Lemme start by asking you this today.

Do you ever feel like your money's in charge and you're just trying to keep up?

Well, let me let you on a little secret.

You're not lazy, you're not broken, and you don't need more shame.

What you need is a better plan.

And today I'm going to talk about hope and I'm gonna talk about healing

through a better way to budget.

I'm gonna introduce you to my three P plan.

So join me today to start your journey to success.

I've got success for you on the horizon today.

thank you for joining me on the show today.

I'm Ralph and I just want to thank you for taking time to join me today.

This show every day is all about breaking your financial shame and doing

it with faith and with confidence.

I don't know about you, but I've tried the budget thing.

I remember when I first got outta college, I wanted to use all those things that

I learned in college, and I wanted to build this massive spreadsheet.

This is gonna be the best budget ever.

And I put this spreadsheet together and I color coded.

I mean, I had everything you could imagine, but guess what?

I never used it.

I never used it because I didn't wanna face the truth.

Maybe you've been there too.

And I got this message the other day from a listener named Angela, and

she, she says to me, she said, Ralph, I keep falling off the budgeting

wagon and I feel like a failure.

Well, see, I think the first thing you've gotta understand, and a lot of

people lose sight of this, budgeting isn't about saying no to everything.

So many people think, oh, I'm gonna go on a budget and I gotta say no to everything.

It's kinda like a diet, you know?

It's restriction.

It's, no, it's, I can't do this.

But the real core benefit to budgeting is actually about saying the word

yes, but here's the difference.

You're saying yes to what matters the most.

See, you gotta think about it in these terms.

Budgeting is direction.

It's moving in a particular way.

It's moving in a particular direction.

It's not about deprivation.

And somebody said this to me earlier today, and I thought this was perfect

for what we wanted to talk about today.

It's when you really give every dollar a job.

Every single dollar has a job.

This dollar is for housing, this dollar is for fuel.

This dollar is for giving.

This dollar is for savings.

It's when you do that, that you actually take back control and listen.

Before I get too far into this, that includes tithing and I want

you to tithe, not outta guilt, but I want you to tithe out of trust.

Because I want you to have that cheerful giver's heart.

I want you to say, God, I trust you more than my bank account.

But the big thing I want you to understand as we get to the main

point today is budgeting is freedom.

It's not punishment.

If you think of it as punishment, guess what?

You're not gonna do it.

You're going to fail at it.

But look at budgeting as freedom.

Look at at.

As intentionality and not punishment.

So lemme get to my three P framework because I like to boil down things

into really simple things that you can understand and better

than that you can implement them.

So let's get to the three Ps.

First one is plan.

You gotta start by knowing what's coming in and what's going out.

It's really that simple.

Start with how much money do I have coming in?

And here are my bills.

Here's my mortgage payment, or here's my rent payment.

Here's my car payment.

Here's what I pay for electricity.

Here's what I pay for gas.

Here's my insurance.

You get the idea, but start with that plan.

Know what's coming in and what's going out.

Second P is prioritize.

That's where you really gotta start thinking along terms of how do I set

the intentionality with those dollars?

How do I assign each one of those dollars to have a purpose?

I'll call it a prioritize that, and I'm gonna talk about doing

that with your essentials.

We're gonna do that with giving, and then we're gonna do it with savings.

We're gonna just start there.

And then the third P, and this is the most critical part,

is you've gotta practice it.

You gotta track it daily.

See, it doesn't matter how you do it.

I don't really care how you track it.

You can track it with a spreadsheet.

Hey, you can build that spreadsheet.

Like I tried to build one when I was back getting outta college, and man, it had all

the columns, it had the colors into it.

I don't really care how you do it, but you gotta do it.

And listen, I'm gonna tell you something that is critical

to you for you to understand.

Don't worry about being perfect.

You're never going to be perfect.

You're never going to reach that point of perfection.

I just want you to be faithful and see the thing you need to

understand and hear me on this.

Budgeting isn't just numbers.

If it was just numbers, it'd be simple.

Hey, here's the numbers.

Here's the numbers I'm gonna use.

But it's emotional.

And when you start to live in that budget, when you start to live in

that intentional spending plan, you may have feelings of shame.

You might think about, oh man, why did I do this before?

Why did I spend so much on, why did I do this?

Why did I do that?

It might bring up fear.

You might be wondering, oh man, how am I ever gonna do this?

And then it might also bring up guilt.

You know, why didn't I do this before?

How come I didn't think about this before?

That's all normal, and that's the emotions you're going to feel when you get started.

But let me just tell you something right now.

Those emotions are not permanent.

And here's the thing.

I want you to really understand this.

Whatever you're doing right now, stop what you're doing and just think about

what I'm getting ready to say because so many people get stuck in that

cycle of shame over their finances because they don't understand that

you are not your financial mistakes.

You're just not.

You are growing.

You are learning.

and Zacharia four 10 says, don't despise small beginnings

and this, this is a process.

So celebrate those small wins.

Every step forward counts.

Just like you're starting a fitness routine.

That first step out the door, that counts.

That's what starts to build the momentum.

We're gonna talk more about that in tomorrow's show.

But Angela, lemme get back to your question because you're not failing.

See, that's what Angela was saying to me.

She goes, Ralph, I feel like whenever I start budgeting, I just fail at it.

I don't finish it.

I don't, but you're not failing.

You gotta understand that you're learning and it's a process.

And that's why I encourage you start with just three basic

categories this week and track them.

That's enough.

What am I going to do for my essentials?

What am I gonna do for my savings and my tithing?

And the rest of it is your once.

And it's all about building that consistency and not

looking for perfection.

If you're looking perfection, you're never going to get there.

That's a truth bomb.

Today.

You're never going to get to a level of perfection.

It just isn't gonna happen.

Now, I'd love for us to pray together right now.

I want to invite God in.

So, Lord, we ask you today for wisdom.

We ask you for strength.

We ask you for consistency because we know that it's the consistency.

It's those habits that we build every day that will get us to the next place.

And Lord, we pray so much for peace.

Help us to be wise stewards of what you've given us, and help

us to put our trust in you first.

And we ask this in the name of Jesus.

And remember this big takeaway today.

Budgeting equals intention.

It's not saying no, it's not saying, I'll restrict this.

Use that three P plan and listen.

Don't aim for perfection.

Hear me on that.

I don't want you to just aim for perfection.

I want you to aim for persistence.

And like I said, today's challenge is really simple.

Pick three spending categories and set a limit just for this week.

And like I said, tomorrow we're gonna talk about small wins, big change.

What's gonna be talking to all about Momentum.

And again, before I close today, I want to encourage you, if you're not

a member of our newsletter, you can get some great information out there.

You can get to it by going to ask Ralph podcast.com/newsletter.

And while you're there, if you've got a testimony or you've got a question

you'd like me to answer on the show, I'd love to hear from you on this.

And just remember this, my final encouragement for today, you've got this.

Just take that first step and just take one step at a time.

And as I always end the show, I wanna encourage you to stay financially

savvy and let's break the cycle of financial shame together.

So God bless you today.