Play Defense With Your Money – Budget, Saving Money, Debt Pay Off

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How To Play Defense With Your Money – Money Management, Saving Money, Debt Pay Off, And More – Ep. 02

Learn to play defense with your money! Including saving money, managing your finances, and get out of debt with a budget! To prepare for the next financial crisis, and protect yourself from identity theft this is a critical first step.

The best way to create unstoppable finances is to play a well-rounded financial game, in this episode we tackle the first pillar… Making the most of what you have, and it isn’t necessarily what you think! No pinching pennies or lack here. Let’s do this!

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Resources/Links:

Budget Makeover Guide – Download Free

Budgeting Simplified – Start to budget for prosperity in 4 weeks – Learn More

Meal Planning Made Easy – Special Offer Waitlist

Money Masters Inner Circle – Learn More & Join Waitlist

Connect On Instagram – @aimeecerka

Key Points:

0:00 – Episode Sponsorship – Meal Planning Made Easy
1:00 – Episode Overview
2:33 – Playing Defense With Your Finances
3:10 – #1 Mistake I Hear Someone Say
5:04 – Things Included In Your Finances That You Don’t Think Of
6:00 – Money Management Pro Steps
8:49 – Expense Tracking Vs Budgeting
9:40 – Percentage Based Budgeting Overview
13:48 – See Consistent Results With Your Budget
15:10 – Adjustment To Budget Categories
18:35 – Resources

Watch The Your Money Your Life Podcast! – How To Play Defense With Your Money – Money Management, Saving Money, Debt Pay Off, And More – Episode 02

Find The Extra Hiding In Your Existing Personal Finanes Starting Today!

Download The Budget Makeover Guide Today!

Resources & Links

Budget Makeover Guide – Download Free

Budgeting Simplified – Start to budget for prosperity in 4 weeks – Learn More

Meal Planning Made Easy – Special Offer Waitlist

Money Masters Inner Circle – Learn More & Join Waitlist

Connect On Instagram – @aimeecerka

Read It! How To Play Defense With Your Money – Money Management, Saving Money, Debt Pay Off, And More – Episode 02

Your Money Your Life – Ep. 02

Aimee Cerka 00:00

This episode of the Your Money Your Life podcast is brought to you by meal planning made easy meal planning Made Easy is a mini course designed to help you save money in the kitchen while still enjoying food that you love. Inside meal planning Made Easy, we’ll create a customized system to help you automate meal planning.

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If you want to be the first to know about this no brainer offer, then simply text Meal to 817-969-4653. And as always, the link is gonna be hanging out in the show notes as well if you missed it.

You avoid budgeting because you don’t want to pinch pennies, cut coupons or live off of beans and rice. I don’t blame you. In today’s episode, we’re talking all about playing defense with your finances and what that actually looks like, which is not any of those things. So oh, let’s do this!
– Aimee cerka

01:31

Welcome to the Your Money Your Life podcast. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. After my husband and I faced three major financial roadblocks in the last six years. I felt like I wasn’t doing all that I could and I had let my family down. It always felt like life was a struggle, like I had to work harder than everyone else. It just came easy to them. And I didn’t feel worthy of success, until a coach helped me see the successes in our experiences instead of our failures. This allowed me to create and implement systems to grow our network by 200,000. Plus, while spending time with my loved ones and on my priorities. Now I help motivated women create the happiness, family life, financial security, and long term wealth they deserve. If you’re ready to eliminate stress, struggle, frustration and guilt within your finances, you’re in the right place. Welcome, I’m so glad you’re here!

02:34

Welcome back to another episode of the Your Money, Your life Podcast, episode two, I’m so excited. You’re here, we’re going to be talking all today about what I call the defense side of your finances. And what defense playing defense with your money means is making the most of what you have. Now, typically, that’s where like the stereotypically, we think about like the budgeting and cutting coupons, pinching pennies, the whole tightening everything down portion of our budget. And we’re gonna get into that.

But before we can go really any further, we have to address four words that I hear all too often. And I don’t want you to make this same mistake.

So let’s start with this. Those four words that I hear all the time is already know that. So somebody will grab the budget makeover Guide, which of course is jam packed with all the tips, the guide that I created, after we went through financial roadblocks along the way that we were able to say $250 a month, countless other people have been able to say $250 a month by going through that guide. And I can’t tell you time and time again, I hear already know that. It was great, Aimee, but I already knew that.

The problem was saying is I already knew that or I already knew that is you’re not listening, when we say that we think okay, yeah, I know this already, we stopped actively listening. So if we’re not actively engaged, and listening for that one piece of information, even that you might be missing, maybe you haven’t been applying it, maybe you’re just not moving forward. When we say that I already know that one of my coaches calls it already always listening. We put that on, we’re not listening to improve. We’re listening because you know, we know it all.

And I firmly believe that we have something to learn from everyone. So we should always be listening. But if you’re thinking as we’re talking, the thought comes up already know that I’m going to encourage you just kind of push it to the side for a minute and think okay, what part of this am I not taking action on? Am I not taking action on consistently?

Or what part have I written off and maybe haven’t tried because I don’t feel it’ll work for me. So now that we’ve kind of gotten that out of the way we are listening together So we can have a real honest conversation.

Now we can talk about the defense.

So like I said, playing defense with your finances is making the most of what you already have.

Now, that also includes like our insurance, your debt payoff plan, the people you associate with, and so much more. But I think for today’s purpose, today’s episode, we’re going to focus more on what we call money management.

Now, part of money management is your budgeting. And I know for several that I’ve talked to they’ve said, like, you know, budgeting budget is a bad word around here, that’s like a four letter word, we don’t say that. I don’t want to budget.

And really, the reason that we have that come up, is because we feel that money from budgeting is about limiting us. And budgeting is not about limiting us. Budgeting is simply about telling your money, where to actually go. And we can dive into that and so much more. Probably in another episode, we do better, because I’ll get on my soapbox there and all of that. But we talk about money management instead of just budgeting.

Because yes, the budgeting is a part of that. But we also do our daily Money Minute, we do a weekly check in, we do a month, month in as well. So there’s four extra pieces there alone, within our money management system, that helps it work. Like in a seamless process, this is about creating the system. So your money works for you that you create prosperity on autopilot. Basically, this is about giving you more of your time back.

So when we master our money, we create that system that we’re looking for, we’re just kind of checking in, you’re truly able to step into that CEO role, and just kind of oversee things, check in on it, make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to, without having me super hands on like all the time. But it’s also done that it’s working for you as well. And that’s really important. This is not about like telling you to be in your budget for hours upon hours all the time. Now, of course, I love numbers, and I love budgeting, I probably could do that.

But I don’t want to do that it’s more important for me to go spend time with my kids that are in the other room. Like it’s more important for me to go spend time with my spouse and to do things as a family and be with my loved ones, or give back to the associations that mean, to me like that is more important to me then kind of getting stuck in the numbers, because that can happen. And that’s what these systems are for. So daily money minutes, we’re checking in daily with our finances, if you got the system in place, it’s just kind of like, it’ll literally take you 60 seconds to make sure everything is still up and going through using a budgeting tracker system. It’s really simple. categorizing the transactions, then weekly, you’re checking in with your finances, making sure like the monies were exposed to the bills that are being auto paid are like being auto paid bills that you have to pay manually or being paid, your budget is up to date.

I’m staying on top of things like this will also help like prevent, I didn’t meet that one in four people who will have their identity stolen at some point. So if there are fraudulent charges on your card, and you’re not staying in tune with the system, you don’t have this in place that you can just kind of check in with it and be done. You won’t necessarily catch it or it’ll take a long time for you to be able to catch it. So those are really important. And then a month in is kind of like putting a bow on the system. We talked all about that inside money masters at our circle, we didn’t end up training there. But just making sure everything’s in the right place. Like you have all of those things they’re in looking at, where you actually ended up in the month with your budget, so that you can proactively plan for the next month.

08:52

I did an Instagram real on this a couple months back. But for a lot of people, when they say like we’re budgeting, we’re actually expense tracking. And the difference is expense tracking is part of budgeting. But expense tracking is reactionary. We’re looking at it after the fact that we’re categorizing the money we already spent instead of setting the intention beforehand with your finances and telling it where to go before you’ve spent the money. expense tracking is reactionary.

So we want to make sure that we’re actually budgeting and really to be able to budget instead of just expense tracking, you have to have that month end system in place so that you can plan the budget because then you know where you’ve been, you know where you want to go. You see how we kind of get like this wheel here that we have to have done this work for the work in the future to work effectively. Um, and then let’s talk about budgeting because I think that’s the big thing. Now there are many different ways you can budget and they can all work. The important thing is to find something that works for you.

The one that I use and I recommend to all my clients is percentage based budgeting. Now the reason why percentage based budgeting is so amazing. Is it solves the struggle of your income varying. So those of us who have incomes that fluctuate, that maybe we’re not on a salary like my husband’s a truck driver, he got paid by the mile, for the longest time talk about inconsistent income, right? Some months, some weeks would be great. And some weeks wouldn’t be so great and of course, would average out, but trying to come up with that and trying to budget when you’re going on this, like roller coaster of great months and low months. And also, if you’re an entrepreneur, I know you know what I’m talking about. Because some months we make we do really great, some months, not so much. There’s so many times that we have that inconsistent income. And if you get paid bi weekly, then you have a couple months out of the year that you get that extra paycheck. And we’re what do you do with that money? How does this work?

Percentage based budgeting solves all of that, because it doesn’t matter how much income you make, the percentages will stay the same. So when you have great months, you’re going to fund the accounts that much better. If you have lower month, then the higher months are going to help like fund the lower months. Now, sometimes with the inconsistent income, it does take like a month or two or so like to get into the system, depending on how much of a cushion you have set up. But by far is the best system that I found. And within percentage based budgeting, we have seven main categories. Actually, you know what, eight, which I’m going to get to in a minute.

The seven main categories that I normally talk about would be your fixed necessities, very necessities, Play account, savings account, giving account, education account and your financial freedom account. Okay. So all of those different funds, we’re breaking our income up into those different categories.

The reason why we break up our necessities into fixed necessities and very necessities, is especially with grocery costs continuing to arise, we don’t want to be in the position where we’re spending our mortgage money on groceries. So we just separate those out. So fixed necessities are like your normal monthly bills that don’t really change, very necessities, gas, food, Amazon household things, all of those stuff goes there.

Play account is really important as well, it’s going to be your dining out his money to blow her money to blow of course, savings, this can be savings for your contingency fund savings for like a target a savings account, or your annual expenses savings account as well.

Then giving, of course, we give 10 cents on every dollar that comes into the company to Operation underground railroad. And then of course, we set aside money as well to give above and beyond that to other causes that are important to us. But giving that money that’s for our giving account.

Then your education account, if you have a small business, if you have a business, if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s what we use to fund the business, especially as you were getting up and going and it’s not necessarily paying for itself. Yeah.

13:03

If you don’t have a business, this can also be funding this is really about improving your skills. Because your skills and your knowledge is the part that can’t be taken away from you. So this could be learning a new skill, this could be going to college, all those things education account.

And then finally, the financial freedom account was the account that’s designated for passive income streams. Now, if you were involved in your business, that sort of has an income stream, there are different ones here, we’re going to get more into income in the next episode when we talk about offensive. But that’s just kind of what your financial freedom account also known as your FFA account is for okay.

But the important part here is being consistent. So whatever system you’re going to use, set it up. And then we have to be consistent and setting up the system is most is the most time intensive. Like once the system is going it doesn’t take as much of your time but if we don’t put in the work that we need to, to actually take action on it, not just think about it, but actually take action on putting the system in place.

We’re not going to see the progress that we’re looking for that right there. If you can overcome that you can put the system in place you can move forward like you want to. It’s going to be game changing for you okay, because the average family overspent every single year by $7,500. I don’t know about you, but we can take a vacation. We have a family of five but we go on a vacation for $7,500.

So this part playing defense and managing your money, this part of the process of managing your finances, at least you’re aware of what’s going on. Okay? That’s like the first step like we know a they talk about like a meeting you have a problem was the first step. This is the first step here, like you have to know what’s going on. And if you don’t have that money management system in place, you’re not going to know what’s going on. Right?

Okay, so I said that we have eight categories now, but I shared with you seven. And the reason for that is, we talk all the time, or I talk all the time about having a system that works for you. It has to work for your life and your priorities and the way that you operate. Like this is not a cookie cutter system. That’s not what we’re about. This is about making it work for you. And I found that I was struggling with our health or medical portion of the budget, there was part of it in a fixed necessities for like, the medical insurance, and then the worst part of it and the very necessities with supplements and things that we do to improve our health, chiropractor visits and oils and things from a more holistic perspective as well. But

15:58

that felt like it was kind of felt like it was taking over the category. So what I did is because our health and making our health a priority is important to us, it’s important for us to be healthy, I simply pulled it out, and I made it its own category. So now I have eight basic subsidies, very necessities play savings, giving education, FFA and health. And I realized that it was a large chunk of those two percentages that I was actually spending on my health, which was fine. Because spending money on my health for myself or my family is important to me, and it is a priority, we are going to spend the money there because I feel we see the return on it. We know how important it is to stay healthy. But it felt like it was that the very necessities category specifically was just continuing to grow and grow and grow and we’re spending more money on it. Now yes, food cost has gone up. And yes, gas costs have gone up as well. So there was some of that. But a large portion of it was actually for our health. So when I simply pulled it out, we adjusted the system. Again, we kind of have to know where things are at. That’s why the weekly check in and your month in are really great. Because you’re able to kind of course correct, see what’s working for you see what’s not. So the same thing here, just because I share those seven categories or the eight categories.

If you want to use help as well, you might have something else that you is really important to you and you want to make it its own category, that is perfectly fine. This is about getting the starting block. The important part here is you managing your money, you being aware of what’s going on in your finances, taking that CEO role, telling your money, where to go, instead of kind of being along for the ride, because that’s the point of the budget, telling your money where you want it to go. Because if you don’t set this intention, somebody else will, we’ll talk more about like mindset advertising, all those things, which are a great, like company’s marketing advertising, that’s all great. I mean, I do it as well. But we still didn’t need to be able to make educated in control decisions.

And when you stay on top of your money, and you know, at least where it’s going, and you have the system in place to do it for you, you are going to be set up that much farther for success. And you know, that that’s really the essence of the defense, there is a lot going on here. So make sure to check out the show notes. I’m going to give you some resources that I found helpful to be able to set these systems up, put them in place. I know, like I mentioned, this is the most time intensive thing and this is where I see people get stuck time and time again and I don’t want that to happen to you.

So make sure to check out the show notes. I’ll include some resources there for you as well so you can get moving. You can set up your finances there to work for you have that money management system and truly step into that CEO role that you’re called to be within your finances within your wife step into that role. And that’s it for now. We’ll see you next week on another episode of the Your Money Your Life podcast

19:27

Thank you so much for listening to the Your Money Your Life podcast. My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram. You can find me at Aimee circa send me a message or post a screenshot and tag me I love hearing from podcast listeners.

19:51

When you’re ready to master your money, go to work with aimee.com You and I will work together to ditch financial stress and struggle for good with a customized plan that works for you your goals your priorities your life. I’ll see you next time on the Your Money Your Life podcast

20:16

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