Have you ever felt like no matter how much you earn, or how diligently you pay your bills, your money still slips through your fingers?
In this episode of Money Files, I introduce you to the Money Table, the first step of my coaching framework that helps clients create 25% more choice with their money without earning more or making extreme cuts. The Money Table is where we lay everything out, your bills, subscriptions, lifestyle expenses, even the purchases you avoid looking at so you can finally see the full financial picture.
For most people, fake math runs the show. You tell yourself that a bonus will cover your expenses or that holidays “don’t cost that much,” only to find yourself overspending and underprepared. At the Money Table, we stop the fake math by naming, numbering, and planning for the expenses that quietly drain your account.
Through client stories, you’ll hear how this simple step transformed how they think about money, whether it was planning for tutoring, travel, or even giving money to family. Once you see the full puzzle, you can finally make confident, intentional choices about your money instead of scrambling paycheck to paycheck.
Listen in to learn:
[02:10] What the Money Table is and why it matters
[05:35] How fake math quietly drains your accounts
[09:15] Client story: turning tutoring expenses into predictable monthly planning
[14:40] How to plan for annual expenses so they don’t wreck your budget
[20:25] Why naming hidden expenses creates immediate relief
[25:10] How clients start making their coaching investment back from Day One
Tune into this episode of Money Files to discover how the Money Table helps you stop hiding from your numbers and finally see the full financial picture.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If you loved hearing about the Money Table, check out Episode 158: Ditch the Fake Math: How Your Spending Habits Impact Your Budget. It’s the perfect next step to help you stop relying on mental math and start making intentional decisions with your money.
Transcript for “The Money Table: How to Create a Real Budget (and Stop Fake Math)”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. I want you to do a little visualization with me and just imagine you had a puzzle and it’s a thousand pieces and you dump it all out on the table and you can see all the pieces laid out. If I remember how to do puzzles correctly, you’re then supposed to put like the box and the top edge of the top edge of the table so like you can actually see the picture. I think about this just like I’m thinking about your money. When that puzzle is in the box, you can actually see all the pieces and we have to put everything out so we can actually see the pieces and you have to throw it out on the table. And that the cover of the box is like the vision for what the puzzle should look like, if you actually know how to complete it.
And I would say that’s exactly what I do with clients when it comes to money. We actually put everything out on the table. So they have a lot of different pieces and they may know all the pieces that they have, but we lay it all out on the table and it’s a figurative table, but we look at their bills, we look at their subscriptions, we look at their lifestyle expenses, we look at the money they have coming in, whether it’s inconsistent or consistent. We look at their bonuses, we even look at the things that they want to avoid. And once it’s all out there, we can actually see what we’re working with. And I call this step the money table. It’s the first part of the framework I walk my clients through and it’s how I help them create 25% more choice with their money without needing to earn more or making extreme cuts.
And what people realize at the money table is that prior to working with me, they have been living off of a list of bills. And it may not be an actual list, but I call it the gold star of budgeting. As adults, we all want to get to the place where we can pay our bills. Like that’s the goal. That is what we’ve been taught in terms of being good with money. And it happens from the transition of like, you know, in my twenties I was making $30,000 and I was focused on paying my bills. But then as you make more money, you give yourself permission to spend because you have more. But the goal that you have still is like, let me pay my bills, let me make sure my lights are on, let me make sure my car payment is paid. And we never expand our vision of what we want managing our money well to look like.
And instead we use our bank account balance to make decisions.
And you might find yourself telling yourself like, oh, if there’s money in my account, I’ll be able to buy this. Or you maybe even have moved to a place where you’re thinking about like, oh, if I could pay my credit card bill off every month, then I’m good, like, that might be your next kind of gold star. And now you’ve maybe gotten to a place where you have a balance and you’re not sure how you got there. And the problem is that when you are only paying attention to maybe paying your credit card off each month, or only looking at your list of bills, you are leaving out regular expenses. You are leaving out subscriptions that might be coming annually. You are leaving out some of the choices that you are making that are inflating your lifestyle.
And it’s what I call fake math. And fake math is the quick mental calculations that you’re doing. They’re guesstimations that you make about your finances, but you never actually go back and check like, are these things the same? Is this actually true? Is this what I do? And you find yourself in a place where you’re talking about how your bonus can cover an expense that you are getting ready to pay for. But what happens is that you, let’s say you’re getting a $20,000 bonus, you’ve told yourself, I’m going to pay off my credit card, I’m also going to pay for that trip. Oh, and then, you know, the kids, they have a whole bunch of sports fees that I’m going to pay. Well, if we actually sat down and did the real math, I can guarantee you that you have allocated that bonus far beyond the $20,000 that you actually were allotted.
And the $20,000 bonus might be just the bonus on paper, but when it actually hits your account, it’s actually 10,000. And so that’s one version of fake math. Or another version is, I don’t really spend that much during the holidays, or I’ll just figure out the car repair when it comes up. But those words that you say to yourself are the things that quietly drain your account because they don’t have a place in your head for how you think about money. And when you don’t actually account for how you actually spend money and how you actually live, there will always be a gap between what you think you should have and what’s actually in your savings, or what’s actually in your checking account, or what’s actually on your credit card. So I saw this very clearly with one of my clients, Lisa.
A couple episodes ago I actually featured her as a podcast episode or a podcast interview. And so when we started working together earlier this year, I remember on our consult very, very vividly how she was telling me like, Keina I use my planner. I have all my bills written down. And she was doing what she thought was managing her money well, like she wanted to pay her bills. And so she was writing them down and thinking about, okay, with this check, I’m paying these bills. With this check, I’m paying these bills. And I remember one of the things that she told me on her consult, and that was that she had to pay, like I was asking her, what are some of the things that you put on your credit card in the like last six months? And she’s like, oh, actually, I paid for my son’s tutoring and that went on my credit card or travel went on my credit card.
And so I remember these things. And so when we sat down at the money table, we went back to that consult conversation and we started talking about, okay, you talked about putting travel on your credit card. Tell me how often you traveled last year. Think about the different trips that you took, how much was each of the trips? And so what I wanted to get from her at the money table is I wanted to name how much she actually wants to spend on travel. One of the things that she values as a mother is being able to give her son experiences. Like she wanted him to be able to see the world, she wanted him to be able to take trips with her. Like that quality time was important to her. And so I wanted to maintain that, but I also wanted her to be able to fund those things from the paycheck that she was making.
And I didn’t want that to be the thing that got her back into credit card debt. I wanted us to be able to like plan for it. So we started talking about it and giving it a number and making it something consistent. With the tutoring I think she had spent about $1,200 for her son to have tutoring for the school year. And of course, this is another fake math thing, when people are like, but Keina I already paid for it for the year. I’m like, okay, but it’s coming back and when it comes back, how are you going to be prepared to pay for it so it doesn’t just feel like it’s hitting, like this expense is hitting your account at an odd time and you can’t afford it? So with the tutoring, we didn’t just say like, okay, $1,200, we’ll just figure it out when it happens.
No, we created predictability by adding in a hundred dollars a month line to her budget. And that shift at the money table as we were talking through how to plan for things, allowed her to see, oh, this is how I can actually think about my money for the year and not just for the month or not just when the expense pops up, is like we took the things that she felt like she couldn’t plan for and we gave them a piece of the puzzle, basically. We gave them shape, we gave them a number so that she had consistency. And when we’re at the money table, this step is really about making those invisible expenses that are keeping you in a cycle of stress and giving them a name, giving them a number, and giving them a place in your budget.
So you might be listening and thinking, okay, but what would that look like for me? Like that sounds good. Good job, Lisa, but what does it look like for me? And so most people don’t forget about the big stuff, like you know about your mortgage, your rent or your car payment, but the puzzle pieces that trip you up are things like the Amazon Prime or Costco renewals or holiday gifts that creep in December. Or you have annual software subscriptions that you forgot that you pay for, or you don’t even know that they come out. Or maybe it’s the family trip you promised yourself and you tell yourself you’re going to make it work and you tie it to different bonuses or your FSA spending reimbursement, but some kind of way it never really works out. Or maybe you have dental work or new tires or medical bills you knew were coming but you didn’t know how to plan for them.
So every time one of those hits, you feel like you failed, you wonder why you can’t seem to get ahead. But at the money table, we break those into manageable, predictable amounts. A $200 annual bill becomes a $17 a month expense. A $600 holiday fund becomes a $50 a month expense. And suddenly instead of being blindsided, you’re going to feel prepared. You’re going to look into your account and be like, oh wow, that’s so cool. Like I had the money for holidays, or I had the money for that Microsoft subscription and I didn’t feel a pinch when that thing came out this month. And that’s why my clients, when we do the money table, it’s at the very first call, but they’re able to walk away from that first call saying like, Keina, I didn’t realize I actually made this much. Or I finally can see how I can use my paycheck and not feel guilty anymore.
And I would say like something else I want you to know if you’re listening and maybe you’ve thought about working with me, is that the money table is where many of my clients realize they’re already starting to make their investment back in coaching with me. So I had another client that I’m working with actually still, and on her consult we talked about how she’s regularly giving family members money. And when we sat down at the money table, we named the fact that she’s giving family members money and we named the people that she gives money to and we named an amount. We didn’t do what she’s been doing, which is like just giving them money whenever. I said like, if we thought about how much you’d want to give to this person and I always tell people if they have family members they give to, I said, they don’t have to know that you’re setting aside money for them, but I want you to know that you have money set aside for them.
So if you want to give money to this person that you know, it’s not going to impact any of your goals. And so in doing this exercise with her at the money table, what was powerful was that instead of saying like, I don’t know how much I can give, she made that decision in advance. The money table gave her permission to set boundaries and she could say, this is what I choose to give, this is what I can afford and this is what I’m not available for. And that’s how clients start to earn their investment back, by starting to plug in the leaks that drain their income and that they’re not able to actually see where it’s going. And by finally seeing where money has been going out without a plan, they can actually choose to do something different. I’ve had clients put coaching on a credit card and then pay it back quickly because at the money table we identified the leaks and we freed up the money so they can actually make the investment in coaching.
And others realize that they’ve been underestimating their income or maybe they’re double paying for subscriptions. There are so many things that we discover at the money table when we actually lay everything out and lay all the pieces out there. The clarity itself is what helps clients start paying themselves back for the investment in coaching. And we start doing that from our very first call on day one. And the money table is the foundation for everything that comes next. Without it, you’ll keep scrambling and you’ll be surprised and you’ll start being reactive or keep being reactive. And with it you’ll finally start to see like the full puzzle of how your income can actually work for you. You’ll discover your real income, not just the number you are guessing that you make. And yes, I have clients that tell me they make one number. We actually look at their bank account. It’s a completely different number. You’ll be able to discover your real obligations so we won’t just look at just the bills, you will look at everything that you are obligated towards.
Like if you have a pet, we need to be thinking about what happens when you go travel, right? Like how do we make sure that you can board your pet. Even if you think you don’t travel that much? But we still want to be able to give a number to the fact that like you need a pet sitter. And you’ll be able to discover the lifestyle patterns that make your money feel unpredictable. So the money table isn’t about being perfect, it’s really about being honest. And honesty is how we create, excuse me, the clarity on that first call. And even if you did nothing else with me, the money table gives you relief. The money table would literally be worth the whole investment of working with me because you would see, here’s how I need to start planning and thinking about my money.
I’ve had clients who after one session have discovered that they actually had the capacity to save $500 a month, or that they could actually be able to consistently pay a thousand dollars more towards their credit card debt. Or they can see how they can build their first five figure savings account because we’ve put in how much they want to save towards their emergency fund. And so we literally lay out the numbers so they can see where we’re going. So today we talk through step one of the framework, which is the money table. It’s where you stop hiding from your numbers, you start laying everything out there and you finally see the full picture. But once you have it all out on the table, the next questions that start to develop are what do you want to do with it? How do you want to refine it, edit it, and align your money with what you actually want.
So that’s where step two comes in, which I call that the money edit. And I’ll walk you through that on our next episode. But in the meantime, if you’re listening and you think Keina, I need a seat at this table, I want to invite you to apply to work with me. And this is where every client begins, and it’s where you can stop doing fake math and finally create more choice with your money. So you can find the link in my show notes or you can go to wealthovernow.com to apply. But thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
