you have the rest of your life to be so successful and to be that much more ahead because you're implementing something now. And I love that because there are some people that come to us in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, which is not too late. It's not at all because it works in any stage of life. But we love it when we get young people in because they have that much more time on their side to be able to build wealth and leave a legacy behind and just all the amazing things that come with that. Yeah. And it's just a blessing too because what you just said is you have $6,000, quote unquote, discretionary, right? It will be like 37 of it is going, 3700 is going to debt. You're going to pay that off. The 2000 extra basically equals, imagine what you're going to do with that money once it's gone. Can we come to the party? What is happening? And you're just going to do so well. So just again, give yourself that little breathing room right now, but understand like you're going to get there. And it's, and again, you're still in your 20s for long two weeks here. And you're have the rest of your life to find how to spend $6,000 and then your income is only going to go up for both of you. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt free but you don't want to live on beans and rice? When you don't want to give up this pumpkin spice latte? Hey, it's okay if you don't already know how to budget or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it's okay if you want to seem like you have your finances all together or you're not on the same page with your spouse when it comes to finances. We know what you're doing probably isn't working. But guess what? You're in for the right place. We're Shayna and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019 helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck and know exactly what to do with their money. In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages and even bring your kids in on a conversation. We can help you no matter where you're at whether you're the single mom who's never had $500 in their savings account or the millionaire who's paid off for real estate workers. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. All right, Shelby. Thank you for coming on Financial Coaching for Women. We're excited to have you. Please let us know what you got going on and how we can help. Hey, yes. Thank you. I actually bought your system like a couple months ago and at first I was disappointed that it was so far in advance or so far out that I'm not to schedule this, but I'm glad I did because I was able to give me time to get into the system and get started on how it was going to work because it was, it took a while to get into the system. I had to switch banks. It was a whole thing. But now I think we finally found a good place. I hope our biggest thing personally is that we racked up a lot of debt. I went back to grad school. We had to live off credit cards for a while because I could work during that time and we just, we collected a lot of debt and now we're, that's really our main focus of trying to get that down. Right now we've got about almost $6,000 a month going towards debt, cars, debt, or extra credit for our payments. Like our minimums at our cars are about $3,700 and then I'm putting an extra $2,000 a month towards everything. Okay, that's better. Yeah, that's better. Yeah, no, yeah. So I'm putting extra $2,000 a month. That's what we budgeted out to still try to find a happy medium of paying everything off, but still have good allowances for ourselves and eating out and stuff we enjoy doing to hopefully make it last long term. Looking at that, we're supposed to be debt free from everything except our main car in one year, November, 2026. That's great. I hope. I don't want to mess up the audio, but I'm snapping. I don't, all the high fives, like gray jobs. I hope. Air claps. Air claps. So yeah, it's been really the monies there. We, I like that's a big part of your system is we make the money. It's not an inflow problem. Obviously, we've made some poor choices and our money hasn't gone where we wanted it to and being able to just have that money automatically come out of RainPatreon has been just an absolute game changer because I just, I don't have to think about it and the money is just not in the retail. And so it's just not getting used where it's not supposed to be. You know what I mean? Everything else I have just, I've read you guys talk on a podcast. That's how I found you. And it just clicked. I bought immediately and I jumped right in and it's just been like so helpful. Even though we're still in the beginning and we're still working through what numbers work to make it get to where we're looking for a long term. Overall, I just can't thank y'all enough for coming up with this system because it's really, it's done a lot of good for us. Okay, stop talking. We're going to end it right now. Yeah. That's, no, I'm sorry. No, that is so sweet. Thank you so much. You're obviously, I'm going to let you get to your question. I have a lot to say, but I want to get your question so that we can make sure we get time to answer it. Yeah. So basically if we're, I just want to make sure I'm putting enough towards savings so that we don't get ourselves in a revolving door of debt. Am I putting too much towards the debt because I'm just focused on this finish line and I just want to be out from under the debt. We have a savings of just a thousand. Like we keep the emergency fund of a thousand and then everything else are all the little savings buckets, but they're not really super substantial yet. Hopefully they will be eventually, but we're obviously using them to pay for things that are coming up. So do I need to shift the focus for when something happens or do you think I should press on? Like I just, I don't want to get sucked back into using a credit card because something happens. So you said you'll be debt-free besides the car, right? In a year. Yeah. Okay. So what I would do is look at in this year, what is, what do you absolutely have to save for? So it doesn't feel super tight. And so you're not going to go back into using credit and only save for that in your savings buckets and then dump everything else on debt, but also make sure your day to day is good too. Cause we don't, what we don't want to do is restrict it so much that we hate it so much. Then we go backwards. Yeah. And I think that's what I was going to say is you're obviously a smarty pants because you're in grad school, but the fact that you realize immediately to, you said you set your budget up so hopefully it would last long. Like we wouldn't have it, like Vanessa said. So that's really good. We want to keep that. And then yeah, what Vanessa is saying is look at the next year, what's non-negotiable. So this is the thing, and we just talked about it on another episode recently is we have clients and they're like, okay, I want to redo the countertop. So I'm like, okay, love that for your home savings bucket, but let's look at what we really, like what's right now, right now. And so that's where you guys are. You obviously are being frugal because you're in your focus, which is great. So we want to balance that with what's, if it's mom and dad's anniversary trip next year, we're going, not, we're not going because it's, we're paying off debt, we're going. So we want to make sure your savings buckets are life that you want to live. Maybe they're not every single thing because this is just for one year and then you're done with this, but they're life that you want to live, but maybe not the whole full extended debt free after debt free life. And then that's how you, like you're, you've struck that balance. It's a short period of time that you know that you can stick to because there's an end date on it. And then like Shayna said, after that, you're going to have all new savings bucket amounts. You're going to have a whole new budget with that looks like what's going to be so freeing. It's going to be amazing, but you're like right there. I know. Like we have a trip play in March and I was like, okay, four months to get about $4,000 for this trip. That's what it's going to cost total. And so I'm like, I'm assuming I really just need to pull that out of my extra $2,000 to pay for it. So that's going to put us behind maybe a month or so. Don't think of it as being behind. That's not, we don't want to do that. What you're thinking about is what is the budget that I need to make for the next year to make this work? And if that saving for that trip is the next four months, then that just goes in for the next four months. And then after that, you pick it back up and it goes somewhere else or it goes into debt or whatever after that March period, right? It's not about putting you behind because when we start thinking of it that way, you're going to go back to using credit to quote unquote catch up or whatever. It's just this is your budget for right now and then you're going to make a whole new budget when at that time. It's time to enter your coaching era because making good money should feel like making good money. Yeah, imagine six months of private coaching where we'll tell you exactly what to do. No guesswork, no confusion and absolutely no judgment. It's a done for you system that actually works. You don't know what you don't know and that's not your fault. And that's why we're here. Financial coaching with us looks like two coaching sessions a month, personalized recaps and after hour support, you can text an email. So you're never stuck wondering what to do next together. We're going to build your budget, set up your system and tackle any challenges that come up along the way, which by the way, they always do. If what you're doing isn't working and you're tired of trying to figure it out on your own, sign up for financial coaching at budgetbesties.com forward slash coaching before all of our spots fill up and we will help you go further faster. Six months from now, you'll wish you started today. The other thing that I wanted to ask, so you obviously are using the debt tracker and what the snowball method is that what you're doing to hit all of it. We ended up actually doing avalanche to begin with. We have one really large interest rate on one of our credit cards that we want to pay off first and then the rest are going to the snowball. Okay, yeah, that's a touch. I just, I'm so thankful that we put all those in there because it gives you guys the option to figure out what's best for you because it's not a one size fits all and you saw that and you looked at all of them and made the best decision. Yeah, and when you're a smarty fans and you see that and that's what you want to do, do it. We're here for it. But I just wanted to make sure that how we're looking at, and you obviously are, you've gotten it just for our listeners to reiterate, we are not paying a little on every debt and just hoping that we'll eventually pay it off and it's a nice cozy little thing. And we are going aggressively at the one regardless of which one you decide is first, even if it's the highest interest, not necessarily the lowest balance, but we're going aggressively at one. That way we can free that up, be done, and then go and then keep going and going. Life and as I said, it's not necessarily the goal Dave Ramsey, we love him, we love him so much, but it's like scorched earth, gazelle intensity, don't do anything else with your life. But if it takes you a year and a half, but you had fun on this trip and you guys have date nights and all the things, that's fine. You're going to get out of it and you're only going to make more money from here on out. Whenever you get this graduate done, you're probably going to get more money from that. It's all going to go, so it's no, there's no need to white knuckle. It's just not necessary. I did that, that's not a great plan. Yeah, no. And I still feel like I gave us a good bit of money, like our own spending money and we still have our own eating out money that's separate from our spending money. We really tried to make it work for what we do on a daily basis that's going to make this hopefully be long term and trying to fix those, how we got here. Right. Are you still in your twenties? I'm almost 30. Okay. Yeah. Okay, but you're still in your, I just, two weeks left. No, it's like, picking on girl. Hang on. Yes. The reason why I ask is I'm sitting here going, what a blessing. It is that you found a system like ours that is working so well. You have the rest of your life to be so successful and to be that much more ahead because you're implementing something now. And I love that because there are some people that come to us in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, which is not too late. It's not at all because it works in any stage of life, but we love it when we get young people in because they have that much more time on their side to be able to build wealth and leave a legacy behind and just all the amazing things that come with that. Yeah. And it's just a blessing too, because what you just said is you have $6,000 quote unquote discretionary, right? It will be like 37 of it is going, 3700 is going to debt. You're going to pay that off. The 2000 extra basically equals, imagine what you're going to do with that money once it's gone. Can we come to the party? What is happening? And you're just going to do so well. So just again, give yourself that little breathing room right now, but understand like you're going to get there. And it's, and again, you're still in your twenties for a long two weeks here. And you're have the rest of your life to, to find where, how does it spend $6,000? And then your income is only going to go up for both of you. And hold on, respond to that, Shelby. What comes to mind when we say all that? Oh, I was just going to tell you that we have what we call post it, the, I mean, their posts, we have posts, it's all of our house with things that when we think of something that we're like, Oh, that'll be really nice to do. Once we get through this debt and we have all this discretionary income, like something that's things that are important to us, not just materialistic, of course, like real things that we want to do with our money and what we want to do for our kids and stuff like that. And we have posted as my husband will say, Oh, put it on post it and we'll put it up around the house to remind us like I go to buy something. I'm like, what's more important? It brings you back down. So that's what really hurts for us. I love that. That is so cute. And it keeps it visual in your face. And like you said, it keeps you motivated. This is a pro tip. And the thing that we just, we were just talking to another woman that came on our podcast and she said, it's the anticipation that is actually what satisfies you. She said, that's why the add to cart actually gives you a little dope. I mean, is this the anticipation? It's not necessarily the buying. So by doing that, you're getting your cake and eating it too. Like you win from the anticipation of wanting, of being, of thinking about it, but you're also winning by not blowing your budget right at this particular moment to spend on it. Yeah, absolutely. And so the other thing I wanted to say, I wanted to ask, and I know you, I know the answer because you're so smart, and I can tell already, but I saw a little puppy walking back in there. And so you have a savings bucket for your dog. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's groomed and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's hot, sporting, whatever we need to do for him. Yeah. Yeah. Very important. Love that. You're just, you're so far ahead. Yeah. Then most people and the way that you're thinking about, it reminds me of me when I'm in my 20s. What's next? What, how can I better myself? What is that next step for us? What does that look like? How can we better set ourselves up for the future? And I just love it. I'm so excited for the two of you and what the future holds. This is fun. That feels good because you feel definitely behind when you're looking at this big ball of no, no, no, and it's like, what happened? And everybody else who's, yeah, everybody else is a little older than Shelby. Don't hear this the wrong way. But most of us take longer to get this realization that you've had. So the fact that you guys are in your 20s, you figured it out, you're almost like you're going to be done basically by the time you're in your 30s. It's fine. You're going to be done with all that. Those are bad decisions. And it's not even your fault. No. What we say is obviously you didn't learn on a budget. Obviously you didn't learn all of this stuff, but what we did get the overwhelming influx of information and marketing that was at us was about debt. So of course that's where we turned. But now you've figured it out. Now you've learned. And Vanessa said you had decades and decades for that extra money to pile up and do whatever it is that you guys are going to do with it. Post it notes first and then maybe some other things. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to plug really quick too for our listeners. We have a lot of people who actually buy our system and coaching for newlyweds and people that are just like young, they're kids getting out of college and things like that. You are an example of what could be if somebody started as young as they are. So I just wanted to throw that there. If you ever thought about what is the right gift for your niece or nephew or child or graduating high school or graduating college or getting married, like this is something that they will take with them forever and be able to implement. And it's just like the gift that keeps on giving. I just wanted a shameless plug, but definitely, definitely. Okay, thank you so much for coming on Shelby. That was a really easy, easy to answer question. If you have more, feel free to book another call. I doubt that you're going to. I think you're going to pretty much figure it out. But yeah, and we'll come to the party when you have the $6,000 extra. Yeah, so actually book a call in a year. Like book a call in a year. I would love for you to come back after you guys are out and what your new budget is going to look like. You're going to have more, you're going to have new problems, better problems, right? We would love to hear from you. This was lovely. It was wonderful to get to know you. Yes, thank you so much. If you're tired of feeling like your finances are all over the place and you're ready for a simple, set it and forget it, way to budget, we have something special for you. Watch our automate your budget masterclass at budgetbesties.com forward slash otomy. We'll show you step by step how to finally organize your money, how to set up your accounts and put your budget on autopilot. So your bills, savings and spending around my clockwork. Imagine less stress, more savings and the freedom to spend money without having to track every dollar or babysit your bank account. Go to budgetbesties.com forward slash automate to start today.
