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How to Set Up Budget Categories and Bank Accounts for Better Financial Control · Stacked Intent: Your Guide to Authentic, Intentional Living

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, my name is Becca Stackhouse Morton, and I am ready for you to tune in each episode with your ways to become you.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at ways you can be your authentic and intentional self, you'll finish each episode motivated to live life more authentically.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I learned how to be truly me through relationships, chronic disease, finances, and taking each journey along the way.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about the real aspects of life?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships, finance, nutrition, hardships, exercise are all topics that we will discuss.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Pull up a seat, drive safely down the road, or get into that workout groove to be challenged, motivated, and encouraged to be you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Stacked Intent podcast.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Stacked Intent, where we are going to discuss and drop some tips on how you are going to intentionally stack your life.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am Becca Stackhouse Morrison, the owner of Stacked Intent.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to talk about your spending plan and a budget and how maybe you want to set up some categories for different accounts in your life.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So come on, let's get started.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the brief objectives that I'd like you to walk away with today are find the best way to track your spending plan.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Find the best method that works for you.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And find a tea or coffee date that you will have with yourself over money.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So topic one is that spending plan.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So a spending plan is really important so that you kind of keep tabs on what you've got coming and going from your account and the money that you've worked hard to earn.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So spending plans are the method for distributing your income among the mix of things that you want, but also the things that you need.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Creating a spending plan ahead of time, it's gonna help you effectively manage your finances and even determine where best to spend your money.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that spending plan, it's really, really important.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um you start with listing some of what your expenses are, whether they're fixed or whether they're variable.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna write down payments and expenses that you have from month to month that are important.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then you might want to list the available monthly income.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So write down income that you've got coming in.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are you working a full-time job and a side hustle?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, are you married and you have a second income?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is the income that you have coming in?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Next, you might want to calculate your net spendable income.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this is subtracting those expenses that you have uh from your income that you've got, and then seeing what you've got left.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: But in also that, you might want to make buckets or categories of how your money is put into your spending plan.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then this is where we're gonna park a second.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Track those expenses.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know where your money is going, and you can do this from keeping up with receipts to looking at your bank statement during that money date, or all kinds of different ways that you can kind of look here.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're tracking your expenses, you're gonna want to find the best method that works for you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it an app that helps you keep up?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can type it in, or it's connected to your bank account.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a paper planner that you can write down on this day I spent this much on this, or on that day my mortgage comes out?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it an Excel spreadsheet that kind of has your formulas plugged in and can generate what and project what you're gonna spend spend, or something that can just kind of help keep up with what you have spent.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's finding which method works best for you.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Personally, I've always loved my Excel spreadsheet, and so I like having one set up for my checking account, for my savings account.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I've got it set up with what my credit card comes and goes, and then I've also got a projection of here's what we're projected to need from this paycheck and how it's gonna be distributed into those categories or buckets that I've kind of laid out, and that my husband helped add his categories and importance to.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So some of the best overall apps that CBNC has kind of recommended are Mint is your best overall.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: For beginners, a good budget app can help.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're more on that serious side, you need a budget, is an app.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you're a small business, QuickBooks is one that can help you in your business.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's important is that you are writing out that spending plan and then you are tracking what you're spending.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So however that best works.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if you try one method and it doesn't work, always remember you can try another method too.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So our second topic that we're gonna kind of talk about in this spending plan tracking and of habits is how do multiple accounts help?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: How can having separate multiple accounts help you?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So for me and my husband, it helped because when we first started dating and our money wasn't combined in one, but we were both contributing to household groceries, for us to open an account that we both saw that was only our grocery money really made us both feel in control and like we were both contributing to the groceries coming in or the eating out, and so having that account allowed us to see see what was going in and coming out together.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um multiple accounts can have specific categories, so you can set up having a account that's your bills account, an account that's your spending account, an account that's your grocery and eating out.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can also have one that's your emergency funds.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So this is one that you only touch if certain things happen.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's something you classify, but typically it's things where more catastrophic or really, really unexpected expenses.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh recommended to have six months of your living set up in an emergency fund.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I have our emergency fund in a high yield savings.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So while it's sitting there being our emergency cushion money, it's sitting there earning some higher interest on itself as well.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then I would have a separate savings for your general savings of whether that be you have a savings for travel, a savings for your Christmas or gift fund, a savings for you fill in X, Y, or Z, what that savings could be for.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then bills, that bills account, it's only touched for things that you classify as bills.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: No other money can come out of that.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's not our let's go out to eat and have fun account.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: The one advice I would have when you're looking at setting up multiple accounts is look at what your bank requires for a checking account.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: If they require you to have a X dollar amount deposited as a direct deposit each month, do you need to swipe that debit card so many times?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it going to be a nominal fee that you're cost?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So just look at that when you're thinking about how do I set up multiple accounts?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And is it important for me?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have to tell you, for my personal money, it is great in my marriage that we have multiple accounts set up because we know that our bills account is not touched when we want to go out on a date, and so we actually ended up opening a dating account, and so it's for us to go out on dates, and that's very specifically what that money is for.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another place that I find is very important, and I did this in my single life, and then we have worked on what it looks like in our marriage and in our partnership of having a monthly, weekly, bi-weekly tea coffee date with yourself or with your partner to look at your money.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so your very first one, you might need to sit down and write out what your goals are, what your financial um things that you're reaching towards are.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are you wanting to buy a car?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are you wanting to have a down payment?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are you wanting to have financial freedom of very minimal debt that you guys are carrying?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So figure out what those goals are first.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as you do, you want to kind of look at that money date and have a checklist.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So me and my husband have one on our notes app on our phone that we both have access to, and we can add things to it that we want to talk about.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, things that we're gonna talk about at our next money date, or things that are just on our topic to talk about about down the road.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where we are.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about where our money's sitting.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about where we want to be headed.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we look at what our credit card balance is, making sure that it's paid off as it's being spent.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's looking at what our account balances are and making sure that our money has been moved to the correct places from payday.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's we also talk about any upcoming expenses, trips we want to plan for, or gifts.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: This past Christmas we set a limit and agreed that that was our cap for purchasing gifts for each other.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in planning trips, we've committed to these are the trips we're going in 2023.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how much we need to make each of those trips happen.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's looking at what's important to you, but it's also looking at what's important to your partner.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of weird that really, really knowing where you want to sit in categories if you're single really helps when you come into a partnership with somebody.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when we were coming up with our categories and looking at our budget of what could we cut?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's gonna stay?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, tools is something that had to stay as a category for my husband to be able to do his job, and so that's a budget line that stayed.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: His UFC fight pass was another budget piece that just stayed because he asked that was his biggest streaming service he used.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now there were two or three that we cut, but that was one that he didn't want cut.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's important to have some money to travel, and so that was my non-negotiable for the our categories.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's also important for me that we have a savings line that goes to goes into our savings account paycheck by paycheck to make sure that we are still always putting money away for a rainy day fund, whether that be in our emergency catastrophic or whether it's even in our travel, we don't have any plans for a trip yet, but we're still gonna put money away so that when we want to go to that trip, it is there.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the recap that I have for you today is find that best way that you track your expenses.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next is find the bank account in the way that best works for you and your finances.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: What has helped us the most is having a bill that's not not touchable, having a groceries, and this is our groceries and eating out.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then find a day each month that you have a date.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you're single, have it with yourself.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a relationship, do this with your partner.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a 15-minute date, or it can be a two-hour date.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure that you're having real conversations about the real aspects of your money, though.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: The call to action here this week is I dare you this week to set your spending plan of all the money you've got coming in and all the money you've got going out.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Opening an additional account if needed.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Join my conversations on Instagram, or if you've got questions, send me an email at stacked intent at outlook.com.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: That brings us to the end of this episode of Stacked Intent.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you'll never miss an episode.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes are gonna be dropped on Thursdays.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, this is Becca, and don't forget, enrich your life by being intentional.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast was created, produced, and recorded, and edited by Stacked Integrity.