Are you ready to start a budget don't know where to begin? The best place to start is to get these three numbers together: your income, your expenses, and your debt. 

Your income needs to include everything that you receive money for your paycheck, alimony, child support, royalties – anything that you receive income for; need to write it down, even if it's not consistent because now we're going to classify it, whether it's variable or consistent. 

The next thing that you want to do is you want to get your expenses, and you want to list your monthly expenses such as rent, water, groceries, gas, etc. Then you want to list out your semi-annual expenses such as your car insurance, doctor appointments, etc. And then you want to list out your annual expenses such as taxes, your car registration, car inspection, that kind of stuff. 
 
Your expenses need to be broken down by needs, and by wants. So the needs are determined by your four walls. That is your food, shelter, utilities, clothing, and transportation. Those things are non negotiable, and you can't live without having those things accounted for. So you want to make sure and mark those as needs. For everything else, go through your list and do needs or wants because, you know, your Netflix subscription is a want, it's not a need. And when you're trying to budget, and you're trying to find money in your budget, there'll be things that you have to give up. And it's okay. It's not forever, but it's temporary. You can borrow it from your friend. 

Okay, so debt, everybody's favorite topic. It's my favorite topic now, because I don't have any, and or we don't have any. And I am excited to share with you how we spent seven years paying off over $450,000 in debt. So all of our businesses are debt free and in our personal life we are debt free.

What you want to do for your debt, you want to list everything from smallest to largest. So your credit cards, your car payment, your mortgage. If you have student loans, anything else that you may have, that you owe to someone else, a family loan, or anything like that, you want to list it out from smallest to largest, don't worry about balances, or I mean, you know, as far as order, smallest balance to largest balance, and then don't worry about interest rates. And then once you do that, then we'll meet up again, and we'll see about how you're working on your budget. 

But your income is your biggest wealth building tool. And so that is so important to find more income and you can find more income if you have a written budget. So when you have a written budget, you're telling your money, where to go and not asking where it went. 

I thank you for being here today and checking me out. I invite you to check me out again on Thursday morning at 11. I think it's CDT. I think it's 11 you want to check back, we'll put a notice. If you have any suggestions of things that you want me to talk about, then please list them below and then also comment if you have any questions about working with these numbers and getting your budget straight. It was so good to see you. Thursday, I'll have some coffee. I look forward to seeing you. Bye!