122: Six Budgeting Strategies to Help You Meet Your Financial Goals

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Hello, everyone, this is Dra. Yvette with another solo episode for you. Today's solo episode is all about budgeting. I'm sharing six budgeting strategies to help you meet your financial goals. Now, let me tell you, why am I talking about budgets? Well, one is recently I've been having a lot of people reach out to me, especially folks that know me, whether it's friends, acquaintances, recent clients, who have realized that I kind of know a thing or two about budgeting and personal finance, to ask me about, like, oh, we vet can you teach me strategies.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So I was recently asked to come up with a workshop all about budgeting. So budgeting 101. So that's what I've been working on. So I've been thinking about this topic of financial literacy, personal finance, and budgeting. And why it's so hard for a lot of us to make a budget and stay on budget. And I think it has a lot more to do than just thinking, Oh, I'm just bad with money, or I just don't make enough money. There's a lot, there's a lot that goes into it. And it's taken me a long time to get to this place. I actually didn't start learning about financial literacy until 2018, y'all. I got my PhD in 2016. So that was two whole years later.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And I didn't start actually like implementing a lot of things that I learned until last year. Yeah, that's two whole years after so this entire two year period of me attempting to budget learning as much as I can about financial literacy and just taking it in, but not necessarily taking action. And so if you listen to this podcast episode, and it feels really overwhelming, and you're tempted to turn it off, try to stick with me here. And even if you don't implement what I'm teaching you or what I'm sharing with you right now, hopefully, you'll open yourself up to being curious about learning more. And little by little, the more you learn about financial literacy, the more you learn about personal finance, the easier it'll be for you to navigate your own money, your money mindset, the way that you manage your money, whether it's a little bit of money, or you start to make more, and you're trying to figure out what to do when that happens. I want you to feel like you are empowered to make decisions that align with your values and your goals.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And so I just I feel like it's important to start with a budget because that is the way that I got started. And I think that learning how to manage my budget was key in empowering me to make a lot of really big life decisions, including my entire move abroad last year. So what is a budget when I'm talking about a budget, like what actually do I mean by that, when I'm talking about a budget, I'm referring to you taking a look at your income, whatever money you make, even if the money is even if the income is zero, knowing what your income is, and then knowing what your expenses are. So income versus expenses. And ideally, you want to take a look at how much money you make and how much money you spend with a plan in mind.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So ideally, your budget is a spending plan that aligns with your values and goals. Let me tell you, I don't think I ever did that growing up. In fact, I didn't know anything about managing money. I remember in high school. There was one time that I won a scholarship. And back then if you got a scholarship, sometimes they'll just send you a check in the mail and it was there for you to use and so silly me I got a scholarship and it was my first time getting a bank account and I started to spend money and then I noticed that there was a parenthesis next to the amount of the money in my checking account and I kept thinking, Oh, that number in the parentheses keeps going getting bigger and bigger. My maybe my mom's depositing money like, or I don't know, like, how am I getting more money? What I didn't know was that I was actually in the negative and that the negative amount was getting higher and higher because I kept spending money. And so that nice $500 scholarship that I had one went straight to paying for my my overdraft fees. Lesson learned.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So that was one of many lessons of me making money mistakes, because no one sat down with me and taught me what, what is a checking account? And how do you how do you like you know, read your you know, your bank statements. No one taught me what is a credit card? And how how do you use credit cards? In fact, I grew up thinking that credit was evil, and that you shouldn't use it and that you shouldn't take out a credit card, because that will just lead to credit card debt. And that's the worst thing that can happen to you. And any kind of debt actually was always just bad, bad bad, try to avoid it whatsoever, try to save all of your money try not to spend.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And so of course, I carried a lot of guilt and a lot of shame anytime I spent money for anything other than the bare necessities. And if you finding yourself relating to any part of the story, then definitely this episode is for you. When you are coming up with your budget, if you've never created a budget before, you know, one thing you can easily do is pull out an Excel sheet or even creating a table. And like I said earlier, writing down how much money you make each month, even if it's an estimate, even if your earnings are variable every month, try to estimate how much you think it's going to be and then estimate how much you think you're gonna spend.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So when when I think about creating a budget, I actually like to have two spreadsheets and two sample budgets. So there's my, my bare bones budget, that's just the budget that you need to survive. And then your regular budget, the budget that accounts for other things outside of just the bare necessities. So when I'm talking about bare necessities, I'm talking about things like housing, I'm talking about food, for sustenance, I'm talking about your health. So do you need medication? What are the things that you absolutely have to pay for every month to literally survive and stay alive. So that might be rent or a mortgage. That might be your groceries, that might be your medication, everything else? Everything else, maybe you need utilities, but eating out buying clothes, etc. You might not need that that's not what you need to survive. So that's what I mean when I say bare bones budget.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But we can't just survive on a bare bones budget all the time. That's just not realistic. There are other expenses that come up. And so for that, that's more of your regular budget, I call it my regular budget. realistic budget, what do you wanna, whatever you want to call it, it's the one that includes what you actually spend money on. So that may be the going out the buying the coffee, the treating yourself shopping every now and then. I think it's important to create a budget initially with your bare bones and then your regular budget what you think you actually spend on everything else?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And then start to keep track. How do you keep track by every month going back and checking your expenses. And at first it's gonna seem like a lot, but the more you get used to checking your bank account or, or like reviewing your expenses at the end of the month, updating your spreadsheet, and taking a look and honest look at what you spend money on. At without judgment without shame just thinking this is it. This is you know, I'm owning up to it. I spend too much on x. I'm guessing for a lot of us we probably spend too much on food.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Not only because food is good, cost, the cost of things is just it just keeps going up and up and up. So a lot of us spend too much what we think is too much on food, but it's just good to get comfortable. Get accustomed, be compassionate with yourself when you're looking at your numbers to get to know yourself a little bit better. It's a different type of intimacy to get to know your numbers and figure out what you're spending money on. And now, okay, let's say you have your, your bare bones budget, and then you have your regular budget. And then you start to track your every month track your your income and your expenses and you start to notice that you're in the negative, what do you do, then?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I think it's important to, to constantly be reflecting on your spending habits, and your spending goals and your budget. So that you can make changes as needed. And to be gentle with yourself, because a lot of us have accrued some sort of debt. And for most people when they accrued debt, it's not because they intentionally went out to try to accrue debt, it's probably because of student loans, or because of an emergency or because something came up that they didn't know to plan for. So I just, I just want you to think about that about how can you be compassionate with yourself as you're facing your numbers.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I also want to introduce you to some concepts of budgeting that some people implement. So the first one, and this is the first actual budgeting strategy that I'm going to highlight is called the zero based budgeting method. What is zero based budgeting method mean? It means you take a look at what you make. And then for every single cent that you make, you give it a job. What does that mean? That means if you make $2,000 a month, you want to make sure that every single dollar of that 2000 have is accounted for whether whether you know it goes to rent, it goes to your other bills, utilities, it goes to your car payment, it goes to gas, it goes to food, it goes to eating out, it goes to savings, but every single dollar has a job. Why is this important? Because then nothing is left, unaccounted for. And so it forces you to think about exactly how you're using your money every month.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

This is good if you really want to like, get to the nitty gritty about exactly how you spend your money, and then modify your budget as needed. So if you find that your zero based budget, you keep going over in one category, then maybe you're going over on one category, but then that means that you have to cut back on another category so that your zero based budgeting numbers add up. So if you're finding yourself, you maybe you said I'm only going to spend $400 a month on groceries, but you're actually finding yourself spending more like $500 a month, then you look at your zero based budget and your spreadsheet, you say, Hmm, if I was spending 500? And where can I cut back $100 every month to make sure that I can pay for the groceries? Or is there any way that I can make just a little bit more money every month to account for the groceries? You know, how can I make 100 extra dollars this month. So it's just it's kind of forcing you to again, give every single dollar a job. And then when if you go over anywhere, if you go under anywhere, then that also needs to be accounted for.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

How do you actually keep track of a zero based budget, there are different ways. One way is by using an app, there are apps like you need a budget, I'm only mentioning that one because that's one I've used. They're not sponsoring me or anything, although I wish they did because I still use it. But you need a budget is very because it actually links to your credit cards it links to your to your bank, bank accounts. And so all of your expenses get tracked there. And then you have to keep every single one of your expenses, a category has to fit within a category so it's given a job. So that's one way is actually using apps, software to make your life a little bit easier.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another way is the old school method, which is using an Excel sheet. And I'm back to I'm back to using an Excel spreadsheet because now I'm working with dollars and euros I've got two currencies, y'all. I've got some things that I spend money on in dollars something and then spending money on in euros bills and dollars bills in euros. And so that's why I'm back to using an Excel spreadsheet and in that Excel spreadsheet I have my expenses listed in both dollars and euros and then I have my total amount that I spend every month in dollars and euros. So I have that conversion and I know exactly how much I spend.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So how do I do it with the spreadsheet? I literally sit my butt down and go over receipts every month, you're gonna think that this is me getting really intimate, y'all, you're gonna be judging me probably and say, Wait, she really does this every month. Yes, every month and I and my partner and I do this, every single thing we spend money on. That's not like a recurring bill. Because those things we don't really get receipts for. But if we're going out to the grocery store, or going out and buying my daughter, some sort of toy, whatever it is, we take a picture of the receipt, and then we that receipt, we then what does it upload it to a shared folder, a folder that we both have access to. And then at the end of the month, we go over our spreadsheet. And we actually update all of our categories with all of the things that we spent money on. Yes, it's a lot of work. And you don't have to do it this way.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

There's another method, trust me. So you don't have to do the zero based budget method. I do it because I like to know where my money is going. And I like to have that much detail. And I might not be at that point forever. Maybe at some point, I will be comfortable enough and making enough money, that I don't have to be looking at everything, line by line, excuse me. But for now, I'm still doing it. Because it's helping me it's helping me to meet my goals, which is which include to be able to cover my basic expenses, and to be able to save and now I'm trying to save, not just to save, but also to start investing so that I can save up for my future future retirement. That's really important. That's something again, no one taught me about this, about the importance of saving for retirement.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And it just seems so far away that now I'm here to tell you, it's actually not as far away as you think. And the sooner you start, even if it's with very little and feels like it's not much at all, it's going to make a big impact later on. So we'll talk more about that in a little bit. So the first one was zero base budget, which means giving every single dollar a job. Now that seems like it's too much for you. And it probably is especially starting out. There's another way. And this actually, I've heard of a lot of financial experts who use some sort of variation on this method. And I think the reason why they do this is because they make enough income that they know that their basic expenses are covered. So they don't have to worry as much about, you know, line by line, how much money they spent.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So I hear folks who have this method of having multiple bank accounts. So they'll have a bank account, that's the bills checking account, they have another one that will be variable expenses checking account, I actually do this too. I have a bills account, and I have a regular checking account. What that means is that every month when you get paid, you put actually get a like a you know, any any income that I make, I make sure it goes to our bills first. And then from the bills, we transfer over whatever we don't use for, you know, our our ongoing bills, our absolute necessities, we move that over to the variable expenses. So that's kind of for us is any like spending money that we have, and there's not a lot but it's good to differentiate between this is money, that's definitely going to go to bills. And this is money, that's spending money. This is what we get to use for groceries, we get to use to go shopping to buy toiletries, etc.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So for folks who are more comfortable, and know that they definitely make enough money to cover their bills, then they put everything into their bills checking account, and then they automate their bills so that their bills get paid every single month. So how nice is that? That your your paycheck goes straight to your bills account, your bills account already has all of your bills automated or most of them, because not all of them can be automated, and then whatever's left is for you to spend for the rest of the month. That's not bad, right? That could work. If you're not super tight on money. And you're comfortable with doing that. You should definitely try that out.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

For me. I'm starting out with my business y'all. So I am not making as much money as I made in my salary job before at least not yet. And sorry, now things are tighter. So I'm back to my zero based budget and maybe eventually I'll go back to using the do the bills versus there expense checking account strategy. So that's the second strategy, you might want to try that out.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now a third strategy. And all of these things that I'm sharing are things that I have actually tried out, which is why I'm sharing them. So the third one is having a monthly meeting with yourself, at least a monthly meeting, it could be weekly, could be daily, but at least every month, and it could be with yourself. Or if you have a partner, if you have a family, if you share your expenses with someone else, then having that meeting with that other person. So for me, it's a monthly meeting with my partner with Josh, and he and I sit down, and we go over our expenses for every month. And based off our expenses, we actually update our spreadsheet and our you need a budget, because again, I use both, but I know I'm extra. And most people are not like me. So update our spreadsheet, which has the euro and the dollar conversion. And then we update our unit a budget. And then at the end of the month, we know okay, so where did we go over? Where did we go under? Did we spend more than we had anticipated? Or did we go under what we anticipated.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

If we go under what we anticipated, then that, then go straight to savings. And now what we're trying to do is I want to get to the point where instead of just going into savings that we have enough in our savings, so that we can start automatically anything that's leftover goes to investing, and that's going to be for our retirement. But that monthly meeting is really important because when you make a budget is not set it and forget it, I really don't believe in that I think that your budget should be flexible, and your budget should be fluid, and it should change, just like you change, just like your circumstances change. So that's why for me, it's important. I take a look at the budget. I see like, you know, where did I go over. And if I go over, does that mean that I need to change the amount for that budget, does that mean I need to cut back on whatever that was that month does it mean I need to make more money.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So it's always, you know, a couple of things, it's either I went way over, I know, I went over and I need to cut back. Or actually my expenses have changed. Inflation has affected my my expenses. And now I need to figure out a way to make more money to account for that. Or, you know, maybe my expenses have gone up, inflation has gone up. And I need to shift around my budget to account for that maybe I can't make more money. So then maybe I am maybe food has gotten more expensive. So I'm gonna just reduce my toiletry budget or reduce my, you know, whatever other categories in my budget.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Do you see how there's so many options to kind of like, play around with the numbers and with your circumstances, to figure out a way to make your budget work. That's what I want from this conversation is for you to be curious about your money about how you spend your money, and about making decisions about how you use your money, that help you to meet your goals, to help you to that are aligned with your values. So for instance, here's an example of something that's aligned with my values. I value quality time, that is my love language, quality time with my family make building memories having experiences that we're never going to forget. And so that's why I moved abroad because I want it to be able to have more time live in a lower cost of living area with a slower pace to have more time with my family.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

As I told myself, I want to make sure we have at least a couple times a month where we go somewhere new, we stay at an Airbnb, and we have this really nice experience and it's on budget. So what did we do? We recently went and checked out this really cute little town called Guimaraes that has this famous castle. And the stay at the Airbnb was 50 euros a night. And so for under 200 euros, we were able to have this really amazing experience. And you know that accounted for the food that accounted for the Airbnb. I don't think that accounted for gas. But it was just it was within budget. It's wild to me what can happen when you start to think about numbers as what it can do for you rather than what it can't do for you. Because I could have easily been totally myself, no, you know, my finances are tight, we can't afford it, we just got to hang out at home. But instead, I thought, well, actually booked the next client this month, or I actually like, got this extra speaking gig this month. And I wasn't accounting for that. So why not have this extra experience, it's part of my values, you see what I mean?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So that monthly meeting super important so that you can figure out how it is that you're spending your money, so that you can modify your budget each month. So in that actual meeting, aside from taking a look at what we spent the last month and kind of updating our spreadsheet to see, you know, we have an estimated budget, and then we have another line item, that's the actual what we actually spent so we can compare the two. And then we create the budget, a whole new budget for the next month, and a lot of the categories, and amounts stay the same. But some things do change month by month, we might like increase our money for food or decrease it depending on the month.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

For instance, one thing that we do in the holidays is we increase our shopping and gift amounts, because we know that we're going to be buying gifts, we're going to be shopping for the holidays. And so because we know that that comes up, we plan for it in advance, and it's part of our one of our categories all year long, we have a category for gifting, and shopping. And so it helps to plan in advance.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Alright, so the fourth strategy is actually what I mentioned earlier, which is always having two versions of your budget, having your bare bones budget and having your regular budget. And it could even create a third one, you could create your rich life budget, which is like if you didn't have to worry about money, what will your life actually look like? What would you actually spend your time and money on? And that's kind of fun to do, even though you're like, oh, that might not happen, at least not right away. But for now, like the bare bones budget and your regular budget. Why is it important to have that bare bones budget, because you want to know how much money to save in case of an emergency. So in case you lose your job, in case something happens to your partner in case just hopefully this never happens. But in case anything terrible happens, you know, how much money do I need in my savings to survive to survive and overcome this? So that's why the bare bones budget is really important.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So when people say oh, you need three months of savings, or six months of savings or 12 months of savings, what do they actually mean saving for your bare bones? This is what one of the experts that I follow who I love her name is Tiffany Aliche. She's known widely as the budget nista and she has her own podcast that she co hosts with Mandi Woodruff Santos called so money and Mandi is super cool. I actually got to have a coaching session with her. Anyway, these are really great people if you want to follow them so mad that no sorry, Brown Ambition, I'm gonna get confused. So money is another really good podcast, by the way, but their podcasts. So Tiffany and Mandi's podcast is called Brown Ambition. And so Tiffany, she calls this bare bones budget, the noodle budget. So if you if you're really struggling, and you can only eat a cup of noodles or ramen noodles, like what does your budget look like then? So she calls it the noodle budget?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And she also calls a budget your say yes plan. I love this reframing because so many people think that a budget is is almost like so limiting and oppressive in some way, shape or form and like, oh, I don't want to deal with it. Like it makes me feel like I can't do anything. And for her she thinks Okay, so how can you? How can you get comfortable enough with your numbers with the money in and the money out and make plans so that you can say yes to yourself? So maybe saying yes means for the first time I want to plan a vacation and I want to save for that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Or for the first time I want to know I want to save $1,000 in my checkings. Why did I say $1,000? Because I was actually reading a CNBC article this week about how over half of the US population doesn't have $1,000 saved to cover an emergency. And that might be true for you. And that was true for me for a very very long time. And so maybe you know that is one of your goals. Maybe you start to create a budget and review it every month with your All of like your first big goal, I want to have $1,000. Because if I have $1,000 saved, then I'm already better off and over half of the population in the US, sadly. But at least it gives you a starting point that could be your starting point is this thinking about and then eventually getting to three months or six months, some people even say that you should have as much as 12 months saved. But really, it's all up to you your circumstances, how quickly you think you might be able to pick yourself back up and get a job in the case that you were to lose your job, or your source of income.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But yeah, so I want you to think about, about your budget. So I guess we're going into the fifth strategy. So the fourth strategy is to have a bare bones budget, and your regular budget. And if you really want to go the extra mile, have a rich life budget and compare them and think, what do I need to do to get from bare bones to regular so that I'm not always living in, in survival mode. And then from your regular budget to a rich life budget, so that eventually you can get to a point where you're living in abundance, you're living from a space of overflow, and that will then empower you to have the capacity to keep helping even more people. So I'm trying to get to that point. I'm trying to get to the overflow. And I'm trying to bring y'all along the ride.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And then so the fifth strategy is to think about your budget, as that say yes plan as Tiffany Aliche's say yes plan. So it's not this oppressive thing. How can you step away from the shame? And how can you step into owning up, you're owning up to your numbers? So how is this budget going to help you get one step closer to say, minimizing your debt? How's it going to help you get one step closer to spending money on things that you're looking forward to spending money on? How is it gonna get you one step closer to working towards increasing your income or working towards decreasing certain expenses, or that are maybe like low value items, and increasing the expenses that are high value, expenses or experiences. So thinking about it as as this is an opportunity for you, to empower yourself.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And I know it doesn't feel that way. And I know it's really uncomfortable, and it might feel scary. And you might open up your bank app and feel really uncomfortable. And a lot of us we stray away from discomfort, but I want to push you down or push you to expand your comfort zone, even if it means just opening up your bank account once a month, or and then eventually once a week. And maybe at some point it might become every other day, who knows I'm not even at a point where I check every day. Some people I know check every day, I don't check every day. I check regularly, but not every day. But it just helps to just get more comfortable with it. And then little by little this is where I think the self compassion part about money. There's this huge, huge way that mental health and mindset impacts the way that you relate to money and financial literacy.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And what I mean by that, oh my gosh, I was listening to this. So I listen to a lot of podcasts a lot. It's a little bit of everything, where there's like higher ed and grad school money and financial literacy and personal finance. You know, feminism and empowerment and personal growth. So I listen to a little bit of a lot of different topics and within the personal finance kind of realm, when oh my gosh, I already blanked out on what I was gonna say about the. Oh, yeah, yeah, I was saying that I was listening to this, this podcast. And that now I'm blanking on the name of the podcast, but the episode was all about the connections between mental health and debt, and how for a lot of folks who struggle with their mental health, that they have a much higher chance of being in debt. And this ties into like if you're struggling with ADHD that could also affect the way that you manage your money.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So that there's this big tie in between mental health and debt and so I want you to think about it as like, okay, how can I make this less shameful? How can I be more compassionate with myself when I look at this? And you know, it was thinking, you know, if it was your friend, it was your best friend come You have to in telling you, oh, I have this kind of secret. I've been spending a lot of money on x and I need help and support, how would you treat that person? You would probably treat them with a lot of, you know, empathy and compassion and try to be supportive. So how can you do that to yourself? It's to provide yourself with compassion, when you look at the numbers, when you see where you're at, maybe it's not where you want to be. Maybe you are in the negative, and then just learn a little bit just kind of opening, be curious and learn a little bit more about personal finance.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And let's see, like, what's one thing you can do, maybe the one thing you can do is creating your first budget, maybe the one thing you can do is adding that monthly meeting to your calendar, telling someone about it to hold you accountable to doing it. Maybe you can talk to a friend and open up to them. Maybe you have a friend like the people that I am friends with who are coming up to me for advice. And say this, this actually is something that did happen to me, someone I know came up to me and told me that they're struggling with their credit card debt. And they were wondering if they could sit down with me and have me help them with creating a spreadsheet to take a look at all of their debt, and come up with a debt pay down plan.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So we did that, we kind of let that person open up all of their accounts on their own, put the numbers of how much they owed for each credit card, and then the interest rates and then based off the amounts and the interest rates, and then how much they could reasonably pay every month, I helped this person come up with a debt pay down plan. And so now they know if they pay bare minimum is going to take them 10 years to pay it off. But if they pay if they work, and so this actually, this is what happened, this realizing, oh my goodness, I need to pay this much every month to get it paid off in a year, motivated this individual to go off and get themselves a job. So they were working. I mean, they were working here and there on and off kind of side gigs. And also a student, you know doing schooling so that I know that takes up a lot of time. But they decided to get I'm not sure if it was a part time or full time job but more of a consistent income. And they're using that income to pay off their debt. And then after that, they're going to use that income to save up so that they can live on their own.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So I'm really proud of this individual. And all of that was as a result of finally sitting down and owning up to the numbers and looking at the credit cards and looking at at the interest rates and googling debt, calculating debt payoff calculators and coming up with a plan. So think about it as like this is not to make yourself feel bad this is to help yourself out and that it takes time. Like I told you, I didn't act on these things until two years into learning about it. Hopefully it doesn't take you as long. But even if it does, it's okay, little by little it'll get better. And you'll get more comfortable. And these weird, strange terms that sound like another language will not feel so foreign. Okay, so I think I said I was going to talk about six budgeting strategies, and I only talked about five.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So the sixth one is kind of what I've been talking about already, which is to consider your budget as part of your foundation of financial literacy. And that financial literacy should be an ongoing part of your education. So just like you're a student, you're studying whatever major that you're studying, you're getting whatever degree that you're getting. It is imperative, it is so important for you to continue to educate yourself, there's never enough that you can learn about personal finance and financial literacy. So many of us have been taught that money is evil. And that you should only be trying to do things for the sake of helping others and service and that is important too. But also we need money to survive. Money is a tool that allows us to do the things that we need to do. And so why not learn about it, learn about how to make it, how to manage it so that you can be okay and not always be living in a place of survival. So that's six strategy.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I can't emphasize this enough financial literacy and personal finance needs to be an ongoing part of your education just like you'd take classes. Listen to that audio book, listen to the podcast, listen to my episodes, where I talk about money. I'm gonna try to do a little bit more of these. Every now and then, because it's so important, y'all. Nobody taught me about this stuff and I wish that they had and the more I learned, the more mad I get. The more I learned, the more passionate I get. I'm like, Oh, hell no. Why didn't anybody teach me about this? Oh, hell, now I want to tell the world or whoever will listen.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But, yes, I think that is all I want to share about budgeting. For now, there's a lot more I have to say. I could actually go on and on about this topic. But if you have any other suggestions for topics related to financial literacy, doesn't matter how basic it might be, even if it's just the ABCs of financial literacy terms that you keep hearing that you want me to explain. Don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'm here to help. Alright, y'all. Have a good rest of the day and I will talk to you all later.