how to budget and *actually* save money 💸 how I track + plan my spending (budgeting for beginners) 💰

for [Music] who I'm just looking at the viewfinder for the first time and I feel like I am giving egg energy today like hard B egg energy I do apologize my hair is just not playing buo that's such an influence of thing to say don't mind my appearance I apologize don't look at me but like you're going to be looking at me for the next 20 30 minutes that's just the fact of the matter it is what it is you know this is me take it or leave it anyway how are we all hope you guys all doing well having yourselves a good day I'm so excited for this video I feel like it's been a while since I've T since I can't speak since I've sat down and filmed just like a chatty money budgeting personal finance video so I'm so excited for this one this is honestly probably one of my most requested videos of all time and as your self-appointed budgeting bestie I feel obliged to share with you guys how I budget how I set up my budget how I budget for monthly and quarterly bills how we budget weekly for nightly monthly income or variable income a different bank account set up and just like General budgeting savings tips I want to say budgeting one more time honestly so yeah buckle up it's probably going to be a very chatty video grab your beverage of choice I'm just on the waters today guys but if I had my way you know what I'd be drinking yeah grab your tea coffee wine your beverage of choice and let's get into it I'm so excited also be sure to subscribe if you're new here and give this video a thumbs up it really helps my channel out I really really appreciate it I do a lot of vlogs and lifestyle content as well as personal finance videos I love talking about money and opening up the conversation around personal finance especially for young women I really believe knowledge is power and there's a reason it's not taught in schools the government I sound like a conspiracy theorist I promise I'm not but the government the banks they're all capitalizing on our lack of knowledge so here we are opening up the conversation making money less of a Tabo topic first things first you want to figure out what your tool of choice is I personally use the yearly 2.0 spreadsheet from centy I always have a link down below along with my discount code I just love this spreadsheet it has monthly tabs and then it also has a yearly tab as well so at the end of the year I can go back and look at how much money we made what we spend just really gives a nice cohesive overview of all of our finances it also has a savings and debt tracker and you can track your net worth on here as well so lots of cool features I've actually downloaded a fresh spreadsheet uh so we've got a blank one that we can set up together and I'll show you guys how I do that but yeah whether it's a spreadsheet or something else just figuring out what your preferred tool of choice is is I personally prefer and I would recommend if you're just starting out with budgeting to use something that requires you to manually track everything I still do this now even the I I could download an app that does it all for me and I do like my bank does that anyway it kind of categorizes my spending but for me manually inputting all of my transactions every single day holds me so much more accountable I'm so much more aware of where my money is going versus it just coming out of my account there's just something about typing it in it really forces you to reflect and figure out if that is a necessary purchase especially if your goal is to save money and honestly the best place to start is to just start I know that sounds so simple and easy but when you're just getting into budgeting or trying to take control of your finances it can feel really overwhelming my biggest tip is to just track for one month just go through don't even set a budget but just start inputting all of your transactions throughout the month and then you've kind of got your Baseline to work off of or if you do have the time I know I'm like this once I set my mind on something and I'm motivated to do something I want to do it now so if you do have the time going back and looking at your last month of spending um is a really good place to start 1 to 3 months is ideal cuz it gives you like a nice range not every month is going to be the same obviously and then from there you can identify different areas that you can cut back in I don't think it's reasonable I know all these Finance bre preach about you know only eating beans and rice and not spending a single scent of money on yourself if you're in debt or you don't have a fully funded emergency fund which is so unrealistic I'm sorry if you're in debt like you are still a human and you're not going to get out of debt any faster by doing that I just don't think it's sustainable especially if you're new to this to completely go cold turkey and cut out all fun spending like that is unsustainable it's almost like a crash diet you know what I mean it's like crash diet for your budget it may work for a little while there will come a time where you will slip up you'll feel like a failure and then you just be like it and just spend willy-nilly you'll look back on all you're spending and be like oh my gosh what have I done and then start that cycle all over again everyone's going to have different money values and I think identifying the things that you're willing to spend money on is really important um and then cutting back in the areas that you don't care about as much also along with this with setting up your budget you want to figure out what your financial goals are whether that's saving for a house deposit or saving for a wedding paying off your car load whatever your financial goal is working that out I think having a financial goal really gives you a lot of purpose keeping that purpose at the center of everything you do is so important I call it my why like why am I doing all of this why am I sacrificing or cutting back in certain areas of my budget it's because I want to achieve this goal and I've talked about this before but anytime I would go to make a purchase especially when we're in the midst of saving for our house deposit and saving for our wedding I would ask myself like is this a necessary purchase is this a want or is this a need will this help me reach my financial goal and nine times out of 10 it wasn't going to and just taking that time to check in with myself really brought me back to reality I saved a lot of money by asking myself that simple question so keeping your financial goal in mind and figuring out what your why is and why you want that like it's one thing being like Oh my goal is to save for a house deposit why is it your goal to save for a house deposit like what is your motivation behind that that is your why and that is what will keep you motivated and keep you focused and then from there it's honestly all about tracking and updating your spreadsheet every single day every single day I find if I leave it more than a day or two I just feel out of touch with where my money is going and then it becomes like a big thing it becomes a little bit overwhelming if you do it every day like it will literally take you 2 minutes if that I can make adjustments in real time and turn things around versus getting to the end of the month and being like Oh I spent $1,000 on eating out this month I had no idea so I will show you guys the spreadsheet that I use and kind of how I use it how I set it up as I said it's the yearly 2.0 spreadsheet from Coop plenty it looks like this when you download it so they have a step-by-step video tutorial they also have an Instagram with some really helpful videos as well and there's a step- bystep on how to actually set it up so Step One is budget name so go to annual totals add the budget name for income bills subscriptions expenses savings and debt and then all of this will appear in the monthly tabs and then it will look a little something like this this is my current spreadsheet for 2024 so we've got both of our paychecks we both get paid or we used to get paid fortn nightly then I've got my business income any miscellaneous income and then I also have a third income line cuz there's some months where we'll get paid three times depending on our pay cycle then we've got our bills subscriptions all of our variable expenses I keep in here savings and debt once you filled everything out and tracked everything you'll get these beautiful little graphs it's all very interesting I cannot believe this was January this feels like a lifetime ago so really when it comes to setting up the spreadsheet it's all about this annuals total tab cuz that is what will show up in your month budget um God it's been so long since I've done this NYX paycheck one NYX paycheck two and now I don't work a 95 job anymore I quit my job back in February so I don't have a usual paycheck I'm just going to call this business income um and it's variable you can add as many different lines in here as you want so if you get paid monthly obviously you just have one if you get paid weekly you'd have at least four or five hello puppet are you going to help me yeah should we do Mabel's income oh I can't reach darling you have to go down and even though it's a monthly spreadsheet it will carry over so if I put in my actual paycheck say Nick's paycheck was 2,000 that will show up here in the left to spend part and if I don't input any transactions into the transaction tracker this will carry over into February so it's always carrying over whatever is left over at the end of the month so doesn't really matter when you get paid or how often you get paid I just like to work off a monthly budget cuz a lot of our bills are monthly um I just find it easier to track that way I usually start by listing our quarterly bills we've got gas electricity add a fun little Emoji in there why not keep it lighthearted uh water oh counil rates we've got like our internet phone bill car insurance basically anything that is a set fixed expense yeah that's just kind of an example of the bills that I would have in here and then subscriptions you might have Netflix um Apple Disney plus and then just general expenses so groceries is probably the biggest one eating out I like to break down eating out and takeway cuz to me they're two very different things there's some things that are in a little bit of a gray area if I go to get frozen yogurt is that takeway or is that eating out I don't know if I sit down and eat it is that eating out it really does depend so there's some things that are bit of a great area but for us takeway is usually like a a weekly or fortn nightly thing we'll go and get takeway food bring it home and eat it like that's one of our dinners for the evening where eating out is more of an experience whether that's going out for brunch or going out to dinner but you really have freedom with this you can really get as specific as you want with it so we've got groceries petrol Home Health social which is like hanging out with our friends coffee uh eating out date night cuz that's one of our goals for 2024 is to prioritize date night so I like to see it on our budget it's a nice little reminder to prioritize that then we've got mvel um entertainment gifts books alcohol takeaway ride shair clothing Beauty miscellaneous and then travel so those are an example of some categories and then coming down here we have our savings again depends on what your current savings goals are so it might be home deposit for us we love traveling so we like to have a travel fund and even though I'm separating these on the spreadsheet I don't necessarily have separate accounts for them when it comes to my bank account this is purely my way of just tracking what that money is for and where that money is going then for debt you might have a car loan credit card we do have a credit card now but I don't include it on here cuz we just pay it off in full every month so there's no point like we're not carrying over any debt into the next month uh we include our mortgage on there oh morage mortgage and that's pretty much it it's so easy to set up like one of the most simple templates that I've come across and then it's as simple as actually setting your budget so expected income let's say 2,500 I would do this at the beginning of every month um which if you watch my monthly rets you're probably very familiar with this little setup business income I might say 5,000 what I also love about the spreadsheet is you can add in the due dates of things so if you know that your gas bill comes out on the 7th of every month which it's probably a quarterly bill so this is probably not a great example but like internet I know it comes out on the 15th of every month so I can keep track of it that way I also like to tick things off as I go whether that's when they're paid or when I transferred that money into our bills account so I guess it's probably a good point to explain how our bank accounts are actually set up and how we manage our money so for us we have basically two well no three accounts first one is our bills account this is an accumulating account essentially a sinking fund every single payday we will transfer half of what we need to into our bills account to cover for our monthly bills that way when the bills come out there's money just sitting there we don't have to think about it we're not accidentally touching that money and spending money that we don't have cuz we have bills coming out like it is a separate account purely for bills so when it comes to Payday I will give may as an example so $981 is how much we need to set aside for bills so usually come next payday cuz it's the most consistent we'll transfer half of that amount into the bills account and I'll come back to how we actually budget for those quarterly bills in a moment um but yeah we have our bills account and then we have our offset account for you that might be your SA account our offset basically acts as our money Hub these days it houses our emergency fund and any other savings we might have the third thing that we use is a credit card now we recently signed up for one in the last last month was our first month of using it and that basically acts as like our spending account we signed up for one so we could get frequent fly points uh for Future travel and also to keep money in our offset account for longer before we used a credit card we just had an everyday spending account um and we usually keep between $600 to $800 a week in there as like a nice little buffer would be for all of our variable expenses so all of these over here that would be our groceries eating out takeway shopping anything that was a variable expense would come from our spending account and this is pretty much how it goes on our budget spreadsheet so anything from the bills would come from our bills account for example at the beginning of the month I want to budget $40 for gas $120 for electricity $70 for water 75 for car insurance 65 for the gym and 40 for pet insurance then we've got our total so $822 we need to set aside for bills for the month that is our first fixed expense Gorge then we have our subscriptions $20 for Netflix $10 for Apple I'm just kind of making up these numbers $12 for Disney plus $42 we need to set aside for subscriptions and then car loan let's say $500 and mortgage $2,500 so that's another $3,000 for our fixed expenses then I would go back over here and have a look at how much money we have left over so our total income is $10,000 our bills at $822 subscriptions is 42 and our debt is 3,000 so we still have $613 left over to play with when you're really in your savings era you want to save before you spend so rather than budgeting for all of your variable expenses or your willy-nilly fun purchases you want to budget for your savings first and then work out how much you have left over so for example our financial goal might be to have $20,000 saved for our house deposit by the end of 2024 let's pretend it's January just for the sake of it oh I I actually can't do the maths let's do 24,000 that just seems more simple I need to save $2,000 so I'm factoring that into my budget like that's a non-negotiable and then for travel let's say $500 that leaves us with $3,636 left over to budget and then this is where we make it work in our expenses so groceries that might be $500 eating out might be$ 150 takeway another 50 shopping that might be a money value for you 400 home maybe 100 gifts you've got a couple of birthday coming up like these expenses will change month to month like I can show you as an example just how different they have been for us month to month January our budget was 3,330 June it was 2,930 this month's budget we budgeted 4,285 cuz we knew it would be a higher spend month so no two months are the same and also because my income is so variable there's some months where we have a little bit more wiggle room versus others it definitely is easier to budget when you have a consistent income but not impossible when it comes to budgeting variable income I think it's again a bit of trial and error I personally like to lobal everything that I think I'm going to make so say I've invoiced for $10,000 I will budget for $5,000 because I know that you know not all of those invoices is going to be paid in time there's some things as well I think as a business owner or at least in my situation when you're self-employed there are some elements or some parts of your income that are consistent and usually before the month starts have a good idea of what income is going to come in from those streams or sources so I usually try and work off of that and then anything else is an extra bonus just keeping things realistic and then that way you're not ever disappointed when it comes to budgeting our quarterly bills try looking back at the last few bills and working out what your average is and then dividing it into a monthly amount so for example $150 water bill I need to set aside $50 a month because we have that separate bills account I'm never really worried about what the actual bill amount is or when it comes out I'm just worried about what it is on a monthly basis you could obviously go back and like in retrospect change the totals that you've set aside and then when it comes to actually using the spreadsheet I'll input my income so got paid on the 10th got paid 2,500 as I expected or as Nick expected should I say NX income I will set aside half of the money for my bills so 40 for my gas and putting 120 in my bills account for electricity $70 for water 98 for counter rate 79 for internet and we'll do 130 for our phone so that's $537 that I've put into my bills account and now I know I have $1,963 left to spend I know that I could put $500 into my car loan so I'm going to add this here car and that will show up here you can tick it off if you want oh I need to pay my mortgage half of that is one 1250 I believe mortgage oh I put that in the wrong one there we go so that's half paid for next payday I'll pay the other half again I'll make that transfer straight into my account I've got $213 left to spend whatever is left to spend is whatever is left over in my spending account and is for my variable expenses so then as the week goes by on the 12th I spend $50 on groceries that's deducted from here so I have I have $163 left in my account and it's updated here with the actual column so basically whatever you put in the transaction tracker will show up here whenever I make a transfer from my account I'm putting it in here which is why I like to update it every single day cuz there are some things that I look back on I'm like you know when it has like a really random Merchant name and you're like what was this like what did I spend this $99.90 on and it's like oh Red Rooster like if too much time has passed you're not going to remember what that transaction is the graphs will also update as you go so 74.9% towards debt 2.1% on expenses so we're doing really well with our spending and 23% towards bills now when I get paid because it is variable I'm not going to make $5,000 straight away I might make $1,000 one week and $2,000 the next and I'll just update the actual amount as I go so for example let's say I got paid $2,000 this week that'll be updated in my left to spend amount I'm going to put $500 in my travel fund cuz that's really important to me and that's going straight in my savings we keep all of our savings in one account just to keep things simple and the way I track it I do keep a note on my phone just for my own sake but also you can see everything in your annuals total so if you go down to savings I can see in January I say $500 and if I scrolled across I can see $500 of my savings is for travel and then come March if I actually go on a trip which would be lovely I just add it to my transaction tracker so I just go minus 500 I'm actually spending that money travel and that will show up in my left to spend and then I can spend it and track it as I go so $30 on eating out for my trip you basically just have to do a minus and then it will again show up in your annual totals so- 500 in March my actual amount is now zero I hope that makes sense yeah basically how I use this spreadsheet honestly nothing too crazy I'd like to try and keep it as simple as possible I know at first glance it might seem a little overwhelming but the more you use it the easier it Bec comes and it really does become one of your daily habits I also love a visual and the fact that I can see all of these different graphs and see in real time where my money is going is so motivating and I really think that's the key to being able to save money I think sometimes people over complicate it it's really as simple as spending less than you're making and obviously there's certain circumstances and situations where that's not possible and that's an entirely different thing but if you find yourself just spending beyond your means and not being able to save any money just start tracking see where that money goes don't even set a budget no expectations on yourself just track your money and you'll be shook cuz all those little miscellaneous purchases they add up really fast get real with yourself work out what you are okay on spending money on and areas that you are willing to sacrifice on and again keeping that why and that money goal at the center of everything you do is key and will really keep you motivated so yeah feel like that's enough of me yapping I am going to end off this video here hopefully I touched on everything if you have any specific questions though feel free to leave them down below I will do my best to answer them also follow me over on my Tik Tok and Instagram if you want to see more personal Finance content give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed and I'll see you guys very soon for another video bye guys