budget girl: my budget isn't working! tips for when your budget fails, dealing with debt & saving money

Hi friends and happy Money Monday! If you are new to my channel, Money Monday is where I answer your personal finance questions to the best of my little ability. And if I don't know the answer, I look it up and see what Dave says. So let's jump in. Mary Blagen says, Hey Budget Girl, we have two major debts and I know that Dave Ramsey says to pay off other debts before the mortgage, but the other loan, which is for solar panels, is actually a little more money than what we owe on our mortgage. The solar panel loan has a smaller interest rate than our mortgage. We can pay off one of the loans in around seven to eight months. Which do you recommend? Now Dave does say pay off all your debt before your mortgage, but it sounds like they're basically for the same amount. So say you owe $10,000 on each. One has a slightly higher interest rate than the other. Either way, it's kind of going to be a wash. Suze Orman, on the other hand, recommends paying down your debt by interest rate first. Dave says smallest debt and then the larger debt. And I don't know which one that would be. He said solar solar panel you owe more money on than the mortgage. Either way, it sounds like you're going to be out of debt in seven to eight months. But do dedicate the like pay your minimum on both and then pick one. Pay everything you can to it. It sounds like you are doing so great and that either way you're going to be out of debt in about a year and a half or so. I would go ahead and pay down the solar panels and then you are debt free except for everything but your house. And then in another seven months you'll be house payment debt free and everything. So it's really kind of a toss up here. I would do it in the way that Dave recommends because Dave has recommended this program to millions of people and it works. But in your specific situation, either way you're going to be out of debt in about the same amount of time. It's not the end of the world if you decide to pay off the solar panels first because they're slightly lower interest rate. Either way, you're doing pretty good and it doesn't sound like you are losing any momentum on the snowball which is one of the reasons that Dave says pay off your debt smallest to largest because then you you get the momentum going. So all right good luck with that. Jen Velasquez says, hi I love your videos. So I set up my budget in Excel like yours. I feel I'm constantly failing month after month. I'm married and have two teenage daughters. I have them on a budget with their allowance but I feel like things are definitely always coming up that I haven't planned for. I'm the one that manages the money and I definitely feel like they are not all in my boat even though I have tried to explain the budget and the numbers in depth. We are always going over on food as well. I do the food shopping and meal planning but always need to go back for other things that I forgot which leads to impulse purchases. My sinking funds are non-existent because even though I want to be adding to them and on paper have money to add to them there isn't any money left over. Oh help me budget girl. I feel like it's easier to stick to a budget as a single person than trying to get three other people in the household to follow the rules. I couldn't tell you that one way or the other because yes with a single person, one income, the only person that I have to keep under control is me. On the other hand there's no one else to help keep me under control. However, I definitely feel your pain. I'm sorry you're going through this but I think I may have the answer for you. It sounds like your budget isn't realistic. If you are always going over on food and there's always stuff coming up every single month it sounds like you have unrealistic numbers put down. Now this can be very frustrating because you do all this work on the budget and everything's laid out and everything is getting paid on paper but if in reality those numbers just aren't going to work then you have to adjust the paper. You have to adjust what you're going to do. So with the grocery budget I would absolutely go ahead and increase that. You say that you meal plan and food shop but always forget stuff. I get that. I do and that's why I only go grocery shopping once a week. If I forget something I may do without it which is very hard especially if you know I plan this recipe and I've forgotten something kind of important. I just get creative and I try to work around it or do a different meal plan. You know adjust the recipes or cook something entirely different and then do that other recipe next week when I get the budget. It's hard to do and it feels like why can't I get this right but that's that's what you have to do if you're not going to make more impulse purchases at the store. Also please remember to keep a list of everything when you're meal planning. Write down absolutely everything that you're going to need. Before I really got it mastered I was doing that all the time and then I learned to write absolutely everything I needed for a recipe down not relying on my mind to remember oh yeah do I have corn starch? Do I have this? Do I have that? Do I have the other thing? I go and check. I write absolutely everything down on my shopping list and then I go through my kitchen and I check for each item and if I have it I mark it off. If I don't I pick it up at the store. I also keep a list on my fridge anytime I run out of something to re-pick it up any of the staples which helps a lot. That could help a little bit with the meal planning budget with the teenagers that are always coming and other things that are always coming up that you haven't planned for. With the teenagers maybe get them to pay for the things that come up that you didn't see coming. If it's a field trip or a dance that they didn't tell you about until last minute maybe they'd tell you earlier if they didn't get to go one time which sounds harsh and as a person who is not a mother I am not speaking from experience here other than when I was a kid and I would forget to tell my parents something I didn't get to go unless I did it within a reasonable amount of time which made me more responsible. With the husband there are an absolute ton of YouTube channels out there that have great tutorials on how to kind of get your on board. Kids and Her Money has one. The former Mrs. Jones has one. Gazelle Intense has done some videos on how to work with your spouse about finances. I refuse to talk about that because I have no ring, no experience, no opinion. I can't like I said I can't control anyone else but me and because I'm not married I don't have to so I can't give advice on that. What I can tell you to do is that it sounds like you are trying to make your life fit your budget too much. You need to adjust your budget to fit your life so maybe you need to increase the categories for an increase in miscellaneous category for a while until you see these things coming on a regular basis. If you know things like Christmas and birthdays come every single year you can plan for that but other things that come up regularly I've just found over time I've learned to anticipate them better. So yeah definitely change your budget around. Keep working it. I know it's super frustrating but I have faith in you that you can do it. Just keep trying and give yourself some grace. This doesn't happen overnight. It takes months and months and months to get a budget that works and even then there are going to be things that come up that throw it out of for a little bit. But good luck Jen. All right Leah Henschel says hey budget girl my husband's work has sold their business and my husband will most likely be out of work with the new employer. We have our baby emergency fund saved thank goodness. My question is what would be better to do for the next few weeks? Stock up on food and pay extra to rent or pay onto the credit card debt where although it will event although it will eventually make a difference it won't make a short-term one. We will get government assistance but it could take weeks to come through if not months as the local office is slack at processing forms. I just want to get through this without going into any further debt. Your thoughts? This is absolutely the best way to think about it of you know an emergency has happened a job loss is an emergency. Deal with the situation that's in front of you. So now is the time to tap the brakes on credit card debt payoff. Keep paying your minimums. Absolutely keep paying your minimums. Don't fall behind but the way that you're going to deal with the things that inevitably come up like the forms don't come through and you don't get the assistance quick enough or a tire suddenly blows something like that that could happen outside of your regular emergency fund is by using this time before he actually gets laid off to stockpile. Now don't necessarily go ahead and start paying to rent and stockpiling on groceries unless you think that that money is just going to like disappear out of your hands but you sound like you're a planner based on this question. So I would just start throwing any current money that you have. I'd stop all of your sinking funds. I would stop any like personal savings any restaurant eating out and pile all of that money into your emergency fund for dealing with this situation until it's resolved until he gets a new job. You can absolutely get through this but yeah tap the brakes cut down to your minimums go into emergency budgeting mode. So go through your budget and cut out anything that is non-essential keep paying your minimums on any of your debts keep your four walls intact housing food clothing all of that but cut out any extra and just sit on a pile of money and use that as you need to and this is the way that you're going to not have to go into more debt until he finds a new job and getting into kind of that emergency mindset will also help motivate you and him to get a new job not that you need it but that definitely helps so I will I believe I've done a video on this before emergency budgeting and if I haven't because I've been doing this a while and I've forgotten I will link a fellow youtuber's how to deal with emergency budgeting down below. You can absolutely do this but yeah don't keep paying to credit card debts right now pause you have a situation on your hands and deal with that situation right in front of you good luck you'll get through this. Okay life paths says how do you wash your fruit and do you let it completely dry before cutting it and putting it into mason jars do you use plain water for washing the fruit or something recommended to wash your fruit with usually the homemade ones I've seen involve vinegar and then freedom in a budget I also asked about like strawberry freshness I get this all the time because I prep my fruit for the week I go ahead and wash it and I cut it up and I put it in mason jars if you watch my food hauls um and my my meal plans and I have that in the fridge for the week and I always people are always asking does it go bad throughout the week like a just a container of strawberries in your fridge or how do you meal prep those and it's the simplest stupidest thing I run the container of strawberries under the water or I put it in a strainer and I just run water over it for a while and then pull them with a little paring knife and then slice them up and chuck them in a mason jar close it and put it in my fridge I don't let them dry I don't wash them in anything special or put anything special in the mason jars I just put them in the mason jars and seal it and put it in my fridge and it lasts at least a week no mold ever I've never ever had an issue with mold or the strawberries or any fruit going bad in a week I just wash it cut it put it in easiest buy I hope that helps all right and then bell fem says I wonder why Dave Ramsey says to close everything and don't use credit cards how will you be able to buy a car a house or even an apartment uh well bell you use money you use money that you have earned uh Dave Ramsey says not to use credit cards because we use those as a crutch in our society and this is only a fairly recent occurrence our grandparents used cash they saved up money to buy things and if they wanted something that they didn't have the money for they didn't buy it now uh as far as a car you can pay for a car with cash and you should pay for a car with cash um because leases just steal your money and so just interest you go to a car lot and you pay twenty thousand dollars for a new car you sign a um a contract on it to pay over time you're gonna end up paying twenty seven thousand dollars or so for that car in the end I go to a car lot with cash and I'm gonna come out of there with an amazing deal um and be free and clear no one can take that car away from me now if you're worried about um not being able to save up enough money for a car I am going to link a wonderful article or video from Dave Ramsey before uh before uh from Dave Ramsey on how to do this so you will always have paid for cars now you start off with a little bit of a junker you save a car payment for yourself and then you buy a car that you can afford you keep saving the car payment that you would be paying to the dealership and then you trade it or you sell that car and buy a better one and then you will always have cars that you own you never have to worry about it being taken away from you it's a thousand times better as far as a house or an apartment there's such a thing as underwrite manual underwriting and this is what they did before the FICO credit score um which is an I love debt score as Dave says all the time all that is is a gauge of how well how much you've borrowed in the past it's saying hey I borrowed debt here and I paid it off and I borrowed debt here and I borrowed debt here and I borrowed debt here and if you pay things with cash you don't need a credit score you don't have it and they can manually underwrite you and know that the company will know that you can pay off your mortgage uh it's it's an absolutely wonderful thing um and I can link another article about that below how their companies do this and it's a wonderful option on how to live your life and you can totally do it without credit I haven't touched a credit card in years and I don't miss it for a second I never have to worry about due dates or late fees or interest I just pay for things when I want them with money that I've earned and saved and then it's mine and that's it that's the end of that's the end of the transaction there so uh yeah it's an absolutely wonderful thing that you can do all right Melissa Alder asks uh I am such a loser with money lol I have ten thousand dollars of credit card debt that I stupidly consolidated and I'm kicking myself now for I feel overwhelmed and now I have five years to pay it off my plan is to send an extra payment when I can towards the loan I'm also paying for a and a truck any advice from me I've learned a lot from your videos and plan on applying it I'm getting ready to sit down and write out a budget our emergency fund had a thousand dollars in it but our water heater bit the dust so we just had to get into it um now we have to build it back up it feels like a sinking hole that just gets deeper oh Melissa yeah you've got a little situation here but it's okay the budget is going to help you with a ton of this so step one yes build back your emergency savings fund and step two quit trying to juggle three things at once whenever you have a plan that involves I'll pay extra when I can that basically means I'm never going to be able to pay extra unfortunately because it it means and I mean no disrespect here it means you don't have a plan with your money you're waiting on a windfall or money to just fall out so yes absolutely sit down do budget and then focus on these debts in order so you've got your truck your house and your credit card debt um and I don't know if that oh you said you consolidated it and you have five years to pay it off so one ignore the hat not flipping you off um ignore the house for now pay your mortgage I would never never not say that but the day plan says to pay off your debts um disregarding your mortgage and baby step two from smallest to largest so if your car is your smallest debt or if your credit card loans your smallest debt then pay that first what you do is you pay your minimums on everything and then any extra money that you've budgeted that you budget your house your all your needs and then anything else that you have left you throw with that any extra money that you can earn by selling something or getting an extra job you throw towards that and this is the snowball method so um also if you owe a lot on your truck maybe consider selling that it get rid of it buy a cheaper car and tell with cash you know sell your truck buy a cheaper car drive that get out of the credit card debt and then upgrade when you can um if you only have five years to pay off your uh credit card debt then you're gonna have to plan that out obviously they're they're charging you each month a minimum and you've got your truck payment and your mortgage so figure all of that out to which your smallest debt is pay the minimums and then throw anything extra at that smallest debt once you've eliminated that smallest debt throw all of that money since you don't have to pay the smallest debt anymore to your next smallest debt um now the mortgage dave says um is not until a later baby step so go ahead and get your truck and your credit card loans uh credit card loans credit card debt out of the way first and you may be able to sell that truck and kind of push you off on that and then after that's done you save your three six month emergency fund and then you pay off your house so i hope that'll help at the very least it breaks everything down into a step by step system which helped me a lot when i was starting because i felt like that i had all this stuff and it was overwhelming but when i was when you know i basically learned through dave that you can take this one thing at a time that kind of helped settle me so i hope this will help settle you and uh you can do this you can do this all right i have a congratulations today uh raves rants reviews says uh my money win for the month of april was that i didn't use my credit card for the entire month yay i've never done that since i got my credit cards at age 22 and now i'm 26 wow so you uh as soon as you got it you started using that like it was money that you had not money that you had to borrow that's uh which is what i thought about a credit card when i was in college it was like i have forty dollars in my bank account and i have oh i have five hundred dollars worth of credit on this card i can buy this no dumb me uh i wanted to save three hundred dollars for a house down payment in the month of april and i ended up saving eight hundred dollars for it that is fantastic that sounds like you're definitely getting your financial life in order um go ahead and cut up that credit card if you can save an extra five hundred dollars over what you thought you could you don't need a credit card you can cash flow whatever you need to buy um race range reviews congratulations it sounds like you are definitely making money steps in the right direction um and i hope you'll be able to buy that house soon uh good job with that all right so ask your money questions down below and tell me your money wins because i like to celebrate with you on that um and i will see you soon bye