The Banking Hack That Changed Our Budget

Whoa, we are talking about money? … YEAH. We are. And I am so excited about it, because the system I have implemented over the last 6 weeks (3 paycheck rounds) has legit changed our entire banking system. We have actually hit our goals and gained more in our savings faster than ever before. Know why living in an open and honest community of friends is so important? You LEARN from each other! I am in a group text of like 13 girls from my church who are my closest gals. They encourage me when I need it, are my biggest cheerleaders, and are always the first people I go to for outside wisdom.

Somebody in our group asked for budgeting tips, and I loved reading everybody’s responses. While some had great systems others replied “FOLLOWING THESE ANSWERS!” We are all learning from one another and gaining wisdom, both in our walks alongside the Lord as well as how we parent, start companies, and *yes* budget/spend. I love my girls, and they are seriously so special to me. All this to say, two of our ladies both mentioned they have multiple accounts they transfer money to immediately upon getting paid. So, according to their budget, they allocate money to different bank accounts. It’s essentially the Dave Ramsey envelopes system… sans the envelopes. I had a hard time sticking to the envelope system with a kid in tow all the time. I can’t unbuckle my kid and go inside to pay cash for my gas all the time or bring in $60 for groceries but my bill is $62. This system is the best of both worlds and it’s truly rocked mine.

We have one bank account with 3 checking accounts and 3 savings accounts. This makes it really easy to transfer between the sub-accounts when they’re all under the same main bank account. We are members of a credit union that I have been part of for over 15 years, and I absolutely love them. Find a bank you can trust, ask questions, and that has great benefits for you. Our categories are as follows:

1. Main Account/Bills: This is where all payments go first and where we have automatic withdrawals setup from.
2. Main Savings: This is that emergency fund we should all have and the account we are chunking anything extra at the end of the month into! We also do an amount every month on the 15th directly into it, no questions asked. It is as though it never existed now.
3. Groceries: I send half our grocery budget on the 1st and the other half on the 15th to make CERTAIN I keep us on track. It’s so hard not to overspend on food, but this has helped me so much seeing a specific number allocated ONLY for groceries for two weeks. GAME CHANGER.
4. “Other” Savings (Currently our Babymoon): This is where we will put money aside for trips. Currently, we are putting money aside for a babymoon, which is looking like a staycation because of the coronavirus and overall sicknesses going around. If I weren’t pregnant I would not be NEAR as careful, but it’s just not worth risking it right now to travel with a babe in tow (at least as of now, this is the direction we are leaning).
5. Date Nights/Fun Money (This is technically in one of the “savings” accounts”): I put our whole month’s “fun” money in on the 1st. This is for date nights, lunch outings, etc. It’s helped me A LOT to see how much more we usually would spend on this category if I didn’t intentionally put a number in there to keep us on track with our budget. YIIIIKES.
6. Business Checking: This is my business account where I pay all employees from and have auto-payments from clients go to. It’s helped with our Quickbooks to track my income for The Cake!

On my app, I literally can just press “transfer money” in the top corner of my screen and move the money around immediately upon spending. So, we only have debit cards connected to our “Main Bills” account, but then immediately will transfer out of the proper category into our main account to replenish. I have ran into the issue ONCE where I did too many transfers in a certain timespan, and I could only transfer the rest of the month by going into my credit union. But, it wasn’t terrible and was still worth it!

I hope this helps you and inspires you to figure out how you want to budget better for your own family. This system has truly been a game changer and I legit get excited every payday to move money into the proper accounts. There truly is something significant about seeing, by category, the actual amount you have from your budget toward things. I took over our budget back in August and ran into the issue so many times that we had “x” amount of dollars in our account, but I didn’t realize that number was already allocated to so many other things. Now, that’s literally impossible to do. If I see for groceries on the 10th that we have $65 left for the next 5 days, then that is what I spend!