Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #215| Why Traditional Budgeting Doesn’t Work for Busy Women (And What Does)

Transcript

#215| Why Traditional Budgeting Doesn’t Work for Busy Women (And What Does) · Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing

• 0:00
  Michelle Gauthier: If budgeting feels like the B-word, you'd rather avoid you are not alone.
• 0:10
  Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
• 0:17
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
• 0:22
  Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
• 0:27
  Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
• 0:36
  Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friends.
• 0:37
  Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
• 0:38
  Michelle Gauthier: Today I'm joined by budget besties, Shayna and Vanessa, and they are two real life friends who turned their own money overwhelming into a simple, beautiful system that actually works.
• 0:48
  Michelle Gauthier: If you listen to me talk about my review of 2025, one of the areas that I want to focus on is paying more attention to my money, where it's going, where it should be going, and just have a really easy system.
• 1:02
  Michelle Gauthier: So I was really excited to have these two on as guests.
• 1:05
  Michelle Gauthier: The subject of money and budgeting can be overwhelming.
• 1:08
  Michelle Gauthier: It to me always feels like it's not that complicated.
• 1:11
  Michelle Gauthier: There's just a lot to do and a lot of places to check and know.
• 1:15
  Michelle Gauthier: But when you listen today, you'll discover why budgeting has felt so hard in the past and good news, how it's not your fault, how to create a calm, automatic system that tells your money where to go, and the concept of a spending account that gives you freedom and control.
• 1:31
  Michelle Gauthier: If you've ever felt like I make decent money, but I have nothing to show for it, or I make decent money, but I just don't really know that much about where my money is going, this conversation is going to feel great to you.
• 1:43
  Michelle Gauthier: Let's dig in.
• 1:45
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much, budget besties, for joining me today.
• 1:48
  Michelle Gauthier: I'm so excited to talk to you.
• 1:49
  Michelle Gauthier: You guys can't see this because this is audio only, but we all showed up in some version of hot pink.
• 1:55
  Michelle Gauthier: So thank you, Shana and Vanessa.
• 1:57
  Michelle Gauthier: And I'm excited for you to help us make our money feel calm.
• 2:00
  Michelle Gauthier: And my personal goal for this interview is to motivate myself to have a budget and stick to it.
• 2:06
  Michelle Gauthier: Because I, it's like I want to, but then I just don't stick with it.
• 2:11
  Michelle Gauthier: And so no pressure, but I need you to fix that throughout this.
• 2:14
  Budget Besties: Oh, no problem.
• 2:14
  Budget Besties: I love how you have a personal motive here.
• 2:16
  Budget Besties: This is fantastic.
• 2:17
  Budget Besties: Yeah, honestly, yes.
• 2:19
  Budget Besties: Thank you for having us on.
• 2:20
  Budget Besties: We're really excited to talk about the B-word.
• 2:21
  Budget Besties: We're gonna help you because what I heard is I want to budget, but I also don't want to budget.
• 2:25
  Budget Besties: And that's what we're here for.
• 2:26
  Budget Besties: Our system is that kind of system.
• 2:28
  Budget Besties: So we can't wait to talk to you about it.
• 2:30
  Michelle Gauthier: Perfect.
• 2:30
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so please start off by telling me.
• 2:33
  Michelle Gauthier: I just asked them before we started recording, were you guys already besties before you started this business?
• 2:37
  Michelle Gauthier: So I know that is true, but tell me how you surely you didn't grow up as besties and graduate college and say, let's start this business.
• 2:44
  Michelle Gauthier: So tell me how you got here and what you do.
• 2:47
  Budget Besties: Yeah, so we met at the YMCA working out together when our boys were four, and they are now 17.
• 2:52
  Budget Besties: So we've been friends for a while.
• 2:54
  Budget Besties: But we started teaching FPU, which is Dave Ramsey's financial peace university class together.
• 3:00
  Budget Besties: And we realized when we were teaching that, because we're both financially wired, we love all things money, budgets, spreadsheet nerds, like we're all about that.
• 3:07
  Budget Besties: Super nerds, super nerds.
• 3:08
  Budget Besties: And so when we were doing that class, one of the instructions is to make a budget.
• 3:12
  Budget Besties: And we realized that nobody actually knew how to do that.
• 3:16
  Budget Besties: The expectation was set that you knew how to make a budget, you knew the ebbs and flows of creating a budget, but that wasn't actually part of the course.
• 3:24
  Budget Besties: And so we decided to really focus on what that means for people and how to create a budget that they can stick to, that they love, and that truly allows them to be bougie on a budget.
• 3:35
  Michelle Gauthier: And what were you doing before this?
• 3:37
  Michelle Gauthier: Before you became the budget besties.
• 3:40
  Budget Besties: Yeah, we were like Vanessa said, we met when the boys were four.
• 3:44
  Budget Besties: We were doing life together.
• 3:46
  Budget Besties: We paused from work and did life together while they were young.
• 3:49
  Budget Besties: And that's what we were doing, we were like Vanessa will always say, we were going to the library, free reading events, we're going to the vacation Bible schools, going to the beach, like trying to figure out now, fast forward now, that was really good because there's no time, there's no extra like anything.
• 4:05
  Budget Besties: We are now very exactly I'm sorry, like the overwhelmed working woman.
• 4:08
  Budget Besties: And so we have been doing everything we're doing to help serve us, who we are now and who we were then, to make the budgeting like super simple, super easy.
• 4:15
  Budget Besties: And we were learning everything that we implement now back then.
• 4:18
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 4:18
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 4:19
  Budget Besties: The book that we both read was The Total Money Makeover that Dave Ramsey put out a long time ago.
• 4:24
  Budget Besties: And I think we learned how to do debt differently.
• 4:27
  Budget Besties: And what you hear is the way you're supposed to tackle debt and the way that you're supposed to be living and all this.
• 4:33
  Budget Besties: And I remember going through that being super stressed, thinking, oh my gosh, like my hair was falling out as my house turning gray.
• 4:39
  Budget Besties: Like it was just a moment that I didn't love so much.
• 4:42
  Budget Besties: And then when her and I came together to create this business and we were working with our clients, they did not want to live like that.
• 4:48
  Budget Besties: And we totally got it because I'd been there.
• 4:50
  Budget Besties: And so when we were creating their budgets, we figured out a way to allow them to go on a date night, take their family to Chick-fil-A, go to the fall festival, and then hey, also you can pay off your debt.
• 5:03
  Budget Besties: You can save for Christmas, go take that vacation, but also you're paying on debt.
• 5:07
  Budget Besties: So it was just finding the middle ground of what we did not want to do and what they were told they were supposed to be doing when they create a budget.
• 5:16
  Budget Besties: And we were little rebels on that and found a wonderful, lovely way to budget that's automatic, that's easy, that's simple, that just allows them to the freedom to spend, truly.
• 5:26
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's so awesome.
• 5:27
  Michelle Gauthier: So you took your own experience and turned it into something doable.
• 5:31
  Michelle Gauthier: And as you can imagine, this whole audience listening is overwhelmed and short on time.
• 5:36
  Michelle Gauthier: And I think it would be wonderful if you could tell us all your secrets.
• 5:40
  Michelle Gauthier: What should we do to not hate budgeting anymore?
• 5:45
  Michelle Gauthier: And so many of the people who listen to this show have great jobs and they're working so hard.
• 5:50
  Michelle Gauthier: And people will tell me it's all gone, everything's so expensive.
• 5:54
  Michelle Gauthier: I have nothing to show for it, even though I'm working so hard and I don't really have the time to think about it or how to fix that.
• 6:01
  Michelle Gauthier: So, what should the listener and also me do about that?
• 6:05
  Budget Besties: So we know that the budget is the B-word and we understand like what you're saying.
• 6:09
  Budget Besties: But what we want them to understand first and foremost is no one ever taught you how to budget.
• 6:14
  Budget Besties: And that's why it feels this overwhelming, insurmountable thing that I don't and truly all you've ever heard about budgeting is it has to be restrictive, we have to say no, all of that kind of stuff.
• 6:22
  Budget Besties: And what you said is our people, which is why we're all aligned here.
• 6:26
  Budget Besties: Our people say, I make good money, but I have nothing to show for it.
• 6:29
  Budget Besties: And that really does seem to make people feel like a lot of shame and there's just so much heaviness on it.
• 6:34
  Budget Besties: And we want to flip that script.
• 6:36
  Budget Besties: We're gonna tell you about budgeting, we're gonna make it simple.
• 6:39
  Budget Besties: We're gonna teach you how to separate things so that it's really clear and easy.
• 6:42
  Budget Besties: And then we're listening, this is the one, Michelle.
• 6:44
  Budget Besties: We're gonna automate it because listen, you do not need to be wasting your time actually going through doing anything manually.
• 6:50
  Budget Besties: We're gonna teach you to let your bank be your personal assistant and run your budget for you.
• 6:55
  Michelle Gauthier: Amazing.
• 6:55
  Michelle Gauthier: Where do I sign up?
• 6:58
  Budget Besties: So the first step in all this is to create a budget where you can see everything on one page.
• 7:03
  Budget Besties: When we first came together, we were using other people's budgets for our clients.
• 7:08
  Budget Besties: And then we said, you know what, let's try to partner with these very smart people that already have budgets created, like on Etsy or Google or Amazon.
• 7:15
  Budget Besties: They've already successful in creating a budget.
• 7:17
  Budget Besties: Let's try to partner with them.
• 7:18
  Budget Besties: And Michelle, when we looked at them, they were awful.
• 7:21
  Budget Besties: They had all these charts and they were requiring you to track everything and write every expense down for the month.
• 7:27
  Budget Besties: And we didn't want to do that.
• 7:28
  Budget Besties: We had words like fixed and variable and wants and needs, fixed and variable, all these boy words.
• 7:34
  Budget Besties: And we did not have time to track.
• 7:36
  Budget Besties: That's not what we wanted to do.
• 7:37
  Budget Besties: That wasn't our idea of a budget.
• 7:39
  Budget Besties: And so we actually hired a designer to build our own.
• 7:42
  Budget Besties: And it is beautiful, girl.
• 7:45
  Budget Besties: It was a lot of fun.
• 7:46
  Budget Besties: It's beautiful, it's airy, it's easy to read.
• 7:48
  Budget Besties: And so it's what it allows you to do is to be able to see all of your numbers written out clearly organized on one page.
• 7:56
  Budget Besties: Yeah, we were just talking to a client that graduated, and she's like, when I started working with you guys, it was the first time I ever knew how much I actually make in a month and how much I cost in a month.
• 8:04
  Budget Besties: Because what's happening, Michelle, is we're in this modern time where you have about three times as many bills as your parents or your grandparents did.
• 8:11
  Budget Besties: There's just more subscriptions, there's more opportunities for your money to go a different direction.
• 8:15
  Budget Besties: And like there, there's credit cards and then there's Venmo and there's PayPal.
• 8:18
  Budget Besties: Everything is so complicated and overwhelming, hello, and cluttery.
• 8:23
  Budget Besties: And so what we wanted to do is give you a chance to see everything on one paper.
• 8:27
  Budget Besties: And so our budget, like Vina said, it has the income call in.
• 8:30
  Budget Besties: Like, how about let's see how much actually you make every month.
• 8:32
  Budget Besties: And that's a great, that's a good number.
• 8:33
  Budget Besties: We like to look at your debt minimums only.
• 8:35
  Budget Besties: We like to start there.
• 8:36
  Budget Besties: What are we paying on debt?
• 8:38
  Budget Besties: How much is the minimum?
• 8:39
  Budget Besties: And so it's slowly going to subtract from that income number.
• 8:41
  Budget Besties: The next thing is bills.
• 8:42
  Budget Besties: Bill is anything with the due date, it's very simple.
• 8:45
  Budget Besties: But a lot of times in other budgets, they mix in things like groceries because it's a need, but that's not a bill.
• 8:50
  Budget Besties: And that's not how you behave with your money.
• 8:52
  Budget Besties: So we want to see all of your bills in one column.
• 8:54
  Budget Besties: And that's really good for you to see.
• 8:55
  Budget Besties: Sometimes this is the first time you've seen that I have Spotify and Prime Music and Apple between this household.
• 9:02
  Budget Besties: And I probably don't need all of those, right?
• 9:03
  Budget Besties: So it's a great little reminder.
• 9:05
  Budget Besties: And then the other parts of the budget are spending and savings.
• 9:08
  Budget Besties: And that's what makes the way that we want you to budget better because it actually matches what you do in real life.
• 9:14
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
• 9:14
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
• 9:14
  Michelle Gauthier: So is this pretty budget?
• 9:17
  Michelle Gauthier: Is that something that people can get?
• 9:19
  Michelle Gauthier: Do you have that?
• 9:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Is that like on your website that they can purchase or is it part of a whole system?
• 9:24
  Budget Besties: Or yeah, yeah.
• 9:25
  Budget Besties: They can go to budgetbesties.com forward slash Michelle G, Michelle G, right?
• 9:30
  Budget Besties: And the other thing about it, Michelle, it does the math for you.
• 9:33
  Budget Besties: Super important.
• 9:34
  Budget Besties: There are check boxes that when you click it, it dims out and crosses it out.
• 9:38
  Budget Besties: And it's really only for the bills because again, we're not tracking your everyday expenses.
• 9:42
  Budget Besties: That's not what we're doing.
• 9:43
  Budget Besties: Check boxes.
• 9:44
  Budget Besties: I personally love checking and crossing some off my list.
• 9:46
  Budget Besties: So we added that.
• 9:47
  Michelle Gauthier: Check boxes, even if I do it after I still write it down.
• 9:50
  Michelle Gauthier: You have to add it.
• 9:52
  Michelle Gauthier: It's important.
• 9:52
  Budget Besties: And even the husbands who use our system say, this thing is really pretty to look at.
• 9:58
  Budget Besties: It's so nice and clean and crisp.
• 10:00
  Budget Besties: And so it's not just for the girls, it's for the dudes too.
• 10:03
  Budget Besties: But it's just, it's a really great way for you to have all of your money in one place.
• 10:07
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 10:07
  Budget Besties: And see what's what's happening with your money.
• 10:09
  Budget Besties: That's a lot of times.
• 10:10
  Budget Besties: I don't, I'm making all this money.
• 10:11
  Budget Besties: I don't know what it's doing.
• 10:11
  Budget Besties: I don't know where it's going.
• 10:12
  Budget Besties: Let's look and see.
• 10:13
  Budget Besties: When we do that, when we get it all on one paper, a lot of times people see, oh, I have more left over than I thought, as long as I'm if I'm actually being honest.
• 10:20
  Budget Besties: Or they might start to see what the actual problem is, if it's bills, if it's spending, whatever.
• 10:24
  Budget Besties: So the other part, so that's simplifying.
• 10:26
  Budget Besties: We want it to be super simple.
• 10:27
  Budget Besties: You can get your budget all on one page, and then we want to separate.
• 10:30
  Budget Besties: And that's important because that is what's going to make it actually simple.
• 10:34
  Budget Besties: You're going to have a separate account for your bills and then a separate account for spending.
• 10:38
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
• 10:38
  Michelle Gauthier: That makes so much sense.
• 10:40
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that idea.
• 10:41
  Budget Besties: So that's really an it's a new concept that a lot of people haven't even thought about yet.
• 10:46
  Budget Besties: And so we've the first one is the simplify, which is putting everything on one paper.
• 10:50
  Budget Besties: The second one, like Shana just said, is that separation.
• 10:53
  Budget Besties: When you have one account doing all of the work for you and your like your checking account, it's so convoluted.
• 10:59
  Budget Besties: It's so messy.
• 11:00
  Budget Besties: There's so much going on.
• 11:01
  Budget Besties: You don't know what's what.
• 11:02
  Budget Besties: When you go to maybe buy groceries at the store, you're asking yourself, did the water bill come out?
• 11:07
  Budget Besties: Did this come out?
• 11:08
  Budget Besties: Did the check and field subscription come out?
• 11:10
  Budget Besties: There's so many different things that you're trying to figure out what hasn't or has come out of the account to allow you to spend the money that you quote unquote see in there.
• 11:18
  Budget Besties: But the reality is that you don't know.
• 11:20
  Budget Besties: You don't know what's going on.
• 11:22
  Budget Besties: And some people will just see that big number in the account and they think that they can spend it and they forget all the things that they have to come out throughout the month.
• 11:29
  Budget Besties: So what we want you to do is have probably your main checking account that you're using now is going to stay as your bills account.
• 11:35
  Budget Besties: Okay.
• 11:35
  Budget Besties: So we want to think of it as a funnel.
• 11:37
  Budget Besties: Your income comes in, all this money goes into your bills account, and anything that's staying there is just to pay for your bills and your minimum debt payments.
• 11:45
  Budget Besties: And then we want you to open up a separate checking account, girl.
• 11:47
  Budget Besties: And this is where the magic happens for your spending.
• 11:50
  Budget Besties: Your spending needs to be completely separate.
• 11:52
  Budget Besties: And because it has some guardrails around it and allows you to say, okay, I'm allocating all of this for my bills and my debt payments, and all of this over here in a separate account is that's because that's where you live in your budget, where you swipe a card, where you tap.
• 12:06
  Budget Besties: That is all you're spending.
• 12:08
  Budget Besties: And so you're separating that so you can clearly see how much you have to spend on gas and groceries and date night and things like that.
• 12:15
  Michelle Gauthier: One thing I found on there last month was that my kids had been using it and I had $204 over the course of a month at Culver's alone, not to mine other ice cream charges and things like that.
• 12:28
  Michelle Gauthier: Like what?
• 12:30
  Budget Besties: Because I'm not looking at it.
• 12:31
  Budget Besties: And I think that's the part of the problem, and we're on overwhelmed working woman, is because you don't have time, you have not yet found time to figure out how to figure this out, which we get.
• 12:40
  Budget Besties: And you don't, you need a system that does it for you.
• 12:42
  Budget Besties: First of all, we're not like super huge about debt or getting out of debt or like going on rice and beans or whatever, but we know that you make enough money that you don't need to rely on credit cards and that a credit card balance is not a budget.
• 12:53
  Budget Besties: So what we actually just the same client I was just talking about, we just got off talking with her.
• 12:57
  Budget Besties: Her kids have their own spending accounts.
• 12:59
  Budget Besties: She gives them a little bit of money each month.
• 13:01
  Budget Besties: And when they go to Culvers, they can go to Culvers, but they have an amount and that actually teaches them how to budget too.
• 13:07
  Budget Besties: And it's the same concept for you.
• 13:09
  Budget Besties: You would have a spending account and you would have money in there, and it goes in there.
• 13:12
  Budget Besties: And that's a third part of our system, is automate.
• 13:14
  Budget Besties: Your bills account would automatically send money into your spending, either every week or every uh two weeks for you.
• 13:20
  Budget Besties: That way you always have spending money.
• 13:21
  Budget Besties: But also it helps you to stick, like Vanessa said, to some sort of guardrail.
• 13:25
  Budget Besties: It's whatever you want.
• 13:26
  Budget Besties: We want you to be bougie in a budget.
• 13:27
  Budget Besties: It doesn't mean you can only get $5 or $20.
• 13:29
  Budget Besties: You can do whatever you want, but at least you know how much you have to spend and it's completely separate from your bill.
• 13:33
  Budget Besties: That's all taken care of.
• 13:34
  Budget Besties: Like check check in your mind, no clutter, no anxiety.
• 13:37
  Budget Besties: I know that's good.
• 13:38
  Budget Besties: And then I have money over here to spend.
• 13:40
  Budget Besties: But what's really important is then the rest of this, whatever I'm not spending because I'm not using a credit card, which has a I can spend as much as I want kind of balance.
• 13:48
  Budget Besties: Then I can start saving for things that are important, which is what we want for you.
• 13:52
  Budget Besties: We want you to be your own bank and have savings for those trips that you're going to take and be in charge of your money.
• 13:57
  Budget Besties: And when you set this all up, you go from feeling like it's overwhelming, I don't want to, and then it's all running without you having to do anything.
• 14:03
  Budget Besties: Yeah, because you know what you are doing is you're basically a month behind, right?
• 14:07
  Budget Besties: So you are swiping the credit card exactly in the moment, you're swipe, and then at the end of the month, you go to pay it off.
• 14:12
  Budget Besties: So your debt balance is increasing, but the money in your bank sometimes could be decreasing, and people are spending both at the same time.
• 14:19
  Budget Besties: They're spent, they're swiping their debit card, they're swiping their credit card, and then they go to pay that credit card and they realize they don't have enough in the bank to cover it.
• 14:25
  Budget Besties: And I'm not saying that's you, but that's just what we've seen in the past.
• 14:28
  Budget Besties: And it just puts them in a place that doesn't really feel great.
• 14:32
  Budget Besties: Because with using a credit card, it's just like that bank account.
• 14:35
  Budget Besties: It's got a million transactions and it's just going up.
• 14:37
  Budget Besties: And there's no way to really put some guardrails around saying, you know what?
• 14:41
  Budget Besties: I love having spending money for myself.
• 14:43
  Budget Besties: But in order for me to want to be wealthy, in order for me to want to continue and be successful with my financial goals, with what I want in my life, I know I need a only cap it at $400 a month or whatever that looks like for you.
• 14:54
  Budget Besties: Again, everyone's budget's different.
• 14:56
  Budget Besties: So being able to have a spending column in your budget where you live at, right?
• 15:00
  Budget Besties: So that's where all the swiping happens.
• 15:02
  Budget Besties: That's where everything happens.
• 15:02
  Budget Besties: Being able to stay and live in there and let everything else happen, like your bills being paid and your savings building, that is really what's going to give you peace of mind when you go spend money.
• 15:12
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, because otherwise it's just a mystery.
• 15:15
  Michelle Gauthier: And then that mystery is just constantly hanging out in my brain and taking up space that doesn't need to be taken up.
• 15:25
  Michelle Gauthier: And my kids do have their own spending accounts and they have my card for emergencies.
• 15:30
  Budget Besties: Oh, ice cream is.
• 15:32
  Budget Besties: It's definitely an emergency for a teen.
• 15:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, but my point is I I didn't know that they'd had this emergency because I don't look until it's actually due.
• 15:41
  Michelle Gauthier: And then I pay the whole thing out of my account and there's no tweaking, or maybe I shouldn't have done that.
• 15:45
  Michelle Gauthier: If I hadn't looked and I just paid it off, I would have been like, oh, that was our pricey, Mond.
• 15:50
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 15:50
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Budget Besties: And that's so we liken it to an ostrich with their head in the sand.
• 15:55
  Budget Besties: It's I just saw I don't have time or I don't really want to figure this out.
• 15:58
  Budget Besties: So I'm just gonna swipe it off and we'll figure it out later.
• 16:00
  Budget Besties: Like a future.
• 16:01
  Budget Besties: The cool thing about the what we want you to do is as we said, all of this can run automatically.
• 16:07
  Budget Besties: So it's not like when we are talking about how we wore pink today at our gyms, right?
• 16:12
  Budget Besties: It's not like when you set a goal on January 1st and you have to go to the gym January 1st, and then you have to go again January 2nd, and then you have to go again January 3rd.
• 16:18
  Budget Besties: And you're like, you have to keep finding the willpower to get up in the morning and go with your budget, set it up once.
• 16:23
  Budget Besties: Set it up once, and then it runs automatically.
• 16:26
  Budget Besties: It runs for you.
• 16:27
  Budget Besties: You don't have to rely on your willpower.
• 16:29
  Budget Besties: You don't really have to rely on you because we know truly, the more often you're in it doing things and fiddling with things, the more you're gonna mess it up.
• 16:35
  Budget Besties: So we set it, we help you set it up to fund your or pay your bills automatically, fund your spending automatically, and start stacking up your savings automatically.
• 16:43
  Budget Besties: Our goal is to make your budget as consistent as possible.
• 16:46
  Budget Besties: And I know some people will say I can because I'm a business owner and things are so inconsistent, but trust me, we've you name the business, we've probably worked with it.
• 16:54
  Budget Besties: I have a multi-million dollar lawn care company who you can imagine in the summer their income is astronomical.
• 16:59
  Budget Besties: In the winter, it's super low.
• 17:00
  Budget Besties: Soup now they're a month ahead in their business and everything is consistent.
• 17:04
  Budget Besties: But it you just take some work and it really just takes looking at your numbers.
• 17:08
  Budget Besties: So, what we want you to do is find a way to make your budget as consistent as possible so that when you can set up all these automatic transfers so you don't have to do it.
• 17:17
  Budget Besties: You don't have to touch it.
• 17:18
  Budget Besties: Everything is funding itself.
• 17:20
  Budget Besties: My husband gets paid every Wednesday, Thursday mornings, everything gets funded.
• 17:23
  Budget Besties: And I didn't lift a finger because I took the small amount of time at the beginning to set up my system.
• 17:30
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that makes so much sense.
• 17:32
  Michelle Gauthier: And I think a couple of things that are coming to mind is even if you are making enough money to cover your bills, how does it benefit a person to still have a budget?
• 17:44
  Michelle Gauthier: So let's just say you don't have a budget and you're just making it work all the time.
• 17:49
  Michelle Gauthier: Like, why should that person still have a budget?
• 17:52
  Michelle Gauthier: What does it buy you?
• 17:53
  Budget Besties: It's actually so much more fun to make a budget with people that have a lot of money and that they can afford everything.
• 17:59
  Budget Besties: So it's not just for those that are living paycheck to paycheck, it's also for those that have an abundance of money.
• 18:05
  Budget Besties: Shayna has an amazing client.
• 18:07
  Budget Besties: I believe he was a financial advisor of some sort.
• 18:09
  Budget Besties: And they had so much money, but they just everything as much that was coming in was going out at the same time because they just weren't organized.
• 18:16
  Budget Besties: And now she's with the amount of money he was getting in bonuses, she's almost a year ahead planning in all of her savings buckets and everything that they were trying to achieve.
• 18:25
  Budget Besties: But it just really took sitting down, looking at the numbers and organizing it.
• 18:29
  Budget Besties: A budget is not just your bills.
• 18:31
  Budget Besties: And that is why we created our budget.
• 18:33
  Budget Besties: It's that is what people think is their budget.
• 18:36
  Budget Besties: But what you actually do in a month and in a year, that is all part of the budget, which includes groceries, which includes spending money, which includes trips and travel, which includes travel sports.
• 18:46
  Budget Besties: That's just us, sorry.
• 18:47
  Budget Besties: We're in the middle of it.
• 18:48
  Budget Besties: Like it includes your gym membership.
• 18:50
  Budget Besties: It does also include saving for the insurance when, because you pay it six months at a time.
• 18:54
  Budget Besties: It includes saving for Christmas.
• 18:55
  Budget Besties: That is where we get we get mixed up because there's a lot more to a budget than just your bills.
• 19:00
  Budget Besties: And that is not just your bills.
• 19:01
  Budget Besties: And if you are making enough just to pay your bills, is that what you're doing?
• 19:04
  Budget Besties: You just want to go to work so you can just pay your bills?
• 19:05
  Budget Besties: No, we don't, we know you want more for your life than that.
• 19:08
  Budget Besties: And that's why we want you to put all of this, think about all of this into your budget so that you we like we said, we want you to be bougie on a budget, but you got it has to start with actually doing a budget, right?
• 19:18
  Budget Besties: Yeah, people forget that your budget is not just for the everyday essentials.
• 19:21
  Budget Besties: When we talk about the savings section of our budget, we're talking about making a line item for annual bills because guess what?
• 19:28
  Budget Besties: That's coming, whether you want it to or not.
• 19:29
  Budget Besties: That HOA fee, that your auto insurance, your how homeowner taxes, yeah, property taxes, homeowners' insurance, that's all coming.
• 19:36
  Budget Besties: So that needs to be put in your budget and it needs to be just as important as your monthly mortgage bill.
• 19:41
  Budget Besties: And then we need to talk about your child's birthday presents that are gonna come sometime throughout the year.
• 19:46
  Budget Besties: Let's talk about that travel that's gonna come up during spring break, medical co pays, right?
• 19:51
  Budget Besties: Those oil changes that are gonna come up for your vehicle, those water filters, air filters, all of that you have with home maintenance, the flowers that you know you're gonna buy in the spring.
• 19:59
  Budget Besties: Your budget should be a picture of you, like a snapshot of you in a year.
• 20:04
  Budget Besties: And so when people buy our system, we have all of that in there for you to set up exactly what that looks like.
• 20:10
  Budget Besties: And yes, maybe at first you have some debt so you can't fill all your savings buckets.
• 20:14
  Budget Besties: But the end goal, like a lot of people will come to us a coaching, I want to do all the savings buckets things that you talk about.
• 20:19
  Budget Besties: I want to do them now.
• 20:20
  Budget Besties: I'm like, yeah, but you can't because you don't have the wiggle room in your budget because you're paying on debt.
• 20:24
  Budget Besties: But eventually when that client graduated, she was saving $2,000 a month in her savings buckets to be able to fund her future.
• 20:31
  Budget Besties: So when Shana's talking about that your budget is not just for the essentials or for your bills, it's for your whole life.
• 20:37
  Budget Besties: And you need to make sure that you incorporate that in your budget on a monthly basis.
• 20:42
  Budget Besties: And I know we just talked a lot.
• 20:43
  Budget Besties: Let me just say, once you do all of this, you're gonna feel so free.
• 20:46
  Budget Besties: All like you said, Michelle, all the things that are in your brain that you need to be thinking about budgeting, it's all gonna be in your budget.
• 20:52
  Budget Besties: And all you have to do is like, hey, I have $1,000 in my groceries account.
• 20:56
  Budget Besties: I have $500 miss spending.
• 20:57
  Budget Besties: What am I gonna do?
• 20:58
  Budget Besties: That's all you have to do for your budget once you get it set up, is just live in the spending zone because everything else is happening.
• 21:03
  Budget Besties: And that's what we want for you because the budget actually gives you permission to spend, it gives you freedom and freedom also from that clutter.
• 21:10
  Budget Besties: So I just wanted to add that little bit in there.
• 21:12
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I love this.
• 21:12
  Michelle Gauthier: I love this approach so much.
• 21:14
  Michelle Gauthier: It feels like it was designed by women who are just living a real, regular, good life and it's for all of us.
• 21:23
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
• 21:24
  Michelle Gauthier: But you mentioned something about the bank like doing the budgeting for you or something like that.
• 21:29
  Budget Besties: What was that?
• 21:30
  Budget Besties: So that's the automation part of our budgeting system.
• 21:33
  Budget Besties: So we talked about making it simple, separating it, and then automating it.
• 21:37
  Budget Besties: So your bank actually has a lot of tools in there to be able to automate your budget and set up transfers and recurring transfers so that way once you look at your budget and you know your numbers and okay, every paycheck, I need this much for gas and groceries.
• 21:50
  Budget Besties: I have this much going for my annual bill savings bucket.
• 21:53
  Budget Besties: I'm gonna give my kids this much a month to be able to spend on whatever they want.
• 21:57
  Budget Besties: Ice cream emergencies.
• 21:58
  Budget Besties: Yeah, once you have all that set up, you can actually transfer all of this into the separate accounts automatically on payday.
• 22:04
  Budget Besties: So you don't have to do any of it.
• 22:06
  Budget Besties: So you take your budget and you transform it into a living thing in your bank app using the automatic transfers.
• 22:13
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, perfect.
• 22:14
  Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
• 22:15
  Michelle Gauthier: The less things I have to think about, the better.
• 22:17
  Budget Besties: That's a and a little bit of part of that is your bank, you can have more than one bank account.
• 22:21
  Budget Besties: We've alluded to that.
• 22:22
  Budget Besties: You can rename them.
• 22:23
  Budget Besties: Vanessa said you can set up the automatic transfers.
• 22:27
  Budget Besties: The bills can be paid automatically, your direct deposit goes in, the bills go out, the transfers are happening.
• 22:31
  Budget Besties: It's like a machine your personal assistant.
• 22:33
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I love that.
• 22:34
  Michelle Gauthier: That's so great.
• 22:35
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I'm ready to sign up for the budget.
• 22:38
  Michelle Gauthier: So if people feel the same way, where should they go?
• 22:42
  Michelle Gauthier: And then I have two more questions for you guys.
• 22:44
  Michelle Gauthier: But just while we're on this topic, if somebody's feeling super motivated, I really need to do that.
• 22:48
  Michelle Gauthier: Where should they go?
• 22:49
  Budget Besties: Yeah, so they can go to budgetbesties.com forward slash Michelle G.
• 22:53
  Budget Besties: If they're like, look, this system is for me.
• 22:55
  Budget Besties: That's what I want.
• 22:56
  Budget Besties: If you want to go to a free masterclass, you can go to budgetbesties.com forward slash automate to learn more, get your feet wet a little bit more, and just understand our full system.
• 23:06
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 23:06
  Budget Besties: And also we have our podcast, Financial Coaching for Women.
• 23:09
  Budget Besties: We can add that after in your to-do list after Overwhelm Working Woman.
• 23:13
  Budget Besties: Add that in there because we're there too.
• 23:14
  Budget Besties: We're in the same app.
• 23:16
  Michelle Gauthier: Amazing.
• 23:17
  Michelle Gauthier: And also a top 1% podcast.
• 23:19
  Michelle Gauthier: You guys don't want to brag, but it's not just a podcast, it's a very successful one.
• 23:24
  Michelle Gauthier: So I'm sure you've got tons of great info on there.
• 23:26
  Michelle Gauthier: So yes, go take a listen.
• 23:28
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay, here are the questions that I ask everybody.
• 23:31
  Michelle Gauthier: What is something that you do if you feel overwhelmed to make yourself feel better?
• 23:36
  Budget Besties: Uh no.
• 23:36
  Budget Besties: I need to tell you that I have three kids and I learned how to nap on demand by the third one because my husband was gone for a year and I was all by myself.
• 23:44
  Budget Besties: So a nap literally resets your brain.
• 23:47
  Budget Besties: And like I will be so stressed or overwhelmed right before.
• 23:49
  Budget Besties: And I come up and I'm like, everything's not so bad.
• 23:51
  Budget Besties: But also, we live at the beach.
• 23:52
  Budget Besties: So we have that cheat code.
• 23:54
  Budget Besties: We can go to the beach anytime, and it literally transforms you.
• 23:56
  Budget Besties: And then lastly, we go for walks all the time.
• 23:59
  Budget Besties: We will be in the business thick of it, Michelle, and be like, we need to go for a walk.
• 24:02
  Budget Besties: This is awful.
• 24:02
  Budget Besties: I'm so scared.
• 24:03
  Budget Besties: I don't know what to do next.
• 24:04
  Budget Besties: Let's go for a walk and it all works happy.
• 24:06
  Michelle Gauthier: Let's start moving our bodies.
• 24:07
  Michelle Gauthier: Somehow that works.
• 24:09
  Michelle Gauthier: What beach do you guys live near?
• 24:12
  Budget Besties: So we live in a little town called Navarre.
• 24:14
  Budget Besties: And so that is our lovely little beach that we go to, and it's very close.
• 24:17
  Budget Besties: Yeah, we're here in Florida.
• 24:18
  Budget Besties: So we can't handle it.
• 24:20
  Michelle Gauthier: Awesome.
• 24:20
  Michelle Gauthier: So you have the beach and you can actually go to it all year round.
• 24:23
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
• 24:24
  Budget Besties: And we have those sandy white beaches, and it's absolutely beautiful.
• 24:27
  Budget Besties: We live where people vacation.
• 24:29
  Budget Besties: It's we're very blessed.
• 24:30
  Budget Besties: That is awesome.
• 24:32
  Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
• 24:32
  Michelle Gauthier: All right.
• 24:33
  Michelle Gauthier: And then the other question: what is something that you do to save time?
• 24:37
  Budget Besties: Delegate.
• 24:38
  Budget Besties: Okay.
• 24:38
  Budget Besties: So I'm like an OCD control freak as far as I just want to do it.
• 24:42
  Budget Besties: I'll just do it.
• 24:42
  Budget Besties: I'll just take care of it.
• 24:43
  Budget Besties: I'll handle it.
• 24:44
  Budget Besties: But the older I got, the older I am, and the more busy we've gotten with our business and the kids and stuff.
• 24:50
  Budget Besties: I think for me, it has been delegating out what I don't need to do myself.
• 24:55
  Budget Besties: And then also taking a hard look at what I was doing and asking, is that really important?
• 24:59
  Budget Besties: Does that actually have to get done?
• 25:01
  Budget Besties: Or is that just something in my brain that's telling me that you have to do this?
• 25:04
  Budget Besties: So I think those two things paired has really helped me just figure out what's important and only stay focused on what matters.
• 25:12
  Michelle Gauthier: That's so great.
• 25:13
  Michelle Gauthier: And that's hard to do.
• 25:14
  Michelle Gauthier: I always talk about it as either doing B minus work, meaning it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, or letting someone else do it.
• 25:20
  Michelle Gauthier: And then with the asterisk, when someone else does it, you have to let it be done the way they did it.
• 25:26
  Michelle Gauthier: That can be the hardest part, especially when you outsource things to kids.
• 25:30
  Michelle Gauthier: For sure.
• 25:30
  Michelle Gauthier: I'll be going to get my shake cup that I use, and I'll be like, okay, Oliver emptied the dishwasher.
• 25:36
  Michelle Gauthier: So where would he have put the lid?
• 25:37
  Michelle Gauthier: I know where it goes, but where did he put the lid?
• 25:39
  Michelle Gauthier: But at least it's done, right?
• 25:41
  Michelle Gauthier: At least it's done.
• 25:43
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes, exactly.
• 25:44
  Michelle Gauthier: It was so great to meet you ladies, and that was such a fun time.
• 25:48
  Michelle Gauthier: Is there anything I didn't ask you that you want to be sure to say, or did we cover all the points?
• 25:53
  Budget Besties: Michelle, we will keep talking.
• 25:55
  Budget Besties: Don't let us do that.
• 25:56
  Budget Besties: But we do the thing that we would say is there's no shame, no judgment.
• 25:59
  Budget Besties: You don't know what you don't know.
• 26:00
  Budget Besties: We know you're busy.
• 26:02
  Budget Besties: So give yourself grace to let this be something that you just take a minute to learn and figure out, set it, then forget it.
• 26:07
  Budget Besties: Like you don't have to completely forget it, but forget all the stress for sure.
• 26:10
  Budget Besties: Yeah.
• 26:10
  Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
• 26:11
  Michelle Gauthier: And I think just getting coaching on anything, it feels vulnerable because you have to admit, I have a problem and I need help with it.
• 26:20
  Michelle Gauthier: And I'm sure you guys get the same thing.
• 26:22
  Michelle Gauthier: Everyone who comes to me is, you're not gonna believe this.
• 26:24
  Michelle Gauthier: My life is such a mess.
• 26:25
  Michelle Gauthier: And then they tell me, and I'm like, mm-hmm, you and everybody else.
• 26:28
  Michelle Gauthier: This is not, we always feel like we're so alone if we're having a problem.
• 26:32
  Michelle Gauthier: So I love that you said that.
• 26:34
  Michelle Gauthier: Like you guys said, I saw on your website you've helped hundreds of people over time.
• 26:38
  Michelle Gauthier: So you've literally heard everything.
• 26:40
  Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
• 26:40
  Michelle Gauthier: And you're non-judgmental and you just want to help people.
• 26:43
  Michelle Gauthier: So I love that.
• 26:45
  Budget Besties: Thank you so much.
• 26:45
  Budget Besties: Yeah, we tell people, I guarantee we've heard worse.
• 26:48
  Budget Besties: That's literally, yeah.
• 26:49
  Budget Besties: And it doesn't matter, like I said, whether they're paycheck to paycheck or have so much money in the bank or whatever, they're single or married, doesn't matter.
• 26:57
  Budget Besties: The they just don't know what they don't know, and just being able to equip them with the knowledge, information, and tools that they need to be able to take that and be successful in the future, like it's just so much fun to be able to watch.
• 27:09
  Michelle Gauthier: Wasn't that a fun interview?
• 27:10
  Michelle Gauthier: I really liked that one.
• 27:11
  Michelle Gauthier: It's so nice.
• 27:12
  Michelle Gauthier: Like, what a good job perk that not only do I get to help my audience learn things, but I myself get to benefit from learning these things.
• 27:19
  Michelle Gauthier: So if you're interested in checking out their budgeting system, go to budgetbesties.com slash Michelle G.
• 27:27
  Michelle Gauthier: I did buy the budget system myself and I have gotten started on it, and I really like it so far.
• 27:32
  Michelle Gauthier: I really value something that is a simple and b pretty and easy.
• 27:36
  Michelle Gauthier: So check it out, and we'll put the other links in the show notes as well if you just want to learn more about their system.
• 27:42
  Michelle Gauthier: I hope your new year is off to a great start.
• 27:44
  Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
• 27:49
  Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
• 27:52
  Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
• 27:59
  Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.