The first thing you want to do is you want to have a written or a digital calendar.
You want to list all your bills – your monthly bills on that. You want to list your bi-annual bill, for example, your car insurance, your renter's insurance, anything like that. Your annual bills. Any special dates that you have, so like holidays, anniversaries, family friends, so that you can kind of plan your expenses around that, too.
And then you want to enter your pay date. So when you're going to get paid, I only get paid once a month. So I get paid on the first, but if you get paid weekly, you want to enter that in when your paycheck is going to be there.
And then you want to write down your cash envelope stuffing days. So for example, that's the day after I deposit my my paycheck or it’s the day of deposit my paycheck, but if it's something like a direct deposit, you can go the day of or the day after just whatever works on your schedule.
So then I put my bank trip on, on my calenda, too, so that I can either deposit the cheque or withdraw the cash envelope money. And like I said before, I only pay us once a month so I have everything that I do on the first of the month. I had been doing where I just wrote out a check, you know paychecks and then I took it to the bank, I got my money back. and then I went and did all my my my errands, I literally map out my trip in the most efficient way after I leave the bank so that I can get the most things done and then get back to my day.
So after I make our deposit, I get the cash back. When I get back to the house, I will do my cash envelope stuffing. So I'll put that all in there, make any adjustments I need to make. When I leave the bank, I'll go to the pharmacy to pick up our meds that we do every every month. [04:04] And what you can do is you can ask your pharmacy if they have a seat program where you can reduce the amount of trips that you make to the pharmacy.
So again, because I do it once a month, I try to only go to the pharmacy once a month. But if you get paid weekly, you can look and see which prescriptions you need to have weekly, that you can ask them if they can sync them on these particular days. And what they do when you do sync is that they short fill it to get you to that date and then every month on that day, you'll have that prescription ready so it can coincide with your paychecks. Makes it super simple and you don't have to get everything all at one time be stressed out.
Then I do like my Quicken tasks, I enter everything in for the entire month: all my bills, everything. I make sure everything kind of balances out.
And then, like I said, I map my most efficient way after I leave the bank. So go to the pharmacy, then if it’s a Friday, then I'll do gas (because I do gas every Friday), I fill up my tank. And how I do that is I get my cash from my deposit, and then I get a QT gift card or a Sam's gift card, and I put my fuel money on those two gift cards – and that's how I do my fuel.
So I'll go every Friday fill up to what I need, and then I'm always good for gas. I'm never behind, I don't have to say “Dang it, I gotta go get gas in the morning.” And then you're running late, of course. So that's what happens.
But when you're trying to create new habits, daily work on the new habit increases retention and increases the likelihood that you're going to continue to make progress.
So I encourage you to work on this daily ‘till you develop this habit where you know how your finances are on your calendar, and you know what to expect. And if you simplify your work around your money, then it will reduce the overwhelm that you feel so and that's very, very important, because money brings a lot of overwhelm, because we we have a lack of money.
