Hey,

How are you today? It’s Mike from Fabulously Broke. I’m incredibly thrilled this morning!

Are you feeling the butterflies in your stomach? You should! You are about to get both your finance and career under control. And this is not a light step: it’s a huge stepping stones event in your life!

I’m very excited today as I am launching an 11 days program to finally take over your finance and start keeping the money you earn. You work very hard for your bucks; do you feel that you get what you deserve?

My Sister-in-law Did it!

I’ve been with my wife for 15 years now. I must say that my wife has the most amazing sister on earth; V. V is now like my own little sister since I have so much fun with her and I have the feeling that I know her for ages. A few years ago, she finished college and had a lot of student loans on her back. She had an “okay” job but couldn’t get around all those debts and couldn’t think of building a financial future. As a brother would do it, I sat down with her and we discussed about her finances. It wasn’t easy, but she followed each of my advices. 5 years later; she has full control of her finance, her student loans are almost paid and she owns a house with her husband. After that experience, I didn’t stop there. I’ve started to help a lot of other people in my entourage and they all went through a financial metamorphosis.

Those people are the inspiration behind this 11 days email series. Since I was able to help them getting her finance on the right way, I thought that I can do the same for you, Pete. While this series is not to be considered professional financial advice (you need to meet with a financial advisor for that 😉 ), I’m convinced that you will be able to improve drastically your finance.

This 11 days email series start today!

Do you know, Pete, that you are a lucky one? As a newsletter subscriber to Fabulously Broke, you are receiving this exclusive content for free. In the next following days, you will be receiving 1 email on every Monday and Thursdays giving you actionable steps to control your cash, save money and enjoy life the way you should! Within only 11 days, you will see a dramatic change in your personal finance. The best part is that almost each action step will take less than 1 hour to do. I’ve decided to send you 2 emails per week so it gives you a little bit more time to complete your learning. Here are the 11 steps:

Pete, are you ready for your journey? Let’s start with today’s tip!

Day #1: Know What Comes in and What Comes Out of You Bank Account

If you want to know where you are going, you need to know where you are coming from. The very first steps in everything you do before making any changes is to know where are you are at.

Pete, do you know what comes in and what comes out of your bank account?

Before you do a budget, before you plan to buy a house or before you build your emergency fund, you need to know how much you make and how much you spend each month. This is the home base of your personal finance. When I checked out where my money was going, I was shocked to find out how much I was spending on restaurant and clothing. This was a real eye opener for me!

What’s The Next Thing to Do: Take 45 minutes to Make it Clear

All it really takes is less than 1 hour of your time to understand where the money comes and where the money goes. How can this be so simple? There’s a trick; you can upload all your transaction in a few minutes through Mint. Join Mint for free and make your life look a lot simpler in a few minutes!

Looking for an Alternative to Mint?

I’ve written a quick Mint Tutorial to walk you through their website. You just have to continue reading below for more info on this awesome web software. But I know that you might not like the idea of using a website to manage your finance. This is why I wanted to offer you 2 other alternatives to complete this task.

Quicken

Both Quicken and Mint are offered by the same company (Intuit). The difference between both software is that Quicken is a “classic” software you install on your computer. You might feel safer knowing that only your desktop contain personal information about your spending. Both programs enable you possibility to download your transaction from your bank accounts or you can enter them manually if you don’t want to provide your passwords.  This is a great alternative for someone who wants to keep everything on one computer. On the other side, you won’t be able to have access to Quicken on via internet or your mobile phone.

Do it by Hand!

The other alternative is to simply look at your paper statement and use a good old Excel spreadsheet and track down your expenses. The key is to create categories where you will dispatch your expenses. This is how you will see where you money go (is it in dinning out? Clothing? Activities? Rent?). If you track all your expenses for 2-3 months, you will have a pretty good idea of how much you spend in a month. This is only when you will be able to take action and reduce unnecessary spending! It takes time to do it by hand but, hey! it’s definitely effective and safe!

A Quick Mint Tutorial: 

If you have a few more minutes in your schedule, you can already categorize all your spending after you have uploaded your transaction.

Here’s how it works:

The first thing you do when you login in your Mint.com account is to create a financial situation. This is where you add all your bank accounts, credit cards, debts and investment accounts. Once this is done, all your transaction are automatically tracked and categorized in different spending categories:

As you can see, some transaction has already been categorized for you. You just have to look at each “uncategorized” spending and associate accordingly. You have also the option to associate similar expenses to the same category so you don’t have to them one by one.

Then, all you have to do is to go into your “Budget” section and you will get the following screen:

Each of the following categories is showed by default. You can now increase/decrease, add/remove/modify each category to fit your needs. This is a very powerful tool as you can see rapidly where you are doing well and where you are overspending due to the color code.

And if you want a more shocking picture, you can look at your spending pie chart:

This gives you a clear understanding of what is going well and what is going wrong with your budget. But the best part is that almost everything is being done by Mint.com and not you J.

If you are not convinced yet, I’d suggest to register for free and build your financial situation to see how this awesome tool can change the way you manage your money!

Then, what you need to do is do a real budget. Look at all the unnecessary expenses you’ve made for the past month. You will be able to cut on some expenses while reallocating your money for better purposes. It’s not easy and painful (who wants to cut on their fun money anyway?) but it’s necessary (yuck!) if you want to live like a Queen or a King later on (cool!).

After this step, you will know how much you earn and how much you spend. How do you feel Pete? Is it a reality check for you or you were expecting this result? Don’t feel down if you are disappointed by the result, I’m here with you to help! During this 11 days program, if you have any questions, please send me an email at me@fabulouslybroke.com.

Stay tuned for next week’s Day #2 tip: Find How Much You Worth!

Cheers,

Mike

www.FabulouslyBroke.com