(upbeat music)
- I've always loved September,
the author, Gretchen Rubin
calls it the other January,
Growing up, going back to
school, feels like a clean slate.
And after the very humid summers
we have here in Virginia,
I'm looking for that first
hint of fall in the air.
This September is of course different
schools, a lot of our work situations,
how we're able to interact
with our communities, all different.
But I got really inspired listening
to the first episode of Budget Nerds,
where the guys go over their
end of the month routines.
I love how Ernie makes
it this whole thing.
He waits for his boys to go to sleep,
gets his favorite drink and sits down
to set up his budget for the new month.
That's what I wanna do today.
I want to create a clean slate for myself.
I have my budget app.
I also have my paper planner
and then the other apps
I use are Notion and Habitica,
but I'm gonna go ahead
and start with my planner.
Whether you have a digital
calendar, a paper one,
or do some kind of combination,
pull it out right now and
work through this with me.
I like starting with my calendar view
even before I get to my budget,
because sometimes when I
get the lay of the land
for the upcoming month, it helps
shape some of my decisions.
If there's events, birthdays,
I need to send a gift for,
all of that will need to
be reflected in my budget.
So this is a great starting point.
The next half of my planner
is for all of my lists, inbox
work projects, personal
projects, someday maybe list.
If that doesn't sound familiar to you,
that whole setup is from David
Allen's, Getting Things Done.
I have kind of a huge physical inbox.
This is so much more
mail than I normally get.
If you're new here, welcome,
I moved last month, so I have
a lot of things to update.
I have a new internet provider
have to update the HOA,
water bill, things like that.
So that is all here.
And the other place I keep
an inbox is on my phone.
At the beginning of the year,
I talked about finding a habit app
and I wanted to try Habitica,
but I thought it seemed
a little bit too much,
so I went with something simpler.
But last month, Jeremy
downloaded that one,
I felt like I was missing
out, so I re-downloaded it,
and I've been really liking it.
Habits this year, I don't really know.
There's not a ton to say about it.
If nothing else, I have made my bed
and budgeted a lot in 2020.
But there is a place for
a running to do list.
And that's what I treat.
If I'm walking around the
house and I have the thought,
Oh, I should email so and so
about this, or a video idea
immediately whip that out,
type it up so I don't lose it.
And then when I'm sitting down and doing
any kind of planning,
I'll go through and process these inboxes.
So either complete the
task or if it's something
that's multi-step,
I will put it on the
appropriate project list.
So completing tasks in my physical inbox.
This townhouse is different
than our last one,
you don't pay an individual water bill.
We pay it as a community,
which is so weird.
So I'm going to delete
my water bill category.
However, the HOA bill is
double, more than double.
So I'm going to update that
and it says, my first
payment is due October 1st.
I'm gonna wanna get that
funded in September.
I have a postcard from the vet saying,
I need to refill Bo's medication.
I've checked,
kind of, don't mess around
with the pet category.
Don't ever wanna run into
a stressful situation.
So there's plenty of money in there.
However, in January I
renewed my driver's license,
thought I was gonna be
done with that for a while,
but I need to pay $19 to get
a new one with my new address.
So I'm gonna move a
little bit of money around
to cover that overspending.
Inboxes have been processed,
immediate obligations are all updated.
And I wanna take a minute and look through
my true expenses, specifically
at the home maintenance category.
My last house was older,
I felt like things
were always needing to
be updated or replaced,
so I was sending a lot of
money there each month.
Hopefully I won't run into
that at least for a while
in this house, but I still wanna be smart.
Maybe I just won't have
to be as aggressive.
So I'm gonna think through that
and update the goal in that category,
feeling pretty good about the budget.
All my accounts are reconciled.
I've covered any overspending
and I made adjustments where needed
to goals or scheduled transactions.
But before I jump right into September,
I like to pause for a minute
and do a little reflection.
And think back on the last
month, were there any wins?
Did you come in under
budget in a category,
maybe you brought in some extra funds?
Maybe you'd been saving up for a long time
and you finally got to make a big purchase
completely with cash,
that's really exciting.
So take a minute and have a
little bit of celebration.
As you're thinking through all this,
you might come across
a category and think,
"I'd actually had hoped
to make more progress
"and had funded that a little bit more."
So that can help affect
September's budget.
And maybe you think to yourself,
I'm gonna do a no spend challenge
and any extra money I can
will go to funding that goal,
so I can build up a little momentum.
Something fun in my budget,
the blinds I ordered cost
less than I was expecting.
This rarely happens to
me, I'm really excited.
I have a couple hundred dollars
that I wanna put into
other areas of the house.
I wanna do a pantry makeover,
make it look as pretty and
functional as I possibly can.
I'm gonna reuse a lot of
things I already have.
I ordered some labels off of Etsy
to make things look like they go together.
I also have my eye on some pretty baskets
and glass canisters.
Also, the other area is the entryway,
which is completely bare right now.
I think I'd like some kind of bench
where you could sit on it
to take off your shoes.
So either put baskets underneath of it
or have something with built in storage.
So I'm going to skip
that out and get an idea
of what I want.
Normally that would be the
end of my monthly rollover,
but again, inspired by Ben and Ernie.
I'm gonna add one last step
and that's to update my tracking accounts.
Before I was doing that once a quarter,
but seeing how excited they got,
I decided to start doing it
at the end of every month
and see how I like it.
Next, looking at Notion.
This is where I keep track
of what I'm learning.
I take a lot of notes
and I store them here.
I also keep track of my goals
and my YouTube video process
is all housed in Notion.
So thinking through what
goals I'd like to accomplish,
I recently started using Readwise,
which was recommended by Jacob at YNAB.
And it's a way to keep
track of a lot of notes
from digital books.
And I've heard that you
could actually link,
Readwise to Notion.
So that's one thing I'd like
to do is get those synced up.
I also read the book,
"Make Time" which I love.
And I've talked about
in a couple of videos.
I bought the course by the same name
and I'm excited to dive into that.
And then the other thing
is the pantry makeover,
which I'm gonna film,
and if it turns out cute,
I will edit it and upload it.
If you love planners and schedules,
I have a couple other videos for you.
If you wanna know the latest with YNAB,
I would recommend a Hannah's video
that goes over the 2020 goal update.
And if you haven't seen it yet,
Ben and Ernie first episode
of Budget Nerds is so good.
So all those videos will be in
a playlist linked at the end,
all you have to do is click.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll talk to you again very soon.
(upbeat music)
