Financial Trust and Transparency w/ Coaches Shana & Vanessa EP 83

 Welcome to Top Self. My name is Shanenn Bryant, and I have master financial coaches and host of the Financial Coaching for Women podcast, awesome name, ladies, by the way,

 Shaina, and Vanessa are here with us today.

[00:01:15] Shanenn Bryant: You ladies really know how to take personal finance, make it fun, nonjudgmental, which is so huge, and makes it really, really simple. I love it. . Welcome to the show.

[00:01:31] Budget Besties: Thank you. We're excited. We're excited to be here. That's

[00:01:35] Shanenn Bryant: I assume you were friends before you went on this business venture or not really, because that happens sometimes too.

[00:01:41] Shanenn Bryant: hey, you're good at this. You're good at this. Let's team up. Tell theA story.

[00:01:46] Budget Besties: I think God had a plan from the beginning. we were not, we were not told the plan, but yeah, we met at a YMCA. Our boys were in a VPK together and we were in a workout class together. And, we started going to church together and fast forward, but there's, yeah. So that was what? They are 15 now, the boys, and they were four when we met. 11 years ago. We're younger though. They're older, but we got younger. Don't worry about that.

[00:02:11] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. tell me how that happens. after we talk about financial 

[00:02:14] Budget Besties: Okay. Yeah. We'll give you the age, the age reversal. Yep. Yep. That's the next one. Yep.

[00:02:19] Budget Besties: Oh goodness! I think people maybe going, hang on a second, why are we talking about finances on a podcast where we really work on overcoming insecurity and jealousy in relationships and romantic relationships. And when we all got together and had this conversation about what we wanted to talk about, this common thread word kept coming up.

[00:02:42] Shanenn Bryant: And that was trust. I tease on the podcast of saying, it's strange how I may not have trusted my husband to go out for guys night, but yet he's on my 401k and all my benefit, information.

[00:02:57] Shanenn Bryant: But. finance and trust really is important in a relationship, in a partnership, in a marriage. Can we talk a little bit about that?

[00:03:06] Budget Besties: absolutely. Yeah. we, so we work with couples mostly, we'll work with, with individuals for sure, the goal is to get them together, but most of their problems are not necessarily budget or money or lack of income or overspending. Most of the problems come from a lack of communication, a lack of trust. Yeah. And it's really about, what went on a long time ago that could have maybe caused that. But the questions you may be asked is do I trust them with the money? Do I trust them sticking to the budget? Do I trust them being honest about what they're spending their money on?

[00:03:39] Budget Besties: there's a lot of questions that kind of arise when we talk about Do they trust each other with their finances? Well, and, and another thing is, do I trust them emotionally? So like I am, I feel, maybe insecure about the way I've been dealing with money, or I have this debt that maybe I'm not talking about, or, I'm, I want to spend more, or I have a big dream or goal that I want to shoot for, but do I trust them to trust me?

[00:04:00] Budget Besties: emotionally, do I trust, do I feel secure sharing that? and so all of that is problems that we have to solve, in order to get to the point where we have a really healthy financial situation.

[00:04:10] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, and you know when people are I feel like at least for me when people are early dating That it seems like a weird topic to talk about. Like I remember the conversation that me and my husband first had when we were still dating about how much do you make and how much do you make? And it just seems so weird.

[00:04:30] Shanenn Bryant: I think we're a little bit more uptight about it in the U S probably than some other places. Just even the conversation feels a little funny, but then yeah, there's more to that of, I do not trust my husband. With his Amazon app, he orders it constantly. I don't, I'm going to have to remove it from his phone, but there are things like that, like I'm merging my life with you potentially, or even just living in the same household, how do we get to that point where we feel like we can trust somebody when it comes to finances?

[00:05:00] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. 

[00:05:01] Budget Besties: when you get married, there's the spender, usually in a saver, usually in every relationship. And the saver is all about saving and keeping as much as they can and not really necessarily hoarding it, but it's maybe because they didn't have a lot of money when they were growing up or their parents, they had a lot of money.

[00:05:16] Budget Besties: so money wasn't really a topic of conversation. they just knew it was always there, so they didn't really have to worry about it. And then the other person maybe is spending it because they never had a chance to spend it before they never, so when they see the money in the account, it automatically gets spent.

[00:05:29] Budget Besties: And so when you're not trusting somebody, it leads into Secret spending, hidden debt and all of this and lots of stress. And we've seen people when they come into marriages, they didn't even talk about finances. They didn't even talk about how many kids they want to have. there's a lot of missed conversations that are not happening before they take the next step in their relationship.

[00:05:49] Budget Besties: Yeah. And to Vanessa's point earlier, It really starts early. So what your parents modeled is a lot what you're going to take both when it comes to, jealousy, when it comes to how you deal with your spouse, how you talk to them, whether you fight, whether you don't. Vanessa loves to say this wonderful line that she never saw her parents fight once. And therefore she didn't, she was super surprised that was the thing that maybe people did that when they were married. And I was like, Oh, I was not surprised. I, that was like, we have different experience. But so a lot of it stems from how you grew up, what you saw, and then you're bringing that to your point.

[00:06:18] Budget Besties: You're like, okay, let's join everything. I'm already, maybe not so great, at budgeting, but, or my finances, but let me add someone to the pot. let's do that. I'm already confused. Let's add another person and this will be great. It's obviously going to go well.

[00:06:33] Shanenn Bryant: I get that, like, how did we hear our parents talk about money?

[00:06:37] Shanenn Bryant: And then you mesh that with, how did my partner's parents? Talk about money. So it sounds like most of the time you're probably coming from two different spaces anyway, and then you don't have the conversation

[00:06:48] Budget Besties: money is taboo. So we're already like, and then if we have other issues, money's like the last thing that I want to, for anybody, maybe even in a, what I would call a healthy marriage, money is still taboo in that one, To talk about, and, opposites attract, you see it in every marriage is always, you complete each other, which is great.

[00:07:06] Budget Besties: Except when you're coming together with your finances, you have two completely different views about money and how you're handling it. And then, one's frustrated at this one, that the other one's frustrated

[00:07:14] Budget Besties: at that one. And so you just really have to come together on that one. And, I think I remember a long time ago, Dave Ramsey having this date questionnaire 

[00:07:22] Budget Besties: of these tough questions to have with the other person of, Hey, what are your goals?

[00:07:27] Budget Besties: What are your finances? Are you in debt? Do you have student loan debt? Do you have credit cards? it's awkward, but sometimes it's necessary. 

[00:07:32] Shanenn Bryant: Okay, so I have a question we hear red flags in just relationships or red flags with your partner? but Are there money red flags to go, hang on a second. Maybe let's back up or have some more conversations.

[00:07:48] Budget Besties: I have a client. She's a pharmacist.

[00:07:49] Budget Besties: She's in her twenties. She's about to be debt free, credit card free. She has so much money and

[00:07:54] Budget Besties: savings like she needs to be looking for someone who values those same things that's going to match that. that's what I would say. We, I don't know if we could say specific red flags because we were, none of us were taught what to do.

[00:08:05] Budget Besties: All of us were confused. All of us are trying, so I don't know if it's like a red flag necessarily. Yeah. And, honestly for us, it's. The transparency. So what we want to do is make sure that you are fully transparent with your stuff, and then you'll be able to tell if the other person isn't.

[00:08:19] Budget Besties: And even if you're in your marriage right now, we just want to be completely open and honest about everything and get everything on the table and lay it out there. We say, Shanann likes to say ripping the bandit off. Yeah.

[00:08:29] Budget Besties: So like when we're talking about your ladies and if they, if they want to figure out how to start navigating this, that's the thing we have clients, they come on, they haven't told each other, they don't know what's happening.

[00:08:39] Budget Besties: They're telling us stuff that they haven't told each other. They're sitting next to each other in this session. And you work it all up in your head more than it is let's just get it out on the table. Yes. Somebody might be mad for a little bit, but let's, they can't, nobody can start healing, nothing can get better until we get it out on the table.

[00:08:52] Budget Besties: So that's really the first step. But what we think the biggest healer. Is to go into dreaming mode, right? Start dreaming together. So think about what's your shared goals, your shared dreams, what you're excited about. We always think like when you started, when you got married, you had all these, like our honeymoon and then we're going to do this and we're going to retire here and blah, whatever, like these great, awesome things. And then life happens, careers, children. Moving, like whatever, and, health. And so then we stopped doing that. But if we can start there and meet in the middle there, what are you excited about? what could be possible? That's a really good place to start. Yeah. We like to tell our people, you have to know your why.

[00:09:31] Budget Besties: Find your why and keep it in front of you, whether that's, Talk about it once a week or once a month in your budget meeting, pictures of it, put it in your bathroom mirror, put it at your desk at work. You have to know your why as a team and and know that you're both striving to achieve that together.

[00:09:48] Shanenn Bryant: love the conversation about dreams, especially after you've just said, hey, lay it out all on the table. Let's not keep secrets. And becoming really aware of what. what situation the other person is in. It's the same thing with jealousy, right? Talking about it, communication. You said that from the beginning.

[00:10:07] Shanenn Bryant: It's the same for everything, right? We've got to start talking about the elephant in the room or the thing or just having those conversations. Like maybe it ends up not an elephant and you go, Oh, great. you're in a much better place than I had even hoped. And you're in a much better place than I had even hoped.

[00:10:23] Shanenn Bryant: Maybe that's not usually the case, but 

[00:10:26] Budget Besties: Well, and it's,

[00:10:26] Budget Besties: all, as Marie Forleo would say, it's all figureoutable. It is figureoutable,

[00:10:29] Budget Besties: but it's not, if it's wrecking balls in your brain, if it's just, if you're leaving it up here and you're not like getting out and talking to them, like you just said, nobody can figure it out. 

[00:10:37] Budget Besties: It's probably the same conversation with. we were talking about with jealousy is with money. It's I didn't know that I didn't know this. I can't solve or help or fix something that I don't know because it's happening in here and you're not getting it out to me here. And I think about my husband. sometimes it surprised me with his goals. I was like. This is a goal of yours? I had no idea. And I'm sure he's the same with me. It's you said you're going to Australia with your mom when you're 45. When were you going to tell me that? I was like, Oh, I thought you did. Anyway, so whatever. So a lot of it is just, getting it out.

[00:11:05] Budget Besties: And the reason that's important to really start with is because you don't, you're not going to want to do the hard thing of budgeting and Getting your finances organized and all of it, unless like I said, you have a why, unless you have something more

[00:11:16] Budget Besties: exciting,to look forward to, that's going to make you want to do those little things to get the systems and the budget going, properly. I would say once you are completely transparent and everything's all out on the table, and I even had a couple, Listen, they were going through a really hard time and as part of their homework, I made them both sit together next to each other and pull each other's credit reports right while they were sitting there 

[00:11:37] Budget Besties: so they 

[00:11:37] Shanenn Bryant: Ooh. 

[00:11:38] Budget Besties: fully see everything that was going on financially.

[00:11:41] Budget Besties: and she texted me privately afterwards and she said, I feel so much better. Thank you for making us do that. because she had a lot of, Distrust going on, thinking that there were other things that she didn't know about, but

[00:11:50] Budget Besties: there wasn't like he was being completely honest, but she needed to see that, but then I told her, I said, okay, but then now the trust has to start, if you, everyone has a clean slate, let's do this together.

[00:11:59] Budget Besties: And the next part that we would talk about is building a budget together. So now that you're completely

[00:12:03] Budget Besties: transparent, you have all the goals, everything hashed out, let's now build this budget together. And the way that we do our system, everyone is involved. Because everyone needs to know what's going on with the money. So that way the trust continues or starts to build. I guess you can say from there,

[00:12:18] Shanenn Bryant: what an amazing, oh my gosh, we're getting ready to see each other's. Credit report. That's like sleeping 

[00:12:24] Budget Besties: I was just going to say, going to see you naked. going to see you naked.

[00:12:27] Shanenn Bryant: I'm getting ready to see you financially naked right now. it almost seems scarier.

[00:12:33] Shanenn Bryant: it could, right? To somebody who, if, you don't know. You don't know what that other person has. And it goes back to let's not keep those secrets going. It's so funny. I remember I had a friend, when I first started working and I looked up to her. She was my supervisor and I was really learning the ropes in this industry with her.

[00:12:53] Shanenn Bryant: And we, she came in one day and she had all of these like dry cleaner bags. And I said, what are you doing? And she said, this is how I shop. So she goes and buys new clothes. She brings them into the office and then she puts dry cleaner bags over them. So then when she takes them home, she can just bring them in.

[00:13:11] Budget Besties: I did not see 

[00:13:11] Shanenn Bryant: that she picks up from the dry cleaner. And I was like, Wow, that is intense. that is 

[00:13:18] Budget Besties: A whole system to hide things. 

[00:13:19] Shanenn Bryant: shopping.

[00:13:21] Budget Besties: Oh my gosh.

[00:13:23] Budget Besties: Yeah. it took a lot of work. It's a lot of work

[00:13:25] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:27] Budget Besties: to tell him. Yeah. But honestly, real quick, for anyone who also does that,that's why like getting on a budget and being honest about it, no.

[00:13:34] Budget Besties: you guys. You have, and I know it can be hard, but you have to know that you both truly do want the best for each other. It just may not be me being shown in the behavior, but you do want the best. And when you are vulnerable with, when you're financially naked with your spouse, when you're naked with your spouse, when you're being vulnerable, saying what your goals and dreams are, this builds some, a foundation for you to do all of these things. And you just want to be able to get to that point. Who else are you going to do it with? Nobody else is going to want to do that. But to the point of making a budget. And the people sneaking in their dry clean clothes. You can have a personal spending option in your budget.

[00:14:10] Budget Besties: And we actually say it's mandatory for the husband and the wife. You both have personal spending. It can be your own account. There's no accountability. There's no what'd you spend your money on? Nope. I get to spend whatever I want. And that's fine. That's okay. That's also part of trust. That's also that's our goal.

[00:14:25] Budget Besties: We want to just be able to, go to Sephora or whatever. And he wants to go to Bass Pro Shop and nobody's mad. It's fine. Nobody

[00:14:31] Budget Besties: has to hide shopping bags. Well, and the idea here is that you each get,how much is going into groceries and gas and how much is going towards bills.

[00:14:37] Budget Besties: And then you each have your own pocket money, right? And with, when you're within limits of that, you have some type of boundaries, Some type of guardrails there where you can blow it on whatever you want, but also, Hey, I know that I can't spend it all because then, Hey, our mortgage won't get paid or electricity won't get paid.

[00:14:51] Budget Besties: Right.

[00:14:52] Budget Besties: So we have some guardrails set up for there, but then it doesn't really matter what the other person spends their money on because they're staying within their limits and you're staying within yours and you're building trust, right? Cause everyone's involved in the finances. Everyone can see the account.

[00:15:03] Budget Besties: Everyone knows what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:05] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, I love that, because it's okay, we're on a diet, but we still get cheat days. in a sense, it's like similar to that, but with money, so then somebody doesn't feel like, oh, I can't go get something that I want, or, oh, now, this thing that was really important to me that, maybe it's getting your nails done or spa day or whatever.

[00:15:25] Shanenn Bryant: Or something very serious, then it still feels Oh, I can still do this.

[00:15:30] Shanenn Bryant: Do you guys recommend people separating their money or should like married couples have joint accounts?

[00:15:36] Budget Besties: Absolutely. They should be joined. 

[00:15:37] Budget Besties: And here's the deal. Unless you want to keep hiding stuff, unless you want to keep not building trust, then keep it separate. Yeah. We like to tell people that, when you're, when you have separate accounts, it means you have something to hide or there's trust.

[00:15:50] Budget Besties: There's not trust there. And you automatically are starting with one foot out the door. You're automatically starting. I know I can, I know I can back up. I know I can go at any point because I'm already, This much over here. and not all in. 

[00:16:02] Budget Besties: So to make it real clear, we say you have your bills account. It will be you'll be on it.

[00:16:07] Budget Besties: You'll both be on it and all the income will go in there into the bills account. And then all the bills will get paid from that bills account. Transfers will happen out. So you'll have transfers to your spending accounts, my husband, Chris would have his own spending account and I have my own spending account and those are separate.

[00:16:22] Budget Besties: It's not that he can't see it, but

[00:16:23] Budget Besties: it's mine. and then your savings accounts you're both on all of those. So you can see everything that's happening. And that's. A good thing. The more that you can do that, the more you're going to build together because you know what else happens when you do that?

[00:16:35] Budget Besties: So our system has you saving automatically to based on your budget. So then you both can see like me and Chris, our trip to Greece fund building right together.

[00:16:43] Budget Besties: And that's exciting together. You can see the good things together. You can both know, Oh, the mortgage just got paid. everybody knows what's

[00:16:50] Budget Besties: going on. And like Vanessa said, you usually have a saver and a spender or a nerd and a not nerd. That's what Dave says. So one person might be doing a little bit more work. That's fine. Somebody might be doing more work and putting more time into the budget.

[00:17:01] Budget Besties: And actually like setting it all up. But you're both doing it together. you're both making the decisions together. You're both involved. And this is one way, like when you're looking at it, you guys are all involved,

[00:17:13] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, because I think what probably happens is the person who, there's the one that's doing more of the work and they're actually paying the bills because they haven't done your automated system yet, which we're going to talk about here in a second. I think it's a good segue to that. But because they're doing that, then they're probably like, okay, I'm the one that needs to have control over, the bank account and, I'm gonna handle all that.

[00:17:38] Budget Besties: that also becomes a parent child relationship 

[00:17:40] Budget Besties: and we're not saying that happens intentionally. We're just saying it

[00:17:43] Budget Besties: happens. asking when things can happen. And that's not what we want. We want both adults deciding, like Shanann said, together, Hey, we're both getting 400 bucks a month and spending money, I don't care.

[00:17:53] Budget Besties: then it's it doesn't matter what you spend it on because we're both making the decision that amount is happening. And then we both know how much we're going to spend on groceries and gas and so on and so forth. and so that's why it's important for you both to make the budget together. so the budget together, we're going to say, because this is where it gets sticky. Like maybe he really values, the home maintenance projects And so you're, and you're like over here, And you're not, or you're the kind of person that really wants an emergency fund or, like you guys have different things or you want to be able to spend more on the kids, but he doesn't understand because he never has to do the spending.

[00:18:24] Budget Besties: there's all of this stuff that when we're apart, we don't know what's going on, but when we put it all on the budget together. Then that's when we work it, we do the work, we get it set up. And then the person who's the free spirit, who doesn't want to be looking at this numbers all the time, they just have money happening automatically and they don't have to.

[00:18:39] Budget Besties: And then you, the control freak, you know, what's going on all the time. It's automated. You feel really good about it. And so everybody wins. And then, you know what? We just have a bonus tip before we move on to tell you exactly about our, our, cause I feel like we already went here. So we're going to add it. We had a client there. They were so cool. They were, dog breeders. That was their job. They had super cute puppies. Anyway, that's how they got out of debt. It was really cute. Anyway, she said he will not come to a budget meeting unless I'm naked. Period. End of story. We were like, sure. Okay. So our bonus tip is if you can't get them to a budget meeting, you can be naked if it's necessary. It's fine. It will help. Bring snacks. snacks.

[00:19:15] Budget Besties: and 

[00:19:16] Shanenn Bryant: Okay.

[00:19:17] Budget Besties: Mega

[00:19:17] Shanenn Bryant: To the meeting. Okay. That's awesome. Bonus tip. 

[00:19:21] Budget Besties: Bonus extra.

[00:19:23] Shanenn Bryant: Bonus extra.

[00:19:24] Budget Besties: meetings don't have to be boring. 

[00:19:27] Budget Besties: Ever. 

[00:19:28] Shanenn Bryant: They don't have to be boring. I get that too, because like sometimes you just have I'm scheduling this and you're coming and that's probably the person that's, controlling the situation already. They're the person that probably is paying all of the 

[00:19:42] Budget Besties: Yeah. Which is why they're mad. Like we get it. Cause you're doing a lot of work 

[00:19:46] Budget Besties: and we don't feel like it's all on your shoulders. And then you have this resentment that they don't want to do it and you're having to make them do it. And that just keeps funneling. It keeps digging you deeper into this hole.

[00:19:56] Budget Besties: If you use our system, first of all, set up the budget and then do our system, then there won't be that resentment. There won't be the bulk of the work, like a lot of work on you. And he doesn't even know what's going on or what, or other ways. Sometimes it's the other way too. It won't be that way. One of the things too, we like to tell people is start by changing your vocabulary around money and how you talk about money. Instead of saying, this is my paycheck, or this is what I want to do. And this, that's yours over there. It is, this is ours. This is what we are doing. this is all for us, right? So you just change it from the singular to the pearl. And it just makes it more of a team atmosphere. It makes it more like everyone's deciding to do this together.

[00:20:33] Budget Besties: And this is what, this is what y'all are trying to achieve.

[00:20:36] Shanenn Bryant: okay, so we said definitely have joint accounts, but you can have separate spending accounts. I love that idea because the only reason that for so long my husband and I kept our separate is just because like I don't want to know I don't want to, have to communicate that I stopped and got a sandwich at such and such place.

[00:20:53] Shanenn Bryant: When, people, if they're really budget conscious or they're on a budget or they're paycheck to paycheck, sometimes that can be really difficult of oh, I have to remember to tell this person this. So I remember, back in the day of being like, oh, I don't ever want to do that. Because I don't want to have to communicate.

[00:21:11] Shanenn Bryant: So I love the separate spending. Okay. So let's talk about, let's free up the person, the controlling person that's paying all the bills and they're having to go in and they're keeping track. Let's talk about automating this. I love automation. Anything that you can automate in your life, I highly recommend.

[00:21:26] Shanenn Bryant: And I know you've got some great tips for that. So let's talk about 

[00:21:30] Budget Besties: So this is our, two hour TED talk. No, I'm just kidding. And we're going to do it in five minutes. So don't worry, we're going to speed through it. But truly, it is about making it as easy, simple and hands free as possible. The first part of our system is to separate your bills from your spending and your savings.

[00:21:45] Budget Besties: So if you think about your budget in five categories, you have your income. Congratulations, you made money. Then you have your debts. for joining us. And then you have bills. So those two categories, your debts and your bills, they're going to go into your bills account, right? And the other two categories spending, when you go get your sandwich, like you said, or when you go get groceries or gas, and then you have savings.

[00:22:05] Budget Besties: I'm saving for Christmas. I'm saving for travel, whatever. Those are the categories that we're working with and we want you to separate them. Because what you're talking about is not only just, I don't want to have to tell him. It's okay, let me look in this account and see, do I have money for the sandwich and to pay the mortgage? Like how

[00:22:20] Budget Besties: many transactions do I have to do the math for to see if

[00:22:22] Budget Besties: I actually have money to buy a sandwich? the confusion comes from everything coming out of one account and that's, and like we did a podcast and I think the first line of it, I said, we're not 16 anymore. you can have more than one checking account and one savings account, right? And, but a lot of people don't know that a lot of people don't know that, Hey, you can go to your bank or if you're at the wrong bank, they won't let you, but, or they charge you fees, but you have to find a bank that'll let you, but you can have multiple checkings, multiple debit cards, multiple savings accounts if you want.

[00:22:46] Budget Besties: And it's not complicated. It actually is so simple and so streamlined. But the idea, like Shanann says, is you have everything coming into your income is coming into your bills account. That's paying all your bills and your debt payments. So Now we categorize a bill as anything that you're being charged for, anything that you're getting invoiced for on a reoccurring basis, right?

[00:23:03] Budget Besties: That's what a bill is. and then from there, you have everything transferring a certain amount of money, like Shanann said earlier, per paycheck into, your groceries account, your, maybe your eating out account, your personal spending accounts. That's how you know how much money that you can spend on those items.

[00:23:19] Budget Besties: And Like you guys were talking about, you don't have to shuffle through the account to see did the mortgage

[00:23:25] Budget Besties: come out? The electricity bill? Do I have a check lingering? Like none of that is happening. Yeah. So our system just helps you know exactly what you need to keep in that bills account so that you're never ever going to have another NSF fee.

[00:23:36] Budget Besties: Everything's going to get paid. You're fine. And you just, that's all that's coming out of that system. And it's, or that, that account, you don't really even have, you can monitor it, but you don't have to look in there. On the other hand, when you're at, The grocery store and you're like, okay, you can look right on your bank app and say, this is how much I have for groceries. and I can go get groceries and I'm going to go now. And I know how exactly how much I have. And so those are, so that all happens automatically. Those transfers, like Vanessa said, you're based on your budget. So we do a budget on a month, right? We're saying how much money do I make? How much are all my bills?

[00:24:05] Budget Besties: How much do I spend on the groceries? And then anything left over, how much can I save for these other things that are really important to me? Okay. That is a month. And then. The automations happen on the paycheck day, right? So your income gets deposited and then, maybe 500 goes to groceries, 200 goes to spending, a hundred goes to travel, whatever it is.

[00:24:24] Budget Besties: And

[00:24:25] Budget Besties: that can all happen automatically. And then when you wake up, your money has your bank accounts, your personal assistant, your money is all where it needs to go. You know, exactly how much you have for everything. You've automatically been saving go girl. Okay. And your debt, your bills are paid without you.

[00:24:38] Budget Besties: Even you set those up on automatic. Everything is just going. 

[00:24:41] Budget Besties: The problem is, is everyone is, they're living paycheck to paycheck, and they're thinking, well, with this paycheck I have to pay these bills and pay this and pay this. So I may get a hundred dollars in groceries this month because of, I'm bill heavy on the front half of the month.

[00:24:53] Budget Besties: And then in this paycheck, feast or famine, yes, the feast or famine, right? And in this paycheck I can actually get groceries. And, there's so much of that. So we want you to think of the month as a whole. How, what can I do?what am I accomplishing as a whole? And then each paycheck, you're putting a certain amount of money aside every single time you get paid. And those groceries accounts, the spending account, the savings account, things like that. And the idea is to do the same thing over and over again. So it's automated your hand it's hands off. so

[00:25:17] Budget Besties: for instance, my husband gets paid every Wednesday, Thursday morning, all the transfers happen and I haven't done anything cause it's all set up automatically. It's really nice. No,

[00:25:26] Shanenn Bryant: Okay, so I have a question. What if people are at really different levels? of income. Because I assume it's you can't ask that other person or maybe I'm just guessing, but so if you both are putting your paycheck in there, do you, is there some formula or at least general rule of thumb or is that something that you all discuss of saying, okay, he makes less than her, she makes less than him and so your portion, this is how much of yours is going to come in?

[00:25:55] Budget Besties: we just got to have everyone's money come into the same account. It doesn't matter who gets paid what. And we actually have a lot of situations where maybe the wife isn't even working and they're just at home managing the household and things like that.

[00:26:05] Budget Besties: So we see that it doesn't matter. We just say pick a paycheck cycle.

[00:26:08] Budget Besties: So maybe you guys get paid on alternate weeks. Maybe you guys get paid on the same weeks. It doesn't matter. Just pick one paycheck cycle. Where all the transfers happen and everything else is just coming into the account, feeding all the bills. Yeah, it's one big pot. All of your money, like Vanessa said, is we, us, ours.

[00:26:22] Budget Besties: It's all going into the same pot. And then the amount that you can transfer out is based on that budget. And it just, the paychecks just help you get in a rhythm. 

[00:26:31] Budget Besties: for example, I get paid, once a month. All of our paychecks get paid once a month, which is a lot of people don't want to, don't want to budget.

[00:26:37] Budget Besties: Okay, go ahead and make 400 last the whole month. you're welcome.

[00:26:42] Budget Besties: So the paycheck helps you get in a rhythm where I know, and I lose some of that anxiety, whatever, because I know every week or every two weeks, I'm getting more money in my spending. I'm getting more money in gas and groceries. So I just have to

[00:26:52] Budget Besties: kind of make it through that cycle.

[00:26:53] Budget Besties: and then, the other really fun thing is we say bank account balancing right now. When you're at the place getting a sandwich, you pull up your phone. You're like, okay, do I have money for my sandwich? Do I have enough money? the cool thing about this is obviously you can pull up and see if you have enough money for a sandwich.

[00:27:06] Budget Besties: We're all really wanting a sandwich now, right? Is it just me?

[00:27:08] Budget Besties: Okay. 

[00:27:08] Shanenn Bryant: I'm starving.

[00:27:09] Budget Besties: And, but then you can also, and this is what I love. You can pull it up and see, look how much I've got set for Christmas. I've got set for, the kids sports or whatever, your things are I've got for travel. You can look at that and you see that grow every paycheck and it makes you feel really good.

[00:27:24] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah,

[00:27:24] Budget Besties: So we're just basically, you're already bank account balancing, but you're doing it the wrong way with the one account, trying to figure out what you can spend in there. we're doing is we're transforming your bank account balancing into the right way to do it is to separating your money into the different accounts.

[00:27:38] Budget Besties: So then all you have to do, I will pull up my gas and groceries account and go, I already got gas. Cause that's the first thing we do every week. So we know that then the rest of it is for groceries. So then I'm like,

[00:27:47] Budget Besties: okay, I know I have a hundred bucks to last me two days for groceries. Cause we already got the bulk of it at the beginning of the week.

[00:27:52] Budget Besties: So we're good. And that's the only, balancing or checking of the money that you have to do is looking at that account. You don't have to do anything else.

[00:27:59] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, it's so good. So good, ladies. Okay, one last question. Thank you so much. Anything else you want to talk about for the automated part that we didn't cover? 

[00:28:09] Shanenn Bryant: It's so 

[00:28:10] Budget Besties: Oh, I mean, we could go into a million more details, but the point is, I'll say this, no spending from the bills account. The bills is protected. There's no spending from that. All the spending comes from those checking accounts. and leave your bills. It's like in a safe castle with like guardrails and like battering, no battering rams, whatever, all the things that's so locked away.

[00:28:28] Budget Besties: You don't even have to, you don't even do anything with that. Okay.

[00:28:30] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah, stay out of that transfer function, right? Yeah, no transferring savings to checking, right? Yeah. okay, so one last question. if you had to pick one, biggest financial mistake that people make, is there something that just really stands out?

[00:28:53] Budget Besties: I would say they're not communicating with each other about money. That's just one of the biggest things that, that we

[00:28:58] Budget Besties: see that, that first came to my mind. Okay. So when you say first, you're going to give us three, right? So they're not communicating. They have everything in one account. That's number one thing that we see is like, of course you're, you don't know what they What the heck's going on?

[00:29:09] Budget Besties: You have a hundred transactions coming every couple of

[00:29:12] Budget Besties: weeks in that account. Nobody knows. I can't know. Like your finances are so much more complicated than it was when grandma had a coffee can and the money between her mattress. So let's just use the systems that we have and make it organized and simple.

[00:29:24] Budget Besties: So

[00:29:25] Shanenn Bryant: yeah. it's funny when you guys were talking about like the different accounts, okay, and so this is the grocery money and this is the, spending money, or this is the gas money. When I was first starting out working, and this will tell you how old I am, I did that. It was like my first little system, but I did it with envelopes.

[00:29:42] Shanenn Bryant: You know, so you put okay, this much. And so I knew, but it, so it works now, thank goodness. We've to make 

[00:29:50] Budget Besties: So that's, 

[00:29:50] Shanenn Bryant: easier.

[00:29:52] Budget Besties: that's what we call it. The digital envelope system. and it is, it's the exact same thing. So we started out, we are Dave girls. We love him and we try to get everybody's cash. Not everybody is on board with that. Come to find out.

[00:30:03] Budget Besties: Yeah. So we're just working with that habit. if you're not.

[00:30:08] Budget Besties: Using cash. That's fine. Just, we're replacing, the credit cards with the debit cards, right? And then we're leaving the bills debit card at home because you're not spending out of that. You're only spending out of like your gas and groceries and your personal pocket money. So you're replacing the credit cards with the debit card.

[00:30:22] Budget Besties: You're replacing the cat. We're, for our clients, they want to replace the cash envelope with a digital envelope. So just cause when, like when we went to Disney, we had a bunch of cash in the Disney envelope. That was, we're also old. It's fine. and so then. I mean mature. We're just mature.

[00:30:35] Budget Besties: Um, and now we have a travel bank account.

[00:30:37] Budget Besties: Instead of it being a cash

[00:30:39] Budget Besties: envelope in our safe, it's in the bank and it's labeled. That's the other thing. We label all the accounts. You can rename all your bank accounts. Yeah. It's so much fun. We had our client, the first one that did it, she renamed her, Bill's account to My Name is No. So,so yeah, you can just do whatever you need to do to

[00:30:53] Budget Besties: make it 

[00:30:53] Budget Besties: fun. 

[00:30:55] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, I've got some, My name is no accounts to set up for my husband. I That's so 

[00:31:02] Budget Besties: well,speaking of, that we also had one, she labeled their emergency fund because of her husband and we love him so much, touch us and you die. So that's maybe a little less, fun.

[00:31:13] Shanenn Bryant: Oh my gosh, I'm sure, like, the most creative, like, names for the accounts.

[00:31:18] Budget Besties: Yeah. Yeah. It was so fun. Yeah.

[00:31:21] Shanenn Bryant: ladies, thank you so much for being on TopSelf. What great information. we've got to start trusting each other across the board. If we're going to be in this partnership with each other, no matter what it is, finances, whatever it is, we've got to start trusting each other.

[00:31:38] Shanenn Bryant: Thank you for all the valuable tips and for being on TopSelf. Oh,

[00:31:41] Budget Besties: the naked part. Okay. if you're all the nakeds were like, that was our bonus tip, financially naked to actually naked, about, it's fine, but also just in case your listeners are interested, we do have a podcast. You were super sweet about the name of it, financial coaching for women.

[00:31:57] Budget Besties: And then also we have, freebie. For it's called 49 smart money moves. It's awesome. Yeah. We basically went through all of our recaps and everything with our clients and said, what are the things that we say all the time, like actionable steps that we have our clients do immediately in the first month or two of coaching.

[00:32:13] Budget Besties: We put it all together in a really pretty packet for you. And we have that for you at budgetbesties. com forward slash smart money.

[00:32:21] Shanenn Bryant: oh, so good. Okay, I, that will be definitely linked in the show notes. Ladies, such valuable information. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:32:31] Budget Besties: ​