Family Budget Committee Meeting: Tips and Tricks

Hey, Good Morning, Everybody! Good Morning! It's Thursday. It's 10 o'clock and it's Coffee Chats with Candice!

So I want to tell you a happy, happy good morning, and I want you to grab a cup of coffee (which I'll have my coffee right here) and a beverage of your choice – no judgment! And one day, I'm going to show up here, from a beach with a cocktail in my hand, because I think that would be fun! 

So let's dive in. If you're joining me live, I want you to say hello. It I know it takes a little bit for the comments to show up, I didn't realize that it takes about 20 seconds or so for comments to show, so don't think I'm ignoring you. But if you're live with me, say “Hello”!  
 
If you're new to me, I am Candice Montgomery, and I own three businesses with my Husband. The first one, we started in 1996, so this is our 27th year, and we have paid off over $450,000 in seven years time. Since 2022, we've been debt-free, completely debt-free in our business and in our personal lives. We actually became debt-free in our personal lives in 2020, and then the last few years, we we paid-off the remaining debt that we had for our business. 

Anyway, today we are going to discuss the “Budget Committee Meetings.” Right. I know your like, “Budget committee meetings…what?” It's the funnest thing for me because I'm such a nerd. But because in business, you have meetings all the time. You have different meetings – you have to discuss things. So anything I say here will transfer to your business to or your future business. Because you know, I also do business coaching as well.

My Husband and I, we have our budget committee meeting, it's on my calendar, it's on both of our calendars, actually. We have it every last Sunday of the month, (prior to the next month) to discuss the next month. Because we're self employed and I only like to go to the bank once if I have to. I try to make the least amount of trips anywhere as possible, so I go to the bank once a month. So I pay us once a month at the beginning of the month and then I do all of my monthly tasks and everything after that.

So mark on your calendar and stick to it. I was gonna have a recording, little time lapse recording of our meeting, but my husband ended up getting sick overnight, like he was having a coughing fit. So he did not get good sleep, and we were not able to record. Because when he came home from work, we're he was super tired. So I apologize for that, but I wanted I wanted to do that because it's funny. 

We sit, typically we sit on the couch, and we discuss it and he'll look at his iPad while I look at my computer, and we'll look over our budget and discuss line item by line item. This should get your full attention and it shouldn't last any more than 10 minutes. If it's lasting over 10 minutes or an hour or whatever, then it's too long; you're not going to keep their attention. 

It's super important for you have to have a written budget to be able to achieve your goals: paying-off debt, having more money, you know being less stressed. So, so important and it has to be written down, otherwise you will not do it. 

 Alright, so the first thing we do is we discuss line items. If you're the one that's been putting the budget together for the month, putting the numbers and getting it ready for your discussion, then you could print out a copy of the budget, if you don't have two computers. Or if you don't prefer to do it like that, you prefer to do it on paper.

If you've been putting the numbers together, then you want to let your spouse, or significant other, or if you're single, you want to have them look at the numbers, and you just be quiet while they're doing it, because you've had an opportunity to review them, and discuss them, or think about them, so you know what's there. You need to give them the opportunity to look it over and have their input on that. So this is a joint venture, this is not one side or the other. You should compromise and come to what needs to be put on this budget – you want to do this as a team.

During this meeting, this is a reminder of your financial goals of your household and if you need to reprioritize them for any reason for the next month or going forward. 
 
Whenever we were paying off debt, we would discuss that, and we would make make goals of what we were going to do the next month. Our goals were pretty much set and we knew the process that we were going to do once we got into it. But in the beginning, we didn't know that. In the first three months or so, when you're trying to get your budget going, you won't know those answers for you, at that time. Make sure that you give yourself grace for that because it's going to take a little bit of time and you might need to reprioritize something so just be aware of that. 

Other thing you want to discuss is cutting back on unnecessary expenses. Soto put off for any future budgets. So say, you put something down or you put something down and your significant other or your accountability partner, spouse, whatever, they're like, “No, you know what, I really need this this month, because of whatever.” And it would really help if we didn't put this on there. If it's not a need to have it, then you can make adjustments. Again to two-way discussion, it's not an argument, it's not one side or the other. So be open to discussion. Find out why that person that you're talking to, needs to make that needs to make that move or is asking for that move. 

You want to celebrate your wins for making the progress of the debt that you're paying off. It's a long journey. It's a it's a marathon, not a sprint. So you want to celebrate when you have those wins, because it's important. You're not going out and having a party, you're not going out and having dinner or whatever, but you're just celebrating. So yeah, you know what, we did this and now we can do the next one and the next one. 
  
So you want to make goals, also during this meeting for the next month. What are your goals? Maybe you can put more money to your debt? Maybe you have found something that you can cut out that you don't really need? And you decided, “Hey, I'm gonna make this commitment and I'm gonna cut off my cable, or I'm gonna cut off this or that” so that you can achieve these goals quicker and faster 
  
The other thing you want to talk about is your long term financial planning. Like for your retirement, having your emergency fund, investing for the future. What the future looks like. You want to talk about that, you want to dream about that because you need something to look forward to. And if you don't look forward to that, then you won't achieve it because you won't be looking towards that goal. 

My husband I, we have started our retirement discussion because he would like to retire in the next five years. So we have to discuss that on our budget. What our goals are, what we need to do in the next five years to be able to do this, because if he's going to retire, more than likely, I'm gonna retire. And when I say retire, I mean, retired from what we're doing now. So you know, part time and traveling and that kind of stuff. I hope to be able to be doing this from anywhere, and sharing my love and my passion for budgeting and financial help and coaching. 

I'm going to also add that on the scree so that you can do that if you want to set up a 20-minute free call with me to discuss your finances. I would be more than happy to discuss them with you, and see if I can help you in any way, see if we can work together. If not, it's no big deal. But I want you to feel comfortable asking me for those. You know, for that help, because we can't do it alone. And you know, you want to get out of this hole. So this is important. This is my website and also, you can find me on the other socials. I'm Candice, Candice Montgomery official on the other socials, and my website is candicemontgomeryonline.com. 
  
So on my website, I also have some different things for planning. So I have like a legacy planner that I've created. I have an Expense Tracker, a Savings Tracker, a Budgeting sheet. We're working on different things to have there to help! And I'll be sharing that, oh, I also have a planner, it's a business planner, really, but you can use it for your personal life too. 

To recap, you want to make sure that you put your budget committee meeting on your calendar, you want to stick to it every month, and no matter what. So like for me, today is the first and we get paid on the first, and we haven't done our budget committee meeting because he was feeling well, so I'm not paying us until we do our budget committee meeting. That’s just me. I don't want to put something there and assume that it's okay with him. You know, it makes sure that I didn't cut something off because you want this as a team, like I said. 
 

If you set it on your calendar and do that, then you want to discuss your financial goals. During the meeting, you want to discuss cutting back on unnecessary expenses. You want to celebrate your wins for paying-off debt and things that you've done. And also celebrate your win for creating a budget! I mean, you should be proud of yourself for doing that and following a budget, and then discuss your long term planning.

Hopefully, you have learned something from this, and I look forward to seeing you next week, so please join me Thursday at 10am here for Coffee Chats with Candice and I am so excited that you’ve watched me, you’ve join me here and watched my live. Anyway, I hope you'll have a wonderful day, a wonderful weekend. It is now the, you know Monday was the unofficial start to summer, so it's now time to start getting those summertime plans going. So Happy Thursday, and I hope you have a great weekend!