226 - 5 Tools for a Financial Reset
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Show Notes:
The longer I live, the more I realize our journey with our money and our finances is not a straight line. There are different seasons of our life, different incomes that we will have, different life experiences and family members will add to our family. Life is ever changing and so are our finances. So today's episode is all about 5 tools that I am using right now that have helped me to take a financial reset.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
I titled today's episode “5 Tools for a Financial Reset” but I don't know that is the best title. It could have been “5 resources.” Some of them are kind of like rhythms. But “tools” felt like the most encompassing word so I just want to preface the episode with just roll with that.
Will and I have been so passionate about our finances since we were engaged to be married. If you don't know our story, we came from two very different backgrounds and when we got married, we were kind of set up to fail, except for God's grace in sending a high school friend of Will. His mom gave us this booklet of Cds with this old script font on the front titled, “Financial Peace University” by Dave Ramsey. Will was very eager to learn about money, I not so much. So she gave it to Will. Thankfully, he started listening to them one by one in his car. He looked at me when we were engaged and was like, “You got to listen to these too.” I was like, “No, I kind of imagined it as you do the finances and I'll just kind of be along for the ride and you tell me what I can spend.” He said, “No, we really need to listen to this together and we need to be in on this together.”
That kind of started our journey of looking at our finances together; getting on the same page. If you're familiar with Dave Ramsey's stuff, I'm the free spirit, he's the nerd. You probably could have guessed that. But having that language and getting on the same page early in our marriage was one of the best things that has ever happened to us.
Now, fast forward 15 years. Guys, we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We've lived in 3 different homes. We've had a dog. 4 children. We've gone through a lot of different career changes. He went from overnight Walgreens manager to youth pastor to independent financial counselor or consultant to now working with C12 (he works with Christian business owners and CEOs across the Triangle Area in North Carolina). I went from having a very long career as a photographer with Nancy Ray Photography to then starting my podcast and taking multiple maternity leaves, launching courses online, and now I work very little and kind of do this podcast as a passion project. I still work some and have a few digital courses which you can look at on my website. But I’ve really stepped back in my work and mostly homeschool my kids and we're involved in our church, but our careers have changed. What we have earned throughout the years has changed a lot.
So anyway, I share all of that background to say one thing and that is every once in a while, you need a financial reset. You can get in a slump or a habit of doing things well with your money or you can get into a habit of doing things not so well. I just wanted to be transparent for a little bit and say that having four kids back to back to back to back and also closing down my photography business has kind of allowed me to focus on a lot of other things other than money.
When I was running NRP (Nancy Ray Photography), I had to look at the finances and the money. I was very aware of that and what I was bringing in. We would have a lot more regular budget meetings, just Will and I, in our personal finances. When things were changing a lot, we were really a lot more in tune with budget and finances and all of that because we had to be. When you get into postpartum world, maternity leaves, babies, I'm not running a business anymore, I just want to be the first to humbly admit that I easily got busy with other things and my focus strayed from our finances.
Will is very naturally good at it and so the pattern that we kind of fell into was Will is going to just kind of handle this and I'm going to kind of manage things. Thankfully, we have had a really good, long history of living on a budget. We just kind of got into a groove, but weren't really having budget meetings as much. We knew the big picture of things, but we weren't really setting goals or really talking about things in detail with one another.
So enter 2024 and Will and I had a good first of the year financial meeting. But even before that, if you are on my email list or I may have talked about it in a podcast episode before, I just had to have this kind of cleanup of finances for my business, my podcast, digital courses, everything at the end of 2023, so just a few months ago. That has propelled us into where we are now, which is… Ok, we need to get back on track. We're ready for a financial reset. I think that's the best way that I can call it. We need to stay on top of things obviously, but I also just think that it's pretty natural and normal, especially in the early years of raising children, to need these big financial reset meetings once in a while. Where we need to reset some things because there's just been a lot of change.
So I wanted to share 5 things that have really helped me (helped us) right now. They've just helped me see things for what they are and get back on the same page with Will and get some healthy spending habits in place again. Several of them are just really good tools that I use. Some of them are regarding our personal life and budget and then others are regarding mindset and heart towards money. Then others are regarding business stuff. Okay, so I'm just going to run down the list of these 5 things that are helping me right now as we've recently gone through this financial reset and are still going through it and are still applying these things. These are the tools that have been most helpful.
1. Print out your bank statements
Schedule a coffee date with yourself after printing off all the bank statements from your checking account last year. Now this can be applied to personal or business. I did this by myself in my business account (my checking account) in December. So I actually printed out 11 of them because December wasn't quite ready yet. I went through and I read every single transaction, marked through the ones that I needed to go back and cancel or change or that I was spending money on that I didn't need to be spending money on anymore. I just kind of did like a cleanup of my expenses. I also took note of all of my income and where that income was coming from.
Do you see why this isn't necessarily a tool? I struggle with the title of this podcast episode, but in a sense, it is a tool because it's something that you can do. For me, printing them out on paper was the biggest difference maker. Having it where I could highlight things helped me see the money leaving my account. It's not the same, I feel like, as it is looking on a computer screen. Bottom line, doing that really allowed me to gauge where I was realistically.
When we went to make our personal budget in the beginning of this year, we did the same thing with our personal account. We just print out the last month of expenses and income, looked at that and got our highlighters out and we marked through everything that we are spending too much money on or subscriptions that we were part of that we didn't really need anymore. It was really helpful. So that's my first tool. Take the time to print out bank statements on paper and mark them up to see what is going on in your finances. That's the first tool in my toolkit for today’s episode.
2. The Contentment Challenge
The second one. I am currently in the middle of my Contentment Challenge. Now, the contentment challenge is when you give up shopping for three months. You can do it for as long as or as little as you want, but it's basically a spending fast. This is a tool that is more of a heart thing for me. I do it every year during the first three months of the year. Next year, I'm thinking about doing it over the summer months because I've just kind of gotten into the habit. I don't know if I will or not - we'll see. The bottom line is we can get very addicted to spending. We can get very comfortable with Amazon boxes and Target pickups and sales that happen at our favorite stores. Those things aren't bad. They're wonderful, amazing conveniences of our day and age. Being alive right now is amazing, but the contentment challenge is a heart challenge. It asks “Why am I not content?” As I go through it, I clean out stuff, I I get rid of a bunch of stuff, I focus on scripture, I replace stuff wiith hobbies and things to do because I firmly believe that experiences and spending money on experiences is a much better use than spending it on stuff just adding to the clutter in my home.
So I just wanted to mention that as not just something that you can do, but viewing it as a financial tool because it has reset my relationship with stuff and my need to buy stuff and my heart towards money and stuff every single year for the last 11 years that I've been doing this. It has repeatedly helped our bank account when I'm not spending money that I don't need to spend. More than that, it has really brought me closer to the Lord and let me see the beauty in all the things that I already have.
So if you need that, I have found that doing the Contentment Challenge at the same time that I'm doing this whole financial reset, they really go together and it's been very helpful for me.
3. EveryDollar budgeting app
Um, the third tool is the EveryDollar app. This is what we use for our personal budget. Will and I just upgraded to their premium option I guess. My sweet mom gave us (I thought this was such a good idea. I’m like tucking this into my back pocket for when I'm a grandma) a gift card to upgrade to the premium app and I was like “That is so cool. What a neat gift.” So we did. We've always used the free version, but the premium version is actually very helpful. You can easily categorize your expenses within the app after you kind of create your own categories. We're really enjoying it. We are committed to budgeting this year and this app has been very helpful. So I think it's going to be worth the money. We’re just a couple months in (really only one month into the year) as I'm recording this, but it's been really helpful and if you're looking for a really good budgeting app, we really have enjoyed it.
4. Utilize a financial advisor
The fourth tool is (and again, this sounds really bad for me to say that this is a tool) is using a financial advisor. Our financial adviser is a very kind person so please know that. He's wonderful, he really is, so he's not like a tool. You know what I mean. Just track with me. In the pieces of the puzzle that is having a financial reset, having a meeting with him once a year or twice a year to look at our finances as a whole, look at our goals, make sure that we have all the important stuff squared away, look at our savings for retirement, our investments, looking at all of that on a regular basis is a very important par to a financial reset. Because again, it gives you the picture of where you are and where you want to go with the professional guidance and wisdom of a financial advisor you trust. So if you don't have a financial advisor and you are in your 30s and you are listening to this episode, if you don't take anything else away from this, go get one. Find someone who you can trust who will help you and get that ball rolling because it is worth it.
5. The Blueprint Model Course
Okay, the fifth one is for business. This is for those of you who kind of get overwhelmed with the finances of running a small business. That is my friend Shanna Skidmore's course, The Blueprint Model. Now I know, if you're listening, you're like, “Who is this? What are you talking about?” Maybe you've heard me talk about her before. I've actually had her on the podcast before. Specifically, this spreadsheet that she includes in the course that is the money plan that you create for your whole year. It's like an income and expense tracker that you input your numbers into every single month and then you also have your financial goals. Bottom line is, I don't know what kind of wizardry she used to make this document in Excel. I really am not gifted at Excel, but she put it all together and I love it so much. It makes me excited to keep looking into my business (the money side of it specifically). As an entrepreneur, if you struggle to pay yourself or you don't know what to put aside for taxes or if you just don't have a good budgeting system or tracking system for your money in business, this is my go-to thing.
I went through her course I think in 2017 or 2018 for the first time and I go through it every single year. I listen to all the lessons again and then I use the templates that are included in it for planning my finances every single year in my business. I feel like I kind of fell off the tracks last year. I started out pretty good and then I just stopped. So I'm really excited this year to get back into it and to have a really firm grasp after my coffee date with all of my bank statements printed to have a really firm grasp on my expenses and on my projected income and on what I'm doing. It just feels so much better. My expenses are down so much because of that meeting. This document is literally just a one stop place for me to go in once a month and input everything and see if I'm tracking with my financial goals or not.
I know, maybe this is a bummer for you to listen to because you're like, “Great Nancyl, that's great for you, but like I've never been through the course. I don't have that.” It might not be for you. It might not be an investment you're ready to make and it might not be something that you need right now and that is totally fine. I would just say, if you could get your eyes on your bank accounts, go back to that first tool of just printing out your bank statements, making sure you're very aware of your income and expenses every month in your work and just putting them into QuickBooks or whatever bookkeeping software you have, that is enough as long as you're in it. That's my weakness. I don't get in it enough. But if you're looking for someone or somewhere to have more of a comprehensive plan with your money, I'd really recommend that you at least check it out.
What I’ll do is leave a link in the show notes for you to find out more about it if you want to. Shanna teaches this online class that's free and she explains a lot of The Blueprint Model inside the class. I will make sure that you have a link to that in the show notes so that you can go check it out. I have been an affiliate for her in the past and I am planning to be an affiliate for her in the future and I'm hoping that this will be an affiliate link so just know that because I have to disclose that, but I'm like the most proud affiliate ever because I use her stuff every year. I go through her course again and again. I really believe in it. The documents that she provides in there alone really are super helpful. So go check it out. Go to my show notes, watch it and see if it's a good fit for you. If not, just make sure that you are tracking your income and your expenses somewhere in your business and that you have eyes on it every single month.
So that's it. Those are my 5 tools for a financial reset. My encouragement to you is if you feel like you've gotten off the rails or like you need a financial reset in your personal life or your work life or whatever, just take the next step. Just do whatever it is. Have the conversation with your husband, print out whatever you need to print out, get your eyes on things, just look over things and know that taking authority in this area of your life is hard. It's a lot of work, but it can also be very freeing and it's beautiful once you get to the other side because you're communicating more, you're getting to your goals faster than you were thinking. Every time we stop and look at things and analyze things, it helps us to see where we're headed and where we are and what we need to do to get from where we are to where we're going and that's a good thing.
So I hope this episode just encourages you. Hey, if you need a financial reset, take one. If there's only one tool in this whole list that you want to use, do that. Do the Contentment Challenge if nothing else (it’s $15 on my website). If it’s the free option of just printing out your bank statements, go do that. Whatever it is, I hope that some or all of these tools help you in your financial journey.
Dave Ramsey said,
“Work is doing it. Discipline is doing it every day. Diligence is doing it well every day.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
