One of the most common money questions I get is,
"Rachel, I feel like I work so hard,
and I look up a week, or maybe a month later,
I'm like, where did my paycheck go?
I have no idea what's happening!"
Listen, happens to a lot of people.
But it doesn't have to happen to you anymore,
so I have a three-part plan for you to master your income.
(upbeat music)
Jumping right in to the exciting Mastering Your Income Plan.
Number one, budget!
Budget, you guys!
So many people do not do this
and it's one of the biggest money mistakes you make.
If you are not in control
and you don't happen to your money,
your money is going to happen to you.
You have to be focused on this.
Now the most efficient budget, the most accurate budget,
is a zero-based budget,
where you take your income for the month
minus all your expenses.
And I say expenses,
but I also mean giving and saving in there as well.
Everything you put money toward,
that added up, minus your income, should equal zero.
So every dollar you have coming in is assigned to a category.
And there are some great budgeting tools out there.
My favorite is EveryDollar.
It's awesome, because there's even EveryDollar Plus, and
it connects to your bank,
your transactions come in, it's fabulous.
But budgeting is so, so key, again,
for being intentional with where your money's going,
and it's gonna be tough. If you've never done this before,
give yourself 90 days to get your budget to work.
Stick with it.
It's gonna take a little adjusting, but you can get there.
Number two is to pay off debt.
So much of people's income
goes straight back out the door in payments,
'cause you have two car payments, you have credit cards,
you're still paying for your wedding, student loans,
it's just constantly money going out.
If you're not intentional about paying it off quickly,
you're gonna live in that life for decades and decades.
So, the most efficient way to get out of debt
is to list out all of your debts, smallest to largest,
regardless of the interest rate.
Pay minimum payments on all of them,
and pay off the smallest debt first.
Once that's paid off,
take everything you were paying on that,
roll it over to the second smallest debt.
Now the great thing about budgeting
is you can look at your budget and say,
"Oh, wow, we don't really need to spend that much on food,"
or, "Eh, we don't need to go shopping this month."
You can take, every month, money out of your budget to say,
"We're gonna take out some of that lifestyle
and put it toward paying off debt."
Getting out of debt frees up your income.
It gets you back in control of your income,
versus it going out to banks all over the world.
Ugh, not good.
And last but not least, save.
Save, save, save.
This is such a hard one,
because we all know we should save,
but doing it is difficult,
because a lot of people say,
"Rachel, by the time I get to the end of the month,
I don't have any money!"
Yeah, that's probably 'cause you're not budgeting
or you're not budgeting correctly.
Your saving in your budget needs to be at the top,
because once you list out all of your bills and you're like,
"Rachel, after I pay for everything,
there is no money left over!"
Well, that means you gotta cut some stuff out
to actually save.
So your goal for saving is to save up $1,000 very quickly.
Then, once you're out of debt,
bump up that $1,000 emergency fund
to three to six months of expenses.
So that's a great place to start saving.
And also, start saving for things like a car
or a vacation you know you have coming up.
Be like, "Okay, how much is that gonna cost us?
How much do we need to put away every month?"
Make saving a habit in your life.
It can be tough at first,
'cause not everyone is a natural saver,
but once you get in the habit of it,
it becomes second nature to you.
It's just what you do.
That's me.
I'm a spender, not a great natural saver,
but since I've been doing this for so long,
I'm like, no, I wanna save!
I wanna be able to save up and pay for things,
'cause I want some awesome stuff.
I wanna go on a great vacation.
So, yeah, I'm gonna save up for fun things,
and for emergency fund and retirement,
but that's for another vlog for another day.
When you're thinking about budgeting and all these things,
you're like, "Oh, there's just so many details."
There's gonna be links in the description below
where I dive deeper into all of these topics.
So, start budgeting, getting out of debt, and saving.
It's gonna be amazing.
Amazing year for you, financially.
I'm so excited.
Hey, YouTube, thanks so much for watching,
and subscribe to my channel!
'Cause there's gonna be really fun stuff happening,
and I want you to get involved,
and I want you to be able to see it.
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