Budget With Me! ($56k Income/$32k Debt)

In  today's "Budget With Me" exercise, we're going through "DP's" budget info.

She has a $56k income and $32k in debt.

Her main goal is to: "keep my emergency/fun money around $7k and eliminate my debt."

As you'll see, this is going to be a challenging one.

"Future Pacing" Exercise:

"Future Pacing" is an exercise we walk through with our students where we run some numbers on how much debt they need to pay down annually in order to reach their stated goal.

Here's what it looks like with $32k in debt:

1. 5 years to pay down the debt: $6.4k/yr
2. 4 years to pay down the debt: $8k/yr
3. 3 years to pay down the debt: $10.6k/yr
4. 2 years to pay down the debt: $16k/yr

This exercise is all about "breaking things down to the ridiculous" to help the visualize how much real effort is going to be required to accomplish their goals. From here, it's much easier to start pacing yourself in a way that's both aggressive while simultaneously sustainable.

These numbers can also be broken down further into monthly targets as well.

From there we can also figure out what needs to be:

1. Addressed in the budget (i.e. reduce, cut, substituted for)

2. Sold (i.e. scour the garage, attic, basement storage unit for items that can be liquidated to help put toward debt).

3. Earned (i.e. extra work projects, overtime, side-hustles, starting an online business, etc.)

Resources To Get You Started: 

The Software I Use In The Series - YNAB

I use an amazing budgeting software called "You Need A Budget" or "YNAB" in this series. It's totally not necessary for you to use that particular platform, but I will tell you that 100% of our students that have adopted it get much quicker and more accurate results by using YNAB.

I have a 34-day free trial if you want to give it a spin:

To Have Me Do Your Budget (Anonymously)

Again to submit your information for the "Budget With Me" series go to: https://www.zerodebtcoach.com/budgetwithme

Free Guides:

1. The Pre-Budgeting Step:

2. Budgeting 101:

3. 8 Steps To Erase Debt:

How can ZeroDebtCoach help you? 4 ways...

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3. If you’re looking for a community of motivated and like-minded people, go ahead and get on the waitlist to join our private financial coaching community. We only open it for new students a couple of times a year, so make sure to get on the waitlist.

4. If you need some help right now because you’ve got a burning issue, you need a problem solved, you want to talk through a complex situation, click on the button below.

All that said, let's keep on building your financial acumen and make this your best year yet!

Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you in the next video post!

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