Today, Paula welcomes Eboney Byrne, Money Coach at Liberty Financial Services. Her tag line is "Have you told your money where to go?"
Eboney feels most people are controlled by their money, instead of taking control of it. This means not being afraid to look at the numbers and see where you're at. (Spoiler: It's often not as bad as you think.)
Know your "why." Eboney and Paula discuss figuring out your priorities and working them into your budget, and allowing yourself more than just the "bare bones" money. You need to plan to have fun once in awhile. And you're going to make mistakes. Be kind and forgive yourself.
Develop a checklist, create a budget, create a plan, understand why you're doing what you're doing, and then track your expenses and be kind to yourself.
Contact Eboney:
Liberty Financial Services Website: https://libertyfinancialllc.com/
Liberty Financial Services Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liberty.financial.services/
Contact Paula Christine:
Website:http://paulachistine.com/
Email: paula@paulachristine.com
Paula: Welcome. And thanks for tuning in to Beyond the Paycheck. I'm Paula Christine. The majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, never understanding how to get ahead or seeming to get ahead and watch other people live life. I've been there. And it really sucks. I hated that feeling of watching other people live while I struggled.
What if I could change that for you? That is my goal. One podcast at a time, you will hear me often talk about the importance of creating a budget and tracking your expense. I've asked my friend, Eboney Byrne, money coach with Liberty Financial Services to join us today, to discuss some tips on budgeting. Welcome, Eboney
Eboney: Hi, thanks for having me, Paula.
Paula: You're welcome. So, one thing I noticed on your website was your tagline and I really loved it. Have you told your money where to go? What do you mean by that?
Eboney: Yeah. I love that one too. Many people, when they think about their money, they think their money is in charge of them. And so by having people ask themselves, have you told your money what to do today? It really gives them the feeling of ownership. And you are in charge. You tell it what to do. And when you start thinking of it that way, it really changes the way that you interact with your money.
Paula: So how do I take ownership of my money?
Eboney: Ooh, good question. The best way to take ownership of your money is to look at it. Most people hide from their money, right? I know you've seen that and I see that they hide from it. They don't want to know the numbers. And many times it's not as bad as they think. So you can't own a thing you have no idea what it's doing.
Paula: I know we both work with our clients. And one of the first things that we have them do is sit down and create a budget and to figure out where their money is going. And it's always amazing for them to find out that they're spending money on something that they didn't realize. Like I spend, $10,000 a year eating out, you know, different things like that, but it's hard to look at that. So what kind of tips do you give your clients about how to create a budget and to stick with it?
Eboney: The first thing I have people do is we dig a little bit into their money story so they can get an idea about why they relate to their money, the way that they do. We can't really create a budget if we don't have a plan.
So what do you want your money to do? So once we've asked ourselves that question, then we can take that time and build a budget around the life that they want. Not the other way around. Have you found that to be the case for your people? That they're just doing what they think their money is allowing them to do?
Paula: Yes. I want to go back to that statement about what do you want your money to do for you? Explain that a little bit.
Eboney: Yeah. So one of the things people will usually say is I can't afford to do something, right? I can't afford to go on vacation. I can't afford to buy that dress or something along those lines, right? If we can change the narrative of, okay, that dress is important to me, how can I create a budget that allows me to have that? So it's a different way of looking at our spending, then letting our money tell us what to do. We tell it what to do by creating a system, to give us the things that are aligned with our values.
Paula: So you're working with them too, and I do the same thing, to figure out what's important. So if it's important to own a home or to buy a car, to put your kid through college or to retire, you have to figure out what's important to you. And. Work your money around those goals.
Eboney: Yep. Perfect. That's exactly it.
Paula: I know. And you know. I mean, it's difficult. Nobody likes to look at their money. Nobody likes to track their expenses. So why do most people fail at budgeting?
Eboney: I think most people fail at budgeting because they are afraid to actually create a plan. Right? So if you don't have a plan, then you'll never stick to it.
The other end of that is when they create these plans, they don't create a plan that's based on their values. They create a plan based on some old chart they found in a book or a website that says you need to have these hard and fast percentages. And that's it. Right? And no one can live like that
long-term. You're going to fail. I know. I would, if someone told me I couldn't do anything ever. So if you can create something that is actually aligned with what is important to you, then when you do slip up, you'll be more willing to get back into it. Does that make sense?
Paula: Yes, it does. Okay. I know a lot of people are struggling now with the increase in inflation, and it's a challenge to budget during economic uncertainty. How do you talk with your clients about staying on track?
Eboney: Hm. One of the first things I have people do is really just take a breath. Don't panic, because most people that's the first thing we all do, right? They panic. They want to pull all their money out of the stock market and all that. Take a real assessment of what's important to you and create a plan.
I love a plan so we can create a plan that says, okay, if the poop hits the fan tomorrow, How can I live my life in a way that's still comfortable to me, right? So that is when we're creating our spending and our saving plans and making sure we have a good emergency fund in place and a nice "oh crap" fund, right?
I'm a firm believer in those and you need to have those too. So one of the things that I tell people to do is the prevailing thought is you should have three months of living expenses, but if you only have your living expenses, when do you have fun? So you want to make sure you're still budgeting for a little fun stuff.
So look at your actual spending, not just your bare bones. So save at least your actual spending, one month of that, to give you that feeling of you can still live a little bit and then keep the rest of it as being your bare bones budget.
Paula: Talk a little bit about one of the things that I encourage, you know, you want to live by a budget, you want to manage your money, but you also want to have fun.
Eboney: Yes.
Paula: You know, I went many, many years without a vacation because I was raising children and, you know, honestly, their needs came before mine. But I think if I could look back, there were ways that I could have changed the way that I was managing my money so that we could have gone on vacation and we could have done.
And I'm not saying that we didn't do those things, but we could have budgeted for things. So how do you manage your everyday expenses and still like take a vacation?
Eboney: What I started doing post-divorce because it was a challenging time for me post divorce. What I did was I decided that I wanted to do one thing, like one "big-ish" vacation a year with my daughter, because I didn't want for all of our time, all of it to be struggle. I wanted us to still enjoy our lives. So I made a plan to do that, and I got creative. So traveling to places where you have family. Driving there, instead of flying, staying with people and getting creative with that gave us the opportunity to still travel and see the area, get out and do things and have those memories without it costing an arm and a thigh. Right? So that was really important to me to create those experiences, because that's what I, my mom worked all the time. We didn't travel. I think the first time I traveled with my mom, I was an adult. I was married and I didn't want that experience for my daughter. So that was my plan is just to save. Groupon is your budd. Um, I'm in Michigan, right?
We're in Michigan. So we can go to Canada. That exchange rate is your friend.
Paula: I have to go back to the arm and a thigh. Where did you come up with that?
Eboney: I come up with all kinds of weird stuff in my head. I don't know.
Paula: I've never heard that one before.
Eboney: The leg is the cheap part, the thigh, you know, that's a whole nother piece of chicken right there.
Paula: That's so clever. So we're going to get to and closing this episode out. What is one tip, or two, to sticking to that budget when things are going downhill or you get fed up. Cause I know it gets hard and you decide, you know, Hey, I just can't do this. What is one of the tips that you give to your clients about staying with that?
Eboney: Have a really strong "why.". The first part, and then the second part is tracking. So if you know that your goal is by the end of this year, you want to pay it down X amount of dollars in debt, track it, right? Color in the little boxes. It feels silly at first, but I know I personally love checking things off, right?
And most people really liked that as well. You can do it digitally. There's a digital ways to do that as well, but just really get in there and know what all of this sacrifice is for. And planning to make mistakes. I think that's something that people don't build into their budgeting process. Just know you're not perfect.
You're gonna mess it up. Right? I know I went over budget last month buying clothes. My daughter just grew out of nowhere and we had to buy a whole new darn wardrobe. So it's that kind of stuff. Am I going to beat myself up for that, now, if we're going over budget? No, we're just going to adjust for this month.
Paula: So what I hear from you is develop a checklist, create a budget, create a plan, understand why you're doing what you're doing, and then track your expenses and be kind to yourself.
Eboney: Yes.
Paula: I get all that right.
Eboney: You did. You did. You killed it. Good job. Good.
Paula: Thank you! Okay. Thank you, Eboney. How can someone get ahold of you they'd like to meet with you?
Eboney: Sure, absolutely. They can definitely follow me on Instagram. I'm all over that thing at liberty.financial.services. They can reach me at my website, which is Liberty financial llc.com.
Paula: To get ahold of me. If you'd like to,check out my website. It's Paula christine.com. Or you can email me at paula@paulachristine.com. We do have some budgeting tools on there. Also some tools to paying off debt. Thank you Eboney. It's been a joy talking with you today.
Eboney: No problem. Thank you for having me.