Michael Lacy 0:00

You're listening to Episode 48 of the winning to wealth podcast how to get your spending under control using cash envelope budgeting.

Unknown Speaker 0:10

You're listening to the winning to wealth podcast where you'll hear real stories from real people who are on the path to building real wealth. These stories will show you how to earn more money and pay off debt, start investing and make better money choices so you can build wealth for your future. Now, here's your host, Michael Lacy,

Michael Lacy 0:32

what's up? What's up? What's up teammates. This is Episode 48 of the winning to wealth podcast. And on this week's episode, I'm hanging out with Alison baggarly, who's the founder of inspired budget and also the co host of the Award nominated This is awkward of podcast. Alison and her husband paid off over $111,000 worth of debt using what's known as the cash flow.

budgeting method. This is a really good episode for those of you who want to be better with money, but maybe you really struggle to get certain areas of your spending under control. Like if you know, you do way too much every time you go to Target, this is the one for you. Or if you know you spend way too much on food every single month, this episode is definitely for you.

And I say that because Allison and I are going to talk about how you can use the cash envelope budgeting to help you eliminate those problem areas so that you can start using that money to hit your goals. Whether that's saving more money, whether that's paying off debt, or maybe that's reaching your net worth goes through Smart Investing. I'm super excited for you guys to hear this episode. But before we get into that, let me just say that Alison mentioned a lot

have things in this episode from the cash envelopes that she sells on our website to the ways that you can connect with her on social media to the podcast she has with her co host Chris brownie. If you miss something, don't worry. You can find everything mentioned in this episode in the show notes over at winning to wealth.com slash Episode 48. That is winning to wealth.com slash Episode 48. But hey, thanks for tuning in. And let's jump right into this episode with Allison baggarly. From inspired budget, and this is awkward podcast.

Hi, Allison. Thanks for joining me today on the winning to wealth Podcast. I am so so excited to have you again. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Michael. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah. So you know, just I want to just kind of jump right in and get right to the meat of your story. So I want to start by asking how did you find yourself over $111,000 a day

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 3:00

Well, my husband and I didn't know what we were doing with money.

to just put it all out there. Basically what happened was, we graduated from college, we both pay for our own colleges, we had card debt, and we never realized it. We got engaged, never talked about money ever. I do not recommend doing what we did. We never had really important conversations about that until we got married, and we realized we were pregnant and couldn't afford daycare. Wow. Okay, so how early in your marriage was this?

We got pregnant unexpectedly on our honeymoon. So it was very soon into our marriage. We actually even bought like a partial timeshare on our honeymoon that we never got to use. So that that actually is not included in our debt payoff because we paid that off before we really started tracking our debt. But basically, we got married had these big dreams of everything we wanted to do before children. We were gonna wait and have children like in four years.

Found out, we were pregnant. And we were like, what do we do now? We didn't know what to do now. So that's where we landed ourselves. Wow. Okay, so I don't know if you're familiar with my story, but my wife and I had never talked about money either before we got married, we went on our honeymoon and had this big money fight. Because I was like, trying to like maneuver around, like, hey, let's get the less expensive alternatives and all that kind of stuff. And then it just really blew up in my face. We had this big money fight. And that was really the genesis for us. So it's kind of interesting to see that, like your honeymoon played a part in your journey as well. So I mean, I want to ask now, like once you calculate it, because that's not just a small amount of debt. Right. So once you've calculated that, how did that feel?

It felt very overwhelming. I remember thinking, Is this normal? I actually asked him that I was like, Is this normal? Is this what people really have? I had no idea because we were each making our minimum payments. We hadn't quite merged our finances yet. Because we had literally just gotten back basically when we found out and we were two teachers. And so I remember thinking, are we alone here? And he his response was, no, I don't think this is normal. And I just felt sad, sad for my previous actions, sad for the student loans that I took out to go on trips to Europe and go spending it forever. 21 sad for not being aware or taking it seriously when my mom tried to warn me and I was just like, Oh, Mom, you don't know what you're talking about. I've got this covered. And it felt very, I felt very defeated. However, I knew that we had this child coming. I knew that we had a new responsibility that we could not deny. And I knew that even though everyone might have told us what we wanted to do with impossible that we were capable,

Michael Lacy 5:58

so Okay, so what was your answer? income range around that time, if you don't mind me asking.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 6:03

It was just about $80,000. were two teachers. Okay, so

Michael Lacy 6:06

80,000 and $111,000 worth of debt. Yes. How do you like, as you're sitting down as you're going through that, like, I mean, do you feel like you know, any sense of fear or not you say, Oh, yeah, because you've got a new baby coming. And so now you've gotten clothing and daycare and all this other stuff. So talk about like, in those early days, how you kind of balanced with, again, saving for a newborn while also trying to attack your debt as well.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 6:38

Well, in those early days, we didn't actually start attacking our debt. We just built up savings but the price of a newborn and all of these things that people tell you you might need was weighing down on us. And I'll never forget, I was talking to a co worker, a fellow teacher, and I'm telling them that, you know, they if we work in the same school, my husband works in my house. I worked in the same school. So we were known by all of our co workers. And I remember saying, we have this debt, we're going to pay it off. And I remember him saying, oh, you're not going to be able to do that. And in my mind, I was like, watch me. And so I got scrappy. I hit up garage sales for anything I could wash or wipe down and clean. So like, my baby carries. My Baby Bjorn was $5, at a at a garage sale, and different things that we could could get secondhand. I got it secondhand. My husband worked every Saturday as a band director. So every Saturday while he was working, I went to garage sales. And I gave myself a budgeted allowance every month to spend on baby items. And I really weighed what was necessary versus what the world was just telling me what's necessary. Okay.

Michael Lacy 7:48

And so you mentioned that, like, you know, you're you've got the income 80,000 and $111,000 a day. Did it feel like you guys were struggling at that time, financially or Were you able to just meet your needs and get all the things you wanted and all that kind of stuff?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 8:04

You know what's sad is that because we had never really looked at our finances before, because we weren't ever aware, I didn't even realize that we were struggling. We were making it by barely. But I didn't even realize we were barely making it by because I, I didn't even want to look at it. Our minimum debt payments, not including our mortgage at the time was over 1400 dollars. And that was half of my income, basically, as a teacher, and it's overwhelming to look back at now. But I just realized how naive I was and how I almost just push it on a closet and said, This scares me so I'm not going to deal with it. And I think so many people do that. But getting pregnant just had it all come out. And I had to face it. And I will tell you what, when people told me it wasn't possible. That is that almost lit a fire under me more than anything because I was like no this can't be right I am a teacher I'm a good person I'm a hard worker I went to college I have a good income this has to work this has to be possible and he pretty much my husband felt the same way.

Michael Lacy 9:16

So I want to talk about just that dynamic with like family and friends a little bit because on our journey I remember like you know, we're talking we're talking about going from Super spenders like we did all the things we traveled we went out to eat all the time we were nice clothes, we did everything. And so when we started to make those changes and cut back our friends were like, what the heck are you guys doing? Like are you broke? Are you like what's happening? So what was the this the general reaction from the people in your inner circle?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 9:46

Well, we we didn't do a lot before all this. We didn't live this grand lifestyle. So cutting back for us mostly looks like not going out to eat as much and not not spending as much time going out. Doing Things however, we were very lucky because I was incredibly sick during my pregnancy. So it was not hard to turn down going out with friends it wasn't difficult to do that our family most of our family was very understanding and you know, we gave them incredibly lame Christmas gifts I feel bad we've made up for it now, but we just knew that there was something greater than what almost like what we had set ourselves up for.

Michael Lacy 10:32

You know, we did the lame Christmas gifts we actually still do it I don't I don't feel too much shame for that because like we have the goals and things but I'm with you on that like we were we were the lame gift givers as well. And and I want to know like one of the things that you're known for obviously you created inspire budget, are you one of the things you're known for is the cash envelope budgeting that you do. So I'm curious like in those early days, what made you decide To go with cash envelopes versus let's say, like an app, or pen and paper or something like that, like, why did that seem to be the method for you?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 11:09

Well, cash envelopes for me really helped me learn how to deal with impulse spending. I love spending money. I still do to this day it brings me it's like a rush and adrenaline rush. I just love it. It brings me joy. It brings me happiness. I love walking into a target with the bright lights. You know, it's just I just enjoy it. I love it. And what I realized is that I was spending way too much money. Now my husband, he doesn't struggle with it. But I do. I remember when we were dating, we went into Ulta. And I was like, I just need to grab a few things. And we were walking out I had just spent $200. And he said, Is that normal? Do you normally spend $200 at Ulta? And I was like, why are you judging me? This is what I spent. This is not a big deal. But for someone that struggles With impulse spending that struggles with spending money, I had to create boundaries for myself, because I did not have boundaries with a debit card. Thankfully, I didn't have a credit card at the time, because it was, this all took place, you know, right around 2009. And I didn't qualify for a credit card, because of the way everything was going on in the world. And so I didn't have a credit card, but I had no boundaries. So cash envelopes gave me boundaries in place to help me limit my spending on areas where I tend to overspend.

Michael Lacy 12:34

And you bring up your husband, I mean, throughout this journey, was he like completely on board or kind of what was the dynamic like between the two of you?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 12:43

He was on board. He says that I'm the one who had the idea. I'm the one that was like, well, let's do this. And so I took this crazy idea that others said was impossible. And he was like, okay, we're gonna do it, and he helped hold me he held me accountable. When I was ready to give up because I'm the one that wanted to stop and take vacations, I'm the one that wanted to live a grander lifestyle. And he would say, No, no, remember that day? So many years ago, we said, this was our goal, and we're gonna keep going on it. He is he does it tend to want to spend money. He's not a spender. So this is just like, right up his alley.

Michael Lacy 13:25

Right. So did you guys have any, like challenges or anything like that? I mean, you just kind of mentioned how, you know, there were times where you want it to stop. You want it to do some other things with their money. So I mean, did you have any other challenges that you want to share?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 13:39

Oh, yes. Did we have challenges? We did. A lot of our challenges didn't come in the form of once. A lot of our challenges came in the form of needs. So for instance, my husband was driving a really old car and the transmission went out and we had $3,000 in our emergency fund. No, we had $4,000 in our Emergency Fund and it was gonna cost us 30 $700 to fix it. And even family was saying, sell the car, just get just get a new used car, it's fine, just go into debt. But we were five months away from being debt free, five months away and it was almost like it was just this big temptation. And we really considered it but then ultimately we said, No, we can't. We cannot go further into debt. Whenever we are so close with him working on this for over four years. We're so close. And so we did it. We fixed his transmission. That car lived another five years after that worked perfectly fine. And was it old? Was the bumpers tied together? Yes, it was. However, you can't notice that unless you're underneath it. We did what it took and then a month after we fixed that car. We found out that my youngest son, who was not even two at the time needed a surgery within the next five months. And so that cost another $5,000. So we worked hard, we saved as much I work to summer school as a teacher, we did what we could to help cover that cost. And that did he realize, however, it also taught us that we are capable of so much more than sometimes we give ourselves credit for it.

Michael Lacy 15:26

Absolutely. I agree with that wholeheartedly. And you know, one thing like when I share our story, we paid off 61,016 months, and people always just go, oh my gosh, that's so crazy. How did you pay everything off so fast? And then I talked to people like you who took a slower route, right? It took you over four years to pay off your debt. And I marvel at those stories because it's like, I know what it took to stay focused for 16 months. Like Yeah, I can't even imagine what it must take to be on this journey for that long. So how do you stay motivated for that long when you're debt free journey is going to take years.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 16:06

You know, it's funny because I used to think when we first started, I was like, when I am done with this, I will never budget again. I will never like I am done with it. But it's funny how when you do something for time and time again month in and month out how it just becomes a part of you. And so what ended up happening Much to my surprise as the spender is that living on less became a part of me, where once I loved going into, let's say, The Container Store and browsing around, and seeing all the things that I want to do or where I love going into different stores and window shopping and buying things. I grew to see it as just another roadblock to my goal. And so it changes you and not in a bad way. It changes you in a good way. And I think that going through the process made me a better person. It made me a stronger person. And after a while, it wasn't hard to stay motivated anymore.

Michael Lacy 17:07

Love it. I love that. So I mean, what was that moment? Like when you hit Submit on that last payment? You know, what's that like for you and your family?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 17:15

It felt unreal. Um, we probably, we probably hit submit a little too soon. Because we drained our savings. We were so close. I was like, let's just do it. It was like a Saturday afternoon. I was like, we have enough in savings. We'll have $300 left in savings. Let's just do it. And we hit submit. We couldn't go out to celebrate because we had no money. We didn't want to use any money in savings. We didn't budget for a celebration. And then like three days later, we got a medical bill in the mail. And I was like, okay, we can make this work. Um, it felt real. It felt I couldn't feel it for a while. I didn't feel it until we had a larger emergency fund because we should have waited maybe two more months to pay it all off and keep our money in our emergency fund. But looking back now, I just think it felt free. I felt liberated, almost just, I just felt free of this weight that was hanging on our shoulders for years before.

Michael Lacy 18:18

So I want to go into the emergencies that you just talked about a little bit. So you drain your savings to pay off all your debt. I know and then everything falls apart.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 18:31

Well, that's what it felt like, you know, and what's funny is that at first I was like, Oh my gosh, what did we do? We're gonna have to go into debt to pay this medical bill and my husband was like, No, because we have all this money every every month that we didn't have before. We were sending, you know, some months anywhere between 1500 to $2,000 to debt to our debt payments. So he was like, No, this bill we can handle it. It's not that big of a deal. It's not a headache anymore. When I realized that I was like, This is what we did this for, because there are going to be times, whenever we have unexpected expenses, my son ended up in the hospital for a week in a children's hospital, and we had about $17,000 worth of medical bills. And we had that money in savings, we were able to breathe through that moment.

Michael Lacy 19:22

I love that because and it's something that I always say is like, you know, when you have money in the bank, it turns these things that used to be these mega life ending emergencies into inconveniences like, you know, because you have that flexibility, you're able to kind of think through like, okay, what's the best course of action and instead of just running to the credit card, or run into the lenders or whatever. So I'm glad that you shared that. That's awesome. But I do want to go back and talk about the cash envelope method because again, that's that's what you're known for. And I know like, you know, when I posed the question to a lot of my listeners, or I mentioned that I was going to have you on they sent in some questions. They had about cash envelope budgeting. And so if it's alright with you, I want to jump into some of those questions and just kind of take on this process to help them understand it better. So the first thing is like, what's your process? Like when you're getting ready? You're setting up your budget every month, you're withdrawing the cash, like, Can you walk us through kind of what your steps are?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 20:23

Absolutely. So we write a budget just like any other people would. And what a lot of people think with the cash envelope system is that we literally pull everything out. Like if I get paid $3,000, I removed $3,000 of cash. And that is not what it's like. Instead, what my husband I have done years ago, is we chose categories inside of our budget that we want to spend in cash. And for us, that looks like groceries because I have a habit of going to the grocery store and overspending. I choose categories where I know I'm going to overspend. So That looks like groceries, restaurants fun money. My husband and I each have spending money. And so when we write our budget, we actually have a little asterik that we put next to that category. And I know that that's what we're going to plot in cash. And then the day we get paid or the day after we get paid, I go to the bank and I pull it out in cash. And I just have like a celebration party by stuffing all the cash envelope,

Michael Lacy 21:25

so you don't pull out for every category. So how did you settle in on the categories that you felt like you needed to use cash for?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 21:34

I think it's definitely it takes time to realize. Food is always a big one. If you know you overspend in a category, you it's a good category to use for cash envelopes. I have never heard of someone overspending on their electricity bill. Oh, my electricity bills. $150 Let me go ahead and pay $200 like, that doesn't happen. But when you think about going out to restaurants when you think about food, look at areas where you always at the end of the month are feeling like, Oh, I went over budget, and ask yourself that those would be really good categories for you to spend in cash. And my recommendation is don't do all at once. Don't take on seven categories at once choose to two categories. And that is it. So for our family that was groceries and restaurants, even though that's all food, we had two categories. When we felt good about that, we started doing spending money, and we slowly worked it up to where we felt comfortable with using cash envelopes. Gotcha. So what happens when you get to the end of the month or the end of the pay cycle? And you realize either you've overestimated what you're going to spend, or you've even underestimated what you thought you'd spend what kind of what's your thought process when that happens? What I love about the cash envelope system is that it allows you to also see your pattern. It's almost like tracking your spending helps you see patterns in your spending, but so does using cash envelopes. So if you've overestimated what you were going to spend and you have money left, what we used to do is we used to do one of three things, we would either send it to savings, send that extra money to debt, or my favorite is I would keep that money into the cash in the cash envelope and budget that much less than next month. So if I had $50 left in our grocery envelope, which never happens, by the way, but if I, if I had it, let's just say on this fantasy world, if I had extra money, and I normally budget, let's just say $500 for groceries in a month, I would only budget $450 that next month, which gives me an extra $50 in my budget to either send to debt or savings or go to Target whatever you want to do with it. Um, so that is what whenever you overestimate when you underestimate and you run out of money beforehand, that is a red flag, that maybe your budget isn't really Stick either your budget isn't realistic, or you need to set up more boundaries when it comes to spending money. Love it. Love it. So what about when you need to buy something online? I mean, obviously, you said that you have certain categories. But what if my spending trigger is Amazon, you know, and how do I handle that? What would you say? So there's different things you could do. If you want to use cash envelopes, you could literally I keep a Notes app in my phone, and I'll spend it from my checking account, and I'll write down how much money I need to take to the bank. If that is too annoying. Too many steps, which it is for some people, then buy yourself a $50 amazon gift card at the beginning of the month and say I have this much to spend. This is my cash envelope. My cash envelope can be a gift card and that's okay.

Michael Lacy 24:50

And so the final thing that I want to ask about the cash envelope budgeting method is let's say you know you're at home, your husband's at work. You need him to grab something Store, and you've got the cash envelopes? That seems to be that was like a really popular question that I got. So how do you guys handle that situation?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 25:10

This is a huge question that is a big deterrent for so many people, they say I can't do this because this happens. First off, it probably isn't happening as much as you think it will. It really probably isn't. And if you are planning your days out in advance and you're organized, then you can make sure you grab that cash envelope before you leave the house for the day. And that's always what we do, or you just don't go by and do it. And so my rule of thumb is I'm only going to go to the grocery store once a week. If I don't have everything I need to bad I need to make do. And so that allows me to not have those issues, where Oh, so and so needs to go to the store because then you're just spending more money. But I would say make sure you are prepared and if all else fails, if it happens once a month. No big deal, take the cash go deposit it into your bank later that day or the next day and it'll be okay. Cool and

Michael Lacy 26:07

and when you're making these transactions, right, you're going to the grocery store you're spending with cash. Obviously there are times when you get changed, right? So what do you do with all the loose change that you inevitably get throughout the month.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 26:20

So what I do with the loose change is I tried putting it in my cash envelopes and then the change is clunking around and it's falling out of your you know, cash envelope that happens. So what I do is I have a little zipper pouch in my wallet, I put my change in there and every time I go to the store and I pay in cash, I try to make exact change. So think of it as you know when you go to like a store and they have that jar with like extra change your pennies and it's like you can grab a penny leave a penny. That's my zipper wallet, right I put any extra change in there. And then I use that to try my best to make exact change. If it gets really overcrowded and it starts getting too full Then we actually have a jar where we, we keep our loose change, I put it in that jar, and when it fills up, we cash it in and we add that jar to our vacation savings fund.

Michael Lacy 27:12

Guys, that is a master class on cash envelope budgeting in like seven minutes, we crushed that, like seven minutes. But Alison, as good as you are at cash envelope budgeting. I saw recently where you had a post where you said your budgets just stopped working for you guys.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 27:33

Oh, yes, that was a very popular thing. Yeah. So can you talk

Michael Lacy 27:36

a little bit about that because I mean, here everybody's here and you know, you've paid off on this day and you making all this progress. And for everything that people struggle with, you've got a solution and it seems to be working. So what happened that made you realize that the budget wasn't working anymore.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 27:51

So after budgeting for over eight years, my husband and I were coming up short every single month, every single month, we would get to the point where We had to pull money from savings, you know, about five days before payday. And we would have to use it, we would have to pull $100. Okay, one pull $100. And we'll put it back and we wouldn't put it back. Or maybe we would it didn't matter either way. There was stress, every single month stress in our marriage stress in our finances, I'm sure it came across to our kids. And one day, my husband and I went out to dinner. And this is the most boring date night that probably anyone could say we got we hired a sitter, and we went out to dinner and I literally brought my computer and our budget binder. And I was like, we have to fix this because this has been happening for months on end and something isn't working. And when we actually looked back at the budget that we were writing, that we had just kind of been using the same numbers every single month, we realized that we were saving more money than we wanted to, and it wasn't giving us the opportunity to live like we wanted. We did all this work. To pay off debt, we wanted to be able to live and take trips and do things with our kids. And it didn't give us the opportunity to give the way we wanted. So we actually and that meeting that on that patio restaurant, we scaled back how much money we were sending to savings. And we increased the amount of money we were giving. And we increase the amount of money that we were spending on family fun money. I love that

Michael Lacy 29:28

because it just shows that you can have fun while you're living on a budget. So talk about just I mean, obviously, we're living in a pandemic right now. Talk about some of the fun things that you guys make sure that you include in your budget.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 29:43

Well, ever since the pandemic, actually we have loved camping. So we're actually going on a camping trip this weekend with some friends. And we budget these trips out in nature to see beautiful places we've budgeted for a four night trip over Thanksgiving together. go out to the Davis mountains and West Texas. We're going next summer, we've planned out a trip to Yellowstone and Colorado and for us, it looks like being in nature where our children, our two boys can detach themselves from the darn iPad for a minute. And I'm just gonna say it to, you know, it's like a detox. They need a detox every now and then. And as do I, as a business owner, as someone who constantly feels 100% on in my job and I work from home, I need that. Zero bars. I need moments for that. And so for us, that's where we've been spending our money. We've been buying things like soft sided backpack coolers, and we were looking into a blow up paddleboard and we're buying things that we can use out in nature and for the years to come, the summers that come that we have with our kids to just Take them to maybe every single National Park in the United States.

Michael Lacy 31:03

So what would you say to somebody that's currently in that spot where they feel like it's not working? You know, they're not having the fun. They're not, you know, using money for things that they're passionate about things they enjoy. How do you use your budget to find that balance?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 31:20

I would say it's almost like you have to let go of everything you did in the past, and start over from scratch and ask yourself the hard questions. The hard questions we had to ask ourselves were, what is it that we want to do with our money, but we feel like we shouldn't be able to do and it was almost like for years on end, we told ourselves, you have to save you have to save you have to save where we were saving almost 40% of our income. And I said, Yeah, this is great. We're saving all this money, but I want to spend some of it. I want to live a little and so where are you willing to compromise? Where are you willing to ask those questions and take the risk of changing your budget because guess what, if it sucks, and it's not a good change, you can you can go back to the same budget the next month. That's what's wonderful about it.

Michael Lacy 32:08

Love it. And I mean, obviously In this episode we talked about, you know, you have these big spending chips at Ulta, to paying off $111,000 worth of debt to saving 40% of your income. And I want to take a second to give some advice to somebody, that's where you were at the beginning of the journey. So what would you say to that person who is struggling to really get their spending under control that wants to pay off debt, they want to save more they want to do all those things. What are some actionable things that they can start to do today?

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 32:42

I would say first and foremost, start tracking your spending. Because there you will start uncovering some of those habits that may be either you know, subconsciously you have or you don't even realize you have tracking your spending allows you to face your truth even when your truth is hard. Even when you're trying sucks. Tracking your spending allows you to face it head on, and then don't sit and that pain, don't sit in those mistakes. We can all sit in our past mistakes, but that's not a good place to be. Give yourself grace, forgive yourself for your past money mistakes, because we all screwed up in the past, and then make a plan moving forward and don't look back, because ultimately, you are likely more capable of anything, anything that you ever thought was possible or that anyone gives you credit for.

Michael Lacy 33:32

I love it. Allison, this has been such a blast. I have enjoyed talking to you so much. The last thing I want to do is just give you the opportunity to share where people can find you where they can connect with you, and anything cool that you have to offer that you think could help the listeners be better at managing money.

Allison Baggerly of Inspired Budget 33:49

Awesome. So if you're listening to this podcast on a podcast app, and I actually have a podcast with my good friend Chris browning, it's called This is awkward, where we share awkward money. stories. And we talk about how to handle them how to handle awkward money situations without losing your friends or family. You can follow me on Instagram at inspired budget, I'd love to have you there. And then if you really think that you would like some more accountability, some more guidance when it comes to paying off debt, managing a budget and getting more experience with your finances and taking back control and gaining that confidence. Then you can check out the inner circle the Inspire budget in our circle, you can learn more about that at inspire budget calm, and that's where I walk hand in hand with you as your accountability person to help you make changes in your life and really lay a strong financial foundation for your future.

Michael Lacy 34:41

Awesome. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, you guys can find the links to all of that in the show notes which you can find in the episode description, or just by heading over to winning to wealth.com slash Episode 48 that is winning to wealth.com slash episode. So 48 all right now it is time for this week's win of the week. So most of our thoughts and our actions pretty much live on autopilot. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing, like our habits, our routines, and even our impulses really carry us through our lives. So we don't have to stop and think about little mundane tasks all the time. However, there is a problem with this. And the problem comes when we're on autopilot for so long, that we forget, we're actually on autopilot. Because when we're not aware of our habits, and our routines and all of those things, then we don't control them. They actually control us. And that's how you may have gotten to the place of spending mindlessly. Literally every single time you go to Target or how when you have a bad day at work, your default setting is to stop on the way home and grab dinner instead of cooking what you already have existing on autopilot impacts your money, and cash envelopes are a great way for you to get the awareness you need of those default habits while simultaneously working to change them. So if there's an area or two where you're really struggling to get control over your spending this week, I want you to give the cash envelope budgeting method a shot. Now Alison has some really cool envelopes on her site that I'll be sure to link to in the show notes. So again, go check those out. You can find them at winning to wealth.com slash Episode 48. Also, if you enjoyed this episode with Allison, be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review with some of your positive thoughts. And finally, if you're looking for a place to talk about money with like minded people, you can head over to my private Facebook group. This group is is the place for you to ask questions for you to share your wins, and even celebrate other people who are winning on their journey. You can find the group over at winning to wealth.com slash teammates that is winning to wealth.com slash teammates. But that's all the time I have for this week's episode. So, until we talk again, keep racking up those wins one at a time. Take care.

Unknown Speaker 37:27

You've wrapped up another episode of the winning to wealth podcast. To learn more about how you can start making winning money decisions head over to winning to wealth.com