Everyone knows how to dream. Dreaming big is often the normal. It’s something you are taught when you are little! However, maybe you find you don’t have the money to live the dream. How can you redefine your life and push your income to work for you rather than against you? Stay tuned!

Here are 3 easy tips that work for us and I am positive they will work for you too!

1. Make automatic savings a priority

This is the first thing I do when I start a new job. I set up direct deposit and find out if I can have multiple accounts attached. This helps because its out of sight out of mind. Start small. Don’t start with sending $100 to this fund and $200 to a sinking fund unless you are ready to send this large of an amount to your savings fund.

I am a person who was ready for a big amount to go to each savings fund. However, not everyone is me and most people are not like me with their finances, but are similar to how my husband was. He needed to start small with savings. He started with $50 to our baby fund and increased it to $75. He started with 6% to his retirement account to get the match from our employer. He then increased the retirement savings to 8% then 10% and now we are rocking at 13%! Only 2 more percents to get to our goal of 15% to retirement! Also, Dave Ramsey recommendation.

It is okay to start with $25 to your car fund, $25 to your house fund, $50 to your emergency fund, and 5% of your pay to your Roth IRA (your future matters!). Increase when you feel on top of the world. Like no one can get in the way. Even if you don’t feel on top of the world right now; you can start small. Obviously you are here for a reason and we are so glad you are! We hope you find an aha moment like I can do this! We want the best for you!

2. Keep Track of Your Expenses

This may seem easy, but often people overlook this part and find this step the part where they think budgeting is horrible.

Tracking your expenses is just like tracking your steps each day, but I would recommend tracking everyday unless you really need to slow your roll on spending money.

Schedule a day of the week you open up your bank account and look at your expenses. Be mindful of the money that is going out. Just as your mindful of eating sweets everyday or binge eating those donuts or Oreos. I am thinking about oreos right now– they sound so good!

Lets get back to money talk.

Looking back on the weeks expenses lets you know where you are doing good and where you can clean up a little bit. Its just like a good workout! What do you do good at and what do you need to work on?

Start your dream — get your income to work for you instead of you working for your income.

Here is our daily spending tracker to get you started!

3. Make a wish list of items that cost and save up for the purchase

This is a game changer!

Often people in the debt free community and the millionaires talk about saving up for the next big purchase. We do not sign up for the credit card at the store to save 15%. We do not get the deal when they have pay no APR interest rate for 6 months. These commercials right now with Covid-19 are killing me! No, do not finance a new car with no APR for 6 months and deferred payments! This is stupid. No do not do it! This is how you get into trouble with your finances!

We save up cash for the items we want. We discuss to make sure it is a good purchase. We place it on a list and then decide maybe I do not want it.

My little sister taught me this next one I am going to share with you all. She is a free spirit, a spender, and the one who taught me this trick to save and use my income to work for me. She loves to online shop like was the one who would get presents at the doorstep each month because she’s always buying the new clothes or make up.

Now here is what she does, she would leave the items she wanted in the shopping cart for awhile. To find if she really was in love with the items or if she could do without.

Most stores either send a coupon to remind us about the items in the cart or it was an item we don’t really want or need anymore after thinking about it.

A smart way to save you money!

Most of the time you say, I can do without this or I cannot believe I wanted that…that is not what I liked.

Your new dream… your old dream. Whatever the dream.

Be the beautiful scraps by figuring out how to make use of your current income to make big dreams come true by using these 3 ways: automatic savings, track expenses, and create a wish list.

I hope this is your starting point or your gas to generate your future plans. Whether you are new at trying to find your income to work for you or you just needed some juice to build your knowledge a new way.

Pin this article if you learned something.

Pin it if you got motivation from this article.

Pin it if you love money.

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Make your budget easier by downloading the free budget calendar.

I often hear budgeting is hard, it is not easy. Budgeting takes time. I do not stay on budget, so why would I do one. Well I am glad you stated all these concerns because budgeting does take sometime, but it gives you control. It gives you a sense of peace, it gives you happiness, it gives you permission to spend money, and best of all it lets you build a future!

It takes 3 months to get your budget going, so do not feel like you failed after your first one. I have been budgeting for years and I still have times where my budget fails or have to change it. This happens! It is totally okay! Let’s go on and show you why you should start a budget today!

• Coronavirus hit hard or another disaster

• Family emergency came up and I could not afford it

• I never thought I’d experience a hardship

• You want to be a millionaire

• You want to be a legacy for your family

• You want to stop the debt cycle

• You want to own your stuff

• You seen people in the debt free community do it

• You know you can have less fights in your marriage with a budget

• You can make a difference by being generous

Where ever you fit in the above area, know you can start budgeting with the bullet journal budget tracker. Budgeting can change your life even if you have budgeted before and it did not work for you. Try this way of budgeting for 3 months, with easy copy and pasting, formulas already built in, and a guide for you!

If you are getting a stimulus check, start there! Here is an example for 2 adult checks and 1 child. Ensuring you have your 4 walls taken care of.

Giving a small amount of your stimulus check to a food bank, large tip for a restaurant, small business, church, etc. is good for the heart and it makes you feel good.

Your blessings that happened — Health and time spent with family. They are little things, but big blessing.

We did place a little bit in the savings fund because it is in our emergency fund incase we need it in the future because something breaks down.

As you can see above, we did not place any money in the spend a little you earned it because really the government is handing out money. This means you should probably not spend this money on clothes, because you already have clothes to wear and do not need the latest fashion. This also means you do not need alcohol, cigarettes, and random other party favors. My husband often in the past used to buy tattoos with his tax return money, but this is not the time to be using money to be buying things like that! We did not work for this money, and should be content with what items we have.

Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

The government is giving this money to us to give a little bit of an assistance. Give to people who need it more than us or pay the items we need to make it in the world such as rent, lights, water, etc.

If you want to spend money to support businesses, go ahead and support them but I believe this should be in your giving or your food budget. You will just need to stay within the budget you allotted. If we end up going to a local pizza place, we use the pizza as food money and the tip as our giving.

Of course, this will be different for everyone, but it gives you a little layout on how to start your budget with the stimulus check.

You can budget! Click Here for our bullet journal budget tracker.

Think of a budget as a blessing being able to tell your money where you get to spend it and not feeling guilty to put it on a credit card.

Want to better yourself in money, loving your life, and be more content. Subscribe and become a part of our family. I promise you, building a relationship with us will benefit you. You will look and feel so much better because you’re not stressing about money. You are not calling companies to ask to waive a fee or a late payment, but also starts with a mindset change too.

You will have fun with money!

Our routine has changed like everyone else’s since being quarantined, but living tiny has its benefits with social distancing. We used to try to get out and about by just walking around stores and window shopping to avoid postpartum depression, but now we’ve had to change to keep us safe.

Here is our new schedule to help keep us positive and uplifted:

7 am – Wake up, diaper change, dress, feed

8 am – Decaf coffee, breakfast for Mom, Good Morning America and play time with Ember

8:30 am – Devotional and prayer with Ember

8:45 am – Quick Jazzercise workout/learn routines; Ember watches mommy dance practicing sitting up or nap time

9:30 am – Feed, diaper change. Take dogs outside to play. Enjoy outside to know its day time and we should stay up and not sleep all day.

10 am – Nap time

11 am – Feed, diaper change, tummy time with books open to learn colors, numbers, produce, seasons, etc.

Noon – Mom eats…if I remember

12:30 pm – Play time

1 pm – Nap time, dad comes home

2 pm – Snack, change diaper, play

3 pm – Take dogs outside, go for walk, be outside enjoying the fresh air!

4 pm – Quick nap time

5 pm – Eat, diaper change, settle down with cuddles and relaxation time while dinner is cooking

6 pm – Relax

6:30 pm – Get ready for bed time. Bath, PJ’s, read book, eat, prayer before bed.

7 pm – Bed time.

The benefits of living tiny during this quarantine are that we live off a property that is not in an RV park or state park. Most state parks have closed up and are only for day time use, so we have had a benefit to not have to pack up and move because of a new guideline. We have a walking trail down to a small pond, we can have a fire at our own fire pit, let our dogs run around without a leash, smell the roses, and even leave when we have to dump the tanks at our local camping world for free with a Good Sams membership.

We are not in a traditional house so it does not feel like we are quaratined. Our lifestyle encourages us to be outside often. Like our schedule shows we are outside in the morning and in the afternoon with the baby. Sometimes once we put the baby down for the evening we often start up a fire in our firepit to enjoy the outdoor as well.

As we have hope that this quaratine is lifted, we also want all to be safe and are willing to do what we have to. If that means keeping ourselves positive and still live our tiny life without traveling. We will be excited when we can take our tiny home back on the road and enjoy new parks, trails, and Gods amazing nature. For now we stay parked and enjoy our own paradise with a minimum budget.

Start your budget today with the yearly bullet journal budget tracker. It is never too late to start! Especially in a time like this when people need to start budgeting, they find money they never knew they had! It’s like a income increase but with the money that you already have.

Subscribe to receive the free ebook coming soon…How to Get Thru These Hard Times with the Unknown! Shine a Light in Uncertainty!

Pin for others to see and share! You never know who needs it in a time like this!