we used a budget to go from over twenty thousand dollars in credit card debt
to becoming millionaires just this year here are top five tips on creating a monthly budget
so
hey guys it's amber and jared here from holy city family our goal is to empower you to
achieve financial independence and provide the best education to your children so that everyone
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of our videos are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial advice
please do your own research consult a certified and trusted financial planner who will put your
interests above their own before following any advice we may offer before we get into our tips
here's a background of how we used to spend our money we bought two jet skis with a credit card
which we later then sold and then bought a boat we went out to eat often we consistently spent
more than we actually made and then we didn't really have a budget at all like nothing we had
two student loans high mortgage payment we had a car payment and then we also had a leased vehicle
and then we had no emergency no emergency fund or savings at all so in 2012 we hit our breaking
point i noticed that amber was spending a lot at michael's arts and crafts store and so i decided
to export our last six months of transactions from checking in credit cards to excel and i was just
kind of fumbling my way through it and i started breaking the purchases down into categories
and i was really shocked at what we found the biggest category was surprisingly a thousand
dollars a month at michael's for like throughout those that six-month period that we looked at
nothing 600 a month on restaurants and 600 a month on groceries and this at the time was for just the
two of us we started using mint and the rest is history now let's get into what we found helpful
when creating and managing our budgets tip number five set up an emergency fund this is one that we
failed to do for many years up until 2012 when jared actually realized something had to change
once we decided to do it it took many months to save enough money to build this up
which that was not easy at all no no absolutely it's not easy um but here at holy city family we
believe that an emergency fund is crucial to your financial security so one question you might have
is how much should you have in your emergency fund according to the website money under 30
most financial experts recommend that you have somewhere between three months and six months of
basic living expenses in your emergency fund the three-month guideline is generally recommended for
those who are in a salary position and have more secure employment the six-month recommendation
is for those that have a less stable employment or earn a variable income another question you
might be asking yourself is when should you use the money in the emergency fund dave ramsey says
you should ask yourself three questions when you're thinking about that is it unexpected
is it necessary and is it urgent tip number four review your expenses we suggest if you're just now
starting a budget that you review your spending from the previous year so that will ensure that
you cover all your expenses both monthly and annually so the majority of our expenses come out
of our main checking account these are things like the mortgage our auto payments insurance things
like that we then have a separate checking account that we just set up to move a specific amount of
money into specific to the to the budget for those items and we do this every quarter for things like
groceries kid purchases and personal shopping we know that this is we're more likely to go over
in these categories and that's why we focused on those and we broke those up into a separate
checking account so this allows us to monitor those categories and to keep an eye on that
cash flow tip number three use a budgeting app for us mint is our favorite budgeting tool it's
one of the tools in our toolbox that we use on a daily basis so why do we love using mint they have
a very easy to use website and a mobile app which we can both have access to very quickly and easily
mint automatically syncs with all of our accounts and categorizes our purchases if something isn't
auto categorizing correctly you can quickly change that for all the past transactions and the future
transactions for that merchant and a side note this is something that's very uncommon with the
other budgeting apps that we've looked at it also utilizes green yellow and red status bars for
every category and this is something that's easy for us to use and it quickly shows which areas
were over budget and under budget it gives you the ability to cut to use custom categories based on
your family's spending also the trends feature this is something that's only available on the
website but something that we use a lot especially for tax time and this allows you to see a variety
of different pie charts and bar charts on your finances if you're looking for other budgeting
apps take a look at what nerdwallet says are the best budgeting apps pocketguard which is great for
simplified but simplified budgeting snapshot mint which is best for budgeting and credit monitoring
every dollar that's great for zero based budgeting good budget if you're using a
shared envelope budgeting system honeydew which is great for budgeting with a partner and then
personal capital which is best for tracking wealth and spending and we use this one to watch all of
our spending and investments and we'll share more on that in a later video tip number two
review your budget your budget and financial goals can change from month to month so it's a good idea
to have a monthly meeting see where you could dial back on your spending and yes i'm about to say it
see where you could actually spend more hold your family accountable and make adjustments along the
way stay focused on the why the reason that you have your budget in place and that should be
your long-term goal so treat your budget like it's part of the family hold those monthly checkups
everyone gets a routine checkup annually and even your car gets a checkup every three months
so why not your budget which is a very important thing for your family say you paid off some debt
now you have a little extra money in your budget um this is your opportunity to assess where you
can redistribute it and even add to building that emergency fund that we talked about in
the beginning of the video tip number one set goals and this one is the most important it's
important to set goals together with your family and individually we start off each year by taking
a day to really focus on setting goals well let's be honest with kids it's more of more like a few
days than the day days and at night but anyway on these days we set up a process where we go through
our individual and family goals and that's really helped us gain control of our spending and help us
to remember the why that we just talked about so here's how we set our annual goals first we take
one copy each and then we spend time over that week to focus on our individual goals and then we
rank those for ourselves next we then find a day where we come together and we share our individual
goals with each other and then during this time we then take our third copy and we make our family
goals from that so we decide together what we want to focus on um and then we rank those two and
then from that we pick one area that we both agree would be our top priority for the year and so then
we make sure to set dates throughout the year to analyze our goals and come back both individually
and with our family goals so to recap here are our five tips on creating and managing a budget
number five set up an emergency fund number four review expenses number three use a budgeting app
number two review your budget and number one set goals we've learned a lot since we started
budgeting in 2012. as our life has changed and our family's grown we're always trying
to hit a moving target with this budget we seem to learn a little more about about our spending
and our savings every time we sit down and look at our budget but i will say it does get easier
as time goes on and you get to understand you have a little better understanding of your strengths
and your weaknesses when it comes to your spending think about these steps money is consistently
ranked as the number one reason couples fight what if you could actually change this in your life and
what if money was something that would actually bring you together 44 percent of people say that
money is a dominant source of stress in their lives more than relationships or work and for
me i can remember when i was working i felt like i couldn't take time off for vacation or like i
felt like i would be quickly replaced or fall behind so to me it was easier just to not take
time off which we all not i know is not good for our sanity and our family sanity so we hope that
you're able to take these tips that we've shared and implement them into your budget planning
to achieve the financial independence that you deserve if you like this video give us a thumbs
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