Financial Coaching for Women: How To Budget, Manage Money, Pay Off Debt, Save Money, Paycheck Plans · Vanessa and Shana | Budget Besties | Bougie On A Budget | Dave Ramsey Fans

How to Plan a Peaceful and Intentional Year With Your Money | 502

·26 min·2 clips

A former mom in $140,000 debt shares how mapping out her year with a calendar changed everything.

Hosts Shana and Vanessa, master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey, welcome guest Carrie from the "Mom Wife Career Life" podcast to discuss intentional yearly planning. Carrie is a former mom who paid off $140,000 in debt and now teaches time management. The episode focuses on aligning financial and personal goals for the upcoming year using strategic foresight. Carrie uses her own 2026 plans as a framework, which include her oldest child graduating high school and applying to colleges. She advises parents to prevent children from emotionally committing to a college before understanding the financial aid package, using an $80,000-per-year school as an example. Her daughter’s 16th birthday involves a family trip to Spain instead of a traditional party, representing a major budget line item. Additional anticipated expenses for 2026 include college dorm furnishings, travel for scholarship interviews in North Carolina, and youth sports for her 12-year-old. Carrie and the hosts emphasize scheduling personal priorities like monthly date nights and an annual couples' vacation alongside these family commitments. The "big rocks" analogy is central, urging listeners to plan major annual events first before filling in smaller obligations. Carrie advocates printing a full-year calendar to visually map out these significant expenses and time commitments. She stresses a weekly reflection practice using her Clever Fox planner, reviewing what worked and what didn't to make incremental improvements. A key insight is linking financial planning with personal joy, illustrated by Carrie's daughter quitting varsity basketball when it no longer brought her happiness. The hosts connect this to evaluating one's own schedule, asking if planned activities foster peace and fulfillment rather than just checking boxes. They discuss the tangible budget impact of children's activities, noting clients often discover why they feel broke after categorizing these costs. Assigning approximate dollar amounts to each major yearly event is recommended to avoid last-minute financial stress. The tone is conversational, encouraging, and practical, blending personal anecdotes with actionable coaching advice. Listeners seeking a structured, proactive approach to integrating their finances with family and personal goals will find this episode valuable. Those preferring tactical, step-by-step budgeting instruction without the life-planning context might find it less directly applicable.

As heard by us

A practical reset for planning money around the real calendar, not wishful thinking.

This episode pushes a simple but useful point: budget with the full year in view, not just the month in front of you. The focus stays on the bills that tend to creep in, especially around the holidays, so the advice feels grounded in real planning instead of abstract money talk.

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Why you'd press play

Your year gets easier when you map your money by the month and then zoom out to the whole year.

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