 Hi guys Welcome back to my channel. My name is nika I am the person behind high black girl here on this channel We really focus on securing the bag and getting that money sets So I talk about personal finance some lifestyle stuff and then also skincare because I Honestly love beauty and skincare and I can't imagine doing a YouTube channel without having that stuff included If you sound like that type of girl go ahead and click that subscribe button. That's gonna do me a huge solid I really want to get to a thousand followers or a thousand subscribers on YouTube. I'm nearly there So please subscribe if you liked this video and stay tuned for weekly videos coming from me I'm gonna be a lot more consistent on YouTube this year promised to myself. So I hope you guys will join me for the ride Anyway, if you click this video, I'm quite sure you're really interested on Budgeting and like how to get started for me personally like budgeting was Super taboo growing up. We didn't really talk about money in my family And if we did talk about money, it was like my parents arguing about it So I had a lot of trauma when it came to money and finances and then when I went to school like Growing up in you growing up in New York. I grew up in Michigan not New York, but going to school in New York City I Realized that there was a huge discrepancy in some of my friends who like had a lot of money And some of my friends who didn't have as much money. So I really like kind of thought like hey like I Probably need to get on top of my finances if I want to like Continue this lifestyle that I live. So I got really into like budgeting I ended up saving $20,000 over two years, which is huge for me because there definitely was a time where I Was living paycheck to paycheck like over drafting my account on a monthly basis So I hear you when you say like you're overwhelmed to your finances right now And I really take it upon myself to make these concepts as easy as possible to make sure that you can feel empowered To kind of make those money moves and boss moves on your own time so when it comes to budgeting and like Getting your shit together money-wise the first thing you really want to take into account is your income Without knowing how much money you're making a month. Everything else kind of goes to shit You can't know how much you're able to save you don't know how much you can spend like it's just a recipe Disaster that goes real real real fast so if You are looking to understand how to budget the first step is really understanding your income You may be in a situation where you have multiple streams of income You know, maybe you have an hourly job or a nine to five job and you also side hustle You know, you're also babysitting on the weekends dog sitting pet sitting Like doing uber like all that fun stuff. You really want to sit down and say hey How much do I make every month and for those side hustles like those? Revenue streams that might not be as easy to track or that vary from month to month You really want to make sure that you're being conservative with your estimate because you don't want to be in a situation Where you thought you're going to make $500 a month from uber eats, but you Your car broke down or something and you're only able to make $100 and now your whole budget It's including that extra $400 that you now know no longer have so whenever you're doing your income You're looking at variable Income streams always err on the side of like caution and being conservative so After you get that first step done, you know exactly how much you're making a month Then we can go on to part two, which is your expenses Figuring out how much do you spend a month like whether that's getting your nails done getting your hair done paying rent or Mortgage you need to know exactly how much money is moving out of your account every month and what is like a Fixed expense an expense that you know it's coming and comes same time every month and what something that Kind of may pop up on you or you have to pay maybe on a quarterly basis or an annual basis Like that is going to really help you say okay I have this much money coming in and I know that this much money is going to come out this month So when you're looking at your expenses, I kind of just touched on this a little bit But you want to make sure that Ooh, ooh, girl. Excuse me. I just burped. Oh, oh Let me take a sip of water And it's fucking iced coffee. There's no more left in Where was I so when it comes to your expenses You really want to make sure that you're breaking them down into two categories The first category is going to be your fixed expenses These are bills that you know are coming every month and that you know you have to pay every month Same time a month and it's the same exact amount. So a couple examples of this may be your phone bill Not something that people usually have to pay every month And it's usually the same amount every month unless you get an upgrade or something another thing for me personally I have this example is like your Wi-Fi bill I know every month. I'm paying Verizon $65 for my Wi-Fi bill. I know every month that comes out on the 7th of my account automatically another example of this expense could be Like a payment plan you might be on like let's say you Financed a couch and you know that you now have to pay your West Elm credit card or your after-pay or Girls don't even get me started on the firm because I have some feelings about lay-away But you know you have to pay a firm like a hundred seventy five dollars every month And that comes out of your account on the 14th. Those are examples of fixed expenses So take some time get a piece of paper I actually have a free printable if you want to go to my blog and Write down everything that is a fixed expense The second half of that, you know, that's just one side of your expenses The next time your expenses are your variable expenses. So what What constitutes a variable expense is something that you pay for monthly, but it can vary in its cost So an example of this is an electricity bill. I have an electricity bill Some months, it's seventy five dollars some months is thirty dollars It really just depends on how often I was home how much I had the lights on ran the heat whatever That's like another example of a variable bill that comes monthly Another example of this could be like your hair your nails like I Recently just became like a nail girl and I am obsessed don't know how I was living life before Thank you, Jesus Bringing me to the nail church the nail choir, but I like I love them I love having art on my nails and I can't really foresee Not having a lot anymore. So that's something that's a variable expense that I pay for monthly and like some months I pay a hundred eighty five dollars remaining cure other months. I may pay ninety five So that's something that also varies based just on like what design I want. What salon I go to you also Sight note I have a little project that I've been playing together because I want to see How much women really spend on their nails because the pink tax is real and it's way more expensive to be a woman than It is to be a man. So please do me a favor leave a comment down below If you liking your nail said how much do you spend on your nail manicures and does that include nail art or not? Let me know But to wrap that up that is going to be like your monthly variable expenses And I also have a printout for that and you can just write all of those down as well So right now in our budgeting 101 we have the income that we make we have our expenses our fixed expenses That come monthly and our variable expenses that come monthly the next thing and this is probably why you're thinking about budgeting because You might got some a little bit a little bit of debt girl and don't be ashamed like I literally have 35,000 maybe 36,000 I don't even know of student loans It's a lot. It's nothing to be ashamed of and on that two-year journey where I saved $20,000 I kind of accidentally slipped and fell back into credit card debt in the tone of like nine thousand dollars. So Things happen I say that to say that while you're on your journey You may slip and fall back into debt and that is completely okay. Life is not linear You're always learning. You're always growing Who cares the past is the past what matters now is that when it comes to your debt You have a plan to pay it down moving forward So your plan may be to pay 200 a month or 300 a month There's a couple of ways that you can really tackle debt The first way is kind of like the debt and the launch method where you throw all of your money towards one Like your largest debt or the snowball method where you kind of slowly like spread it out and begin to build up your payments What really matters is that you find a way that works for you So when you're looking at your income your expenses and your debt Ideally you would like to be spending About 50% of your income on like your needs your wants like your fixed expenses and your variable Expenses and all of that fun stuff and then another 20% should be going towards your debt. So Pay that shit off girl The other 30% you should be saving for the future and for a rainy day If you know one's perfect and if your expenses and your income is not set up to do that 50 20 30 model Don't worry about it. Just worry about getting a handle on your finances today Rome is not the lunar day. This stuff does not happen overnight. So don't stress girl You got this follow me for more content and we're gonna kind of deep dive how we can build our income together pay down our debt together and Honestly, you know, keep it cute keep it bougie, you know, keep our hair cute our nails done You know our face beat. We got this we're keeping it cute and securing the bag my love. So subscribe for more videos And wow, I think this is the end I honestly feel like I should make more videos about that if you have any like video ideas Leave those in the comments below and I'll see you guys next time. Bye