(Intro) some of us have always been in the role of managing our family's finances,
but other times a transition in job or relationship or family structure. I can land you in this role for the first time in your adult life. Cortney comes on the podcast today to talk about becoming the families budgeter. After being married for 13 years, I'm excited for you to hear her story today, as she shares all the things she learned about her family's money and managing the family budget.
Today on the Debt Free Mom podcast, I have Cortney, and she is a homeschooling mom of two, who recently became a stay-at-home mom after working full-time for several years. She's been married for 15 years. Her husband works from home, but also travels for work. She's new to the world of budgeting and would describe herself as a saver married to a spender, an overthinker, and a researcher. Both her and her husband have worked in nonprofit and ministry roles in the past and want to be able to give even more than they do now. So thanks Cortney, for coming on and being willing to share your story about moving into this budgeting role.
Thanks. It's been overwhelming, but a good challenge for me personally.
Yeah. So tell me a little bit about moving into that, like what made your household be like, let's shift this task from one person to the next.
I think the biggest thing that made us reevaluate it was we made big changes in the way our life was structured. We moved across the country so we moved, from the west coast to the Midwest. We had one income for the first time. I became a stay-at-home mom after working full-time. And when we made the shift, we knew theoretically on paper that it worked. But when you practically go to live that stuff out, you kind of run into things where it's like, okay, it's not working quite the way that we thought. Inflation also really hit us hard , like that wasn't in the original plan.
That was not in anybody's plan.
Yeah, it was not in anybody's plan. It wasn't part of our math when we were factoring, like, what would it take financially and those things. And like you said, we work in nonprofit and ministry things. We don't make a lot of money. I mean, our one income is pretty tight. We already naturally run a fairly tight budget. But we were like, we can do this. When you start living it out, then you start realizing what's not working. And what we were doing before one of us was a stay-at-home parent, it just wasn't making sense anymore.
And we've always been really committed to reevaluating things regularly. I try to do that with the kids, with everything we do. It's like, let's constantly be reevaluating, is this still working? Does this still serve us? And we really had never done that with our budget. Which is so funny to me that it just never occurred to us because we do it with a lot of other things that we do. When we very first got married, we had a ton of debt, student loans stuff. My husband's a spender. He'd gotten into, stuff as so many of us do when you're in your twenties and you think, the sky's the limit. And we had a bunch of stuff we needed to pay off. And we did Dave Ramsey, and we did pay off a bunch of things. And we committed to several concepts and ideas about, not living off of credit cards and not incurring a lot of debt. But then it was just like we never circled back and tried doing anything different. We just kind of were stuck in this same cycle and same pattern and never were talking about it. We don't really fight about our finances much. I really had just kind of backed out of it cause I did not like it, didn't want to deal with it. I was like, you just do it and I'll just sit back and relax about it and you've got it. And so for me it was just, this isn't working anymore and why are we not reevaluating our process on what we're doing? And that was kind of the catalyst for making the switch to me doing it, which was a huge leap. Cuz math terrifies me to death. But budgeting isn't all math.
Yeah. You can find tools that do it for you.
You do find tools that do it for you. And even though he is more mathematically inclined and he's an organized person, he works in administration, like, he's all those things. And I did a lot of that kind of stuff too, very administrative work. We're very different. He's a spender. I'm a saver. I research things. I find solutions. I have a more positive outlook on , our finances where he tends to lean more negative. I definitely like, little things add up. He's more the one, like, if I don't, if I can't put $200 in there, that vacation account, then it's worthless.
And I'm like, no, we can pay $5 every week. We're yeah, we can go on that trip, honey. And so it just, looking at, what actually is gonna work better. It's made a huge difference.
So who was it him saying, why don't you try doing this? Or was it you saying, why don't I try taking this on? Or was it mutual?
I think it was fairly mutual. He was getting really overwhelmed. He was working a lot of hours and traveling a lot. And I am now in a position, where I'm at home and I'm doing the grocery shopping regularly and differently than we used to do it. And I'm, trying to get things done around the house, and I'm asking him questions like, how much can I spend on this? And how, what can I do with this? And what can I do with that? And he doesn't even know because he's so overwhelmed with his work. And so it got to the point where I realized, he's overwhelmed, he's drowning. He can't do this anymore. And he got to that point also. So it was fairly mutual.
And I had been following your account for a while on Instagram. A few, several months. I think before the beginning of January when I started the Know Your Numbers challenge. I did that in January. So I think that was when, we had both kind of gotten to the same place. And after following your account for a while I was like, okay, maybe I can figure it out. I tell my kids all the time, if you practice and you learn new things, anybody can learn something new. It doesn't matter if , you dunno how to do something. I'm like, if I tell my kids that I need to practically live that out myself.
And so how did becoming a stay-at-home parent play into that? Right before I started recording, you mentioned that as you became a stay-at-home parent, you became more involved in the purchasing of things and the groceries and stuff.
So compared to when you were working full-time, how did your relationship or your attachment to the family finances change once you were a stay-at-home mom?
I think becoming a stay-at-home mom. I've always been a saver, we've always tried to keep things fairly tight and frugal. But it allowed me more space to do that. And and I kind of enjoy that. And so it was like, if I have a better view of our budget, I can do this even more. I can be more effective at it. And, we're gonna be saving more money. I can have a better idea of how we can do that. I was starting to be able to meal plan more effectively than when I was working. I was able to grocery shop when I wanted to instead of always on the weekend. My kids now, they're nine and six, they're getting to a little bit more independent, have a little bit more room in our life to take on some new things to learn, some new things like budgeting. And so it just has allowed me to kind of dive deeper into how to have a more efficient home.
So is January when you took over budgeting, or January was when you started using the pay period template?
Both.
Both. Okay. So when you took that over, I'm curious to know what surprised you about that? Like maybe you had reservations about, a certain category being too high or something. Once you actually dove into the numbers and built a budget, had a plan looking forward, was there anything either good or bad that surprised you about your outlook?
I think some of the things that surprised me the most, there were some things that I knew, but I'm a really visual person. And so even though I knew some of the information, seeing the actual numbers, seeing the actual category, seeing the percentages of where money goes to certain things was really helpful to me. Like I said, like we already run a tight budget we don't have a lot of subscriptions. There was, there wasn't like certain things where it was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe we're spending, 12% of our income on subscription services. That didn't exist really. But seeing how much, how, like what the percentages of each category of our income was really helpful to me.
Even though I didn't feel like any of those categories were really out of alignment with our goals, but seeing zeros in the investment and savings categories- that's hard. Even though I mentally, I knew we weren't investing, I knew we weren't saving.
Now we do already have an emergency fund in place. So there wasn't an urgent need to have money going into our savings account. But there also isn't, there wasn't room in the budget to save for a trip or, save for something that would be a big expense. Our car is paid off, but it's also a 2010. It's gonna need to save for a new vehicle. And we don't wanna have a big car payment, so we wanna either pay cash or have a really low payment, and then pay it off quickly. But , I'm looking at it going, there's no way to do that with the way it is right now.
And for my husband it had gotten so overwhelming, I think, for him, and he's an all or nothing thinker. I think, for me to be able to come in with like fresh eyes, fresh attitude, fresh vision for it was really helpful.
Yeah, . He's ready to have maybe a break from being so in the weeds of it.
Yeah.
He's been in the weeds of it. He needs that time to just disconnect from it.
So now that you've set it up January to now is a couple months, would you say that growing that gap is one of your primary goals with your budget? Like what would you say let's do top two priorities in your budget?
I think top two priorities would probably be being able to save up for large purchase, whether it's like a trip or a car. Because he does travel occasionally, we have the freedom and we homeschool and big reason why we homeschool, we have the freedom to go with him if we wanted to. But then practically speaking, it's like, but we don't have the money to actually do it. And that was one of the main reasons we do homeschool and so, we wanna get to that place, where because we have the freedom to do this and it was one of our original goals, we need to then financially get to a place where if he's going on a trip and we want to go, we can financially do that. So that's a big goal for us personally.
And then saving for big purchases. We don't wanna be in car debt. We, at this point we have a little balance on a credit card. It was actually quite big. We were able to knock out a ton of of the balance on the credit card between like our tax return and some other things. I just have a small balance on that.
I was, it's one of my questions for you: do I take some money out of the emergency fund now to, now that I know we're not gonna need it for a while, in theory, to pay off what I have left. So that's something that we're considering.
So with the credit card, are you currently paying like a really small minimum payment on it a month?
We can pay over the minimum payment. Okay. But it would still probably take us, I think I did a I did a debt calculator on it. , if I didn't put anything more than what I have, which is more than the minimum to put back on it, it would take probably a year.
Okay. Is it like in a promo period or anything? Or does it have an interest? It does have interest. Okay. If you took savings out to pay it off, would you have a really solid amount in your emergency fund? Like at least two months? Yes. Of, of like income or expenses. Okay.
So those are the triage that I go through is how helpful would it be to my budget to eliminate it. So like, what kind of minimum payment can I eliminate? Number two, what kind of interest can I avoid? And number three, if I pull the money from savings and pay it off, am I exposing myself to risk basically, or do I still have a very solid cushion of, at least two months of like expenses or of income to where even if you paid the credit card off today and then tomorrow your car needed a new battery, you would still be fine kind of thing.
If all those things are true, then yes, I would pay off the card in full because the interest rate going a long time is going to take so much more of your money than necessary when you have that money sitting in savings. So what that not only does is avoid that interest so that you can save yourself money. So you just pay the actual amount of the balance instead of the current balance plus 25% interest over the next year. And then also because you're mentioning wishing that other goals could happen faster, or wishing that there was more breathing room in your budget than there is now, when we pay that in full, you get to look at all your future pay periods and delete out that payment to that card, and instead send that to another goal.
So for the, for all those reasons, I think you're in the perfect spot to pay it in full and be able to say, that's done, that's paid off. We're avoiding that interest. Even if you wanna say you're gonna then refill the emergency fund a little bit if you want to option optionally you still could do that faster by having that minimum payment gone than if you kept paying it slowly.
So yes, ideally in any situation where an interest rate is like 10% or higher, we wanna prioritize getting that outta here because that is just taking away from your ability to travel, your ability to invest, your ability to just feel like there's flexibility in the budget. Short answer, yes. If all those things that I asked are true, I would pay that card off and then free yourself up in future pay periods to then use that money towards another goal, which feels more fun than paying off a credit card balance.
Definitely. We had, I think, gotten to that point. I think we're there now. We weren't, a couple months ago, when he was in the midst of a job transition, I, we were wanting to get there, but it was like, okay, we may need this emergency fund. Now, like things are feeling more stable. And now the balance that needs paid off, it's not an insurmountable balance.
And another thing that can help you decide, so that's a really good point. First of all, is how stable or volatile is your overall situation? Anybody that's in a life transition at all, whether it's moving or job change or adding a baby or anything like that, to me the number one thing is just save. Like if you have extra cash, just put it in a, in account because then if something comes up during that transition, you have full access and control over what you do with that extra, even if like what you're doing where you just wait until you ride out the transition, everything ends up being fine and then you can take that money and you can dump it on a different goal later. But if we first dump it on a credit card, it's not like we can call up Visa and be like, actually I changed my mind and I want that money back. So I think if you feel stable, you know what his take home pay is, you know what the job is then you can feel more comfortable using that.
The other thing was to help you make the decision on that same credit card calculator it will often also tell you how much interest you will pay over the life of it. So seeing that number is sometimes enough to get people like, oh, nevermind. I really do wanna pay this off today. I would say that paying it off and being able to then refill the emergency fund to whatever amount you felt more secure at could happen faster by having the card gone.
Looking forward then and thinking about your next, like three to six months, if we also imagine that credit card is paid off, so the amount that you're currently putting towards that card would then be freed up to do other things. Does that kind of help grow that gap between your income and expenses to feel like you have a little bit more momentum that could build towards those other goals like travel and car replacement?
It doesn't create a huge number, but it gives us enough that we can plan what we wanna do this summer or, there's a trip that we know we're gonna take next year. So just having that mentally go. Okay. We can cover that, we're not worrying about how we're gonna cover that. So just knowing some of those things and then, starting to think about what we wanna do for future car. That's been really important to me. He grew up, like the whole car payment thing is just like not a big deal.
Yeah. Normal.
He, yeah. We haven't had a car payment, I think in four or five years, and that was the first time in his life that he did not have a car payment and he obviously loves it. And it's mental shift and he doesn't wanna just get back to that, but he tends to lean just being more okay with it than I do.
Yeah. Even though budgeting isn't your preference, and math isn't your preference, being the budgeter actually made you feel more confident about that transition. Which I think is really important to point out, not just for me and you, but for people listening, that ignorance is not bliss when it comes to money. And we like to think it is. Like a lot of times, especially like you said, you're not math minded, the people who aren't numbers minded tend to just be like I don't like numbers, so you know, he does it or whatever.
And it's like, ignorance is not bliss. So what you're actually creating for yourself is more stress instead of less stress. And so I love that by being willing to step into this task that you wouldn't have preferred you now feel less stressed about it instead of more stressed, which is a really important thing to note that if we want that bliss, then we need to do the opposite of ignoring it and instead face it and see the numbers. I have personally found as a worrier actually looking at the real numbers is so calming because I'm like, okay, the things that my brain is coming up with are false. Like I'm creating these, the world is ending kind of scenarios, and now these numbers are telling me like, actually the world's not ending. You just have a, like a small margin, like you said, and it's like a small margin we can deal with. If I tell myself, if I actually align my thinking with the reality of the true numbers, then I'm like, okay, calm down. You can manage this. The world is not ending. I'm definitely a chicken little, sky is falling type person.
I am.
And I think ,it helps with the budgeting to then be like, okay, what I imagined is not the truth. So I can look at these numbers and I can start to tell myself things that are actually true about our money. Even if , they aren't the numbers that we love, it's still information that we can actually do something with because it's the real numbers instead of what we're imagining or kind of generalizing that it might be.
So I just love that you mentioned that as the person who doesn't prefer budgeting, becoming a budgeter actually made you feel more confident in a big transition than being able to just be the one that kind of said, I don't wanna look at that.
Absolutely. I am so much more confident in it now and I am the same way. I am a worst case scenario. I have come up with every bad thing that could possibly happen. And so having a full, hundred percent view of our budget, it isn't as bad as I imagined it. And it is something I can control. I may not be able to always control, maybe you know, what's coming in, but I can control where it's gonna go and how it's gonna go out, and I am the natural saver. And so it does help. I mean, sometimes I have to be like, okay, it is okay to spend a little money, let's not, be that person.
But but it does, it does lend to, okay, we need to be responsible. Let's not just, go crazy. And I think the other thing too, there were times when I knew nothing about the budget. I would ask him, can I, I wanna get a couple of things at Target. Can I order those? And he would say yes. And so then I would, and then maybe a month later something would come up that I would wanna do or spend money on, and he'd be like you spent that money when you bought those clothes. If I would've known I was trading this for a couple of shirts, I would've been like, oh, nevermind. I don't want them that much. But because I didn't know that I was trading this for that , I didn't know to make that decision. And that used to absolutely drive me crazy.
I'm sure. Yeah.
And because I'm a saver. And so to me, I'm like, I have things very specifically that I wanna spend money on and so I'm always laying out like, how badly do I want these items?
And so not knowing what I'm giving up when I buy something was just absolutely infuriated me. So now, there's so much less that I wonder about, or I don't have to look and be like, okay, what would I be giving up potentially if I spend this money?
You can go in the budget and just play around with how does this fit into the numbers before you actually buy it.
So that has made a big difference for me personally.
So on the flip side of that, he is the spender who's no longer budgeting, did you guys work personal spending cash into the plan for each of you, for him, for both of you, so that he as the spender had permission or room in the budget to spend?
January and February we kind of had none. We're in the midst of this big job transition. There were all these unknowns. But once we got through that big hurdle, the very first thing I did was work personal spending money back into the budget before I did anything else.
Even though I'm a saver, I know it is not practical to not have anything. So our personal spending, it's still a small amount right now. I'm hoping we can grow that. But it, he and I knew, like I remember even before I took over the budget, I made myself some, notes and goals. And one of mine at the top was he has to have some money that nobody's asking him about and he can do whatever he wants with and so that was like the first thing I did once we had, a little gap and so that's already there. And he can just, go and do it. And he is technical and he's, he gets all of it already. So he's got the app on his phone, he can look at it.
I am 40 now and I can't remember what I did two minutes ago. So there's a note on almost ab I'm almost everything in the spreadsheet. Yeah. So he can look at it and he can be like, what is this? And he can look at my little note don't know how much he checks it honestly, cuz he is a pretty busy guy. But he can if he wants to and he knows how and he is comfortable using spreadsheets, he can out spread sheet me any day.
I just love that you knew that he needed that in there, even if he wasn't going to be the primary person budgeting, cuz sometimes that could be such a big pain point when the saver of the couple is the budgeter and then the spender just kind of feels in this prison of always being told no or always being told there's not enough money for something.
So I, you commented that it's a smaller amount than you would like, but I think so often it's more about the gesture or the principle than it is about the specific amount. Just knowing I have, like you said, I have a corner of the budget that I don't have to ask about that I don't have to get permission to buy.
When Kyle and I were first married in our twenties and our personal spending was like $20 a month or something, whatever it was, we called it our "No questions asked money" because we had a few months right after we got married where he is the saver and I'm the spender. And he wanted to set money aside to buy bigger things down the road.
And I was just like, these little $5 coffee cups and ordering a, on-demand movie or whatever. So I thought it was totally fine cuz all my charges were like less than $10 or whatever. And each of us was getting annoyed by the other person because he was like, what are all these little charges? And then I was like, what is this one big charge? And so because of that then we actually called the personal spending cash our "no questions asked money."
So I, I think it's super important for everybody to have personal spending cash, but especially for a spender who's not the one making the budget. To have that little piece of independence kind of helps them be like, okay, I can stick to the rest of the plan cuz I have my little piece that belongs to me.
Yeah. Especially when he was the one who was doing it. I mean, 15 years is a long time. And I know that he's not worried about it. He's not, questioning anything that I'm doing.
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So, now that you are into it a little bit and you've kind of run a few pay periods and you're not like new to it, what questions do you have about using it well or applying it or prioritizing goals?
I think there's a couple things that I feel like I'm just not that great at. I think and maybe because I either don't know how to use it in the spreadsheet very well, or maybe it doesn't exist in the spreadsheet. And I don't know which one it is. I think the first one would be when we are trying to track, , I think you call 'em sinking funds . So like we always take the whole year to save up, like for what we're gonna spend at the holidays, right? And then because I homeschool, like I save up for our curriculum. So things like that, that are going to cost a little bit more. So I take, a certain amount and I set that aside every month. So how do you track that? So like if you say you're gonna take, $50 out of the first pay period in a month, what's the best way to track those and keep tabs on that? Cuz I kind of just created myself a little something on a spreadsheet and it's terrible.
Okay. So I can explain what I do and then maybe a few other options as well. Number one, when I put it into the budget, I just treat it like an expense. So if I wanna put $50 aside every month for Christmas, I'll just have $50 on the Christmas line once a month. And then once I transfer it out of checking, then I mark it as paid. Where I put it is that I put it into savings accounts at Ally Bank that allow me to subcategorize my savings. So actually where I track like how I'm doing with my progress in filling that category is in the bank account itself. Because in Ally, in a savings account, I can not only create subcategories and that I could rename. So I have, one of my savings accounts at Ally is called Family Funds. And I have a category for a vacation, a category for car repair, I have several others. But I can rename the category and I can set a goal amount for the category itself.
So if I say, okay, for vacation, if we wanna do an overnight during spring break and I need $300, they call it buckets. I can set that bucket as having a $300 goal by April 5th or something. And then every time I deposit money into that, it shows the little bar filling up to tell me how close I am to filling that category. So for me, my two tools that I use to accomplish this are the budget telling me when I have extra available and how much so that I can put it into the savings. And then the other tool is the bank app itself telling me how close to meeting that goal a m i in each of my specific categories.
As far as using the money out of it, I, there's two different things I do. For example, for a car repair if the, if it's one charge, like an oil change and I'm gonna pull money out of a sinking fund in order to pay for it, I ignore both of those things completely in the budget. So I actually did this in real life this week. I have a car repair sinking fund, and then both of our vehicles got an oil change and the bill was $119.79.
So it's one charge and I get charged a hundred nineteen seventy nine and I pull a hundred nineteen seventy nine out of the car repair sinking fund. Those two things cancel each other out in my bank account, and I just don't record them in my budget at all because the transfers into the car repair fund were already recorded in my budget in the car repair line. So I've basically already represented in my budget that much money was going to be used for a car repair.
Some people are like, I, my brain can't handle ignoring it. I can't leave it out. I have to put it in. Totally fine. What you do then is there's a miscellaneous deposits row at the very top of the budget, and you record the transfer out of the sinking fund into your checking account as a miscellaneous deposit. And then you record the expense in whatever category it happens to fall. And those things will also cancel each other out so that it doesn't, it's not gonna take away from your buffer or anything because you have a matching deposit and a withdrawal basically. So again, some people are totally fine with ignoring it because it cancels to zero in their bank account. Other people are like, I have to see it in the ba in the budget. And that's what you can do to put those two in there.
As far as tracking if you just have one savings account and all the money for all the different categories is going in there and then you are managing where each one is going, then yes, you'll need some kind of other system for just writing down how much you have in there. And honestly, that's not something I have cuz I don't do that myself. But I do know that if you Google like free sinking fund, you could even say like free sinking fund Google Sheets something. I am very confident that there's a ton of stuff out there that people have made that you can then copy and paste into your budget documents on like a blank tab so that it's still all housed in one place.
My preference for myself and for other people is actually to organize yourself with different bank accounts as opposed to having one big bank account that just fills up that has multiple uses. I think organizing the bank accounts allows me the permission to not try to track the other information in the budget, if that makes sense.
That does make sense. So for his work, we have a credit card that's just for his work expenses and then he has to get reimbursed. I'm trying to figure out how best to keep track of that credit card and all the expenses. And then getting the reimbursement I have to make sure that he turned in the reimbursement and the reimbursement's coming back quickly.
And then making sure that we don't incur interest on that, because even though the expenses ultimately aren't our responsibility, the interest would be. So we got really sloppy with that off and on, just depending on how busy we were at various decisions in our lives. And I am like, okay, I'm not working right now. I can devote time to this and make sure we stay on track. Yeah. Cause we do also reap the benefits of like credit card You know, benefits, like a travel, whatever it might be. I'm trying to figure out the best away.
Okay. A few questions. Is the credit card that he uses only used for that? So like if it has a balance, it is a work reimbursable expense?
Yes.
Okay. So that helps. That's good. That's always what I recommend whether it's a debit card or a credit card or a Venmo card or whatever, something that can just be siloed into only work expenses that need to be reimbursed, just to make it easier for you to know if there's a balance on that card, it means that it's a work related expense.
So that's number one, which is good. Number two, to avoid interest with the timing of credit card statement balances and stuff as you're waiting for that, I would recommend having, Something like $500, something that could cover the balance if needed. And then you reimburse that $500 when you get the card back.
For example, if you come up with a system like an Ally bank account, that, that allows you to subdivide into categories. You don't need to worry that it's actually using any of your money. It's just allocating money from your savings. Like from your emergency fund of $500, that's gonna be cycling in and out for work reimbursements. But again, you're not actually spending anything because if you use it to pay off his credit card, it means that you're gonna reimburse it when he does get a check from work. So earmarking a little bit of your savings as this is the money that if the credit card hasn't been paid off before the statement date, I'm gonna go ahead and take just a small chunk, pay it off, and then when he gets the check for the reimbursement, I'm gonna deposit it back in that little work reimbursement fund or something, call it something to where you've actually given yourself permission to use that money. Cuz that's often the biggest hurdle for people is not that they don't have the cash to cover the card, it's that they feel like there's something wrong with taking money out of savings in order to cover it. So if all you need is kind of renaming the money, so it's like $500 of this is not gonna be called emergency fund anymore, it's gonna be called Work Reimbursement Fund. And then if, let's say he charges $200 in the month of March and that reimbursement isn't gonna come until after the statement date on that card, you could take $200 out of that $500, pay the card down to zero, and then you know for a fact that he's gonna get a check reimbursing that $200 and you can just put it back into that little pocket of $500.
So that's generally what I recommend doing is setting aside cash that can cover it in case the reimbursement takes longer than what the statement is simply so that it can stay completely out of your personal budget. Because oftentimes that's also what ends up happening is then people are like, then I have to use money outta my checking account to cover it while I'm waiting for the reimbursement. But that eats into what I had planned to do with our own personal money for our personal expenses. So as much as possible sequestering off this little corner of money that's saying this is gonna cover that card if I need to, and then I'll refill it with reimbursement money allows that to operate in its own little system, completely removed from your personal budget.
Okay. That's where I had started getting to cuz I was asking myself this question. I was like, how do, how am I supposed to do this if the reimbursement doesn't come by the time, it closes and all those. Cuz sometimes, I mean, when he's traveling, there's hotel rental car food, there's all these things. Airline tickets, I mean, it can be several thousand dollars. We don't wanna pay interest on this money, obviously. But I know with where we're at right now, I could take a decent amount of our savings account and just have it sitting there. Knowing it's gonna cycle back in.
I just, I always ask myself, because I'm still working on my confidence , is it the best way to do that? Or is there a better way to do that? And am I, am I really on the right track. And so I think just being able to talk it through, being like, okay, yeah, that is how other people would do it, that is the best way to do it.
I would have a different answer if you're like, no, it takes them like three months to reimburse him or something, then I would be like, I would probably be talking to HR, being like, listen, I'm not floating you $300 or $3,000 a month.
But if they are consistent about, like as he gets it in, then he gets a check cut, within a couple days or whatever, then I would say, again, give yourself permission to use a little bit of your own money for it, knowing that it's coming right back to you so you're not actually spending because it's gonna come back. And then number two, just keeping it out of your checking account and out of your budget cuz work should be benefiting your personal budget. It shouldn't be draining your personal budget. Yeah. So don't feel the need to like work it into your budget until they get reimbursed or something.
I would just come up with a system that's completely removed from the personal budget and the personal checking account. Use the money to pay it off and avoid interest, and then take the check and deposit it right back in so that you go back up to the balance you originally had.
It feels good to actually be at that point. And I would've I would've thought in January that it was gonna take a lot longer to get there. I'm actually really surprised how quickly it went to kind of get everything in order. Keep my head around it, and to feel like, okay, we've got this and we're fine. So it's really been, a really big tool for us to get, things where we wanted him to be. And I think it's gonna be really surprising to my husband. When he is ready to actually kind of take another look at it, sit back for a minute. He's . Starting a new job right now, so he's focused on that. That's perfect. That's where he should be. But I think he is gonna be surprised when I'm like, we actually have more money than you think we do.
Yeah, for sure.
In a lot of ways. So I think that's gonna be a nice surprise. Just by doing things a little bit differently and having a tool that's serving us better in a different season of life is just, it just kind of changes it. So
yeah, when we set up the numbers to kind of accurately reflect what is going on in our bank account and what's going on in our expenses, suddenly the exact same paycheck can start to feel bigger because it's like, we have more breathing room than we thought we did.
Now our mindset or our approach to the exact same size paycheck is actually a new feeling. We feel more secure. And so I know a lot of times when people have that turning point with their budget is when they say, I feel like I got a raise, but I didn't. But even if we don't create more margin, just having an awareness of what the margin actually is makes us feel more secure within the same paycheck size.
Yeah. And in the first two months, I mean, there really was no margin. When you're already living really frugally, I mean, there was a moment where I was like, there is nowhere to go, but for me to have to start working. I mean, I've had that moment and it was, but it was like, you know what though? There was gotta be more to this. There's gotta be, this is just temporary. Let's not go worst case scenario, let's take a minute. Let's see how this works out. And in doing that then margin starts to come and, yeah.
But as spouses too, and having a partner and stuff, I mean, I do, one of my biggest regrets is that abdicating the responsibility I have a s a shared partner in all of this. And just sitting back and going, you know what? You just take care of it cuz I don't want to. And that comes up more than just in our finances. But I think that's probably a big one for a lot of people. Yeah. It wasn't something we really fought about. I, for a lot of people it's a big stressor. It really wasn't for us. We'd set up our foundation early on when we got married. We kind of had it worked out, but we just sat back and let it go for too long. And but that was on me. It was like, I should not have just been like, I don't want to, so I'm just gonna look at it. And so that has been, that's been a big turning point for me.
And as much as we, I think our brains trick us into spending so much time in that regret and what could be that then we miss out on all the good things that you are doing now and can do moving forward. As much as that might be true about the past or about how you feel about it, I like, I am encouraged by what you're doing now that you are saying, okay, what's within my control today? Like, what happened? And it, and I think it's good to, take that time to reflect on that. And especially with him, to talk together about like, wow I'm sorry that I did that, but now moving forward, let's just turn our focus on the future and that can make both of you feel like this is a really positive thing.
I am, I'm so excited for you. I especially because you're in that beginning, like you're, you're not new, so you have gotten a few pay periods under your belt, so it doesn't have to feel like every part of it is overwhelming that every time something pops up, you're like, where does this go in the budget or whatever. You're getting closer and closer to more of an autopilot approach to the budget. And once you hit that sweet spot, then it's like, oh, this was all so worth it. So I know that you're like, if you're not already there, you're right about to be there.
Isn't it so cool to hear someone's story of going from willfully ignoring what's happening in the family's finances to being the one who manages the finances, who makes a plan for money and who sees where the money is going in advance? I loved hearing Cortney's story from trying to ignore what's happening with the numbers to becoming the one making plans for her family's financial future.
For whatever reason, if you find yourself newly thrust into this role of being the family budgeter, I want you to take heart from what Cortney has shared. It might take a little bit at the beginning to figure out what a good budget looks like for you, but once you go through even just a few pay periods like Cortney did, you will start to have these light bulb moments realizing all the upsides that come from budgeting that far outweigh any of the initial overwhelm.
(*Credits) Thanks for listening to the Debt Free Mom Podcast. If you want to join me as a guest on the show, go to dfmpodcast.com. The Debt Free Mom Podcast is hosted by me, Carly Hill, and is produced, edited, and mixed by Kyle Hill. Music for this episode was written by Kyle Hill. Hit subscribe wherever you're listening to join in with every new episode as we grow our confidence and contentment in our personal finances.
