Are you changing your budgeting system month after month—and still not seeing results?
In this episode, I challenge you to ditch the viral budgeting trends and money apps and build a spending plan based on your values and goals. For high-income earners, financial clarity doesn’t come from constantly resetting—it comes from committing to one financial management system that adapts with you over time.
I walk through my Three Bucket System, how to plan for expenses months in advance, and why consistency—not complexity—is the key to building financial trust and security.
If you’re tired of reactive spending and want a sustainable strategy customized to your lifestyle, this episode will shift how you think about budgeting and financial management.
Learn the power of consistency and sticking with one system…
- [00:49] I coach my clients on one financial management system
- [03:33] Why you need to stick to one system for one year
- [07:06] The 3 bucket money system
- [09:56] The power of building consistency
Tune into this episode of Money Files to discover how leaning into one financial management system will help you ditch the fake math, find consistency, and regain control of your spending.
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 the discussion about sticking to one financial management system for one year, check out my episode, The Smart Way to Budget as a Six-Figure Earner: My Three Bucket Money System!
Transcript for “The Power of a One-Year Money System”
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 File. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about sticking with one system. I often hear clients that before they worked with me, they talk about redoing their budget every single month. And I actually don’t believe in redoing your budget every single month. I think you need to stick with the same system. And they talk about, oh, I have a budget for January, I have a budget for February, I have a budget for March. And I think the challenge of that is that we’re not thinking about our year holistically. And it’s not to say that you won’t ever have changes in your budget, but we want to stick with one system because it’s going to allow you to understand what is actually going on in your life. So there are going to be updates that you need to make, yes, but we’re not starting from scratch every single month.
What I teach is that my clients, we start with a spending plan and a spending plan is just another name for a budget. But we want to start with this spending plan or budget, and we want to consider literally everything that you like to spend money on. So we really walk through the process of thinking about everything that is outside of your bills. I am very much focused on, if you have been listening to me, it’s what else are you paying for that’s outside of your bills? And that simple exercise is what allows my clients to be able to stick with one system so they feel like their money is doing the work for them, and that they actually have something to show for their money because when we actually take the time to sit and ask ourselves what is coming up three months from now, what am I going to want to spend money on?
And at the time that I’m recording this podcast, we’re in April so if I think about three months from now, I am thinking about the summer. If you have kids and I was coaching you, I’d be asking you about summer camps, I would be asking you about school fees, I would be asking you about back to school shopping. And so going through this exercise of what’s coming up and being able to walk through planning ahead allows the confidence that one needs to know that they can actually trust in the system that they’ve created for themselves. So this is why I am not a fan of doing like a no spin challenge or signing up for a lot of different apps on TikTok or Instagram. And you are just looking for the latest budget technique that is going to help you feel better about your finances. Because what you actually need is you need to spend time with one system for one year. And that one system for one year is going to teach you about what you actually need in order to take care of yourself financially.
When you have this one system, when you have one spending plan and you are going through the year and you are going through a cycle, you are going to be able to have less emotional attachment, if you will, to things that come up unexpectedly. Because you are going to see it as, oh, okay, so I had to get my tires replaced and I just hadn’t thought about how much it was going to be to get my tires replaced. But because I had actually thought about the fact that I owned a car and it was when and not if I would need tires, have some amount of money to actually put towards my auto maintenance. And so with that, you would be able to adjust your spending plan and be thinking about like, okay, so my tires actually cost $900. I was only setting aside $50 a month or $600 a year. So I think I actually want to increase that to where I’m going to be setting aside $100 a month for auto maintenance.
So when you have this system that you lean into and you trust for an entire year, you’re able to make less reactive changes, you are also able to have a more positive dialogue with yourself when things come up that feels unexpected. Having one system also allows you to feel good about using real math. I’ve talked about how fake math is just, you have guesstimations on what you think you’re going to spend or what you think something costs, but you never actually come back around and check and make sure that number is the true number. But when you have one system that you know, Hey, I actually do go in and I adjust my plan based off of financial patterns that I notice. When you have that system, that allows you to do that, you’re going to lean more into the real math because the real math actually is going to make you excited. I’m going to say that again. Real math will create excitement for your numbers. Real math will create excitement because you’ll get to a point where you’re like, oh my goodness, like I didn’t realize that being able to, I’m going to go back to tires guys, being able to pay for my car maintenance could be something that felt easy.
And because that now feels easy, you’re going to build increased curiosity for what other things you want to be able to put into your budget. I think another thing that can come up for people is even being able to take a trip with a girlfriend on the weekend and you’re like, yeah, I get to go on that road trip and I don’t actually have to think about the cost of what I’m going to be spending because I know that is already factored in. I was talking to one of my friends recently and we had worked together and she had just actually gone on a business trip and she was telling me, she said, it feels so good. I went out of town, I went to Florida and I ordered room service. I felt so good about being able to order room service and not feeling like I was indulging in a way that I was going to feel guilty about when I got back home.
She was like, at the end of the day I was going to need food, I was going to be eating regardless. I wanted to, like, I knew that one of the things I wanted to do is to be able to order room service and just be able to take this time for myself being away from my kids. But that is something that having and sticking with one system has allowed her to do because she’s learned the ability to be able to plan ahead and to be able to always be able to take care of yourself financially. And so that once again is the power of just having one system. So the system that I teach all of my clients is the three money bucket system. So the goal is that you follow it paycheck after paycheck, and what happens is you stop questioning yourself and you stop checking your bank account in a panic and you stop starting over. You start to see patterns, you start to build evidence, you start to trust yourself with money and that’s when the financial safety is going to kick in for you. One of my clients also that has implemented this has started to talk about how she didn’t realize how much she wasn’t able to trust herself, but now that she’s been able to implement the three money bucket system, she started to do the same thing with her money everyday that she’s able to trust herself, she’s able to see that it works.
And because it works and it’s not anything that is fancy, it’s not anything that’s complicated, that it just helps her feel consistent. So with that consistency, she’s able to show up and actually be the person who consistently manages their money. I know that one of the challenges you might experience when it comes to wanting to shift how you manage your finances is you don’t want to actually sit down and look at your numbers every week because that’s something that feels very overwhelming for you. And the reason that feels overwhelming is because you’re not sure what you’re going to find. But when you have that system that is consistent, you don’t have to be scared about what you’re going to find because you know when you have the three money bucket system that you’re like, okay, I have spending. Out of that spending is going to be some groceries, there’s going to be some eating out, there’s going to be some coffee, but those are my Chuck E Cheese tokens and it’s okay.
Being able to look at your money and talk to yourself about it being okay is the most healing experience that you can ever have because it’s going to give you the mental space and the clarity to think about other things that you want to achieve. So if you’re hearing me talk right now and you’re like, yeah, Keina, this all sounds great, but I just don’t know that I can trust a system. If trusting a system feels hard, it’s most likely because you’ve been burned before, you’ve tried tools or you tried tricks and they didn’t fit your life but you didn’t have support either or you were trying to fix a pattern with some type of shame instead of structure. So I want you to know that you’re not behind, you are not broken. You truly, truly, truly only need a system that’s simple enough to repeat and strong enough to hold you through a rough month, a vacation, a work bonus, or a last minute bill and that’s what we build in coaching.
It’s not just clarity, but we build consistency. When you stick with one system, your spending stops feeling reactive. Your savings starts to grow and stay. Your goals stop getting pushed to next year. And you don’t just become better with money, you become someone who trusts yourself with money and you create a new financial normal where peace is your baseline and not panic. So I know this episode is really short and sweet, but if you realize you’ve been changing your money strategy every few months and you’re just hoping that something will stick because you should, and I say this with air quotes, “be able to figure this out.” I mean, after all, you have a MBA and you have two degrees and you make multiple six figures a year. I want to invite you to do something different.
So inside my one-to-one coaching program, that’s five months, we will build your system once and then we’ll walk together in thinking about what needs to change, what needs to evolve, what’s coming up in your life. You might start working with me, especially right now, and you’re like, Keina, I got these trips and I’m not going to tell you you can’t go on the trip. I’m going to actually help you put that trip into the system. I will share with you that people come to me all the time and they already have expenses planned. I help them feel better about the expenses they already have planned, even if this is going to be the part that trips you up, even if they’re putting that expense on a credit card, I have talked clients through, let’s actually make a plan for this trip you’re going on and let’s not be blind to what’s actually happening because I would rather you intentionally put a thousand dollars on a credit card versus unintentionally putting $2,000 on a credit card because you were just too scared to look at the numbers.
So regardless of where you’re starting, regardless of what’s coming up, we can start exactly where you are and I want you to come as you are to work with me. You don’t need to do anything special. You coming to work with me is going to help you stop guessing, it’s going to help you stop resetting and you’ll finally experience what it feels like to have a money plan that supports you no matter what season of life you’re in. So I have one-to-one spots that are open right now. You can apply to work with me, you can just go to Wealthovernow.com/appointment, and I look forward to seeing you on my calendar. Have a great 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.
