Blog

As a financial professional, I spend a lot of time with my clients working on finances and numbers. We focus on both the personal side of money as well as the business. You have to know what you need to make on the personal side in order to correctly pay yourself from the business side. In this video, I share my favorite features and benefits that the platform has making it very simple for you Read More

Goal planning can be tricky. I think most of us set goals based on past experience. But the most inspirational goals come from envisioning a better future that looks and feels different than our past. Stephen Covey explained this concept in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” with Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind. He states that this habit is based on “the ability to envision in your mind what Read More

As the founder of Dr. Budgets, you can safely assume I have a good handle on my spending. But, even I have blind spots when it comes to my household expenses. Amazon Prime was one of those blind spots. In early 2019 we canceled our Amazon Prime subscription, and we haven’t looked back. If you have Prime, you might be asking yourself “Why would you do that?!” The simple answer is that all clutter overwhelmed Read More

My life is built around systems… that’s just how I’m wired. For Dr. Budgets, I have systems for managing potential clients, new clients, and coaching clients. I also have financial systems around the money that flows in and out of the company. On the personal side, I have systems for tracking my time, loading the dishwasher, paying the bills, and automatically saving. Which brings me to the topic of this post… having a good personal Read More

I read a book last year that I may have changed my life. It is called “Simplicity Parenting” by Kim John Payne and Lisa Ross, and it’s sooooo good. The premise is that kids (and adults) are stressed out by having too many choices and too much stuff. Not to over-simplify it, but the authors suggest putting all of your kids’ toys in one place and getting rid of half of them. And then, get Read More

When starting to work with clients, the first thing we do together is look for easy ways to cut spending. Since I’ve been doing this for a long time, I can quickly identify a few things we can discuss with the potential to save hundreds or thousands of dollars per year with minimal impact on their lifestyle (or sometimes no impact at all!). One category that fits into this first round of discussion is the storage Read More

An emergency fund (or cash reserve fund) is important to your financial security. I would say paying off high-interest debt and building up an emergency fund are the foundation of your financial stability. This rings even more true during these unprecedented times. But, when should you tap into your emergency fund? What constitutes a financial emergency? I believe the list of actual financial emergencies is short. This would include unexpected life events such as losing Read More

Gina’s Background I consider myself to be an “elder Millennial.” I’m not quite Gen X and not really a Millennial. I’m happy to be referred to in that way, but that means we grew up with credit cards being peddled on college campuses (“Get a credit card, get a T-shirt!”). People our age had parents who talked to us about money, but they didn’t know that we were being marketed to so heavily by credit Read More