[00:00:00] Corinne Foxx: Welcome back to another episode of Am I Doing This Right? I'm Corinne Foxx.

[00:00:05] Natalie McMillan: And I'm Natalie McMillan.

[00:00:07] Corinne Foxx: And we are best friends, confidants, millennials, and the hosts of Am I doing This Right? A life how-to podcast from the perspective of non-experts.

[00:00:17] Natalie McMillan: And each week we cover a new topic and we drink a new bottle of wine.

[00:00:23] Corinne Foxx: Of one and this week we are talking budgeting 1 0 1.

Finally, finally, how to organize your life with financial coach, a Elena fing, we needed a expert.

[00:00:37] Natalie McMillan: We, you guys we've been talking about this for two solid years, cuz we've had requests. From the jump yeah. To do this. And we're like, and

[00:00:44] Corinne Foxx: you've been avoiding it. Cause yeah. Cause we personally are scared of budgeting.

Yes. We're scared of it. Yeah. But we're gonna talk to Elena about how budgeting does not have to be scary. No, it does not how to organize your life and why organization equals. Financial success. I really need to remember that we need, we, we need

[00:01:04] Natalie McMillan: her. I need her. I need her for

[00:01:06] Corinne Foxx: sure. And remember you guys, you guys can write in an episode suggestion at, am I doing this right pod@gmail.com and we are bringing back random advice.

So if you have something going on in your personal life, your professional life, you just need, you. You need the girlies. You need the girlies to set you straight. Yes. You can email us at, am I doing this right? Pod gmail.com. We will keep it. UNW miss always anonymous. Miss, always one miss. And we'll give you more advice.

[00:01:35] Natalie McMillan: Yeah, but the, our end, our wrap up for this week is citizens arrest

[00:01:40] Corinne Foxx: citizens arrest. We're be arresting somebody or something. We will, or some things as a or something as, as, but first now let's get into the wine for the budgeting episode. Oh yes. Literal be drinking. All

[00:01:54] Natalie McMillan: right. We're drinking. TWR Hmm. It says Terah.

That's literally what it says. What is, am I wrong? TA? But it says TWR okay. So I don't know what that is. It's a Marlborough. I thought those are cigarettes. No, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:02:14] Corinne Foxx: I think it's a Toro and it's from Marlborough cuz isn't that in New

[00:02:18] Natalie McMillan: Zealand. You know what? I have no idea.

[00:02:20] Corinne Foxx: Are you, you know what? I might be wrong.

No, no, no, no. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. Am I wrong? It's a blend of a reasoning, a Pinot grease and a

[00:02:30] Natalie McMillan: Gortz and enzyme. Oh, averse, demeanor. Are you seriously? Yeah. Oh, oh, okay. This, this might be good. This might be good. I might like

[00:02:38] Corinne Foxx: this. Okay. Cuz we were just saying you

[00:02:40] Natalie McMillan: guys, we are we're sick of this shit.

I'm gonna be straight up. We can't.

[00:02:47] Corinne Foxx: I mean, in theory as drinking wine, every episode, like it's fun, it's digestible. It's even a gift and yeah. And now we're at the point where. You know, it's Tuesday.

[00:02:58] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. You know? Right. And we're hot. We're hot. It's the middle of the day. It's the middle of the day. You can't like enjoy you.

Can't like just chug it and be like, woo. It's starting to feel like work. it's starting to feel a little, so, you know, let us know. Would you be mad if we, I don't know, drink? A kombu. I know I would just love like a Gatorade or something. You guys were outta here dying for you. I know. I know. They don't even know how hot we usually are.

Okay. Well, let's, let's cheer. Okay. We're gonna have a good attitude about yes, we are.

Okay. Okay. Hmm. Well, we'll circle back. We always do. We always do . We're not until we don't until we no longer do it. All right. Karen, why, why did we choose this

[00:03:45] Corinne Foxx: topic? Yeah, well, I mean, since we started this podcast, we have had countless truly. Request to do a budgeting episode. And like, honestly, since it's inception, I always envisioned us doing a budgeting episode.

Right. But you know, it's not our forte. Mm-hmm we are living in cheer terror. Yeah. Of the even concept of budgeting. Yeah. Yeah. So we were just kinda waiting for the right expert for this, and we have officially. Got her, not only does she work on money and budgeting, but she also is a big proponent of like time management and organization and every aspect of your life.

Mm-hmm , she's also a really big fan of the written planner, which I'm very curious about. Yes. I know. I'm curious, know, I'm very curious. So let's intro Elena before we bring her on.

[00:04:33] Natalie McMillan: Yes. So Elena, she's an accountant, a certified financial coach, an author, and a content creator. Wow. Wears a lot of hats. What doesn't she do?

She helps busy people who struggle with budgeting and time management use a paper planner to get organized. She shares her easy approach to productivity and finances through her YouTube channel and has amassed over 100,000. Subscribers go off and six milli views. Gee. She is really helping a lot of us.

Mm-hmm her work has been featured in Yahoo finance, the New York, weekly, the Huffington post, and recently named one of LA wire's 40, under

[00:05:13] Corinne Foxx: 40. Oh my God. How fun? Good for

[00:05:15] Natalie McMillan: her. She lives in new Orleans with her husband, Tori and their two daughters, Tori, Michelle and Alyssa Jade. Oh, what? Nice names. Those

[00:05:24] Corinne Foxx: are such great names.

Okay. Let's bring on Elena.

Hello, Elena. Hey, El.

[00:05:36] Alaina Fingal: Hi,

[00:05:37] Corinne Foxx: we are so excited to have you on. We were saying before this, we are terrible, terrible at budgeting and being organized in the way that you are organized. Cuz I think it's, it's such a unique. Well, it's not just, you know yes, of course. It's like having your pantry super clean, but you are like organizing your livelihood.

I mean,

[00:05:59] Natalie McMillan: I'm looking behind you right now and there's like PO there's like color coded post-its I'm like, you've gotta have a lot of Capricorn in your chart. There's gotta be yeah. Very

[00:06:07] Alaina Fingal: on the cancer. Oh, well happy recent birthday. Thank you. It was last week. I appreciate it.

[00:06:15] Corinne Foxx: Fun. Well, I was curious since you are the organizational queen budgeting queen, was there ever a time that you weren't organized with your life and your budget or have you always kind of been of this flavor?

[00:06:32] Alaina Fingal: so I have had ups and downs my entire life. My mom has always been a super, super organized person. So she's always pushed me and my brother to be organized. However, as a child, I always rebelled against, you know, good advice. Yeah. Just because I can't listen to my mom. Right. So I rebelled and I was like, oh no, I'm.

Still it's organized chaos and I still have it together. But what happened was is as I got older, I started to lose things I, you know, and different transitions in life. Like once I went from high school to college, it was a big change for me. And I couldn't just. Figure out my homework. I had to write it down.

I couldn't just try and kind of figure out life. And so that was my first time when I realized I really needed a planner. So I started really trying to get organized and budgeting and all of those things in college. Um, however, I didn't have a lot of money at the time. so it didn't last long. And then as I got older and once I got married and had my first baby, my first baby was like, Wow moment.

You are responsible for another life. You gotta get it together, girl, like get your life together. And so that's when I really went on this journey and I saw that everybody was organizing all of these spaces and I'm like, yeah, I get it. I want my house to be organized, but I really need to organize my mind.

I need to get a hold on all of these random thoughts and ideas and all of these crazy things that's going on in my mind. So that I could budget better and save and get on a better pattern with spending my money. So that's how I got started was when I had my baby it really forced me. yeah.

[00:08:20] Corinne Foxx: I mean, that's a, that's a pretty good wake up call.

You're like, okay. You know, I'm not, I can't play around anymore. And I love what you do is. Is that you organize your life and your budget and you create these systems that you can keep up with every month and you can see, look at your progress and see where you're going and, and set goals, which are all things we need to do, Natalie.

We need to

[00:08:43] Natalie McMillan: do, I know, I know my question is how does not only organization, but also routine play a role in. Your money management in particular?

[00:08:56] Alaina Fingal: Yeah. So one thing that I realized is when I first started the organized money, it was just about budgeting. It was just going to be money focused. And I was doing well for like the first six months.

And then I would. Get on a one-on-one calls. And I even experienced it in my own life where I would create this beautiful budget and I would create it on a Sunday. And then if I woke up late on a Monday, or if I was rushing or if anything else happened with my life, my time that it would throw off my budget.

So I would plan a budget. And then I would forget my lunch at home, or, and then now I gotta buy lunch or I didn't have an umbrella. So now I need to buy this and I have to buy that. And I ended up in post shopping because I didn't have structure with my time and my life. And what I realized is that. When your life is unorganized, you can't get anything else organized.

So money and time really do play hand in hand. And once I started to work on organizing my schedule and I started to plan better and I started to really pay attention to how I was going to organize my life. It became so much easier to budget and save like budgeting and saving became like, oh, this is really easy.

Cuz I started to plan the routine and the day. And I knew this is my Friday routine of what I'm going to do with my money. And once I set that time and set the intention of what I was gonna do, it became easier to do it. So I revamped the entire, um, platform for my business and made it about life and money because I realized how much they were tied together.

Like you have to be able to organize them both. Yeah.

[00:10:41] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. General definition of time is money.

[00:10:44] Corinne Foxx: Yeah, right. it? Yes. You just used that B word, which is budgeting, which Natalie and I are terrified of. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, you know, get overwhelmed by that word, but what you were just saying, do you think people are overwhelmed by the concept of budgeting because they actually don't have their lives in order first?

Or why do you think we're so intimidated to even try to

[00:11:08] Alaina Fingal: budget start. I think it's because of what the word represents. I believe that we have always looked at it as a negative word, right? Yeah. We associate budgeting with restriction with depriving ourselves. It's almost like dieting, right? We're we think of it along the lines of man, I can't do this.

And so I have to limit myself and restrict myself so I can save and make more money, but really. Think of it as reframing your mind as a spending thing that you can do. Like this shows me when I create this spending plan, this shows me how much money I can spend. It shows me where I can go shopping. It shows me how I can travel and how I can save.

It shows me how I'm going to live the life that I want. It doesn't have to be a restrictive thing, because if you think about it, you really deep dive into it. When you create a budget and you are able to stick to it, it's going to open up your life to be able to do so many more things that you want to do.

You achieve your goals because you have this spending plan. So I think it's just the way that we look at it and reframing our mind and our mindset of what it can do for us. Instead of thinking of the restrictive side of what you can't spend. Think of how it's going to open it up to well, after I pay my bills, now I have all of this extra money to spend.

[00:12:33] Corinne Foxx: Ah, yeah, it's a reframe. We have to reframe how we think about it, cuz you're right. When I think of budgeting, I think of restriction. I, I think of all the things I won't be able to do because I'll be on a budget. But it's you're right. Like if you really understand your money, it can work for you and you can build goals and then you can start attaining things that you actually truly want.

And also, like it's a lesson in prioritizing, like what actually is gonna make you happy and fulfilled and what's worth your money and your time.

[00:13:03] Alaina Fingal: Right, right. Because then you can plan out what you actually wanna do. Like when I say sometimes I'll put more money into food because I know we're gonna go out.

It's my birthday. Right. I know I want to spend more money for my birthday. So I'm gonna set aside money for that goal. If I have to pay all these bills and I'm not on the budget, then I might not be able to set aside that money because I don't have a budget. But if I do, then I'm able to open myself up and do more with my.

Yeah.

[00:13:33] Natalie McMillan: So it's kind of just like a giant misconception that we we've all convinced ourselves of

[00:13:40] Alaina Fingal: and I think it's the exact same way that we have, we've done it in so many areas. Right? If you think about it, how you've done it with, uh, the diet culture of fad dieting, and yes, you might be able to be restrictive with your food for a moment of time, but all of us crash and burn.

Types of diets, right? You lose a bunch of weight, but then you gain it all back. And it's the same way. When you do restrictive budgeting. When we restrictive budget, we save a bunch of money, but then we go impulse and shopping because it just triggers us one day. We're like, I'm not living life or I'm not eating.

I'm not. And then you binge and you end up spending a bunch of money that you didn't want to spend. But if we take our time and. Look at it another way. And we stop looking at it as a restriction and start thinking about how we can open ourself up to opportunity. Then we become able to open ourselves up to seeing how we can spend more money through the budget that we have.

[00:14:40] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So how do we, how do we go about setting up a budget and then how do we adhere to said budget?

[00:14:49] Natalie McMillan: yeah, very simple question. how do we, how we do, we do all

[00:14:54] Alaina Fingal: of it. Yeah. If you are starting off, this is your very first time starting a budget. The first thing you wanna write down is how much make, how much money do you have coming in.

Then I want you to write down all your bills. This is probably the easy part. I feel like everyone does this part. We write down our income, we write down our bills and then we see how much we have left over. Now, once you have that ending number, Income after you subtract all of your bills. Now you have a number of how much you have to spend.

So now we can divide it up into categories. Usually it's food, entertainment and shopping. That's where the majority of us will spend our money. Now we might have to. Kids or extracurriculars, but you wanna write down those categories, where else do you need to spend your money? You might need to buy gas, all of that, write those things down.

And then the money that you have left over, you wanna divide it up into those categories. The top question that I get is how do you know how much to put into each category, right? The best way to figure it out is to look at your bank statement. How much are you currently spending on food? How much are you currently spending in shopping and on Amazon?

What are. Currently doing, you don't wanna guess, or try and estimate this number, cuz you're setting yourself up for failure. When you do that, you wanna look at your past behavior. How much have you currently spent? Because if you're currently eating out every single day and you spend $500 on eating out and then you say, oh, but I'm gonna set a budget of 200.

That's, that's not realistic. You're setting yourself up for failure. So what you wanna do is say, okay, I am currently spending 500, but I feel like that might be too much. I'm gonna bring it down to four 50 this month and see how I do with that and try and stick along that side. Now, my, I usually will suggest to take that money out in cash.

You can leave your bill money in account, take your money out in cash, put it in the envelopes of the different categories that you talked about and spend that cash so that you don't go over budget. But if you just feel like I need to use my debit card, then try and separate it. A bill account and a spending account, but you don't want those two accounts mixed up, cuz we end up spending bill money when we do that and just using your debit card until you get paid again, repeat rent and repeat every single time you wanna just repeat that process of setting up your payday budget and doing that over and over again.

And then after a while you'll be able to save. You'll be able to spend the money the way that you have set aside. And you'll start to get accustomed to budgeting on that, on that level. And it will help you to start to make progress. Yeah.

[00:17:40] Corinne Foxx: I mean it really, yeah. Again, just like dieting, dieting, doesn't work.

It's a lifestyle change. Right. You have to just make that lifestyle change and that's similar to what you're saying. It's like, okay. Make it small. So it's like attainable and you can actually like keep up with it. So going from 500 to four 50, and then it's just a light, we're just changing how we're living and it's not.

Intense and scary yeah.

[00:18:04] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. Well, I feel like, so for me, I think about as a business owner and, you know, I, I run my own business. How, what are some tips you might have for expense tracking that isn't very time consuming? Mm-hmm

[00:18:20] Alaina Fingal: so if you don't like writing things down paper, I get it because, um, I know I have a.

Clients who don't like to track that way. One thing that has come out that a lot of banks are doing that I absolutely love is they categorize for you. So if you are with chase, if you're with capital one, I think Wells Fargo is starting to do it now as well. They categorize. Your transactions for you so soon as you log in, you are able to see where your money is going.

And I just advised that you check their bank account every single morning, make it a part of your morning routine. Many times when we're thinking about. Our morning routine. We are usually thinking about self care things that we love to do. Right. I love to wake up and get my coffee and I'm gonna do a light workout.

Might do some yoga into meditation. And all of that is wonderful. We definitely want to do that, but also add in some things that you may not find the most pleasurable, but your future self will. Thank you. So it's still self care. Looking at my money for 10 minutes in the morning where I just check my bank account, see how much I have, compare it to my budget, and then just make sure I'm not going over is a part of my morning routine, cuz it's a part of my self care.

It is taking care of my future self. So that I'm not stressed out over money and I love it. And so it will make you, um, love the process a little bit more, especially if you set it aside, light a candle, have your favorite beverage, make it a thing to where you are doing a money date. I will just spend some time and spend a little moment with my money so that I feel more prepared for what's coming up next in my.

Yeah, prepared

[00:20:07] Natalie McMillan: and also more comfortable because I feel like it's so, I mean, I'm still in this space where it's so uncomfortable. Like I hate I'm like, all right, I'm gonna look at it. You know, but if you look at it every day, you start to get more comfortable with it, and then you're able to do the budgeting.

It's not a heat event

[00:20:23] Corinne Foxx: when you left have to sit down.

[00:20:24] Natalie McMillan: Right. It's not like, okay, here we go. I'm gonna open it. You know,

[00:20:27] Corinne Foxx: one thing that you do, not that. Inspired me to do, is that you said you like listened to music when you're going through your finances. Yeah. So it's not like, and just trying to make it more of a lighthearted thing than this, you know, like you were saying, like this intense thing that you sit down and it's very stern where it's like, like you're saying light a candle, but play music, make it fun, have a little drink.

I don't know, whatever you need .

[00:20:51] Alaina Fingal: And if you're like, if. Spouse or someone that you are budgeting with? Um, me and my husband will make a money date where we keep it light. Cause you know, finances can be a very intense situation, a very intense conversation if we make it that way. But what we'll do is we'll keep it light.

Like I talk about my dreams and the different things that I wanna achieve with our finances, like our financial plan. He talk about some of the things that he wants to do individually, like go back to school and things that he has on his list. And then we talk about things that we wanna do as a family upcoming travel.

Like don't make it all serious. Just paying bills, conversation. Does that make you shut down so quick? Like who wants to talk about that? But if I'm talking about my dreams and the traveling that we want to do and the different things that we want to purchase throughout our life and when we wanna retire and things like that, it becomes easier to have those types of conversations.

[00:21:53] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. Yeah. One thing that's tough for, I think me and Natalie, because like, you know, I'm a multi hyphenate, I'm a freelancer. Like I don't have like a salary yes. That I have every year that it's, it makes it a lot easier to budget when you kind of can anticipate how much money you're gonna make, what would your tips be for like entrepreneurs or, or even like freelancers on how they can still kind of adhere to a budget, even if.

Their income isn't as consistent. This is

[00:22:19] Natalie McMillan: my main block. So I'm very curious about this

[00:22:22] Alaina Fingal: yeah, so I am the same way. I'm a full time entrepreneur, which means I do not know how much I'm going to make at the start of any month. So one of the things that, um, I will. Always recommend to entrepreneurs is first that you know, that bare minimum number that you need to cover your bills.

So this is your core number, right? This is the bare minimum that you have to cover for the month. And the goal is over time is to save that number because the ultimate goal is to get one month ahead of yourself so that you aren't budgeting this month. With this month, you're budgeting this. With last month's money.

And I have an entire video on my YouTube channel on how to get one month ahead that talks you through the baby steps of how to do that. Cuz I know every time I say him, one month ahead, I can hear my audience just like. What one month girl, I can't, you know, but it's a three step process of the way that I like saved in order to do that.

And I do have it on my YouTube channel. I'll send you guys the link in case anyone

[00:23:33] Corinne Foxx: wants we'll link everything you're doing in our show notes for our listener, so they can find it.

[00:23:37] Alaina Fingal: And so you can find that video. But in that video, I talked about, um, three things that I did. And one of the things that I did was to try and make sure that when you have those extra weeks, cuz you have three months out of the year where you have five weeks months.

And so what I would normally do is on. Higher up months where I just, we killed it this month. I just made way more than I thought I was gonna make. What I did is I tried to save as much as possible or save half of the amount that I need on a monthly basis, or save a quarter of the amount that I need on a monthly basis and put it in a savings account.

But it's a certain savings strategy. when you don't know how much you're going to make, it's always going to be a saving strategy so that you can get ahead of yourself. And you're not depending on making a certain income number in order to pay your bills. So I, and with all entrepreneurs, I always recommend that you.

Save, you know, your emergency fund is not the average three to six months. Like everyone else usually recommends. It's always more. You wanna get, get that nine to 12 months in the bank account. But before that, before you can get to that spot, you wanna try and get at least. One month ahead so that you're paying this month with last month.

And then when you don't make the number that you think you're gonna make, you still had it, you still have money in your savings account and you can still cover everything, including your food, shopping and entertainment. You wanna be able to cover it all.

[00:25:10] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. So not just the bills, not just the bells, all of it, all of

[00:25:14] Alaina Fingal: it.

So you

[00:25:15] Natalie McMillan: were referencing your YouTube videos and you, you put out a lot of content and we were looking through it and we noticed that you. Write everything down like physically write. Is there a reason for that over

[00:25:27] Corinne Foxx: digital? I just made Natalie.

[00:25:30] Natalie McMillan: She made me stop writing my

[00:25:31] Corinne Foxx: stuff down. I know. I tried to feel really bad.

I was like, you've gotta get on Google calendar girl.

[00:25:36] Alaina Fingal: So, okay. I, I feel like a part of this is personal preference in a part of it is statistics. So I have to put that out there, but you are more likely. Complete something that you write down. You're I think you wanna say you're like 40% more likely to complete it.

If you write it down. Wow. Couple of reasons why I like to write things down the first is to minimize distractions. I am constantly distracted when it comes to tech devices, my phone, anything. So all of those notifications and things, I don't really prefer them. I really do like to. Write things down because of the, the space where I am, when I'm writing it down, like I said, I'm lighting a candle.

I am making it a part of my self care and having this one spot. If I call it my one book is my life book because my entire life is in this one planner. I'm like, it's all divided up, but it is my life because any area that I. To organize or think through normally when you're thinking something through and you're trying to organize your thoughts, you're gonna take out a sheet of paper.

Very rarely do people like type up a document when they're trying to process and think through or mind like we mind map. We create to do list. We write things down. We jotted down on the sticky note. We will put it, pull out a sheet of paper or writing from the back of an envelope. And the reason we do those things is because writing has a way of connecting to our brain differently than digital.

So you can, I always, I still use the Cal. I'm not gonna say that. I don't, I still use Google Cal. I still will have documents in, you know, all written up and all within my computer. I still use all of that Google drive, but when I am my main source of planning or I am really trying to process what's going on in my mind, I use paper because paper helps me to process a little bit better.

[00:27:41] Corinne Foxx: Yeah. And you use it for budgeting, but then also your calendar, right? Like everything, like, yeah. I've seen your wife, you have to go on her on her Instagram and like, it's so impressive. It's also very soothing to watch you write. And like it's very, there's something of like as M R about it. Yes.

[00:27:58] Alaina Fingal: Yeah. I have every such, so it's, it's my schedule.

It's my faith section. My business. My budget, my church, like everything in this one book, and I promise you, it has changed my life. It's the basis of my company.

[00:28:12] Corinne Foxx: I love it. No, it's so wonderful. And we need to probably get on it. We do for sure. So in terms of like setting monthly goals for ourselves, how do you organize and prioritize your life to achieve these types of goals that we're setting?

[00:28:27] Alaina Fingal: So the very first thing with any goal that you have, wanna make sure that it is super realistic and you break it down to a daily goal. So no matter what that annual goal is, no matter what that big overarching picture, how can we break it all the way down to what you can do today? There is a quote out there, not sure who caught, who said it.

I cannot remember off the top of my head, but it says that we usually overestimate what we can do in a. But we underestimate what we can do in a year and what we can do in that amount of time. And it's because we set really big goals at the beginning of the year. And then we usually wait and then they taper out around March because you feel like, oh, I got so much time.

I got the year I got this. I got, you know, I'm gonna do it in June. I'm gonna do it in July. I'm gonna start at this point in time. And then it's so much time has passed. Oh, man, I never got to it. I'm gonna set it again for this year. Now I'm gonna do it again this year, but we will usually, when we think about our date, we write a 20 page list of all the things we wanna do today.

And so we will usually like mismanage our time based on what we think we possibly can do in a certain timeframe. So the best thing to do is when you have that really big goal, let's say it's to write a book. I wanna write a book this year. Writing a book is a very big goal. What can you do in a month?

You might be able to write a chapter in a month. So my monthly goal would be to write a chapter. What can I do today? Today? I could think of some titles. I could brainstorm what my outline is going to be for this book. And that's what I'm gonna do today. And if you do that every single day, when you wake up, you think about one thing that you can do and you work on that one thing for 20 minutes or 30 minutes.

Not a whole bunch of time, cuz you know, you may not have three hours to work on your book, but you may be able to set aside 30 minutes added to your calendar, added to your schedule, set aside 30 minutes from 12 to 1230. I'm gonna work on my outline for my book and that's what I do. And when you put that into your routine, where every single day you're looking at your goals and you're thinking about the one thing that you can do for a short period of time, that's gonna help you to achieve that goal.

You end up achieving more.

[00:30:49] Natalie McMillan: Wow. I have a lot of reorganizing my life to do . Oh gosh.

[00:30:53] Corinne Foxx: Well luckily you offer a lot of things. Yes.

[00:30:57] Natalie McMillan: Yeah. For what, what types of things do you offer? So our listeners, if they need help with budgeting or organization,

[00:31:04] Alaina Fingal: So the first stop is always my YouTube channel and I am currently reorganizing all of my playlists on my YouTube channel to help you with whatever section you are currently trying to organize.

So I currently talk about planning. Productivity money management and business. So those are the four areas and those are the four areas that you will see on my YouTube channel, where you can dive into those specific videos. Once you get into those areas, then you will find different offers that are associated with that particular area.

So for instance, with the business, I have the organized business, which is another. Cohort. It's a four week intensive that I do every other month. So the next one comes up in the month of, um, September. And in that month I work with about 20 women, very close knit, where I am helping them organize their business.

And so we do group calls every single week. We will dive into the different things that they can do in different areas, like their content, how to organize your content. Because I, I know a lot of business owners, we know we're supposed. Doing content, but it's like, how do I find time to do all of this stuff?

Right? How do I figure this stuff out? It's so much. And so finding time and scheduling and figuring out the different things that you need to do is what we do within that. And then each one of my sections, there's something like that. So I have the organized business. And then the organized you, which is the organized you is a monthly membership.

Where, if you need accountability, you need help organizing your life and your money. Then that is the membership. It where we just jump on every single week. And we are talking about a variety of topics, like procrastination, motivation, how to, uh, move and actually get more things done. All of that is within that membership.

That's awesome.

[00:33:05] Corinne Foxx: Like I need that sounds like we'll be signing up we definitely need that. Thank you so much for coming on and, and making this concept of budgeting and organizing our lives way more approachable, approachable, and digestible. It was something that Natalie and I were really like, not you, but we were just dreading we're like, oh, like this is just something we're not good at.

[00:33:30] Natalie McMillan: We've had so many. For like we've had yeah, the whole, since we started and we're like, we need, we have to find the experts. We're like, oh, OK. Cause we cannot do it. So we're so happy. We've we've had your time

[00:33:42] Corinne Foxx: today. Yeah. So we're gonna link to everything you're doing in our show notes for our listeners. Um, if they wanna connect with you and thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with

[00:33:51] Alaina Fingal: us.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate

[00:33:55] Corinne Foxx: it. Yeah. Have a great rest of your.

[00:33:57] Alaina Fingal: Thank you. You too.

[00:34:05] Corinne Foxx: Okay, Natalie, we we've gotta start budgeting. I know we told her we would. I

[00:34:09] Natalie McMillan: know we do. We really, I really do want to get in the habit of just looking at my bank account. Why every day, why

[00:34:17] Corinne Foxx: is so scary? It's why is it so scary? You know? Well, it's because you're right. We, we do it once every blue moon. And so we have no gauge as to what's going on.

Right. But if you're checking in daily, there shouldn't be major surprises. Right. Right. If there isn't there's fraud happening.

[00:34:32] Natalie McMillan: Exactly. Which you would want to know immediately. Yeah.

[00:34:35] Corinne Foxx: So we just have to get, we're gonna get in the habit and the routine, and we have our YouTube channel to help us. Thank gorgeous.

Thank goodness. Well, we hope you guys learn more about budgeting, how to better organize your life and why organization equals success. Success,

[00:34:50] Alaina Fingal: success

[00:34:51] Natalie McMillan: oh, what's wrong with us?

[00:34:53] Corinne Foxx: We're unwell. Um, now let's get into the wine that we did not wanna drink, but we did, but we wore this epi.

[00:34:59] Natalie McMillan: All right. Again. Quora.

What is that? It's it's

[00:35:06] Corinne Foxx: TWR but it is TA

[00:35:08] Natalie McMillan: Tera Tera Quora from who knows where Marlborough. I thought those were cigarettes. Are those not cigarettes? They

[00:35:16] Corinne Foxx: are, but it's also, is that a location? No, it's a 2020 Marro. Touro Touro, Touro. Wait, it says it is from New Zealand. Oh, you were right. Oh yeah. Oh, it says it on the front

[00:35:31] Natalie McMillan: New Zealand.

Oh. Oh, okay.

[00:35:34] Corinne Foxx: We're not doing well, folks. We are not doing well. This is a wellness check.

[00:35:38] Natalie McMillan: Wellness check. Okay. Somebody call the police.

[00:35:41] Corinne Foxx: One, two are hot of the week, which Natalie fought me on a little

[00:35:44] Natalie McMillan: bit. I. Fight you on it. I was just like,

[00:35:47] Corinne Foxx: okay. okay. Well, we tried to match our hos of the week with the episode, you know, we're trying to theme it.

Yeah. So we looked up celebrities that budget. Yeah. And we found out that ed Sheron who we budgets. Everyone loves. He gives, he loves ed Sheron. Yeah. He gives himself an allowance. So we thought he would be a good hobby of the week. Yeah. He's UN problematic. We love him. He's a soundtrack to our love wive.

Okay.

[00:36:10] Natalie McMillan: Right. Right. So one. To Mr. Ed. Ed. It's just hard to rate like rating to ed.

[00:36:17] Corinne Foxx: No, it's not. He's sweet. He's musical. That's

[00:36:22] Natalie McMillan: true. Okay. Yes. Yes. I'm picturing him playing his

[00:36:24] Corinne Foxx: little picture. Have guitar. Have you in his baby photos? Have you

[00:36:27] Natalie McMillan: ever seen his baby photo? Uh, yes. Remember in the car. Oh yeah. she showed everybody in the car, but then there's the baby that looks like him.

You were like, this is him and it's not him. No, no, it's not. It's not him. There's it looks exactly. No, but there's

[00:36:43] Corinne Foxx: a baby on the internet that looks just

[00:36:44] Natalie McMillan: like, put him on the story. This one, literally that is ed sheen. It's exactly like yeah, it is. Okay. So we'll post this on Stu today. Yeah. Okay. Let me take another

[00:36:55] Corinne Foxx: sippy.

Yeah. One to edge. She I'm sorry. I got distracted. Um, this TWR I like it. What do you wanna give it? Eight?

[00:37:04] Natalie McMillan: I'll give it a nine. You know, I really it's. It's light mm-hmm it's very drinkable. Mm-hmm and I love gr diverse demeanors and razing. So I think it's just a nice,

[00:37:18] Corinne Foxx: okay, so this is an eight and a half at an edge.

She, and we'll link it in the show notes. If you wanna pick up

[00:37:23] Natalie McMillan: a bottle, you didn't rate it. You just, I said I was giving it an eight. Oh, I thought you were asking me if I was

[00:37:29] Corinne Foxx: giving it an eight. Oh, I was saying eight question mark. Cause I thought we were line I'm so sorry. Ah, okay. I'm giving it an eight.

You're giving it a nine. It's an 8.5 outta edge year. We'll link into the show, link it below,

[00:37:41] Natalie McMillan: pick up box.

[00:37:49] Corinne Foxx: All right. This is the part of the episode where we play a little wrap up game. And like we sit at the top this week. It's citizens rest. We also had a listener write in and say that she loved the wrap up game part. Oh yeah.

[00:38:01] Natalie McMillan: She was like, can you guys make that longer? I know. Well, should we share two citizens arrests?

I don't have that many. Oh, I, you know why I'm constantly thinking. I see there's every day. I'm like citizens arrest on you. Citizens arrest on that. You can do

[00:38:13] Corinne Foxx: too. You should do too. All right. Blow through that list. But I have.

[00:38:18] Natalie McMillan: Okay. Prepped. Okay. I will do two. Okay. The first one I'm gonna do is citizens arrest on people who leave their shopping carts in the.

Parking spot

[00:38:31] Corinne Foxx: like they, oh, and you can't park there? Yes. They need to

[00:38:34] Natalie McMillan: be arrested. They need to be arrested immediately. okay. Immediately.

[00:38:38] Corinne Foxx: I'm the person, which I think is people like roll their eyes at, but I do return it to the front. Me too. I return it. Oh, do oh yes. Okay. Joe, one time was like, you know, there's.

That's like people's jobs to like go in a parking lot. I'm like, Joe, we live in Los Angeles. It is 100 degrees with the concrete pavement. And you want someone going out to get your

[00:38:58] Natalie McMillan: cart? It's like the people who say, why are you cleaning for the cleaning lady? Oh, Joe that's because she does not need to cl like

[00:39:06] Corinne Foxx: you have to organize for the C lady to be there.

I know, pick up your shit, but the worst are the people who leave the carts in the parking spot. At least put it to the side at,

[00:39:14] Natalie McMillan: I mean, where, where do you need to be that bad, but you can't just simply move the car out of the spot. That's a good one. Citizens arrest

[00:39:22] Corinne Foxx: on. That's a great citizen's arrest. What about you?

I just feel like they need to be arrested because it's getting out of hand. Okay. It used to be like, okay, this is just like a thing. This is a thing that's everywhere. And then now it's becoming more intense and more crazy Uhhuh and it's billboard lawyers.

[00:39:42] Natalie McMillan: Yeah.

[00:39:43] Corinne Foxx: Have you, I don't know if it's just a Los Angeles thing.

Oh no. Oh, it's everywhere. Oh, it's everywhere. Okay. Well the ones the billboards I've been seeing for these lawyers, these accident lawyers are so insane. There's actually a TikTok on 'em that like had all these crazy ones in Los Angeles, but one looked like a movie, an action movie poster. Have you seen this one?

No, I'm a there's flames. There's the guy and his hair's blowing in the wind. And it's titled as if it is a movie that's coming out, but no, it's a billboard

[00:40:14] Natalie McMillan: accident lawyer. Oh my God.

[00:40:17] Corinne Foxx: They're really out here getting

[00:40:19] Natalie McMillan: and Barnes injuries.

[00:40:22] Corinne Foxx: my favorite one is I want, there's this one guy who's on the back of buses.

Yes. And he looks like an exit L. He looks like,

[00:40:30] Natalie McMillan: um, he looks like Fred Arison in a mustache. He looks like Fred Aon wearing a little mustache and it says accident days on top of him.

[00:40:39] Corinne Foxx: And I literally, I'm convinced it's a bit, I'm convinced

[00:40:43] Natalie McMillan: it's a bit

exactly

[00:40:45] Alaina Fingal: what

[00:40:45] Natalie McMillan: you're talking about. Hold on. I'm it has to, it cannot be real that guy's not real.

I'm almost 1000% positive. I have him on one of my story highlights. I'm looking right now. Yeah, because I think he's, we'll post him because.

[00:40:59] Corinne Foxx: He's he's he's not real.

[00:41:03] Natalie McMillan: He's a comedy. It's just a comedy scam. It's a comedy SC. Oh, there he is.

[00:41:08] Alaina Fingal: Yeah, I looked .

[00:41:10] Natalie McMillan: It says I am utterly obsessed with this man. I am accident days accident days 8, 8, 8 7 7 7 7 7 7.

It's JJ Dominguez. Yo my God. Okay, so that's my citizen's arrest. Do you wanna do a second one? Yes. Okay. My second one. Well, I don't wanna offend anybody, but I'm gonna have to arrest people that do this. Okay. People who get married on holidays, that's really messed up. Come on. Like, I think people think it's like romantic or something to get married on new year's and I'm like, you're gonna make everybody, and then you can't just enjoy the holiday.

You have to send a happy anniversary. Yeah. 4th of July. No. Yeah, no.

[00:41:53] Corinne Foxx: That's fair. I know somebody who had to go to this year had to go to a wedding on new year's and they were pissed. Right. I would beat, they were like damnit, right.

[00:42:01] Natalie McMillan: Or even 4th of July. I'm like, I want nothing to do with the 4th of July, but like, I don't wanna have to go to your wedding on the 4th of

[00:42:09] Corinne Foxx: July.

Right. It's like we all have like the weekend off, right? Yeah. Just let us do our own thing. Hi, philio it's a fair, it's a fair citizen's. You guys, if you have an episode idea and you would like us to do it, let us know you can email us. Am I doing this right pod@gmail.com and rate and review our podcast?

If you love it, cuz we love you. Yeah. And we'll

[00:42:32] Natalie McMillan: read more on, on the air cuz they're really fun.

[00:42:34] Corinne Foxx: Yeah, we will. And we'll be back next week with another episode. Bye bye.