 Hmm. Hi. It's time to talk about some FPU. Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. If you haven't been here before, let me do a little recap about myself. My name is Emily, I am single and I live in Minnesota. I am currently on baby step 3B, which means that I am saving for a down payment on a home. I have decided to join FPU and go through the course study. I understand that most people that join FPU are usually on baby step zero one or two. I'm just a little bit unique where I am on 3B. However, I am just showing my perspective on what I learned as a single person. FPU, I feel, is geared a little bit more towards the married couple. I just like to share from my perspective as a single individual what I have taken away from the classes every single week. So without further ado, here is week three review. All right. So week three, we learned about cash flow planning, essentially budgeting and then also like telling your money where to go and all of that good stuff. Actually, as soon as I'm done filling this, I'll be doing my February budget, which will be up on Wednesday, but this is coming up on Friday. So if you go a video or two back, you'll be able to see it if you log into my channel. So anyways, I film everything out of order. And if you guys are long-time subscribers, you already know that because I have a really traditional job. So I only get the weekend to film and that's it. So yeah. So anyway, we really just learned how to do a budget properly. So my takeaways from this class is that you need to feel your money. And what that means is working on your cash envelope system. I do a version of the cash envelope system. I will leave my video link below for you guys. It's my most updated version of the cash clip system. And I'll just leave it below. You guys can take a look and see. Dave really hit on like the pain sensors and like talking about that we have no issues going to the ATMs and just taking out $20 at a time, $20 at a time, $20 at a time, and not really recognizing that that's actually coming out of our account. But if we're paying a $20 bill for things and services that we're going to feel that a little bit more. And then if we use a cash envelope or a cash clip system like I use, once the money is out of that envelope or that clip for the month, like you're done. So it's really registering that and making your brain think a little bit differently when you're going through the grocery store or you're looking for clothing or buying other things in your daily life that are going to be in those envelope systems. Also, I've been doing budgeting for quite a while. As you guys know, if you've been watching my channel for a while, if you haven't been watching my channel for a while, I am heavy into budgeting and I do a budget every single month. And another good takeaway is that it really takes 90 days to get good at your budget because you're going to forget things and that's okay. It's fine not to be good at it right away. Dave was talking in the lesson about, you know, remember when you started to ride a bike, how bad you were, but you kept doing it and you got the hang of it and now you can ride a bike like it's no big deal. With that said, don't be afraid to fail. You're going to get there and you know, you might have a whole bunch of revisits on your budget the first couple of months and that's okay. The biggest lesson is just do it. Just sit down and do it. Also, with that in mind, I like have a whole bunch of notes today you guys because this was like big into like what I love to do, like I love to budget. One of the next like key takeaways that I really resonated with me is that your budget probably isn't as scary as you think it is. I have gotten numerous emails of the last about 30 days asking if I will help people do their own budgets and things like that and unfortunately I'm not a place where I feel comfortable doing that for anybody else. I just love sharing my experience of my story and what I am doing personally but if you would like to talk to somebody about it, you could talk to a financial advisor, you could just talk to a trusted family member or friend. Also, something that keeps me motivated is listening to the Dave Ramsey podcast. I just downloaded on iTunes and I listened to it in the commute in my car on the way home and on the way, you know, back from work at like two and from because I have a really long commute but I am not a pen to position to be giving any financial advice. However, I just love sharing my story with you guys. So just getting started is key and your budget probably isn't as scary as you probably thought it was. I know when I first started actually putting pen to paper, I thought it was going to be way scarier than it actually was and even if it is scary, that's okay because now you're actually looking at it pen to paper in black and white and you can see what you have to do to get through to the other side. The scariest thing about is actually not doing it at all. So if you just do it, it's going to be less and less scary every single month you go along. So if you're trying to pay off debt, if you're trying to save for something, you know, whatever you're trying to do and whatever your goal is, whatever baby stuff that you're in, it's probably not as scary as you think and there's always other opportunities to either make more income or cut things out of your budget that you maybe don't even need. And with the budget, you decide where your money goes. Whether your budget for going out to eat is $20 a month or maybe $0 a month right now or maybe it's $200 a month. That's okay. You get to decide where your money goes. And then also when you do the budget and you actually lay everything out on paper line by line by line, you feel like you got a raise because you're like, wow, I didn't realize I was spending that much in that category. I'm going to really control that category and look how much money I'll have left at the end of the month or look how much money I can put towards my debt or towards my savings or towards retirement or whatever, save for that vacation. It really feels like you do get a raise. So those were all of my lesson notes for this week of what really resonated with me. This week, I actually have to use the FPU budget forms, which I'll show you guys, it's over here. As you all know, if you've watched my channel, which I've already referenced to a few times, I do my own budget in a different like planner thing. So I'm going to bring that to class, but I need to do the budget like in the back of the book. So I haven't actually done that yet. So I am going to use like, there's a bunch of like forms in the back of the book. So I am going to use some of those in my financial piece workbook. I did talk to my coordinator and I said, hey, do you want me to actually like do the budget in the workbook like on the day forms or can I do my own form? And she said, no, do the day form. So anyway, I might actually download a couple of the forms online and then just print out a whole bunch of them and then just like work it into what I'm already going to be doing for February anyways. So yeah, that was my experience on week three. So that was a short and sweet little recap of week three. I'm really excited that we're finally talking about budgeting and that's awesome. And I don't know what week four has in store, but I'm excited to start learning and I can tell that some of the other members of my class are kind of like clicking and getting it. Some people that came in and had no idea who Dave Ramsey was and stuff. So it's really kind of cool to talk to the other people about what they've been doing differently in their lives. A lot of people said this week that they cut out cable or have been, you know, thinking about cutting out cable. So they're going to start doing that. I shared my experience where I've been shopping at Aldi recently and that's been saving quite a bit of money in my grocery budget, which has been awesome. And a lot of other people have said that, you know, they do the same thing that they shop at Aldi for a lot of the staples and then they'll supplement with a, you know, bigger grocery chain if they need to for other things, but that Aldi has really good prices. So I mean, when you're feeding a family of four or a family of five, it makes a huge difference in your grocery bill and also talking about the power of saying no, saying no to yourself as an adult individual and then also saying no to your kids, you know, you know, hey, you're not going to get the big lavish birthday party and you're not going to get those big huge gifts like maybe we've done in years past. We're trying to do something different to change all of our lives. So it's been really cool to just like listen and learn from other people. So anyway, I'm going to wrap it up before this gets too long. I just like to give you guys a little bit of an update every Friday. By the way, I'm going to now be doing Friday videos. I'm going to call them financial Fridays. Whoa, I'm so creative with my words. Anyway, I asked him on my plan with me is I think it was last week's plan with me. If you guys be interested in a financial Friday and all of you said yes, that you would like a more kind of like structured Monday is always a plan with me Friday to be more geared towards financial. So for the next few Fridays, I have nine weeks of this class. So I have a few more weeks left into I believe March, like the second Friday in March, I will have all of these FPU videos up as well as my Wednesday video will just kind of be whatever this upcoming Wednesday, which is going to be in the past for you guys watching on Friday is going to be my February budget. But my Wednesday video is just kind of going to be whatever it might be financial, it might be planning, it might be home, it might be decor, it could be just a vlog, a travel. I don't know what it's going to be, but to kind of have it more structured on my channel a little bit. So if you love financial videos, I'm going to try to put out a financial video every single Friday. So make sure to subscribe if you haven't already. So anyway, I'm going to let you guys go. Thank you so much for hanging out with me for a little part of your day. It means so much to me. If you guys have any questions about FPU or financial piece university, I will leave the link down below of where to find more information on the Dave Ramsey program. If you're not interested in taking FPU but want to download his podcast or watch some of his YouTube videos, I will leave the link to his YouTube channel down below as well. So anyway, that is it from me. I hope you guys are having a wonderful day no matter where you are and I will talk to you all in my next video. Bye guys!