i'm gonna be honest my budget was more like a guideline this month
today i am 69 659 dollars in debt now i would like to talk to you about my very eventful month and
trying to figure out what budgeting app i'm gonna start using next and which one i actually like if
you saw my recent negative fifty thousand dollar net worth video i just crossed that milestone and
i'm so proud of myself in that video i mentioned that i started using mint because a lot of you
guys actually suggested it to me and it actually really impressed me with some of its capabilities
that i wasn't aware of before now i will say as i kept using it more and more i did notice some
issues that i had with the app and honestly i wasn't the biggest fan of it because i really
like it when things are accurate and precise and sometimes mint didn't really allow me to do that
i was able to get it to a point where it was actually really similar to what i had
budgeted for at the beginning of the month on the other app in fact you can separate it by income
and expenses so you can see all of the income that i had for the month and then my expenses
which are all in customized categories that either i created or were already there by default
that i ended up using i will say that i kind of stopped using mint halfway throughout the month
because these categories do not show the decimal places and it honestly seems like such a small
minor thing that really shouldn't affect how you're budgeting or how much you're actually going
to contribute towards your goals but i personally really like having that resolution because i love
having a zero-based budget and to me mint tries to be a zero-based budgeting app but it's not
quite there yet because i want to know if there are three cents left over that i can throw at my
student loans and i can't quite tell here on the app the other thing is changing the quantities
that you want to put towards a certain category requires kind of an extra step which again is a
small thing but it's just something that doesn't really work with me because i love adjusting my
budget throughout the month especially when i don't spend as much as i thought i would in a
certain category i like to quickly make changes and put that money towards another category or
towards my student loans so in response i decided to create a budget in a spreadsheet which is
something that i really did not want to do and honestly i was right i think spreadsheets are an
amazing way to visualize your goals and plan out where you want to allocate your money because it's
all in one page and it does math for you however when i actually did it it ended up being a bit
more complicated than i felt it needed to be so here i set up my april 2021 budget i had set
up my different categories here along the left and wrote the subcategories right next to them
so essentially the numbers under the plan section should match up exactly to what i had listed
in my april 2021 budget video so right now i'm just gonna go through my april spending because
this spreadsheet i think has maybe one mistake in it that i can't quite pinpoint
but it gives you a good summary of what i actually did spend in the month and i just want to go
through that very quickly just so you can see what changed and what i'm gonna do about it i actually
ended up earning 2090 and 2076 dollars for my two paychecks they are higher than what i had budgeted
for which is annoying because it means that every time i have tried adjusting my paycheck and my tax
withholdings i haven't actually gotten to where i wanted to be and then i ended up making 126 from
upwork this month which was less than what i had planned which was 216. then i ended up making
20 on marketplace because i sold that one travel cooler that you'll see in the closet in my video
it's like a black and decker thing venmo i got 31 dollars from a friend who i had dinner with i just
put a hundred dollars under venmo but it wasn't really venmo i honestly just didn't feel like
making another category in the spreadsheet because i knew i wasn't gonna use it again
so my mom transferred a hundred dollars to my account because i wanted to make a weeble
account so that she could get six free stocks from her referral link and then i also got seventy
dollars in cash for my mom because i ended up transferring seventy dollars to her account
so that i could get cash so that i could pay for gasoline and cash because it's cheaper than paying
with card here in new jersey at most gas stations at least so i spent 81 on gas this month in cash
158 dollars in tolls so i did a lot of driving my vaccine appointment was actually like an hour and
a half away so i had to take the turnpike all the way down but you know what your girl is vaccinated
i love being a robot it's been a great time i still need to get my second dose though so then
i will fully transform i'm i'm completely joking by the way please go get vaccinated if you want
to you know it's your body your choice but i'm so happy i got vaccinated and i do not mind spending
on tolls to get to that early appointment 55 on my phone then i actually got a three dollar credit
for canceling my renters insurance which i really should have done five months ago but i didn't so
my refund was only three dollars so that's why my check payment went down because in my credit card
they gave me a credit of three dollars so i spent like less than thirteen dollars on check
entertainment i spent 1267 on fearless taylor's version go stream go buy it right now i did not
end up getting the vinyl this month because i'm really hoping the target comes out with the vinyl
because they did the same thing for evermore and i think folklore as well and i don't want to pay
for shipping so then movies that charge the 924 charge did not actually take place in april it's
gonna take place probably tomorrow so i'm filming this april 30th the 924 expense will probably post
tomorrow or maybe even monday so i'm just not even including it this month i'm gonna try a different
style of budgeting and i'll show you that soon you know i sent a hundred dollars towards my new
evil account and guys i gave in i i wanted to join the hype i wanted to be part of something bigger
and i decided to fund my old robin hood account that i have honestly never used but i've had for
like two years and i funded it with 50 so that i could buy bitcoin and dogecoin and you know
i'm not proud of myself for doing that but i'm really happy that i have a fraction of a fraction
of a fraction of bitcoin and some deutsche coin and next up there's no expense here but i also
created a coinbase account so far a big fan of coinbase because i have not put a dime into
that account and i have more than a dime in that account now you can literally take quizzes about
cryptos and just learn about them and they'll just reward you with free stuff or like free
coins or fractions of coins so it's been fun and i hope they come out with more quizzes because
i i'm taking them and i'm earning money there next up i spent 59 at the restaurant that i
went to with my friend so i just i paid for the whole bill and then he venmed me so that's why
that's more than the 50 that i had budgeted pets i spent almost 35 on percy i didn't end up taking
him grooming this month so i'm actually gonna do it tomorrow may 1st miscellaneous cash so when i
did go and donate all of my clothes i obviously did that at a thrift store and i wanted to see
if i could get like a relatively cheap mirror so that i could add it to my home workout room they
had a super cheap mirror for 3.99 and then when i went to the register it ended up being 3.19 so
very happy with that purchase i paid it in cash at the beginning of the month i was just you know
browsing some websites and i really wanted these like reebok sneakers and i also wanted these
ugg slippers and then i also wanted like these waterproof birkenstocks that i could wear them
to the beach not get them ruined and at some point i was like wow like i don't know what my size is
like i should probably go to the mall and see like what size i am you know like whenever i do
you know potentially buy these shoes i'll know what my size is my parents and i went to the
mall and i tried the shoes on and i was like yep these fit me perfect they're the only size
here and they fit me and i bought them because i was already there then i went to famous footwear
and they had the same shoes for ten dollars less and so my mom was like just buy them here and
we'll return them at like three box stores and so that's what i ended up doing and at the same
time while i was at famous footwear i noticed that they had the bergen stocks that i wanted but they
were all sold out in like the adult section but then we go to the kids section and they had like
size 33 birkenstocks and they fit me perfectly you know it was just meant to be it was probably at
least ten dollars less than what i would have paid so i bought these shoes for such a cheap price and
i was so happy with it so i ended up spending like almost 90 on shoes this month which i absolutely
did not plan on doing but you know i have wanted these pairs of shoes for like at least a year now
so i'm happy i got them and i don't really blame myself because i did get rid of a lot of shoes
and i know that i'm gonna use the shoes that i bought because i'm putting a lot more value into
them okay then i paid my self-employment tax and that ended up being thirty one dollars not thirty
dollars and ninety two cents because they only accept whole numbers and this month i ended up
sending three thousand five hundred eight dollars and twenty five cents towards my student loan debt
and that is three hundred nineteen dollars less than what i had planned tried really hard to make
this look good because i thought this was gonna be what i present on my videos from now on and how i
want to look at my spending i then realized that spreadsheets really are not what i need it's not
the way to go because clearly i messed something up here because this 278 should be like a 243
and i'll show you why i know that so very soon after i had kind of been using the mint app and
my google sheets budget i realized that this really wasn't sustainable i hated having to
use two things for one purpose i kind of started watching a few more videos about budgeting and
what people use for their budgeting apps while i was doing that gen z finance who is another
personal finance youtuber posted this video about why why nab is worth it so if you don't know ynab
is a budgeting software called you need a budget and it's an online software it has an app version
but it costs like 84 dollars per year i actually watch a lot of wine evers like you know jensen
finance is one of them barlow street is another there is millennial making it there are so many
other amazing wine nubber youtubers and i always love watching their budgets because they are so
fun to look at it's kind of satisfying to see how they use the software and in the past i
had considered whether or not i would ever want to get wine up and i felt like you know at some point
maybe i would because i do like keeping track of all my spending you know in a very clear way but
then i also felt like this doesn't make sense like why would i pay for something to do math
for me that's so unnecessary and it's so extra but then i really thought about it and i was like well
i use my budget more than i use netflix and i'm paying for netflix every month and ynab is less
expensive than netflix and i know that i would use it all the time and it would make my life easier
while this was going on i was also thinking of the pros and cons of mint and for me the pros of
mint were that it was free you could link accounts you could have a customized budget it has a mobile
and desktop version and they calculate your net worth for you however at the cost of this you
get a lot of advertisements so you can't see the decimal values as i had mentioned before and it's
kind of hard to budget in the future and you guys know how much i love seeing in the future i love
forecasting and it's just something that's not really a good mix with mint that didn't quite work
and then i thought about my google sheets budget thinking of just completely doing my budget there
and not using mint at all and then i was like yeah google sheets is great you know it's customizable
it's a very familiar platform like i know how a spreadsheet works but you know what it's not
a database and what i really want is a database with different fields that i could track you know
what data transaction occurred what i actually purchased who's a payee where did that money come
from that i spent it's really hard to track the history of these transactions if you're not using
a database now when genzi finance made a video about why ynub was worth it i watched the whole
thing she provided really good arguments about you know why even mint has kind of questionable
company practices but then i really started thinking like ynab is taking information from
a database querying it and showing it to you the end user in a very friendly interface and that is
exactly what i needed that's exactly what i want and of course it'll come at a price so i decided
to just give it a shot and do the free trial and i started using it and lo and behold i realized that
i had missed something completely in all of these why not budget videos that i've been watching
for months at this point now and it's the fact that you should not be forecasting your budget
because that'll eventually lead you to not really budget correctly and you know it kind of sets you
up for failure and that's basically what i've been doing but it's honestly because i like to predict
when i'll be debt free and creating my loan payoff spreadsheet is definitely based on forecasts and
estimates of my future income and future payments towards certain goals so even though ynab was this
great software and it has a mobile and desktop version it required me to completely change
my mindset and philosophy and approach towards budgeting probably like the first day of using it
i was honestly kind of bummed because it didn't do what i thought it was gonna do and i thought
i'd be able to start budgeting for may and just seeing how that would look like but i could only
budget the money that i had in my bank account at that time for april and if i wanted to budget in
the future i would be using april money for may it meant that i would be throwing less at my student
loans for april and spending that money in may and after kind of having that inner conflict i
just decided to budget based on ynab's philosophy and budget ahead for any expenses that would take
place before my next paycheck in may so i gave in and actually gave it a shot and i'm finding that i
was kind of already doing this the problem with it is that i was doing it with my emergency fund of
a thousand dollars that was already my checking account so if i don't get paid on the first day
of the month i would obviously dip into those funds if i had an expense coming up thankfully
my expenses are so low because i literally live with my parents and i don't really pay
for anything other than transportation but doing that exercise kind of made me aware of how i have
not really been budgeting correctly and it really drew attention to that so you know i gave in i did
the wind up philosophy and now i have my budget in ynab and i'm liking it so far okay so this
is now my why not budget so i have my categories over here and then my subcategories underneath the
best thing about wine app is that i can actually create different budgets so this is not my only
budget i can actually incorporate my mom's budget under my account but it'll be her separate budget
that's what really sold me on ynab because i did not want to continue using every dollar for my mom
either and i also did not want to make a separate spreadsheet for my mom's expenses as well because
that honestly just sounds like such a nightmare and i did not want to deal with it for me the
84 dollars worth it just on that point the other thing is that obviously you can link your account
so you can see all my accounts here and you know the reports will calculate your net worth
and stuff like that so i already went through all of my expenses this negative 20 cents is actually
going to turn into cash back for my credit card so i'm not really overspent i'm gonna
you know cash that in once it hits my account but other than that i'm done with april and i
can go into may i am budgeted ahead in may so i have like thirty five dollars in gifts here fifty
dollars in gas seventy dollars in totals sixty five dollars for percy's grooming tomorrow 14
on food that actually spent on a work trip already but it's not gonna post to my account until may
and then here is the movie streaming charge for april this is what ynab is and i'm still learning
a lot about it so i don't really want to go into the details of it but i'm starting to budget in
the future and we'll see how this pans out yes it lowered how much i was able to contribute towards
debt this month but i think changing my philosophy and approach to budgeting is going to be a bit
more beneficial than saving a few more dollars in interest so then i also just decided to update
my loan payoff spreadsheet decrease the estimates for each month just because i know that i've been
a lot busier lately and i've been spending more on transportation because i've been going to work
and i've been using tolls and they can really add up i've lowered my contributions for the month
and just made them an even number i'm still on track to paying things off in september
this month i hope to send 3 800 towards my student loans here in my debt payoff chart you'll see
i have paid off seventy six thousand four hundred seventy dollars and thirty three cents
of debt since the start of my debt free journey that's so much money i could have
spent that on a house my current net worth is negative forty seven thousand seven hundred
thirty seven dollars and forty one cents that's a change of three thousand five hundred fifty
four dollars and forty two cents in one month my next big milestone would be negative 25 k
and i believe that's gonna happen sometime in october yeah i hope you guys kind of followed
that it is definitely so confusing for me but long story short i tried out two different new
budgeting methods they didn't work out and then i ended up with ynab and i will likely be doing
bi-weekly budget videos because the only times i can really budget is when i get paid because
that's how ynab works so let me know what you guys think of that i could also just limit it to one
and just show you how i budget once thank you guys so much for watching and for helping me get
over 400 subscribers i honestly would love to get to know you guys more so leave a comment below and
tell me something about yourself that you'd like to share you know especially if it's frugality and
finance related or can be something fun like tell me your favorite color tell me what your favorite
taylor swift song is actually that's that's not fair i can't even answer that question but yeah
tell me something about yourself and don't forget to like this video if you enjoyed it
and um if you're not subscribed please consider subscribing because i have a lot more
learning and growing to do in ynab and you can watch me struggle through that so yeah thanks