A peek inside our actual budgets
Most budgeting advice is so generic. And it has to be… everyone’s income, priorities, and expenses are different.
But we know there’s something helpful (and kind of fun) about seeing how real people budget. So today, we’re taking you inside our actual budgets — how we categorize our spending, what we prioritize, and which expenses always seem to catch us off guard.
Even though we both use YNAB, our budgets look completely different — so whether you’re super structured or more go-with-the-flow, you’ll walk away with ideas for how to make budgeting work for you.
📌 In this episode, we cover:
✅ How our budgeting styles have evolved over time
✅ How we structure our budgets (and why they’re so different)
✅ What goes in our “needs” vs. “wants” categories
✅ Where we put expenses like haircuts, skincare, and car maintenance
✅ The unexpected categories we budget for
✅ What we do when we overspend in a category (spoiler: it happens)
Plus, we chat about why budgeting isn’t about restricting yourself — it’s about deciding what’s actually important to you.
📌 Time stamps and highlights
[00:02:00] How our budgeting styles have changed over time
[00:07:00] How we organize our budgets
[00:16:00] Where we put personal expenses (haircuts, makeup, skincare)
[00:24:00] Food budgeting: Do we separate groceries & eating out?
[00:26:00] The unexpected budget categories we have
[00:30:00] What happens when we overspend in a category
[00:38:00] Why budgeting isn’t about restriction
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Transcript
Thank you.
0:09
Emily Batdorf
Are you drowning in money questions, but too embarrassed to ask? Tired of scrolling endlessly through conflicting financial advice that leaves you more confused than when you started? Welcome to the Finance Girlies podcast, your cozy corner for all things finance. I'm your host, Emily.
0:25
Cassidy Horton
And I'm your host, Cassidy. We're both finance writers for brands like Forbes Advisor, USA Today Blueprint, and Yahoo Finance. Throughout our careers and personal lives, we have come to one realization. When we keep our money worries to ourselves, we end up feeling alone. That's why each episode we tackle those burning questions you've been afraid to ask
with no judgment, no jargon, just real talk about real money. Ready to finally get answers? Let's dive in. Welcome back to another episode of the Finance Girlies. Today, we're doing something that we think is super, super fun, and that is we're taking you inside our actual budgets.
1:04
Emily Batdorf
One of the biggest problems with budgeting advice, in my opinion, is that it can be so generic. And it has to be, obviously, because everyone's income and priorities and expenses and obligations are all different. But Cassidy and I thought it would still be helpful to get a look into how we budget, which categories we use,
and what it actually looks like in practice. So that's what we're going to do today, take you through all the categories we have in each of our budgets.
1:32
Cassidy Horton
And just some quick background. We both use YNAB, which stands for You Need a Budget. It's a budgeting app. But you don't have to use YNAB to benefit from this episode. The goal is to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we actually organize our money and what categories work for us.
And even though we use the same app, this is real life, baby. And there will be lots of differences between our budgets. And our goal is really for you to just walk away feeling like you have a better idea of how you can categorize your own budget or spending plan based on your real life.
2:05
Emily Batdorf
Cool. Let's get started. Has your budgeting style changed over time?
2:09
Cassidy Horton
One thousand percent. Absolutely. So do you want me to take you through like the history real quick? Yeah, let's do it. I remember back when I was in college, I started feeling the pressure of I feel like I have no money, like I don't know where all of my money is going.
I feel really stressed about every single purchase. And I came to the conclusion that I probably felt stressed about every purchase because I really didn't know what exactly I was spending my money on and if I was spending more than I earned. So my first entry into the budgeting world was just with a Google spreadsheet.
And usually what I would do is at the very end of every month, I would pull up all of my credit card statements and bank statements, and I would plug in every transaction into this spreadsheet and And I would try to categorize it to the best of my ability.
Like this was groceries and this was rent and this was gas like that. And then I would tally up the total income that I brought in that month and just see if the numbers matched. And almost every single time I had spent more than I earned And I would feel really, really frustrated.
And I would be like, well, maybe I'll do better again next month. And I would do the same thing. I would wait until the very last day of the month, pull up everything again, plug it all into the spreadsheet. And again, it would be like I spent more than I earned,
even though I felt like I was trying not to. So it was just this endless cycle of me being frustrated. And I was like, ugh. Maybe budgeting isn't for me. And then I was like, maybe I need to be a little more proactive. I think I did some research and the research was all like,
you need to be looking at your budget throughout the week and take a more like proactive approach to it. And I was like, that makes sense. Let me try that. That's when I found YNAB, December 2016, and I started using it like multiple times a week, if not every day,
to just make sure that I was keeping tabs on, this is how much I actually wanted to be spending on groceries. Am I staying within this ballpark range or not? and like making adjustments from there. So that's kind of my story. What's your situation or your story with budgeting?
4:15
Emily Batdorf
Similar, but I, yeah, I would say I started thinking about my spending not until after college, like when I had my first job. And I don't really remember exactly what prompted it, but it was sometime probably within the first year or two of like starting a full-time job. And similar to you, I just kind of,
At the end of the month or maybe throughout the month, I don't remember, just listed all of my expenses and like tallied them up and sometimes categorized them. And then I would do the same thing with my income. So at the time I had like a full time job.
And then I also did a bunch of like babysitting and sometimes pet sitting on the side. And I would do this all in like a notebook, which I still have today. I just found on my shelf. So it would look like maybe on one page I would have like my earnings for the month
and on another page my expenses for the month. Showing Cassidy an example. Love. Yeah. So like, for instance, in March of 2019, maybe 20, my income consisted of my two very small paychecks and some babysitting income. And my expenses were almost entirely groceries. That's remarkable. I will say my rent was taken out of my paycheck.
So that is not listed on my expenses. But like looking back, I was just laughing. Yeah. Because my expenses were so small. It's kind of fun to look back and see.
5:54
Cassidy Horton
It is so funny to me that a lot of the classic financial advice is like, if you're new to budgeting and you don't want to use an app, you can start with like a spreadsheet or pen and paper. And in my brain, I've been like, pen and paper is never an option.
Like, there's no way I'm writing all of that stuff out. And you were like, ooh, that's for me. Yeah.
6:14
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. I don't know. I've never been like, like I will do a lot of things to avoid using technology to my advantage. I don't know why I'm adapting. But yeah, I love pen and paper. And so that's what I did for a while.
And then I think got YNAB around the time I got married and have been using that since. But I didn't use any other software or budgeting tool before that.
6:42
Cassidy Horton
same cool all right well speaking of shall we get into the juicy part where we talk about what categories we have in our budget yes let's do it and just for some context YNAB is a budgeting app but you have full control over the number of categories you have what those categories are called
And they'll give you like recommendations when you first set up the app. But I think that I changed almost everything that was like in the template that you get whenever you first start the app. And Emily has also like finessed some of those categories over time.
So yeah, our budgets look a lot different whenever you get into the categories. So this should be really fun.
7:27
Emily Batdorf
Do you want to start with like an overview of how we each have things organized? Let's do it. All right, I can start. So I will say I don't actually love the way mine is organized. I think I could change more probably from like the standard, you know,
template that you start off with to make a little more sense. So As I talk through this, some of it, I'm going to be like, why is it organized like this? Anyway, so I share my account with my husband and we pretty much have merged our finances with the exception of a couple of accounts.
So this reflects our joint budget together. So we have one big category for shared expenses and it includes a wide variety of things. So for instance, it's like our bills and utilities, things that we pay every month. groceries, gas, insurance, subscriptions, those types of things, even haircuts, things we forgot to budget for.
We have like a category that we sometimes fund and sometimes don't. But then we each have sections like individually. So like for our own phone bills, we have our own spending money. Some of our insurance we have separately. So those ones are under our own categories. Each of our car registrations and retirement contributions.
And like I have a little section for like coffee shops because I'll like go work at coffee shops every once in a while. So I've added that little section to mine. And then we have a long-term savings category. And this includes, again, a big variety of things. A category for a new car.
car, category for like technology, like if one of us needs a new phone. We have a sinking fund for our dog, real estate category for someday when we want to buy real estate, and our emergency funds in that category. And then just kind of a couple like I would say unorganized categories that probably could fit somewhere else
that are just kind of outliers right now are a vacation category and a fun money category. And that's different from like our individual fun money. This is like our, our joint pool that we'll use to like go out to eat together or go to an event, something like that.
So that's kind of an overview of my messy budget.
10:01
Cassidy Horton
i have several follow-up questions my first follow-up question to you is you don't have a separate like dining out eating out category other than coffee shops and everything else is just in your like joint fun money good question actually we just
10:19
Emily Batdorf
changed that previously we had a dining out category in fun money category and we just lumped them together recently because it just seemed kind of unnecessary like we don't eat out a ton and yeah I think we just kind of thought of them together anyways like for instance if we spent all of our
dining out money and then wanted to go out again we would just use our fun money so it's all one category now
10:44
Cassidy Horton
Okay. That makes sense. That is not the case with my budget. So that is very cool. My other follow-up question, just to make sure I'm understanding. So it seems like you two are mostly breaking your expenses up between these are the things that we share. So like here are all of the categories and we share these expenses.
And then here are like our other individual expenses like lumped into these other broader categories and then you have savings and then you have like some fun things yeah essentially yep that's a strategy I never would have thought of but I do like
it and I can see how it would work if you're like merging finances with a partner
11:27
Emily Batdorf
yeah and I think it started off being a little more useful like before we had merged most things some of these expenses were like coming out of our individual accounts now Pretty much everything comes out of our joint account, regardless of if it's in my expense category or his.
But I think it's just kind of a result of the period of our lives when we started using this app.
11:52
Cassidy Horton
Yeah. I also thought it was interesting that you have an individual line for your car registration.
11:58
Emily Batdorf
Yeah, that is kind of oddly specific.
11:59
Yeah.
12:00
Cassidy Horton
yeah it's like your dining out is lumped into your like fun together money you're just like anything we do we're having fun together it's just this category but then
12:09
Emily Batdorf
you're like yeah i i don't know i i can't really explain that aside from the fact that it's really nice when that time comes around and i have the exact amount ready to go Yeah, I don't know. I feel like anything that's, like, predictable, we're like, okay, let's put that in the budget.
And then things that are more discretionary, we're just more likely to lump them together, like. It's flexible.
12:38
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, that does make sense. Okay, now I'll give you an overview of my budget. So I also share this account with my husband. So it's like all of our joint, we have like merged everything completely over the years. So our budget is broken up into a few broader categories.
So the first one that we have is fixed needs. And this includes every expense that we absolutely need to keep the lights on that is the same exact amount every single month. So this is our rent, our phone bill, our insurance, and yeah, insurance is auto insurance and renter's insurance.
And then the second grouping that we have is called irregular needs. And these are things, once again, that we need to keep the lights on, but the price can change month to month. So these are utilities, groceries, gas for our car, We have haircuts in here. And then we also have medical expenses.
Those are all grouped under what I would call like the irregular needs heading. And then we have all of our optional categories or at least things that in my brain I've like deemed as optional. And that is a gym membership. So like I'm paying for a pure bar membership right now.
This is to get our house cleaned once a month. Dining out. My fun money. Cody's fun money. We have a category called hiking slash entertainment things. And I think this could just be called like art together, fun money, similar to what you have. And then we have subscriptions, gifts,
and then we have a not budgeted for category where I will just usually put like two or three hundred dollars in there just to catch. any expense that I have forgotten about or wasn't expecting or whatever. It's just a catch-all category. And then we have a category for our cats,
and that consists of a line item for food, litter, and then vet slash random expenses. And then we have all of our savings goals. So that's like saving for a down payment on a house, our emergency fund, investments, and then a vacation fund.
14:37
Emily Batdorf
I like the way you've organized it. I might steal your overarching structure. It makes so much sense to me to have things split up by required expenses and then optional expenses. In our shared expenses category, we have... The very necessary things like rent and utilities and car insurance. But we also have haircuts and subscriptions.
And I don't know if that makes the most sense. That's just what we've been doing. But anyway.
15:09
Cassidy Horton
I don't know. We also have our haircuts category under the, like, irregular needs. Because honestly, this is something we could talk about. I don't know why my brain is thinking like this. But I think in my head, I'm like... Cody needs to get his hair cut like every six weeks or eight weeks,
however often he gets his hair cut because he likes to keep his hair short,
15:33
Emily Batdorf
you know?
15:34
Cassidy Horton
Something like that. He needs that. But then a lot of times, I did this for years. Anytime I would want to get my hair cut because I'm like, my hair could technically grow as long as it needs to and it would be fine. I don't need a haircut.
For years, I would put my haircut out of like my fun money and Because I would be like, this is an optional thing that I'm choosing to spend my own money on. And then a few years ago, it dawned on me. I was like, no, just because you technically could go longer without a haircut doesn't mean it's
not a need for you to. So then I just started putting mine in there too. But like, where do you put your haircuts?
16:12
Emily Batdorf
I mean, yeah, it's just – I feel like our shared expense category is so broad that like there's just gifts are in there auto maintenance is in there subscriptions rent everything and that's where haircuts is but I do feel like I kind of consider it like a necessity I mean
obviously it's not a necessity necessity but like I'm gonna get my haircut or else it'll get out of hand you know
16:39
Cassidy Horton
Yeah. Okay. In addition to haircuts, where do you put like makeup and other things like skincare, things that could be considered girly grooming kind of thing?
16:52
Emily Batdorf
I really don't spend much on those types of things aside from haircuts. And so I guess like if I were to broaden this a little bit, probably where I would put this type of thing is like in groceries, honestly, because we put all of like our household supplies and thinking like toilet paper
and shampoo and toothpaste and all of those kinds of things. That's just all lumped in groceries for us. I don't know if you do the same thing, but.
17:21
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, it is for us too.
17:22
Emily Batdorf
Okay. Yeah. So that's where I would add anything like pharmacy or drugstore related. All goes in groceries.
17:29
Cassidy Horton
It's like, can you buy this thing, a Walmart neighborhood market?
17:33
Emily Batdorf
Right.
17:34
Cassidy Horton
Like the grocery store version of Walmart. And it was like, yes, it's going in groceries.
17:37
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. Yeah. If I was going to buy something like particularly expensive, that's not like a normal thing I use. Like, I'm trying to think of an example even. Like a hair dryer, like a blow dryer. Yeah. If I were to buy something like that that's not like a thing I use regularly,
then I would probably put something like that that's a little more expensive in like my own spending, if that makes sense.
18:00
Cassidy Horton
It does. That's kind of how my brain splits it up too. I'm like, if this is something that I could buy at the grocery store, like the deodorant that I use or like the body lotion that I use or something like that, it's going to go in the groceries category.
But if it's something that I would have to make a trip to like Sephora or Ulta for – Because it's like a little more specific, whether it's like makeup or skincare or whatever, then I usually pull it out of my fun money category because I'm like choosing to buy a higher end version.
18:34
Emily Batdorf
Right. That makes sense.
18:36
Cassidy Horton
Of that thing.
18:36
Emily Batdorf
Yeah.
18:38
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, not saying it's right or wrong, but that's just like how my brain is processed what should go in either of those categories.
18:46
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know if you listed out all of your categories or if you skipped a few, but I'm curious about like what would you say one of your most unexpected categories is?
18:58
Cassidy Horton
Let's see. I pretty much named everything.
19:03
Emily Batdorf
I mean, the one that was called like hiking and other entertainment or something was that feels interestingly specific.
19:11
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, I think because at the time when I created it, all of our extracurricular things that we were doing were hiking related. So I just felt like that was the most appropriate name for it a few years ago. And now we don't really hike as much.
So I feel like it needs to be renamed because I still put transactions in there. And it's usually like if we go to the movies.
19:32
Emily Batdorf
Mm-hmm.
19:33
Cassidy Horton
I would put that money in there. If I was going to some tourist attraction thing in my city, I would put that there. So I do feel like it needs to be renamed. But yeah, I think one of the most unexpected for me that I've recently added is probably just a gifts category. Yeah. Because, I mean,
I've had YNAB since 2016, but I've only had this budgeting category for maybe six months at the most. And that's just because it would be one of those things that would creep up on me. I'd be like, oh, I really want to buy this person like a birthday gift or whatever.
And then I would be like, where do we pull that from? And for a lot of times, it would ultimately go into my not budgeted for category. Like this is a thing I forgot to budget for. But then if you forget to budget for a thing so many times,
it dawns on you that maybe you just need to start budgeting for it. So that was kind of how that happened. But do you have any unexpected or weird? I think for me, the most unexpected thing was the car registration.
20:33
Emily Batdorf
Yeah, I think that probably is the weirdest. I mean, we have gas and car wash separate from auto repairs. I don't know. Maybe that makes sense. Separate from savings for a new car. That might just be redundant. I don't know.
20:49
Cassidy Horton
I think those are separate things. Like you're saving for a future car. Yeah. But then you're also saving for maintenance on the car you do have.
20:56
Emily Batdorf
And then we're also... And then gas and car washes. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it makes sense. How often are you getting your car wash? Funny you should ask. So I got a new-ish, new-to-me car last year. And I'm determined to keep it for a very long time. I really love it. And...
want to keep it in good shape so one of the things I like told myself I was gonna do was get it washed regularly and part of the reason I think it's so important is because of where I live in Michigan right now there's been salt on the road since
December and there will be for the next at least another month and so that's just like so hard on your car so I ended up getting a car wash subscription recently which is like one of the only subscriptions that i
pay for and yeah it's not like one of those fancy i see these popping up when we go to like actual bigger cities like have you seen these like fancy car wash empires I think so. Actually, we do have one now that I think about it. But anyway, it's not one of those.
It's just like a small, locally owned little place and it's not very expensive. But anyway, so I get my car washed now that I have this twice a month. Twice a month? If somebody's listening and knows more about cars than me and thinks that's excessive,
let me know because I did a lot of research trying to find out, like, how often should you wash your car? And that's what I found. And for me, like, with the salt... At least this time of year, it makes sense to me. I don't know if I'll keep that up in the summer. We'll see.
But just trying to stay on top of it.
22:41
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, it does make sense if you live in a snowy area, I think, to get your car wash more, especially during the winter. We rarely ever get snow in the winter, so it's usually just cold and nothing else. But we get our car wash, I'm not even joking, once or twice a year.
22:56
Emily Batdorf
Yeah, that's how I used to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm trying to think of it as like routine maintenance now. Really want it to last. Yeah. And also my old car, like one of the first things that happened to it was like it started getting kind of corroded underneath. Yeah. And like a little rusty.
So I just really don't want that to happen again. Because otherwise there are a lot of things about it that like we're in great shape. But Michigan is tough on cars. Michigan.
23:28
Cassidy Horton
Okay. Another distinction that I noticed between our budgets I want us to talk about is It's just all of the food categories. But we have a separate groceries category and a separate dining category. And honestly, there are two categories that we struggle to stay within budget the most because we do love eating out.
And for the most part, we'll try to limit our eating out to like Saturdays only. But sometimes that doesn't work. Like right now, I feel like we're kind of in a season where... we're eating out maybe two or three times a week. Yeah. And a lot of times I feel like unless you're just running through a drive-thru,
it's really easy to drop like $50 when you die out like for two people. So anyway, yeah, those are two distinct. I'm like, if we do something that's fun together, that's not eating out, that is its own separate thing, but like eating it. Dining is its own thing.
24:26
Emily Batdorf
Do you find you go over your grocery budget too?
24:29
Cassidy Horton
For sure. I think I could be better about planning out those expenses, but I don't know. A lot of times for the most part, I will make the grocery list in however much the groceries are. I'll just pay it. And if I go over, I'll just move money from another category.
But it used to not be that way. I think that's come over time as I felt more like financially comfortable or I felt like I've had a better grip on my finances. But in the beginning, I was still making my list, but also doing the mental math in the store to be like,
this can of beans is 40 cents and then this pack of tortillas is two dollars and like doing the mental math as i got through the store so i wasn't like shocked and surprised when i got to the register but lately i've just been like it'll be
25:16
Emily Batdorf
however much it is yeah i it's fine yeah i'm kind of the same way like i kind of feel like because we don't eat out a lot regardless of how much we spend on groceries like we're still saving you know what i mean versus eating out. So if groceries are a little more expensive, that's fine. Especially nowadays,
like with grocery prices having increased so much over the last few years, I'm just trying to give myself a little more grace with that category.
25:47
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, that was also my thought. Maybe I just feel slightly defeated in the grocery department. So I'm like, if it's more than I expected, It's probably for reasons outside of my control, so I'm not going to really beat myself up about it. So I'm just like groceries are expensive in general right now.
It's going to be what it is. I think that also plays into it a lot, at least subconsciously.
26:15
Emily Batdorf
Yeah, definitely. I think one thing that we both have realized over our years of budgeting is that sometimes we'll have expenses that just don't fit neatly into any one category. So I want to know how you categorize a few different very specific purchases and So, first of all,
if you are on a road trip and you stop for food at like a, you know, fast food chain or whatever, would you consider that your travel budget or your dining out budget?
26:47
Cassidy Horton
I would do travel because I would be like, we are on an adventure and as part of this adventure, we require food. Yeah.
26:57
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. Yeah. What about you? I think I would normally do travel as well unless we're driving like two or three hours downstate and it doesn't feel like a vacation. I don't know. For some reason, that feels a little different, especially if we have like plenty of room in our dining out category.
I'm like, well, let's not dip into travel, you know?
27:17
Cassidy Horton
That's true. Yeah. I was thinking like even if we went to a town like two hours away and I was like, I don't know. I think I would be like, this is dining out because we're so close to home. But it does need to be like a proper, proper day trip.
We're driving for hours and we're going to spend all day in this place and it's going to be a full long day.
27:38
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. Interesting distinction. Yeah.
27:41
Cassidy Horton
Okay. In that same vein, if you have a family member visiting, they're on vacation and you're like whining and dining them and showing them your city and you take them out to eat, what category do you put that expense in?
27:55
Emily Batdorf
Hmm. I think it would be dining out. I'm trying to think of examples like if we've had friends visiting and like treat them to something. Yeah, I feel like we just put it in our typical dining out category. What about you?
28:10
Cassidy Horton
We always put hours in vacation because like most of my friends and family, like they're all, they all live out of state. So whenever they come, they have like taken time off work. This is their vacation. Like they're choosing this when their vacation is here.
And I do love to be like, you paid for your plane ticket to get here. Like the least I can do is buy our meals when we eat out or something, you know? And I think because they're on vacation, I also feel like it's a vacation because they're here. I'm like, this is a vacation expense.
It's just more of like a staycation. Right. Because I'm still at home. But collectively, we are all on vacation mindset and modes.
28:46
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. I actually like how you think about that. I think like if we know, for instance, like if we know we're going to be hosting friends or something well in advance, we might try to save up our dining out budget so it like goes farther when we have people visiting. Mm-hmm. But yeah,
I don't think we've ever done the vacation unless we're like traveling with someone, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
29:09
Cassidy Horton
My next question for you is more so about like how you handle budget surprises because I know for me and our budget, I feel like we overspend in a specific category almost every single month. And that category might change depending on what's going on. Yeah.
Our cats are currently going to the vet this month and it's going to be way more than we budgeted for. So like that's an over expense. So I just like the categories are always changing, but something inevitably happens. So my question to you is, what do you typically do when you overspend on a category?
29:41
Emily Batdorf
Yeah, good question. And I think it depends on the situation. Like it's easy to reallocate money from a different category. We'll definitely do that. Like say we didn't spend a lot on gas one month and we overspend on groceries. Like that's an easy fix. We'll just move that money over from that category. Yeah.
If there's not an obvious place to take that money from or if our forgot about category is empty, which is where we'll sometimes put extra money, then it's a little trickier and we might just have a smaller budget for that category the next month. Again, if it's the grocery example and we spend $100 more
than we had allocated. Maybe we see if we can try to cut back $100 the next month. I don't have a great answer for this. I think it just really depends on the situation. But what do you do?
30:37
Cassidy Horton
Yeah, it's kind of similar from us. I feel like I have a little list of triage steps that I go through. And it's like, triage step number one, is there money that I can move from some other category to cover this expense? It's like, what money do we already have in the budget?
And then, like I said, I do usually put like $200, $300 in a not budgeted for category. So, you know, I'll turn to that if I need to. But if we go over more than that, honestly, and I don't know that this is necessarily good, but sometimes I will pull from the travel fund to cover it.
31:13
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. I mean, I have stories like that. Like for the longest time, we knew we wanted to get a dog one day and we started saving for a dog like way before we got a dog. And then we got to a point where we were like,
we have no plans in the foreseeable future for actually getting a dog. Why don't we use this money for something that we're actually like... Right now we're like trying to save up for. So we totally emptied that category and then like started again when we actually were going to get a dog.
So yeah, we've done that too before. We're like, is this actually the most important thing to be saving for right now? I don't think so. So it's okay to dip into that.
31:53
Cassidy Horton
I feel like I would never, ever pull from my emergency fund unless it was a true emergency. But with the travel fund, I'm like, this is optional money. And I'll kind of gauge it too. I'll be like, do I have any trips coming up? Like, do we have any family visiting? Are we going anywhere?
And if the answer is no, then I'm like, it's okay. Like I can top it back up before I eventually need it again. So yeah, it's probably not best practice. And also I don't feel too bad about it.
32:20
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. So what are some of those unexpected expenses that sneak up on you?
32:25
Cassidy Horton
I think for me, and honestly, in hearing you talk about your budget, I think there are some adjustments I need to make, like some categories. I feel like right now I'm relying too heavily on not budgeted for on that specific category to pay for things that are irregular but happen often enough that they warrant their own expenses.
category to save for so for example like car maintenance we do not have a category where we save for car maintenance i'm just like when our oil needs change we'll pull that money from someone even if it's not budgeted for or also like random vet
bills and then gifts is another one i do have the category now but i'm trying to figure out like is the amount enough does it need to be higher do i want it to be higher or do i want to try to like really restrain myself into like
gifts are going to be $50 a month or something like that I don't know yeah I'm sitting with that but yeah I do think like some car maintenance things and some vet things are probably the two biggest things I'm just like I really should budget for
33:29
Emily Batdorf
these more than I do what about you yeah similar actually The pet expenses are just kind of crazy. Even though I expected to spend a lot of money on a dog, it still continues to surprise me. The medications that inevitably they need at some point and the training and the, I don't know.
She like destroyed all of her toys within weeks of, she just is a little fireball. But yeah, everything. So we constantly, I feel like, blow through that category. But we're working on it. Obviously like she's young and like the first year or so I think is when you do the most spending. Or a lot of the spending.
And then the other category that we tend to blow through, even though we have a category and like try to plan for it, is also gifts. We both have several siblings and we now have two nephews and obviously our parents and a lot of our friends are getting married.
It just feels like there are so many more life events happening all the time. Then there were, like, even before we got married. So it just feels like there's always an occasion to give a gift. And as much as I love, like, taking the time to make something homemade.
Well, for instance, like, I have been making quilts lately as gifts. And those are expensive to make. Like, you know, buying the supplies. So that doesn't always save money. And then sometimes it's like... Ooh, we forgot this birthday was coming up or like, you know, something inevitably comes up.
And so we'll kind of spend last minute on it. So I would say those are the two places we kind of struggle to stay on top of the most.
35:34
Cassidy Horton
I think with gifts specifically, whenever I made the category, I was only thinking in terms of birthdays. In my head, I was like, budgeting $50 a month should be more than enough to cover everyone's birthday that I want to buy a gift for. But then, like you said, so many life events happen.
I feel like in my life, it's baby showers. So many people that I know are just having babies. Yeah. Like you want to get them something from their registry and a lot of times it will inevitably be more than $50 for whatever reason. Like baby stuff is kind of expensive.
And then another thing too is I think of gifting money as also like donating money to certain places. So like when the LA wildfires were going on, I was like, I definitely want to like donate money to an organization that's helping. So I pulled that from the gift fund, you know, because it's
my brain i'm like it's it's close to it yeah you're gifting money to an organization um and i just think after all of that i'm like i think i want more money in there just so i can be a more generous person when i want to so yeah yeah
36:46
Emily Batdorf
yeah it's nice to like have money set aside for that kind of thing
36:50
Cassidy Horton
Are there any categories after us both talking that you don't currently have that
36:55
Emily Batdorf
maybe you want to add or take away? Yes. I think my biggest takeaway from hearing about how you organize your budget is how you group different expenses because say something happens and We're like one of us isn't earning an income for a period of time and like we need
to pull back on spending like it'd be so much easier to look at our budget and see like, oh, OK, here's everything that's optional. We're going to start here and work our way through these expenses and like not. worry about sorting through insurance versus travel versus new car, having all these things jumbled up together.
So I definitely want to take your approach on that. What about you?
37:43
Cassidy Horton
I think the biggest thing for me is a car maintenance fund. And then also doing more with my vet expense fund because right now it always stays empty because our cats are healthy and they're indoor cats and they really only see the vet for their annual checkup, like when they need vaccinations and stuff.
And even then sometimes like it doesn't happen every year. I don't know. I'm like, it's such an infrequent expense, but I do feel like there needs to be money in there because the months when they do need to go to the vet and it's not there, I'm like, oh my God, why haven't I?
Yeah, put money in here after all this time. I also want to add that over time there have, of course, been categories that we have like closed out over the years. Like we had a category when we were moving from Georgia. to Seattle like we saved up for that move because we knew we would have hotel stays
and like the U-Haul rental and gas and like all of that stuff so we saved up for that and then closed that category whenever we no longer needed it and we did the same when we moved to a different part of Washington State but like we did the same
thing when we moved again this year like we saved up for that move so we could pay movers and right all of that stuff and then And also, like, we needed stuff for the new house. And we were like, these are going to be one-off expenses. So we, like, dumped everything into that, like, moving category and then,
like, closed it out once we got settled. Yeah.
39:11
Emily Batdorf
Yeah. Ours changes every so often too. We have like hidden categories that who knows, maybe we'll use again. Yeah.
39:19
Cassidy Horton
So I think in closing, budgeting gets a bad rap because people assume it's all about restricting yourself. And I feel like even like with my original form of budgeting with the spreadsheet, I would overspin and then I'd be like, I just need to like be better about disciplining myself. And it just felt very hard because
But I think budgeting is the most helpful and the most productive when you think of it as intentionally deciding where your money is going to go. Because your budget at the end of the day should reflect your priorities. And your priorities can mean all sorts of things. Like even if it is,
I feel like the cliche financial advice is like ditch the lattes, which that in and of itself is kind of overused now. And hopefully everyone knows by now that you can 100% treat yourself to the latte if it is what makes you happy. Speaking of that, next week's episode,
Emily and I are diving deep on the splurges that we make that kind of make us feel like we're living the high life. So we're just going to go over a bunch of things that we splurge on that bring us a lot of joy. But in the meantime, if you already budget,
we would love to know what's the weirdest or funniest thing that you budget for. And if you don't have a budget, let us know what's holding you back. We'd love to have a conversation with you about it. You can email us at hello at thefinancegirlies.com.
40:30
Emily Batdorf
That's a wrap on another episode of the Finance Girlies podcast. Nothing in this episode is meant to be taken as financial advice.
40:37
Cassidy Horton
Please do your own research and talk to a professional if you need advice. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Love you. Bye.
