The Monthly Cash Flow Plan

Hey, guys! Today, I just want to talk with you a little more about The Monthly Cash Flow Plan. This goes along with basically setting up your, and figuring out your zero based budget.

Basically, you use The Monthly Cash Flow Plan as a great resource for you to help you figure out and think of all the different things that you really wouldn’t think of. So I just start to go through these, just fill in the steps. It is very easy to just go through this.

Some of this stuff is kind of, it maybe too… I don’t know you dig a little bit too into it. You know, I kind of like to, let’s see. What is this word I’m kind of looking for? I encompass everything into one, more or less-- I do not break it down quite this much. I mean, you can, if you can. The more you can break it down, the better off you are, but, to break it down into, like even for example, I’ll start giving you examples as we go through, like transportation. It says gas and oil.

Yes! It is easy for you to break down what you should be spending in gas, but, how do you break down like, tires? I mean, it is just a whole different thing you can do, so for me, I would just put it in a budget as far as gas, oil changes, tires-- all that stuff into one thing. And then there is this one here has license and taxes, **car’s** (unsure) replacement—these kind of things, so if you would just kind of split it that way to make it one big expense instead of like breaking it down individually-- but it is just me. I kind of like I said, I kind of have a bigger budget just to cover the little things like that, just to kind of cover. You know, we have some money that gets put away every week from our paycheck into an account that’s separate from ours. That way, it pays like the vehicle’s taxes, the fees for the vehicle registration… insurance. It is just kind of money that we never see so it is out of sight out of mind; it is actually in a different bank. So it actually works out really good.

But, just start going through this here, as you’ll see, you got your charity. You can do your tithes and charity and offerings, however you want to do it. For saving your emergency fund, just you want to make sure that that emergency fund has a thousand dollars in it. And then, we’re not going to do anymore saving until we get past step two. So, you want to save up a thousand dollars first, and then we will go from there.

Housing - you got your mortgage, your second mortgage, your taxes, your repairs and maintenance. Repairs and maintenance is kind of tough. You know, especially if you’re trying to get out of debt quickly. To have a repair and maintenance, I mean obviously you’ll want to do little maintenance and things like that, but to say like I’m saving up for an addition or to, say you’re going to paint the house or something, those kind of things are really hard to save up for and pay off debt at the same time so you have to think about that and that aspect of thing.

Utilities - you got electricity; gas; water; trash, if you pay for your trash, your mobile phones; your phone; your internet; your cable. These are all bills that you know are going to come up every month. So you’ve got to think about those, write those down on here.

Food - your groceries, restaurants, if you’re truly dedicated to this, you shouldn’t see the inside of a restaurant unless you’re working there. Clothing - I said in an earlier video it’s just a matter of school comes around and then you’re going to shop for kids so that’s kind of, factor that stuff in.

Transportation, again here. Medical - health if you have medical bills, doctor bills, your dentist bills, vitamins, your optometrist, if you need to get your eyes checked, that kind of stuff, to save up and break down just a little bit more. And then it just has your insurances; we all have insurances that we have to pay. We can’t get out of that unfortunately.

Just personal stuff in here, you got your childcare, sitters, I mean for some of us, we have to do that. We don’t have a choice. Toiletries - that’s such a hard thing to, I mean, you’re getting really fussy if you have to know how much toilet paper you’re using. I just kind of, like I said, I put that in my slush fund. Here’s descriptions for things: pocket money, it’s part of my below money, his and hers.

Then recreation, I highly recommend that you do create a recreation account, just so that way you can go out, say you have a special night or something and you want to take your friend or take your wife or something out for dinner or a movie. Because you don’t, you see the thing is, with Linz and I, we decided that, we were going to do this, but we’re not going to do it where we live completely on beans and rice.

If you listen to the Dave Ramsey show, I mean these people are living on absolutely nothing; they’re not doing anything. And see, our point of view is that we truly love to have fun, our kids are only going to be little for so long, so for us, it’s important to actually get out there and enjoy ourselves too. I’m not willing to sacrifice two years of our lives just to get out of debt. And with us, it was just a matter of I got more income, so that way we could have more fun. And we’re still paying off debt, I mean, we’re attacking it a vengeance because we are telling our money where to go, but we’re not following this a hundred percent. So if you feel like you’re not following it a hundred percent, it’s ok, it’s fine. We’re doing the same thing. So, cause we like to have a lot of fun. Like I said, if we were really following it, we wouldn’t be able to have five vacations. That’s just the reality, cause that money could have gone to something else. But I tell you I wouldn’t take any of those back.

And then you list your debts: car payments, credit cards one, two, three, four, five, you know, I think we had all five of these when we started; student loans, one, two, three, four; and I think we’ve got two, and then just any other stuff, and so this monthly cash flow plan, it really helps you to, and this is if you don’t know it’s in the files section of this group. You can go in and just print it off, and it will really help you to create your zero based budget. It will give you all the ideas that you need, and like I said, you’re first budget isn’t going to be very good anyways, so don’t stress about it too much. But, this gives you all the ideas that you need, so you should be all set. But that’s it for today. So go through your monthly cash flow plan, get that part figured out, and then once you do, just let me know in the comments. Just say, “Yep, I’ve looked at it, I’m starting to really figure things out.” And if you have any questions, just ask. Remember this group is here for you to ask questions so the only way that I can answer them, is if you ask them. Okay? So I’ll see you tomorrow.