7-Step Guide to RESET Your Budget | minimalism + saving money

all of us have experienced times in our life where we've gone through periods of great change or maybe Financial strain and these events can be positive such as buying and moving into a new home or welcoming a new baby into the family or they could be negative things like divorce job loss or getting diagnosed with a chronic illness and in times like this a budget reset can be a good way to hit the reset button on your finances and maybe some of you watching this video are going through such a time right now I know we are job loss moving to a new country problems with Healthcare and housing we've been through all of that and more in the past few years and that's why today I wanted to make this video to share how our spending has changed and what I'm doing to reset our budget so that you can do the same if and when you face budgeting challenges in the future so that when life gets overwhelming money isn't one of the things that you have to stress out or lose sleep over hi there and welcome to my channel my name is Marissa and I'm a minimalist who also happens to be passionate about budgeting and I've been tracking our spending for the past 15 years and normally we're pretty good about sticking to our budget however because our family recently moved back to the USA after 4 years of living in Europe we've been spending a little bit more money than usual in the process of settling into our new home and life so here are the steps that I'm taking to reset our budget starting with number one one on this list which is to audit your expenses the first step to resetting your budget is to take a good hard look at how much you're spending where you're spending it and what's working and what's going wrong because being able to pinpoint what categories you're overspending on is key to changing your habits and behaviors in those areas depending on what's going on in your life you might find that you have brand new expense categories that you didn't have before buying a new home might mean you're spending more on furniture utilities and upkeep and maintenance in your home and a new baby might mean that you need to purchase baby gear or maybe formula if you find you have trouble with breast feeding like I said we just repatriated back to the USA with only eight suitcases but even though we moved into a furnished rental to hold us over until we can find a Home of Our Own there were still plenty of Essentials that we needed to buy ourselves for our new home we tend to go for quality over quantity and sometimes that comes with a higher price tag but to me it's worth it to pay a little bit more to get exactly the Japanese rice cooker that I want instead of buying a cheaper model from some place like Target or Walmart and because almost everything that we needed was within close walking distance of us back in our old home in Europe we were able to live carfree for many years there and our monthly Transportation spending was close to zero with only the occasional taxi ride or bus or train pass here or there but now that we live in the suburbs of Chicago both my husband and myself need our own car which means that not only did we have to buy cars but then we also have to now pay for things like auto insurance for each car gas to put in our cars and things like eye passes so that we can travel the toll roads that get us from place to place luckily because we have over a decade of frugal living and budgeting experience under our belts I have a really good budgeting system in place so that we were able to accommodate these changes without any Financial strain and if budgeting is something that you struggle with you can get the exact budget in system that I use in the a tozen life shop which is the minimalist budget bundle including 50 pages of printables such as monthly expense trackers debt payoff and savings trackers cash envelopes and much much more I know that for me personally I like a Hands-On paper approach to budgeting best but you could also do things like keep a journal or you could create spreadsheets or you could use a budgeting app the most important thing is that you have a way to track your daily expenses and plan your monthly budget number two do a priority Double Take there is no better way to find out where someone's true priorities lie than to look at the way that they're spending their money you might have a friend or co-worker who says that they care about paying off their student loans but if they're blowing their budget by going out to lunch with co-workers or partying at the bar with their friends every weekend that shows that their priorities aren't really in alignment with that goal it's up to you to figure out what your biggest priorities in life are and then after that you can use those priorities as a compass to guide you in deciding how to save and spend your money right now my husband and I are trying to save money towards our purchase of a new home here so that's a huge priority for us but we also prioritize things like spending money on good food and groceries to feed our family I grew up in a home where most of the time we were eating things like microwave dinners or fast food or takeout and my husband who grew up poor experienced food insecurity so bad that there were times when he would only get one small meal a day and sometimes they would be eating things like rotten sweet potatoes or cans of expired crab meat so both of us are really on the same page when it comes to food and we try to buy plenty of fresh fruits and veggies and go for organic meats and eggs as much as possible unfortunately we have found that healthy food is much more expensive here in the USA versus back in Germany and because we were kind of starting from scratch with our pantry and refrigerator we didn't have a lot of things like flour or spices or pastas that are kind of those Pantry Staples and the first month here which was August was really expensive for us and we spent a total of $1,900 on food and after that I got things a little bit more under control and then in the month of September we spent a total of $1,066 for our family of four now depending where you are that might sound like a lot or not that much at all but I like to keep things objective as much as possible and if you live in the USA there's actually a really great tool that you can use to see what the average person or the average family spends each month on groceries and to find that you can go to the USDA website where they share a monthly cost of food report for four different levels including Thrifty low cost moderate cost and the liberal spending plan and if you look at this budget breakdown of the USDA spending plan for a family of four that matches our exact ages you can see that last month we were right on par with the lowcost spending plan I always say that my goal is to spend as though we're spending for the Thrifty or the lowcost plan but have our family eat as though we're spending according to a moderate or liberal plan so I feel pretty good about our food budget as long as I'm sticking to that goal I will make sure to put a link to the USDA food plans down in the description box below so make sure to check that out if you live in the USA and food is a priority for you as well and by the way if spending less and saving more money is a priority for you allow me to suggest that you go down and hit the little red subscribe button and ring the bell to turn on all notifications so that you don't miss any of the helpful videos that I share here on my channel each week that are designed to help you do just that for the low low price of free so if you appreciate my honesty or you're finding value in this video or you just want to lead a happier richer better life because who doesn't want that right then I'd love to have you join our a tozen life family here on YouTube and I do so appreciate all of your likes comments and support let's move on moving on to number three that is to get honest about any changes in budget categories it doesn't do you any good to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich and ignore any overspending or budget breakdowns because the longer you ignore money problems the worse they're likely to get over time so the sooner you can nip them in the bud the better so getting honest with yourself about how much money you have to work with and adjusting your spending and saving habits accordingly is essential to taking control of your financial future and for some people that might mean taking drastic measures like choosing to stop using credit cards which happens to be number four on this list that you can use a cash envelope system and only buying things with the cash that you have allotted to yourself for that week paying with credit cards is so effortless that it's often easy for people to ignore that they're spending real actual money so sometimes it can be helpful to set aside your credit cards and commit to switching to using cash for a while if if you find that switching cards for cash is just too difficult or impractical for everything in your life you can also challenge yourself to just switch to cash for those budget categories that you find most challenging for some people it might be buying new clothes and for others it might be going out to eat with their friends or ordering takeout but using cash is going to make your spending a lot more real and visible to you and it might make you think twice when you go to buy a new pair of shoes and you grab your cash envelope and you realize that you've already blown your entire week's budget by Tuesday and there's only $3 left inside number five Purge unnecessary expenses another reason that I love my budgeting principle is because I can easily see at a glance all of the fixed expenses that we have and that we're spending our money on each month and it makes it easy to see at a glance which subscriptions and reoccurring expenses we're not using so that I can purge them from our budget previously my husband and I were paying $45 a month for a gym membership but now the apartment complex that we live in has a great workout facility and we were able to eliminate that expense all together and in Germany we were paying $124 a month for both of our boys to take kickboxing classes which ended up being two classes per week for a total of eish classes per month but here they decided that they no longer want to continue kickboxing and instead they've taken up skateboarding and we did have to buy new gear for one of my sons but my husband's old friend was super generous and gave our other son some old gear that his daughter had outgrown and now they're just practicing at free skate parks and riding around in our neighborhood so when you're trying to do a budget reset it's a good idea to go through your budget and see if you have any memberships or subscriptions that you can eliminate and then when you cut those reoccurring expenses you're putting putting that money back into your pocket each month number six stick to a shopping list I keep shopping lists for everything whether it's going to the grocery store or things that I need around my home because having a list is really good for keeping you focused on what you need to buy and you're less likely to impulse buy something on a wiim in my minimalist budget bundle I have a printable 30-day minimalist shopping list that I use to keep track of personal shopping ideas like any new clothes I might be thinking about buying or like water bottles or a new yoga mat for my morning exercise routine and when I use my minimalist meal planner principle to plan our meals for the week I also write down what I need from the grocery store off to one side so that way when I head to the grocery store I'm better able to stick to a list and you know not buy ingredients or random things that I didn't necessarily need and finally number seven on this list is to do a spending freeze which is where you challenge yourself to stop spending money for a set period of time whether it's a weekend or an entire month or a whole year spending freezes are also called No spin challenges or no buys and can be a good way to do a hard reset on your budget fair warning a lot of people who try spending freezes find them challenging the first time so if you're new to spending freezes you might try doing one on maybe a weekend or a week before you go all the way to trying to do a 30-day spending freeze or even an entire year which is something that some people do and if you want to know more about spending freezes and how to do them you can go watch this video here which is the first in a four-part series of spending freeze challenges that I do every year or I will also link some additional videos and blog posts down in the description box below for you to check out or I'll see you next week until then take care bye-bye

Channel: A to Zen Life

Views: 71,781

Keywords: reset your budget, budget reset, how to reset your budget, how to budget, budget, budgeting, minimalist, minimalism, minimalist budget, budget challenge, reset routine, budgeting and saving money, budgeting tips, saving money, how to save money, money saving tips, frugal, frugal living, what i spend, what i spend in, what i spend in a month, money tips, how i save money, a to zen life

Id: DOorU7JVfro

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023