What’s your day rate?

How much money do you need to survive a day? Not sure? Financial Fitness Coach, Chantel Chapman, has some tips and tricks to help you budget your money.

This week on the Kastor & Pollux blog, the adulting question comes from Alyssa Lau, owner of super cool minimalist fashion-line, New Classics Studio. She asks:

"Hey Chantel! Staying on budget is tough, especially when there is so much good food to buy. What are your favorite tips when it comes to budgeting? Do you use any phone apps or tools to help?"

Hey Alyssa! First.. I feeeel you girl. My guiltiest spend is on food. I buy ALL the food. Smaller cost items are usually the ones that get you. Often, you don’t put much thought into them on an individual level, but food steadily shrinks your bank account while your ass grows.

Another one that gets me is app purchases and subscriptions. For example, when people subscribe for things like music streaming apps, on-time payments are automatically set up. For that reason they can be suuuper easy to lose track of! I like to limit myself to 2 apps that I absolutely need and 2 apps that I really want – it adds up to about 40 bucks a month on average which I think is totally reasonable for anyone’s budget!

Image by Monica Moraru

Here are some of my personal budgeting tips:

• Know how much money you have coming in at the beginning of the month and make a plan for it. So simple but absolutely mandatory!

• Set a day rate playa: Calculate how much you spend on stuff that gets you through the day and don’t go over that rate. There is a golden rule to this though: don’t ever borrow from the future (duh). If you don’t spend it all in one day, you can carry forward that $$ and maybe F*CK UP SOME COMMAS! This method works so well that Mogo’s added a “Daily Spend” section on our MOGOCARD account.

Image by Monica Moraru

Not saying it’s healthy to make it rain at strip clubs, but going out for drinks on Friday shouldn’t leave you stressing about your funds on Monday.

• Give yourself some “RICK ROSS” money. Rick likes to BMF (Blow Money Fast), and sometimes so do I. To keep myself in control with my spending, I give myself some money that I can spend guilt-free each month. Ironically, the success to budgeting is to give yourself a little money each month to BMF. It’s like dieting: if you eliminate carbs, sugar, gluten and fat all at once, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to have a cheat day 7 days a week and start sweating when you see donuts.

It’s the same with budgeting — your Rick Ross money will let you satisfy your guilt-free spending in a controlled way and take away the urges of overspending because you’re not putting excessive restraints on yourself. I also separate my Rick Ross money from my chequing account that has my $$ for bills. If you can clearly see how much you have in your R&R account — you will know where you are at without “accidentally” dipping into the #adulting fund meant to pay your bills.

Image by Monica Moraru

My preferred method is to sit myself down, write out how much of a financial sh*thead I am on a day-to-day basis and create my monthly (or weekly for all you keeners) budget based on those numbers. Budgeting is not complicated, but if you need an outline there are a lot of great templates on the internet! Doing it old school makes you more mindful. Pairing this with smart tools like an account just for your spending and my tips above will keep you in shape.

Some of these tips that I’ve told you have conveniently been included in some way onto the MogoCard - it’s currently in Beta, so download our app, and get in line because you'll love it. You can load your daily budget onto it and it texts you every time you spend so you know how much money you have left. It’s the closest you can get to being treated like a child while being an adult.👊

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Chantel Chapman is Mogo's Financial Fitness Coach and Credit Score Expert. She teaches you how to be an adult, and is also the host of our Adulting 101 events. With over a decade’s experience as a mortgage broker, Chantel recognized a need for financial education with many of her first-time homebuyers, so she began creating custom content to help guide them. Chantel is the founder of Holler For Your Dollar, a consulting firm that jump-starts anyone who’s ready to dive into the world of Adulting or entrepreneurship. Her role at Mogo puts her skills to use creating and teaching digestible, educational financial literacy content geared to millennials and daring entrepreneurs.

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