Mother's Day Money Hack

Does Mother’s Day mean you have gifts on your mind?

If you felt pain at the cash register in the flower shop or find yourself mentally preparing for the family brunch bill in your future, here’s a simple strategy that helps keep gifting joyful:

Use a gift fund. 

This concept is similar to escrowing your property taxes and insurance with your mortgage payment so you don’t get hit with a giant bill once per year. 

You save money specifically for gifts. Then when you buy a gift, you take the money out of that account.

Here's how to set up your fund, step by step.

✨Open a free bank account that you will deposit money in every week or month to cover future gifting. 

✨Estimate the number of gifting events you have per month. For most people, between birthdays and holidays, it’s at least one per month but may be many more. 

✨Estimate how much you spend per gift. Don't get stuck overcomplicating this! Just pick an average.

✨Multiply the number of events times how much you spend, and the result is your Baseline Estimate.

✨This part is really important: multiply that amount by 1.5 to get your Realistic Estimate (we all underestimate!). 

Now you know how much to put in your new account each month... if your income is steady.

But I can already hear those of you with commission based or seasonal businesses saying, 

"That doesn’t work for me! I've never had two months that are the same!" 

Don't worry, I’ve got you covered. 

You could reeeeeally benefit from this technique, you just need to front load your savings during your high income months.

Here's how you do that.

✨Determine your high income months. Let’s say you’re in the construction business in Minnesota. Your busiest months are probably May - September. 

✨Decide how many months you're going to save in. Maybe June, July and August feel most comfortable to you. That's 3 deposits. 

✨Take your Realistic Estimate (from the steps above) and multiply it by 12 to get an annual total. Then divide by 4 to get the 3 equal deposits for 3 months.

When you take advantage of June, July, and August and save for the next nine months, you'll avoid the stress and worry because the cost of all those gifts won't feel overwhelming.

I’ve personally used this strategy in many different ways over the past 15 years, and it is a game changer. 

Try it and let me know how it works for you!