5 Steps to Make Your Daily Financial Plan

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Make your daily financial plan

Jim Rohn said, “Success is a few good habits repeated every day.’ Failure, then, is a few bad decisions repeated every day. The success of your short- and long-term financial plans is contingent on what you do every day. Here’s how to build a daily financial plan, and build it easier with the free 7-Step Credit Card Debt Slasher here.

Your daily financial plan fuels everything

Continuing our rock, pebbles, and sand analogy, it’s the “sand” that distracts most people. It’s that small stuff that adds little value and disproportionately wastes your time and money. When talking about y our long-term financial plan, we discussed how filling up your jar first with sand stops you from being able to add the important stuff – your “rocks” and “pebbles.”

By prioritizing and filling your jar first with rocks, then pebbles and then sand, you’re positioning yourself for financial success.

Your daily financial plan should support your short-term financial plan, and your short-term financial plan should support your long-term financial plan. That’s how it gets easier to reach those seemingly elusive goals. - John of Debt Free GuysClick To Tweet

As an example, David and I discussed our priorities thirteen years ago. Our sand was buying clothing and clubbing. When we wanted to buy a house, a rock, we couldn’t afford it. Over several weeks, we discussed our true financial and life goals.

Clothes and clubbing weren’t at the top of our lists, but they were consuming our lives. Most people can’t have it all, and we’re no exception. As David says, “If you can’t enjoy the big things in life, enjoy the small things. If, however, you enjoy the small things in life too much, you’ll never ever get to enjoy the big things.”

Once we learn what was important to us, we prioritize better.

Here are the six steps we used to create our daily financial plan (sand) that feeds into our short-term financial plan (pebbles) that then feeds into our long-term financial plan (rocks).

Hear how to build your daily financial plan:

5 steps to building your daily financial plan

1. Set a daily money chunking budget

Money chunking is breaking the amount of money allotted within each category of your budget into smaller pieces to then spread your allotted money within each category over longer periods of time – at least until your next payday

Have a daily plan. Break your bi-weekly or monthly budget into daily and weekly budgets by money chunking so your money lasts until your next paycheck.

If, one day, you plan to do nothing to save money, know what you will do so you aren’t tempted away from your do-nothing, spend-nothing day. Distractions and boredom lead to spending the money you’re trying to save.

2. Live on cash

People who use debit and credit cards spend 12% – 18% more respectively than people who use cash. The disparity only increases with new payment features like ApplePay.

Use only cash. Unless you have great willpower, credit and debit cards are misleading. Using cash to cover most of your expenses and storing it in designated envelopes will give you a daily count of how much cash you have.

If you “underspend” in a category during a period, put these savings towards the next period or towards your short-term or long-term financial goals.

3. Use FinTech

Make technology work for you by automating your bill payments, emergency savings, regular savings and investing. Have account statements emailed to you. Add text alerts to your credit and debit cards, and your checking and savings accounts.

Money apps are great tools to use for your daily money management. Use your bank and investment firm’s apps to stay on top of your spending, savings and investing goals. Apps such as YNAB, Qube and Mint are some of the best available for daily budgeting. Apps such as Personal Capital, Acorns and Front are great for investing.

Our favorite app for monitoring our credit scores is CreditWise.

4. Do something every day to learn more about money

You don’t have to read Barron’s every week. Sweet Mother Nature knows we don’t. Just know what’s going on in the financial world and how it affects you.

Don’t take Econ 500. Find money bloggers who speak to you and know at least as much about managing money as Paris Hilton knows about DJing.

Some of our favorite resources for money are debtfreeguys.com, the Queer Money® podcast and Debt Free Guys on YouTube. 😜 Some of our true favorite LGBTQ money content creators are listed here. Find whoever you connect with and learn, learn, learn.

Pay attention to the fluctuating prices of the products and services you buy, and adjust your budget accordingly.

5. Have fun!

Have fun! This is critically important because otherwise you’ll fail or lose interest daily financial plan.

Keep your eye on the prize and know that the success of your daily financial plan, will lead to the successes of your short-term and long-term financial plans.

For example, the closer we get to our savings goal for a vacation, the more excited we get. If the stock market isn’t going against us, it’s exciting to watch our retirement accounts grow. We have more working years ahead of us, but we can already see those daily strolls on the beach.

Enjoy it. Have fun. Don’t take it too seriously, and easily forgive your mistakes.

These are our tips for creating a daily financial plan. Combining these daily financial plan tips with our tips for short- and long-term financial planning provides you with a gives way to achieve financial success.

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Resources for your daily financial plan

Get more help for your short-term financial plan:

We’re David and John Auten-Schneider, the Debt Free Guys and hosts of the Queer Money® podcast. We help queer people (and allies) live fabulously not fabulously broke by helping them 1) pay off credit card debt, 2) become part- or full-time entrepreneurs and 3) save and invest for retirement.

Note: This article contains affiliate links, meaning we’ll receive payment at no cost to you if you buy through these links. We only recommend products we use or thoroughly vet and would recommend to our moms. Buying too many of these is how you live fabulously broke. To live fabulously with financial security, start here.

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