every week about our Money.

So we use why NAB if people are familiar with that, you need a budget calm. It’s just a budgeting software, which there’s lots of and honestly, you don’t even need a software. But that is our system that we use, you can just use like an Excel spreadsheet, you can use paper and pencil, I literally have a friend who paid off her mortgage using paper and pencil.

So just find a system that works for you. We use wine app. So that system every every couple days, actually we go in and make sure that transactions are importing and we organize it and put it in their categories because what we found is if you wait for a week to pass or month to pass, it’s way too much time and it gets really clunky, clunky, right or clumsy.

And then it just takes a bunch of time to do the actual budgeting which then Illinois people right especially if they’re new to it, they’ll be like what this is so horrible and awful. This is taking me two hours when honestly when we import them every like two days it probably takes me 10 minutes on that day, you know Just kind of check in with my money. See what you know if we’re having anything, any expenses coming up or we’re going out to dinner that night, what do we have in the dining out category? Just like checking in just like you would with a business budget, right?

I know a lot of like entrepreneurs, they can they can understand that as far as the business goes, but they don’t understand that as part of their personal finances. And it’s exactly the same thing. You you pay attention to your personal finances the same way you would your business finances. So those are the two things I do mostly. So I check in with wine app every couple days import transactions, and then once a week, my husband and I sit down and really, you know, it probably at this point only takes us like 20 or 30 minutes.

In the beginning it will take you longer because you’ll probably have some more heated discussions that like right at this point. It’s been like 10 years, my husband and I honestly don’t argue about money anymore at all. We can have disagreements, and it’s okay like we just kind of table it, let it go. But so the budget meeting itself is literally sitting down, you know, reconciling the accounts, which my Free Beacon will tell you what all of that means.

Hilary Erickson 15:10
Which I’m going to link to in the show notes. So definitely check that out. You guys.

Nicole Rule 15:13
Okay, yeah, I’ll give you that. And then the last part of it is talking through like, Are we still aligned with like, what our values are? Are we still aligned with what our vision is for the next month or two months or six months? are we spending based on that, because that’s really what it comes down to. It’s all the little things you do every day and spend money on every day or every week or every month that are going to kind of get you closer to where you want to be. So it’s really checking in every week and making sure that you’re still on track to do what you want to be doing with your money.

Hilary Erickson 15:48
Yeah, so my system is a little bit different. I think it can be hard for both, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t tolerate it. Well, if my husband was in my budgeting software frequently. Also, we I use a system called money wise, which I don’t love. I used to use Quicken and then it just became horrible. But I kind of have like weird things in there that if I die, good luck to my husband, but I like to get in there and really look at it.

And then I have a separate one for the business. And I do that and I do it Saturday mornings when everyone else is asleep. I go in there and I do it. And one of the things I really enjoyed is celebrating when that total goes up, right? Okay. Yes, so long it was we don’t have enough money and me looking to my husband to be like, when are you going to make more money?

You know, he was a teacher. I was a nurse. So I would pick up shifts, but teachers, you get the money they give you so it wasn’t ever like he could add money to the pot. So now it’s just like, yeah, it’s going up and it’s so exciting. And I will say during quarantine, I don’t have a whole lot to categorize because we don’t go anywhere.

Nicole Rule 16:48
It’s so much simpler. So I’m actually telling people right now is a perfect time to get started budgeting because it’s so simple, right? Like my kids have no extracurriculars. Like literally no Nothing is happening this summer. Like there’s nothing to categorize.

Hilary Erickson 17:03
it really, this is really true. And if you know, people are going to be listening to this on the fall, we’re recording this early summer. But you know, if you’re starting in the fall, what a great fresh time to make a fresh start. Because, you know, you’re going to be in a new place, hopefully, please, hopefully.

Nicole Rule 17:19
Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think I think you know, fall especially for parents is a fresh start. Always. Yes. So who knows what will be going on with the kids at that point, if they’ll be going back to school or not, but nonetheless, we’ll we’ll be starting and it’s always like a, you know, it was it? You’ve Got Mail. Did you ever see that movie where he talked about like a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils like, you know, that feeling of like fall and you know, starting a new school and all that so it’s a perfect time to start but

Hilary Erickson 17:51
yeah, and because our, our finances have been so different during quarantine. Now is the time to really assess does my kid need 12 after school classes Or were they just as happy coming home and coloring? Yes, yeah,

Nicole Rule 18:04
yeah, we are doing a lot of those discussions. I don’t know about you and your husband, but there’s a lot that we’re like, wow, that didn’t seem to benefit our family at all those activities that the kids were doing

Hilary Erickson 18:14
right. And, you know, some of them we’ve realized did yeah, maybe a benefited me because they were gone.

Nicole Rule 18:24
Yeah, that’s also good.

Hilary Erickson 18:26
Yeah. I think we really just have a lot more clarity maybe after this and can decide, you know, what’s really reaching our goals and what isn’t? Yeah, we are only eating out. And by eating out. We mean, we get takeout once a week. And I’ve realized the take out I’ve never really wanted to do cake takeout before, but I may enjoy it more with my kids, because I’m not stressed out about the restaurant mess and waiting for the food and all that kind of stuff.

Nicole Rule 18:48
Yeah, that’s a good point. We’ve been feeling that too. We also realized we never used to buy like frozen foods like processed, frozen pre made food and we started by With no so we don’t even do like takeout we just get like premade Chinese food from Trader Joe’s, you know in the frozen section and my kids are loving that stuff which is cheaper and easier even But still, I mean, I guess you’re cooking still but it’s like a one pot.

Hilary Erickson 19:16
It’s way easier. So less cleanup, less stress. Well, I think that’s probably easier than getting takeout, honestly.

Nicole Rule 19:24
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And cheaper. Yeah, for sure. So

Hilary Erickson 19:27
I just, if you guys are listening in the fall, hopefully you’ve taken the time to really evaluate how you want to use your money. I think that’s a good time to do her. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you use you need a budget, any other tools that you use? The only

Nicole Rule 19:40
other thing I was going to talk about, of course, is like a shameless plug for the workbooks that I have. Because as I kind of went through my process of paying off money I was I was following I was like reaching for everybody else’s formulas. Tell me what to do.

Tell me what to do. And then I kind of got to like a breaking point where I was literally crying on the floor. Like, I hate this so much. And my husband and I, that’s when we like created a vision and defined our values and did all these things. So that’s what I’ve put into my workbooks. It’s like a step one is figuring out your mindset. Step two is creating and defining your values. Step three is the vision. And then step four is where you actually create the budget based on all of that information you already have gathered about yourself. Because I think what we do so often is we go backwards, we start with the budget, and then we’re like, wait, and then we find people’s formulas, and we use those formulas.

And then you’re like, Wait, is this actually what I want to I want to be? I don’t even know, I’m trying to think of some of the things that frustrated me about the formulas. Well, if they don’t work for everybody, because we lived in the Bay Area, and if you paid 35% isn’t that what they say for your house? Like we would have had 25 we would have lived in a cardboard box. Yeah, we had to pay a lot. You know, the formulas are still working. And they would totally work in Phoenix because we bought at the low and now.

Hilary Erickson 20:59
We’ve been weigh less, you know, for a house here.

Nicole Rule 21:02
Yeah, that’s a great example is housing because sometimes to housing is really important to someone and they value that more. And so maybe they do want to spend more on that than they want to, then the formulas are saying or whatever, I just think it’s really important. And in the Bay Area, most likely, that would be an amazing investment to write if you bought something and it was like 50%, which would be stressful for you to pay for it. But then in the long run, if you go to sell it, you’d probably make quite a bit of money off of it.

Hilary Erickson 21:30
You know, normal people would. We broke even and I felt very grateful to break even where the market Yes, we just said, Oh, you know, but again, we moved and it’s fine.

Nicole Rule 21:42
Yeah, yeah. And then you got a great value on your other right. Yes, yeah.

Hilary Erickson 21:46
Yeah. Um, so what is your best financial tip for families? Do you think,

Nicole Rule 21:50
Oh, well, this is interesting, because my best tip might be in opposition with yours because my best tip was, if you’re in a partnership, do it Together, it sounds like you do some of it by yourself. You

Hilary Erickson 22:03
do broad swaths together. But the categorizing and the reviewing transactions make, that’s just you. Okay?

Nicole Rule 22:11
That seems fair, you’re almost you both review

Hilary Erickson 22:13
every transaction like, my business transactions are horrible because it’s 700 PayPal fees. So clearly, my husband doesn’t need to go through and do that,

Nicole Rule 22:21
right? No, we both don’t do them. It’s just kind of like, who gets in there first, we’ll categorize them. And then it’s like, at the end of the week, when we have our meeting, that’s when we’re like this. We’re discussing big picture. We’re not discussing the transaction. And

Hilary Erickson 22:35
we do that probably once a month. Okay, because our big picture isn’t really changing much right now.

Nicole Rule 22:41
And this is what I mean that people need to figure out what works for them. I do think though, if you’re in a partnership, your partner needs to know what’s happening with the money because what I find is a lot of women are trying to do all of this on their own. And the men are often it’s interesting because it actually is more women who are doing it The men and the men are like, Oh, she’s great at that. Like, like, in a sense, he’s supporting her. If it’s a, you know, opposite sex couple, in a sense, he’s supporting her, but like, in a sense to she’s on her own. Right.

And she’s shouldering this burden, when as we get older and older becomes even bigger, because then it’s like, investments and college funding and, and then it’s like, and then if you have bills and debts, like, do you keep them? Do you not keep them? Do you pay them off and you’re trying as a woman to make all these decisions for your family, and it just feels like too much. So that is my biggest tip is to do it as a partner.

Hilary Erickson 23:39
Yeah, partnership. I love that. So we kind of just go by percentages, and we kind of figure out the percentages on our own, but then I look, I’m watching the percentages, and if they seem to be out of whack, then we have a discussion about it. But for us, it didn’t make sense every month. So we have a discussion about like how much we should put in the college fund. So it’s just kind of based on percentages and what we bring in so

Nicole Rule 23:59
yes, That totally makes sense. We do it. I’ll say we do it like twice a year, that kind of big picture stuff like investments and college funding.

Hilary Erickson 24:08
Yeah. Well, and and when you own your own business, I don’t know what your husband does. If his job is more study he actually

Nicole Rule 24:14
had, he’s a realtor. So now he kind of owns his own business too. And

Hilary Erickson 24:17
it’s so weird to cry. It’s harder to deal with money that fluctuates a great deal when you have your own business.

Nicole Rule 24:23
Yeah, it’s hard to like, we’re going to say $1,000 this month, because you have no idea what’s gonna come in and what’s not going to come in you can predict, but it’s so yeah,

Hilary Erickson 24:34
different. Yeah. Which is why I like the percentages because it doesn’t matter if I make 4 million, which I do every month, clearly. 4000 You know, you can take your percentages and make it work. So yeah, that’s, that’s good. That’s good advice. Well, this was really fun. And I hope you guys like are gonna take this to heart and kind of make a change and definitely talk about it with your spouse, my husband and I actually recorded one on finances and things that we’ve maybe tussled over

Nicole Rule 25:00
Yeah, that’s awesome to be so honest about it because I think that’s the other thing with money is people don’t talk about it. It’s It’s embarrassing and shameful. And especially between partners, like you fight a lot about it, or even if you just fight sometimes about it, then that can be like embarrassing, but that’s the reality, you guys that is real. So thank you for sharing that with the world because I think that’s such an important thing. It’s like talking about sex and death, right? We have to talk about these things.

Hilary Erickson 25:31
Yes, or and we have to be honest with each other. And we need to be honest with each other with all of our friends saying this is a hard thing to overcome, because I think newly married couples think, you know, they’ve seen parents who have done this for a number of years and feel like it just comes naturally when in reality, everyone gets married and it’s kind of like you spend our money on what, what does happen.

And we all go through those Growing Pains as we, you know, advance into our marriage. Yes, for sure. Yeah. Or any relationship, you know, definitely boyfriends and girlfriends anymore because people aren’t getting married as much have this problem too. So yeah, yeah. Any partnership for sure. Yeah. All right. Thanks for coming on, Nicole. Thanks, Hilary. I appreciate it. Okay, guys, I loved having Nicole on. I love what she had to say. Because while money is so important, it is just a tool.

And I think we all have to kind of realize our feelings around money. I’m not that big on feelings. But I really did learn a lot when examining my feelings on money. So I would recommend doing that. If you guys are interested in more about abundance and all that kind of stuff. Nicole is actually a part of the abundant life summit, which is happening this fall if you’re listening, and I will have the link in the show notes where you guys can sign up for that as well.

Big thanks to our sponsor, the organized home, you know, we think of organizing as like books and craft supplies and all that kind of stuff. But organizing your finances is probably one of the most important things and it can really help us kind of set priorities about the things we want in our life and all that kind of stuff. So definitely check out the order. Nice talk. Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope we help smooth out a few of the snarls in your life. We drop an episode every Monday and we always appreciate it when you guys share and review. Until next time, we hope you have a tangle free day.

The post Organizing Your Finances with Nicole Rule from Greatest Worth — PCP 054 appeared first on Pulling Curls.

{shock}

Turns out I was making decent cash (let’s not go crazy here with our imaginations, I was a nurse at a nursing home, but it was more than we had made in the past) and we basically had no write offs, and I was having too little taken out of my paycheck.

Has that happened to anyone else?

I went to my dad and started crying.  I asked him what on earth we could do because we just didn’t have the money.

Now, my dad is a famous economic historian.  The guy knows money, and has a real grasp of a family economic system.

He said, “Well – I have one tip.”

I was so excited.  I couldn’t wait to hear his get rich quick scam that I had never heard about.  I mean, the guy’s a financial guru.  Dave Ramsey eat your heart out.

And then my dad gave me this little gem:

“Well, you can either spend less, or make more.”

{sound of a balloon deflating}

What?

Well, I knew THAT!!!!  But how on earth could I squeeze pennies out of my already dry life?

But the reality, that is the best financial advice I’ve ever gotten.  And it is the truth with which all good budgets are found.

You can spend less

• Follow a budget
• Take out some “wants”
• Decide what is really a “want” and what a “need” is
• Move to a smaller place

You can make more

• Pick up a 2nd job
• Get a new job
• Sell stuff
• Pick up side gigs

That’s it.  You might think that your finances are a mess and you need someone with some sort of certifications and initials up the yang… but really you just need THAT advice.

Spend less or make more.

Those are your options, clear and simple.

It hurts, but it’s true.  It’s the best financial advice I ever got.  I hope it helps you too!

Want more simple tips to get on track with your finances — check out my tips all about abundance financing — and be sure to check out my other family finances posts below that!

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The post The Best Financial Advice I Ever Got appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Average Monthly Expenses for Family of Five

I did my original budget post in 2014.  I would encourage you to check that post out first as it tells a lot of the history about how budgeting worked (and didn’t work) for us. I was going to re-do the graphic for that post, but then realized the whole post needs updating.  So, without further adieu, this is our revised budget as of late.

It is still fairly similar to the old one, but it is SO important to keep the budgeting discussion open in a marriage.  I want my husband happy with the money in each category, and I don’t want us feel “constrained” by the budget, but rather supported so it helps us evaluate wants vs. needs.  WE do evaluate the budget once a quarter together, usually over food.

As an aside, my husband has quit his job and is looking for one.  At this point it hasn’t affected our budget all that much.  In the areas where it has affected it I will note it.

Bills Budget

Keep in mind that many bills are an average, and our budget has to have some flexibility in the "bill" department -- a big flex is our electricity bill that is about 3X's the amount in the summer, and obviously less in the winter.

• Cell phone 125 (we recently upgraded to Verizon due to a lack of coverage when traveling, and I have been pleased — we do split a Verizon plan with my parents)
• Water/trash 80 (on average)
• Internet 65 (we have a nice high speed plan and it is necessary for the blog work that I do — also a partial write-off)
• Netflix 10
• Car insurance 85 (we save this monthly and pay the bill every 6 months)
• Electricity 150 (average — I would say it varies between 80-200)
• HOA 38
• Life Insurance 50 (we each pay quarterly, I just took our payment and devided it by 3, we each use different carriers because it was cheaper that way)
• Lunch Money 45 (luxury, it could be cut if necessary)
• Health insurance 650(this will be the price for all 5 of us on one plan {sigh} — we have a 5.5k deductible HSA plan — I really WISH we could have better coverage, but we really can’t)

Household Money Budget

• Weekly money 360 — we get 80/week.  Check out that post, great info on there!  In brief, this money pays for all groceries and anything else we need beyond the Costco and other things listed below.  Seriously, check out the post about this.  This weekly money cateogry is what SAVED us!
• Costco 200 (up from 150 — I gave myself a Costco raise after graduation, mostly because we were ALWAYS going over budget there, even when we just bought necessities)
• Gas 200 (this went up when Drew was working 1/2 hour away, but it will probably go WAY down if he doesn’t get another job, in the summer it should be pretty low as well as I am the only one working)
• Dating 100
• Clothing/Household 100
• Personal Money 100 — this is money we each get out at the beginnig of the month that the other has no say in how we spend it.  The 200 bucks between this and dating is WAY cheaper than a lawyer!

If you add all these numbers up plus our mortgage payment our budget is just under $3,600

We also pay 10% of our income in tithing, and we stow a lot of money in savings and in our HSA.  In a perfect month I like to make at least 5k.  Drew’s salary is really constant, and mine fluctuates quite a lot.  For that reason, and because it is safest, we pre-fund each month’s budget with the prior month’s salary.  Be sure to check that post out also!

I should also add that I am extremely debt-adverse.  While I disagree with Dave Ramsey on a few things, I do agree that it is not our best choice to carry a debt balance and investing that money instead.  We have paid off debts and invested thereafter.  Our only current debt right now is our mortgage payment.  Our cars are losers, and we are getting to the point that the mechanic bill will be more than a car payment, but we’re not there yet.  We are EXTREMELY lucky to be this way.  I am well aware it’s not possible in many situations.

We also have other savings accounts that pay for family fun (vacations) and any home/car improvements.  You can read about those and how we use our “extra” money in this post.

Anyway, that’s our budget.  Every family is different.  Everyone prioritizes differently.  We have a fairly large date budget as compared to the rest of my budget, and that’s a choice we’ve made.  You’ll make choices too.

If you want to take away the “mistique” of family budgeting, be sure to sign up for my newsletter for very DOABLE tips to keep your family in the black!

I also have a post with an example on how to budget right here!

FYI, this post was written in 2015, but has been updated

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The post Budgeting For a Family Of 5 appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Abundance mentality budgeting is a way of sound accounting combined with being able to receive all the abundance that is offered to you!  It’s a difficult balance.

I have written some very hard-line budgeting posts.  And frankly, it’s been hard to write this one for a while.  I don’t want you guys to think that I’m a spendthrift.

But, I no longer follow strict rules of budgeting {can you hear the subscribers hitting unsubscribe?}.  But wait, read on — maybe this post can help your mindset.

After my husband left his job, I started taking some classes on abundance and really being open to new veins of income.  But, the one thing that I really felt was limiting me was those hard numbers.

I felt that the hard numbers left me in a scarcity mindset.

What would we do if we ran out and how could I "keep my budget" if I was consistently going over and buying all the things we needed?

Abundance Mentality Budgeting

My new budget is running off of 4 principles:

1.  I have cash on me all the time.
2.  We have enough money for our needs and plenty of our wants
3.  We will get more cash, it is a steady flow that is increasing
4.  Money is a tool that allows us to do the things we want to do
5. Cash only

Let’s explore those a bit more in-depth:

I have cash on me all the time

I took Carol Tuttle’s Money Makeover a few months ago and it really helped to change my mindset on a few things.  I have always been concerned that someone would steal my money if I had too much in my wallet.  Now, I don’t go to her lengths where she keeps 100’s in there, but I always try to have a little cash on me.  It’s a physical reminder that I have money, and I can get more.

We have enough money for our needs, and plenty for our wants

If we truly need something, I just buy it.  There is no reason for us to be limping along with something that is truly a NEED when I can have it shipped to my home from Amazon in just a couple of days (or grab it at Walmart).

Of course, you do need to be very honest about what your needs are.  I had a cell phone charger that had exposed wires.  I was going to keep limping it along — but that really didn’t make sense.  Just buy a new charger instead of getting electrocuted.

Previous to this, I would have limped along with it until the budget $$ renewed.

And I, personally, felt like that made me just want more and more things (and, I’d spend more and more once that budget money was “renewed”).  I also just felt like we never had enough money… and that wasn’t how I wanted to feel.  You can read about that in my post on the magic of having enough.

As for wants I really evaluate them.

We have recently really started paring down on the things we bring into the home.  I hate organizing them and I feel bad when I throw them away — so I’m really trying to bring in “wants” that I’ll value.

And frankly, by having enough you often find the wants aren’t as bad.

We will get more cash, it is a steady flow that is increasing

I always felt like money was a finite principle.  There was a set amount and I could just get that amount.

But, now I believe that money can come in many forms and ways.

Now, having your own business makes that all a little easier, but I think that money can come in many ways to people.

I think that when we lived off a nurse’s and a teacher’s salary we felt like we just had a fixed amount of income and could never increase that.  And that, my friends, never did us any favors.

Believe that money can come to you in new ways.  I envisioned money flowing to us like a river, and it really did start to!

It really does sound insane, but I felt like it calmed me down enough to let it work it’s process.

Money is a tool that allows us to do the things we want to do

That’s all it is.  It’s not a measure of success or something that makes us prideful and arrogant.

It’s just a tool.

I never worry about having enough air.  It’s always there.

I don’t worry about using my screwdriver.  It’s a tool.  I’m using it to get work done.

That’s it.

That really takes the stress out of it.

Money is a tool.  Use it.  Don’t be worried it won’t be there.  Don’t over-use it, or use it in times that another tool would work better.

Cash Only

I also follow a 100% cash principle as well.  I NEVER believe you should spend money you don’t have.  You may have to tighten to actual needs for a while and hopefully, as your abundance increases you can loosen for your flow.  I know it’s worked that way for us.!

This doesn’t mean that we only USE cash — but we use debit and credit cards wisely (love my cash back) and make sure we have the money to back it up.

So, that’s our budgeting in a nutshell.  I made a hand printable with these reminders – maybe you could make it small and put it somewhere you’ll see it frequently.  And, check out my other family finances posts below that:

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The post Abundance Mentality Budgeting appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Don’t miss this episode on the home economy:

I’ll tell you, the first time I said it I was really taken aback at how I felt.  I felt like that was wrong and it was wrong to say.

But, why is it?  I don’t love being seflish, rude, mean or greedy.  I’m not saying that by saying I love money.  But, why do I think it?

I just love money, and I’d love money to be as adequate in my life as air is.  I’d like to not have to struggle to get it.

Ok, get comfortable, it’s story time….

When I was, I think, in the 6th grade, the teachers & principal called all of us into an assembly and told that we were no longer able to wear Guess or ESPRIT clothes.  The label monger-ing and put-downs of girls who weren’t able (or chose not) to wear those had gotten so bad, they came out with that rule.

Because I grew up around some mean, rich, label-whore girls.

I wasn’t a label-whore.  I actually never really felt bad about what I wore and I just knew that the rich girls were mean and to stay away from them.

In reality, I’m not sure that those mean, rich girls were any more rich than my family was.  But, my dad was a professor of economics and we used our money in a different way.

Still, to this day when I see a Guess or ESPRIT label, I decide I can’t wear those, even from the Goodwill.

After living Dressing Your Truth for about a year (read all about that in these posts) I had heard SO many things good about Soulprint Healing and I also knew that money has been a struggle for us in the past.

We had been a teacher and a nurse and we knew we’d never make much money, but we were helping people and doing what we loved.  When unexpected bills came I took a deep breath and just crossed my fingers it would work out.

And now we’re an educational consultant and a blogger/nurse.  Money is different.  It’s a lot more vague. It’s very different than money has ever been for us. I set out into Soulprint Healing planning to just think about money in a new way and skip off on my way.

But, the first time she had us say “I Love money” I realize that those rich girls had gotten into my brain.  Also, somehow I feel like religion sometimes makes you feel bad for liking money.  Does religion want us poor?  Obviously, not.  And there are plenty of rich Mormons, but I often hear in church about how evil money is and how it will hurt you.

In reality, I think money can be like fire.  You need it.  You need it to stay warm, and cook by, and see by.  But, if you love it too much and get too close it can burn you.

Also, I have started to notice that the people saying that money is evil are usually not people who have much of it.

Now, you wouldn’t have found me saying that money was evil.  I just never thought we’d have much of it.  And we were certainly happy the way we were.  But, could we have less struggle and worry if we had a bit more of it.

SoulPrint Healing is about living a life of affluence, ease and lack of struggle.

I’m changing how I think about money.

There is even a free video series to see if it might be for you!

**Soul Print Healing isn’t offered anymore**

Right now I am in week 4.  We are working on realizing that money is an energy flow in our lives.  Ok, I know — I just said energy flow.  And there are times I give a hearty eye-roll to some of the visualization we’re doing and some of the words she uses.  I just try to go with it, or ignore things that make me want to giggle.

I just would like to know that money is like air.  That I will have enough to cover my needs and more.  Wouldn’t you?  It is a 12 week series and I am excited to share with you, in a couple of months, what we’re learning and how it has changed us.  She’s promised that our lives will look different at the end of the 12 weeks, and I’m starting to believe her.

So, what are your beliefs about money?  Do you think that you have negative feelings about it at all?  Are there experiences that you’ve had with money, that if you could let them all go — might make it so you attract more of it?  I’d say to check out her free series.  I bet it gets some financial juices flowing in your brain.

If you like posts like this, be sure to sign up for my finances newsletter.  Then, check out all my other finances posts!

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1.  Find other sources.

First off, I have to call a miracle when I see one.  My blog went from maybe 10 bucks/month income to averaging over 2k in about 18 months.  A spade is a spade, and for us that’s a miracle.  But I am pushing it.  I’m finding other sponsored posts and I’m networking.  I’m working hard to make that miracle work as well for us as it can.  And we are blessed.  What ways can you bring in other income?  Think of things you already enjoy doing.  Think how that can become income.

2.  Start eating the food storage.

We had a ton of food.  LOTs of chicken, canned goods and all sorts of tasty vittles and we are eating it down.  Now, we still live in the fantasy world that we are moving sometime soon.  BUT, until then we are saving a lot on groceries by making do with the things we have on hand.  I almost make it a game to sit in front of the pantry to figure out how to best use up those cans.  This isn’t to say that we’re not grocery shopping, we are.  But it’s probably about 1/2 the cost it was before we were relying heavily on food storage (and obviously, not building it up).

3.  Stick to the budget.

Now, if money is a serious concern you may want to shrink that budget, but for us the budget has been REALLY nice.  We have a nice cushion of savings and sticking with our original budget has been freeing that I don’t have to feel destitute.  Once the fall comes and the reality of a lower income hits we may need to adjust the budget, but until then having a budget is freeing.  Also, we currently are able to cover the budget.  I can’t live in fear of what will happen next month, so I’m sticking with our budget.  **Be aware, our budget was pretty bare bones to start with, so I’m still pretty frugal, but it’s nice to still have some date money.

4.  Spend the money to stay together

Speaking of date money….. My husband and I really need to get out of the house to talk about what our future plans are.  Almost weekly it’s a NEED.  I am using that.  It is a HUGE amount of pressure on both of us.  And we need to see what page everyone is on frequently.

5.  Don’t let your kids feel it

Our kids already live in fear of us uprooting them at any moment.  We have still bought school clothes like any other year and went on a back to school date.  They were budgeted but I felt they were important.  I’m not saying that they don’t understand that we need to be frugal.  But I’m not cutting out the big things, at least not right now.

6.  Check out your insurance options

Obama Care has made getting your own insurance MUCH cheaper than cobra.  Because my husband left his job he was able to get on my individual policy.  If we had done cobra we would’ve paid over 1k/month as compared to the $140’ish it’s costing us now.  Phewsh!

7. Pay tithing

God is watching out for us (see #1), and we continue to pay 10% of our increase to the church and I have faith that will pay back in countless blessings.  Not the least of it being the peace that we’ll be OK.

8.  And if you’re currently employed SAVE NOW.

The only reason these 7 things can keep us together is that we do have a cushion of savings. We were hoping to buy a car with cash in the near future, and while that isn’t happening, we don’t feel the pinch as much as we might.

A few other tips, less financial:

• Don’t nag — I’m the type that wanted 400 applications filled out yesterday, but that’s not how my husband works and it’s frankly just not possible.  A friend reminded me that my job is to support him.  Not to be his mom
• Keep the faith.  WE’re still attending church, paying tithing, looking for opportunities to serve.  That makes me less likely to dwell on myself when I’m dwelling on others.
• Don’t over-do it.  This summer I tried to pick up every shift that was humanly available and it took me to the edge.  I need income, I don’t need to run myself into the ground.  Having a budget, and a target income comes in handy in that area.

I know the average time to get a new job is around 4 months, from what I’ve seen on the internet.  We already have that in our rear view mirror at this point, but my husband is pretty specific in what he wants.  We feel hopeful, and by doing these things I hope we can remain hopeful.  Now it’s your turn.  I know most families survive unemployment at some point in their life.  Tell me YOUR tips!

Find out more about our job hunt journey here:
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