The Sugar Daddy Podcast
Ready to normalize talking about money? Then welcome to The Sugar Daddy Podcast. Every episode will get you one step closer to your financial goals. Whether that is learning how to invest, budget, save, retire early or talk about money with your partner, Jess & Brandon have you covered in a way that's easy to understand, and easy to implement. Tune in as they demystify the realm of dollars, so it all makes cents, while giving you a glimpse into their relationship with money and each other.
Brandon is an award-winning, licensed financial planner, and owner of Oak City Financial, with over a decade of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the United States.
New episodes published every Wednesday.
The Sugar Daddy Podcast
117: The 2025 Financial Audit You Can’t Afford to Skip (Before It’s Too Late)
Before you set another New Year’s resolution or budget goal, hit pause and reflect. In this episode, Jessica and Brandon walk you through the exact steps to do a personal money audit that sets you up to win in 2026. Whether you're feeling behind or just want a clearer plan, this episode is your financial reset.
We cover:
- How to review your income, expenses, debt, and savings from 2025
- The 6 key money numbers you need to know
- Tools and automations that make your financial life easier
- How to set smarter, more realistic financial goals for the new year
This is the year you stop winging it and start making your money work for you.
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Money, relationships, and the mindset to master both. Hosted by financial advisor Brandon and his wife Jessica, The Sugar Daddy Podcast breaks down how to build wealth, unpack old money beliefs, and have real conversations about love and finances. Our mission? To help couples and individuals grow rich in every sense of the word: emotionally, relationally and financially.
If your money could talk, would it say you crushed it this year or you just barely survived? As we wrap up the year, it's the perfect time to hit pause and reflect on your financial wins, your money mistakes, and everything in between. In this episode, we're doing a full end-of-year financial review so you can stop winging it and start building a money game plan that actually works. We'll break down what you should be looking at, how to assess your progress, and exactly how to set smarter financial goals for the new year. Whether you're trying to get out of debt, grow your income, or just stop feeling broke after payday, this episode is your reset button. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_02:Sugar Teddy Podcast, yo. Learn how to make them pockets grow. Financial freedoms where we grow. Smart investments, money flow.
SPEAKER_00:Hey babe, what are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_01:Today we are talking about reflecting on our 2025 and setting up our 2026.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, this is going to be your end of year review for your money. So talking about all the things that went on that were either good, bad, maybe need improvement, or things that are good and you want to keep continuing to do that you did in 2025 going into 2026.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and we do this every year. So you can listen to this episode, you can listen to last year's episode, you can listen to the one before that. We are going to say almost the same thing because what you should be doing to reflect at the end of every year is not going to change from year to year.
SPEAKER_00:Like I mean, some those things can change as far as what you were trying to accomplish, as far as goals and see how that goes. And you'll also be in a different financial place. Yeah, a lot of the things that you're assessing are going to be the same, but you could also be adding some new things to the, you know, sure that you're going to look back on.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, all I'm saying is the foundational items are not going to change, right? Like how much did you spend? How much did you save? How much did you invest? What did your investments do? What would you like to do more of next year? What do you want to do less of? I mean, those are the foundational things that I think of, right?
SPEAKER_00:I would say that would be a common theme year to year as far as things that you're keeping an eye on and looking back on and seeing how you did.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. All right. So let's get into it. Where do we start?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the first thing you obviously want to do is you want to do a look back on your income. Um, I think one of the biggest things you need to keep track of is how much money you had coming for the year. And is there a possibility of you maybe increasing that going into the new year? I think all of us would like to make more money if possible, too, depending on what it you know entails. But the idea here is that one of the things you really want to focus on too is especially in the the age range that we're at right now, what's maximizing your income? Because all the bonuses and everything that you have are gonna be based off your income. So the higher your income is, those percentages is just gonna increase even more.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. One thing that I'm doing to hopefully increase my income is I just wrapped up a PMP boot camp. We are gonna do a separate episode on that um because I think it's worth talking about. But the PMP, the um professional um project management certif certification. Wow, see that boot camp has taken me out. I'm tired. Um it's one of those certifications that really people are looking for. And so going into the next year, um, you know, I'm always thinking about what what skills do I want to enhance? What do I want to be working on? I've kept saying it, I've got like 10 good years of corporate in me. Y'all got y'all got me for 10 more years. You get me for another decade, and then I'm out. Like that is my goal. So, you know, I'm doing things now to think about how I can increase um my income. And fun fact, as we reflect on this year, a PMP term, which I'm sure lots of people use in their business, is called a retrospective.
SPEAKER_00:Learning not new things.
SPEAKER_01:No. Okay. All right, we can keep going.
SPEAKER_00:But the idea here is that, like I said, you're looking on the income that you had coming in. And in relation to some of your goals, do you think maybe you need more money? Now, one of the things here is in the reflection is that always yes. One of the things here, too, is that, you know, going into the new year, is there possibly anything that's gonna change in regards to your income? You know, for example, we've had episodes where maybe you're getting ready to welcome a new baby, and you we've decided that maybe one of the parents are gonna be a stay-at-home parent and that's gonna make a change in your income. So these are the things that you want to reflect on and think about and make a plan as far as what did we do well? What are some things that we can improve on and put a plan in place moving forward into the new year with that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Daycare, maybe you had a child that was at home and now they're gonna be going to daycare. Are you moving in an elderly parent? I mean, so many things. And even, hey Well, that's just the income.
SPEAKER_00:So the next part would be expensive.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, okay. So what you were talking about, you were moving right into the next part as far as because that's all we do is expend, like the money just goes out.
SPEAKER_00:You want to do a spending breakdown of what you spent last year and what you spent it on. Now, one of the easiest ways to do that is by using um a type of budgeting software such as Monarch Money. All right. Shout out to Monarch. It makes it so easy for you because what it allows you to do is that you're allowed to use their account aggregator, which means that you can connect all your various accounts, your bank accounts, your investment accounts, your credit card, all those things, and you can see all that information in one place. And then it attracts your spending over time. So all you literally have to do is, you know, hop into the software and it'll show you month by month, you know, how much income you had coming in, how much expenses, and then the breakdown of where the income was coming from if you have multiple streams of income, but then it also shows you the different expense categories as well. So the biggest thing you want to do here is you want to take a look at between, like, you know, your lifestyle spending versus your fixed costs, you know, things that you need to have, your rent, mortgage, utilities, food, stuff of that nature, and how much did that, you know, equate to over the course of the past year in relation to your lifestyle spending, you know, things that are maybe a little bit more on the one side. Because the biggest thing we want to see here is that are we spending too much? Is there something we can do better in regards to reducing some of our frivolous spending where it can actually be more beneficial to allocate that towards maybe your emergency fund or your investment accounts?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you know, I like to offset all of the mundane spending on all of the things that we have to spend money on with the fun things, which are planning for trips.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So those are things that you want to to work in and budget for as well as you're planning for what next year can look like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because this is all about seeing, you know, how the past year you've done and are there any changes you can make to improve going into the new year? Because we're all about improving and, you know, this is not to shame anybody in regards to like if you look at your 2025 and you haven't done a lot of the things that you wish you would have done, this is uh an opportunity for you to have some reflection and retrospect. And like I said, see the errors of where they occurred and put a plan in place so that you can do better going to the new year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But the the most important thing is here, and I think this is a common theme, not only with your clients, but even the friends that I talk to about their finances, it's the visibility.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:You can't measure what you don't manage, right? And if money is just going out, you have no idea where it's going, you're a high earner, and we've had this whole episode, right? You're a high earner and you still feel broke or you still feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck. Where is your money going? And when you actually start tracking it, you will find, oh, I actually do eat out way more than I thought, you know, or oh, that Amazon cart, you know, maybe I didn't need to hit, you know, add to cart on that. And we all do it. I mean, there are definitely times where those Amazon boxes are come into the house. And a lot of times it is stuff for the kids or for the house. But even then, yeah. Did I need it? Could I have gotten it from a thrift store? You know, things like that. And so it adds up quickly. And if you're not looking at it, if you do not have the visibility, you're never going to get a handle on your finances. And that's just the bottom line. And if you're scared to look at it, that's even bigger problem. That that's a whole nother that's a whole nother episode. And we've done that episode as well.
SPEAKER_00:Um Yeah, the key part is here is having a system in place. And utilizing technology is going to be the easiest way to be able to have that visibility and accountability of where where your money is going while also not wasting so much time on doing it.
SPEAKER_01:Because I set up our let me just interject. I set up our monarch in bed one night in 15 minutes. It was it was probably less than 15 minutes because you already have all the apps on your phone, right? It wasn't even like I had to go get my wallet and type in. No, it was literally like, where do you bank? Okay, JP Morgan. Okay, where's your savings? Okay, here. Okay, where's where's your 401k? I mean, you're literally, you already have the apps on your phone. Like, did you have to do a little authentication and all the security stuff? Yes. But 15 minutes, y'all, and everything, every place that we have money, boom, it's there. It's on a beautiful dashboard.
SPEAKER_00:And it goes back several months. So it's not just like, oh, you um, you know, set it up today and it's only taking transactions from today moving forward. I think it goes, I mean, I it goes back at least a year.
SPEAKER_01:It it's pretty significant. And then, you know, you can add in your home value. That'll make, you know, everything look a look a little better. Cause at one point I was like, what's happening? And then I added in our home value.
SPEAKER_00:And I was like, oh, yeah, you put our mortgage in, but not the actual.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I only put in the expense, but not that it's also an asset. So anyway, um, so for those of you, I'm thinking like the busy moms, right? Who are like, I'm gonna be ha be the one who has to do this. It will not take long. When you're sitting in the car line waiting for the kids, do five accounts. Like when you're at the dentist waiting for the kids, do five more accounts. Like make it a priority to get this visibility because it really is a game changer.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. So with that, like I said, we uh we'll link it in the show notes show notes. We have a um referral code. There we go. A referral code that'll get you 50% off for your first year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's worth it. It's worth it. And once you see it and you're like, oh, this is so nice, and then having the money meetings, having the conversations with your partner is much easier because you can just pull up the app or you can pull it up on your computer and you're looking at the same thing. You're working off of the same document, you know?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, like literally it puts there and you know, easy for you to see, income for the month shows you how much income you came in. And this nice thing is that it's after tax. And then you have expenses for the month. Did you have more income come in than expenses? Makes your life a lot easier. But uh moving into the next category, this is where you want to also do a debt check-in. So any debts that you have, you want to check on the progress that you're making towards paying that off. You know, whether that's student loan, personal loan, car loan, um, credit card debt, anything of that nature. You want to take a look at, you know, one, how has those payments been going over the past year? Is there any additional money that you could actually allocate towards paying off some of those debts sooner going to the new year? And you want to put a plan in place. Um, I think we've had we've had episodes in the past talking about how there are debt calculators out there that you could put in your, you know, the balance of your debt, the interest rate on that debt, and your payments, and it'll show you exactly when you would actually pay that off. And you can also add on there, like if you were to add an additional$50 or so to the debt that you were paying as far as the minimum, it'll show you much how much faster you would actually pay that debt off. And I think that's a really big part in having an end goal to these debts. So any debts that you have, using a calculator to know that, hey, if I'm paying this amount, this is when it's going to be done. That's gonna also help with that motivation aspect.
SPEAKER_01:Again, that's visibility, right? That's understanding what where do I have these debts and what's my plan? So if you're new to the show, welcome. We are not debt free. That's not our goal. That's never something that we've claimed. We have a mortgage, we have car payments, we have um a credit card that has a balance that has a 0%. Like those being debt free is not something that we are about, but we talk about our debts, we have a plan for our debts, we reassess our debts, and we try to use debt strategically, right? Um and so avoiding it is not the answer. Not making a plan and again, understanding the amount of people who don't know the interest on their credit cards. That's a problem. If you have little balances here and there and you're thinking, well, it's not that much, it's only 500, it's only 400, it's only a thousand. Ooh, especially all those store credit cards. Please go and look at, we don't have any store credit cards, but those store credit cards, I'm looking at, you know, the Kohl's, the old navies, the Victoria's Secrets, those things are gonna be pushing 30 plus percent. So if you are carrying a balance on there, this is why you're gonna be paying month over month. And you're like, wait, I keep paying on it, but I can't pay it off. This is why. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that debt calculator will help you know exactly if you're paying this amount, how quickly that would pay that off. And it allows you to see if you were to just add a little bit more, how much sooner that debt could be eliminated.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, exactly. So visibility is key. You can't manage and measure, measure, but you can't manage. Whatever the saying is, I need more coffee. Y'all know what I'm trying to say. If you don't look at it, if you are not aware, it's not gonna go anywhere and you can't make a plan. So you have to have visibility first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00:All right. So after that, moving into savings and investments, you want to look back over the course of the past year. What was your overall savings rate? And by that I mean how much did you save percentage-wise of your income for the given year? So that can be money that's gonna be going into, you know, your 401k plan, emergency fund, other investment accounts. You want to take um, you want to get an idea of what that was. And once again, with Monarch Money, it can help you really easily keep track of that. Now, you wanna, if you don't have a fully funded um emergency fund, how close are you to funding that? You know, and that simply could be a math breakdown. If you have a certain amount and you're trying to hit a goal, you're contributing a certain amount each month, you should be able to know exactly how many months it would take for you to get there. Now, as far as taking a look at, you know, your 401k plan, did you max out your 401k 401k plan? If you didn't, do you think that there's a possibility for you to do that going into 2020, 2026? Um, were there any you know contributions to a Roth IRA, a traditional IRA, or just another type of brokerage account? Also including your 529 plans, uh my accounts for your kids. How much were you putting to these accounts? How successful were you? And the idea here is you want to set a goal moving forward as well.
SPEAKER_01:I think one uh key call out here for both savings and investing is to automate. And we've said this on every other episode. I would not be a natural saver. I would not consider myself a saver. I have to automate everything. And I am so grateful when I look at, you know, my Roth balance, my 401k balance. I am always so glad that that is automated because otherwise it would be at zero. But it's not because it automatically goes in there. And that is how you build wealth. That is how you build your emergency fund. Can I tell the really funny story about our emergency fund?
SPEAKER_00:Real quick for what you were just saying about the automation. For some people out there who are self-employed and you have fluctuations from month to month with how much you have coming in, I understand that it makes it very hard to automate everything. Um well, what you can do from a savings standpoint is that you can automate lower.
SPEAKER_01:The minimum. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So for example, well, what I'm saying is from like from a savings standpoint, if you're contributing to an IRA, um, if you know that you can contribute, you know,$400 comfortably,$100, then maybe you lower to$200 as the automation. And you do have to have the discipline that if you have a month that's fine, then you could put that additional amount in. Because like I said, I've worked with people who have that fluctuation and then they feel a little, you know, um, worried about doing that automation.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Okay. Um, so Brandon and I have little money meetings all the time. We need to have a dedicated one, which I know we're planning for. But because we talk about money all the time and we're weird like that, we'll just be in the car driving and whoever's not driving will pull up whatever account and we'll be looking at stuff and you know, we'll just like reassess something really quickly. So I don't remember where we were going, but we were looking at one of our savings accounts. And do you remember? You know what story I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_00:I will I'll see if if you keep going.
SPEAKER_01:I said I was like, well, I think there's this amount of money in there. And you were like, actually, it's this amount of money, and it was$18,000 higher than it should have been. And I was like, Oh my gosh, we like we've been doing so well with like our automations. I had I was like$18,000. That's incredible. So we ended up doing some digging. Y'all, why did Brandon's mama transfer money into our savings account? I think that was our ally account.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So like my mom had like our ally account as one of her like And I don't know why.
SPEAKER_01:I still don't understand why.
SPEAKER_00:Because of something with in regards to uh sending money to me or something of her nature, which is why she had it saved. And she didn't properly label them as my as our ally saving account hers. And so she she went ahead and trans thought so she was transferring the money to herself and transferred into our account.
SPEAKER_01:So we had this extra$18,000 sitting there.
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, I know that like I can just like anybody else. Sometimes you have little errors where you didn't necessarily keep track of things as close as you would like to. Happens to all of us, even me and you know, and Jess. But I was like, there's no way I missed that. Like right.
SPEAKER_01:I was like, oh, you've been doing really well with like putting money aside. And so, anyways, that was um we had like a super high high and then like a low, low afterwards when we were like, oh, well, let's deduct that eight thousand eighteen thousand dollars. I did say though, if she does make that mistake again, that money's ours. Like you need to unlink, label whatever you need to do because the next time it hits our account, I'm moving it right back out into a different account and it's ours. But again, you have to, you know, you have to assess things and uh you have to reevaluate and figure, figure things out on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_00:So after taking a look at your savings and investments, you want to honestly reflect on some of your money wins and the lessons that you learned over the past year. Um, I think too often we're always worried about the next thing. And we don't sometimes take a moment to enjoy those small wins or successes that we have. And I think that's really important, especially when it comes to your finances, because you're not gonna always have them. That's you know, you're gonna have things that happen no matter how much you plan, there are gonna be things that you didn't um account for happening happening. So definitely, you know, enjoy those ones that you've had. And then also, you know, as far as out of the things that went right, what are some of the things that maybe didn't go as well as you would like? What are some of the habits or decisions that, you know, over the past year that held you back? What could you, you know, what were those and how could you potentially avoid them?
SPEAKER_01:I think what you said about celebrating the wins, even if they s they feel small, right? Instead of saying, Well, I only saved. X amount of dollars, change that to I was able to save X amount of dollars. Like even if you didn't hit a goal, maybe you hadn't even set a goal, anything saved is better than nothing saved. Oh, 100%. If you invested, if you got your 401k match at work, if you um, you know, opened a 529 plan for one of your children or your children, like those are important and incremental steps to building wealth, to building your portfolio, to being financially responsible. Celebrate those things, you know. Like they're, I mean, know better, do better. You can't do it all at once. So make sure that you give yourself some grace and that you celebrate and tap yourself, you know, pat yourself on the back for doing the things.
SPEAKER_00:You took action.
SPEAKER_01:You took action, and that's so important.
SPEAKER_00:Many people avoid that first step of taking action. Exactly. So just simply taking that first step of actually doing something is huge because the majority of people don't even do that.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Yeah. So don't focus on what you didn't do, celebrate what you did accomplish.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we we do want to take account of what we didn't do. Yes. But we don't want to dwell on.
SPEAKER_01:We're not gonna dwell. Yeah. We're not gonna let that derail us from moving forward.
SPEAKER_00:Realize that there's things that you didn't do and then move on.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_00:All right.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:So with that, you know, as far as a 2025 look back, now we're gonna move into the forecasting forward. You do want to prep for the new year coming up. So, first thing I always say everything starts with is what are your actual goals? So you do need to set your goals for 2026 as far as what you want to accomplish, because everything from a planning standpoint is gonna be based on your individual goals and what you as an individual want to accomplish for that year.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You, you as an individual, and if you're in a partnership as a team or a couple.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, definitely, because you're gonna have your individual goals. Yep. You want to have your group goals. So, you know, if um you didn't quite make as much as you wanted to last year from an income standpoint, what is your goal for 2026? What are you gonna do to help, you know, increase that amount of money that you have coming in? Um, if you didn't quite save as much as you wanted to or invest as much as you wanted to, what changes are you gonna make? Like are you gonna maybe, for example, like the last year, maybe you weren't an automator? Maybe this year you want to go ahead and automate your savings so that you ensure that it happens, automate your investing into you know certain accounts.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, if you were, you know, had debt that you didn't quite pay off and you didn't use that debt calculator. Maybe use that debt calculator now to know, hey, if I'm paying this amount, then I know that I'll pay it off by this date. Or if I add a little extra bit more, I could pay it off sooner. So this is what you want to do. You want to set these new financial goals going into 2026.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, absolutely. And one thing that we've talked about previously too is look at what your um what your employer allows. You know, most of us get a direct deposit paycheck, but a lot of times you can have multiple accounts that money goes into. So even if you set up a savings account to link to your direct deposit, you can have$20 out of your paycheck go into that savings account. High yield, please, high yield savings account. Um, but again, if you don't see it, you're probably not going to miss it, you know? So again, know who you are as a person. And if you know that you're gonna pay yourself last, try to flip that. Pay yourself first. Remember, that's what the wealthy do. They pay themselves first in their savings and their investments. Um, and and do that. Figure out a way to do that, even if it's$20.$20 is better than zero dollars.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and also at this point in time is also with the whole new goal setting for 2026, is also seeing if you need to make some changes to your mindset. Because a lot of this stuff really starts with your mindset. How do you actually view your finances? Is that a positive relationship, a negative relationship, or just an avoidance in general? Because everything when it comes to having the proper outcome that you would want to have really starts with your mindset. So if maybe you weren't in quite the right mindset in 2025, maybe what are some of the things that you need to do and to change that for 2026? You know, we have a dream framework that really helps out with the having those conversations from a mindset standpoint with your partner. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And that's, I mean, not this is not a financial goal, but that's a big goal for us, is we really want to start building community around dream because we know it's a powerful framework. We know it works. And we want to make sure that we are helping and empowering other people to have better money conversations, to have dinner table conversations around finances and goals and what's working, what's not, and just to make it a normal conversation, right? Especially for those of us who have kids normalizing the conversation so that they're learning through osmosis. Ooh, that is um another PMP term, osmostic communication. And it's literally like absorbing things in your environment by just like listening. It's like ear hustling.
SPEAKER_00:That's what I used to tell my teachers when I was in high school and I was sleeping class.
SPEAKER_01:That you're osmostic communication.
SPEAKER_00:I'm learning. I didn't use that word specifically. I use osmosis. I did the word osmosis from science. So I used to say I'm absorbing it via osmosis.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and you know, we say it jokingly, right? But like literally osmostic communication.
SPEAKER_00:Now, these were classes that I was getting A's in that I was falling asleep in.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I was a good student still.
SPEAKER_01:Um okay, let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00:So obviously with setting the new goals, you also want to do a budget reset if that's necessary. All right.
SPEAKER_01:Especially with these prices. Everybody needs to be doing a budget reset.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. That's exactly where I was going to lead to that, you know, especially with inflation, um, cost of everything just increasing.
SPEAKER_01:Our healthcare premiums went up 17%. If you didn't listen to that episode, you can go listen to that one.
SPEAKER_00:It's honestly like you're just gonna have to do a complete budget reset because you're gonna have to take a look at, like I said, even though even if you hit your budget last year, as far as everything that you're doing, you do want to do a reassessment and make sure that with the increased cost of things, does that budget still work? Are there gonna be any adjustments that you need to make so that you are successful in 2026?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's always just a good thing to keep be aware of. Um, even the wealthy, the wealthy are aware. Like you they you think like, oh, they have a lot of money, they're not thinking about it. No, they know where their money's going because that's one of the reasons why they became wealthy and they stay wealthy. They know where their money is going.
SPEAKER_01:They track it, they look at it, they assess it, then they make changes to it. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Also, sorry, were you gonna say something? No. I'm saying also with looking forward, you know, we're coming to the year run for 2025. Also, you guys use some tax prep. It's not fun. Uh, my little sidebar rant is I don't understand if you're, you know, if you're a W-2 um employee why you have to file taxes to the government, if you know how much I owe you, just tell me.
SPEAKER_01:Just tell me.
SPEAKER_00:But, anyways, you do have to do test some tax prep. So making sure that, like, you know, one, are you gonna do your tax to yourself? Because if not, you better get somebody, you know, establish a relationship with them because all the CPAs and enrolled agents and all everything like that, they're busy now. So make sure you do a plan for that. Um, also make sure that you're starting to gather all the necessary tax documents that you have. So um, outside of just, you know, if you're a W2 employee, outside of that, you know, making sure that if you have any type of investment accounts that require any type of tax document documentation with that, making sure that you have all that ready to go as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, be organized.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Get organized, be organized. Like find a folder, write taxes 2025, and put all the receipts in there.
SPEAKER_00:And I I always say to people that if you're one of those people that you don't like doing it, just have somebody else do it. Build that into your budget.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know anybody who likes doing their taxes?
SPEAKER_00:There are some weird people out there.
SPEAKER_01:Besides actual CPAs.
SPEAKER_00:I've come across some. Uh some analytical people like to, you know, be on top and do their own taxes.
SPEAKER_01:That's that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I don't yuck anybody else's yum when it comes to um next, we're gonna audit subscriptions and expenses.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So the biggest thing here is that you want to eliminate any waste. Was there something that you were used that you thought you were using in 2025, but it turns out you weren't using? Get rid of it because that money could be better utilized someplace else. And I'm not even necessarily saying that money could be better utilized going into savings or an investment account. It could be better utilized on a lifestyle purchase that you'll actually use.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's and that's especially if you're in a partnership. Like, hey, are we both accidentally paying for Spotify? Are we both like Brandon and I have been talking about this for months? I'm I'm just gonna out us right here. We both are paying for a Canva subscription. Y'all, that does not make sense. First of all, our Canvas stuff should be together because we're using it for the podcast. So, like, we are literally, it's dumb. We need to do our own audit because we've been saying it. We are aware of it. Now we need to actually like figure out does it make sense for him to keep his and me move my stuff? Like, we need to just figure it out.
SPEAKER_00:Nobody's perfect. No, we all have things that we can improve upon.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Y'all will never hear us say that we are perfect. It's that does not exist.
SPEAKER_00:That's I don't aspire to be perfect either.
SPEAKER_01:So no, no. But like that's that's the stuff that you know, why are we paying for this subscription and that subscription? When was the last time you watch something on Apple TV? If you're not watching something on there, cancel it. Like you can always resubscribe. Get rid of those subscriptions and actually.
SPEAKER_00:Like I know, you know, there's several times where like you go to cancel something, like, oh, well, we'll give it to you for half off now.
SPEAKER_01:Serious, serious X XM is who uses Serious XM anymore? A lot of people. Um, it they listen, if you tell them that you can't afford it and you want to cancel, you will walk out of there with a$2.99 monthly subscription.
SPEAKER_00:That's funny though, because uh with the Sirius XM little sidebar, my dad was talking about how he thinks that they charge him more because he has Mercedes in comparison to uh his uh uh his partner he's been with for a long time, Kelly, who has a Kia.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, well, that could be part of that dynamic pricing that is starting to happen.
SPEAKER_00:He's like, I swear, like he's like the pricing that she gets, I never know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, he needs to call.
SPEAKER_00:He said he has.
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. Well, he's gonna get a new car soon. So let's see what his pricing is then. Yeah. So listen, know what your subscriptions are, know what your recurring payments are, figure out what you need, what you don't need, what are you using, what are you not using. And you'd be surprised. I mean, I'm not saying, you know, it's gonna make you a millionaire, but you could put easily a hundred dollars back in your pocket a month.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I said, I will take that all day. I I personally very much dislike wasting money. So, like sometimes if I do something where like it ends up wasting money, I'm like, oh, even if it's not a lot, that's like, I don't know, just something that irks me about myself sometimes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, even yeah, I mean, I it took me far too long to cancel my gym membership when I literally was like barely able to move or walk around the block. I was clearly not going to the gym. And it in my head, I was like, oh, it's what what was it,$25? But that's$25 wasted and life is expensive and we do not have the money to waste.
SPEAKER_00:So the last thing as far as the uh prepping and looking forward for 2026 is plan your automations. We kind of, you know, touched on that when it comes to um some aspects of the uh new goals, but anything that you can automate, it just makes your life so much easier because it really helps you reduce uh decision fatigue. Like we have so many decisions on a daily basis that we have to make. So if there's anything that you can do to reduce that, it's going to yield a much better outcome overall.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's also going to help mitigate risk, another PMP situation, um, which is oh, I forgot to pay that bill. Oh, that bill slipped underneath the car seat, and you know, I forgot to pay it. Or now you have a late payment. Now you need to call somebody to try to get the late payment. I mean, it's just like that that constant revolving door. If you can automate it, automate it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't think there's a single bill that we have that's not automated.
SPEAKER_01:I know that I like other ones that I think yes, are trash and recycling. And you know what's funny? I just paid it yesterday. I pay that on Cash App. Isn't that weird?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Cash App. He takes Cash App, Venmo. I don't even know.
SPEAKER_00:But that one can't be automated, can it?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if you can automate things on Cash App.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. So like everything that we can everything that we can automate, we have that automated from a bill standpoint.
SPEAKER_01:That is that is the only one. And then aside from like medical bills that come on come in or something, but yeah, everything else. And, you know, this is not a credit card points and miles uh conversation today, but the bills that we can put on our credit cards, we do. Because if I'm gonna have to pay that bill anyways, I might as well get something for it. And I put it on that Capital One venture card, two times the points, and we use those points for what we like best, which is travel. So again, we try to maximize, you're gonna spend the money anyway. So get your points and miles if you can, you know?
SPEAKER_00:All right. So now that you've kind of taken a look in regards to forecasting forward as far as what you want to do going into the new year, what are some of like, you know, the tips and tools that you can actually utilize to make it easier for you in the new year? So, like we said, one of the things that we've talked about through this episode numerous times is monarch money, as far as using a budgeting tool that provides a lot more visibility for, you know, especially if you're married in a partnership, provides a visibility that often can sometimes be lacking when it comes to merging finances.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, absolutely. And we'll again put that link in the show notes. Um, one thing that I love that we do, and even then, that's something you have to update, you have to look at it, you have to keep it current, but organizing our financial documents, right? And having we have shared Google documents that we have and that the people in our life that need to have access have access to. Um, and it it, you know, it's easy to update, it's easy to share.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I feel so much better knowing that we both have access to our important documents in an easy to access manner.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So to make it easy for people, like um we have a Google Doc that has like, you know, where are our bank accounts? How many do we have at that given bank? You know, how where are our investment accounts? How many accounts do we have? Our life insurance, where it's at. Everything from a financial standpoint has all that information. So God forbid something happens to the both of us. The people that wouldn't need that information have access to it, um, even have um linked there is a um a digital copy of our uh will and trust so that they have that access to information. And it makes it so much easier. You know, God forbid that happens in that terrible time period, having to deal with trying to find all this stuff. We have it very much easily organized and we update it and it automatically, you know, sends out in regards to the Google Doc.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I've been updating um the portion of our Google Doc of like, you know, it's from our When I Die guide, um, which we'll go ahead and link it. It's a free 17-page guide that we put together of these important documents that you you definitely want to look at them at least once a year. I would say twice because things change, you know, frequently. But I've started adding things just, you know, when I'm thinking about it. I added, you know, what picture I would want used for my obituary.
SPEAKER_00:I've yeah, you start to find, but the thing is in Forcing, we have you have, we're at the age where you have friends that go through all these various things and you know, these things come up that I wouldn't have thought of because I'd never experienced them. But then we have someone that we know who has and they bring them up.
SPEAKER_01:I have um a quote that I would like.
SPEAKER_00:Um I haven't done any of that.
SPEAKER_01:That's okay. I um I put what I want the menu to be. I want I put what I want people to wear.
SPEAKER_00:That's the difference between me and her.
SPEAKER_01:Like that's a what kind of music I want played, early 2000s, obviously. Um yeah, I've just listened I I want my people to be able to grieve me if something happens. And I don't want you to think about, well, what would Jessica want? You know what I want? It's right here on this document, in in literal black and white. Like it literally says, like, I want my favorite food, Mexican sushi, pizza, charcuterie. The, you know, like I'm spelling it out. And I don't sit there and spend a ton of time, but like in the event that I have a few extra minutes or a flight is delayed or whatever, I'll just pop into that document and I'll be like, ooh, I forgot about this. Or if I see a quote that I really like, I'm like, oh, that would be beautiful at my funeral. Let me put that in there.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I know I'm a weirdo.
SPEAKER_00:Moving on.
SPEAKER_01:Moving on, moving right along.
SPEAKER_00:Um, also, too, if you have not, you know, in 2025, if you did not do, you know, your quarterly, maybe money dates, your money meetings with your partner, go ahead and schedule those. I would go ahead and get them on a calendar before because I think it's also easier to reschedule something than it is to initially schedule something.
SPEAKER_01:That's true. That's true. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so honestly, that's, you know, kind of the all the things that you need to really kind of think about from an overview standpoint when it comes to the 2025, 2025 review and then planning for an even more successful 2026.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, that was a lot. I feel like we gave y'all a lot. So let's do a quick recap. So the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna look back. This is that retrospective. Okay, we're gonna drop some PMP terms. You're gonna look at your income, you're gonna look at your spending, you're gonna look at where you are in your debt and make a plan. You're gonna use that calculator so that you can have a plan for how you're gonna pay that debt off. You're going to look at your savings and investments, you're going to make sure that that emergency fund is growing, that your retirement and brokerage accounts are being contributed to, that you're getting your employer match, et cetera. And then you're going to reflect on your money wins and your lessons learned because we want to, and actually, lessons learned is another PMP thing. You don't go into a project ever without lessons learned from previous projects. Because it just makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, like why start from scratch? You know? Then you're going to look at next year. You're going to like look forward. So you're going to set those financial goals. What do you want to accomplish in 2026? You're going to do a budget reset. Life is more expensive. The budget that you had in 2025, if you had one, is not going to work in 2026. So you need to reassess. You're going to look at that tax prep. If you don't want to do it, go ahead and get on somebody's list so that they can do it for you because we don't want to be late. We're going to audit those subscriptions and those expenses. We're going to eliminate waste. That's a lean six sigma term. We're going to renegotiate and upgrade some, you know, some of our bills, some of our accent essentials. And then we're going to plan for automation. So automate, automate, automate. That is the name of the game. And then last but not least, we are going to use the tools that are available to us, like account aggregators like Monarch. We're going to get organized. We're going to use, you know, maybe Google Docs, Dropbox, whatever it works for you to get those important documents in place for you and your family. And you're going to schedule those quarterly money dates. And if you're not in a partnership, you can have a money meeting by yourself, just to be very clear. We're not just doing them if we're in a partnership. You need to be having your own money date if you are solo doloring.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, schedule those reviews, put them on the calendar. Um, also, like I said, you know, we've mentioned that with those reviews, if you haven't, go ahead and find some form of an account aggregator. We recommend Monarch. There are other ones out there, but we find that Monarch um I think is often a little bit better than the other ones.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, if you used to use Mint, you will like Monarch.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I you know find some form of management when it comes to that stuff and set those dates as far as to do the reviews.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. All right, friends, uh, we are wrapping up 2025, heading into 2026. Hopefully, this has helped you. Share it with a friend. Let us know what you're going to be implementing. We are happy to be your accountability partners. And I don't know why we didn't say this, but if you know that you need support in 2026 because you need your hand held, you need the education, you just know that you cannot do it on your own. Guess what? Brandon can help you. Hello. We're really bad at like saying that. But at the very end of this episode, Brandon can help you. He can hold your hand. He can help educate you. He can look at those accounts. He can help you make the right decisions. He can make your budget work for you. He's not going to put you on a budget because that is not his job and you are a grown-ass adult. But he will help you look at your your money so that you can make your money work for you. Okay? So, boom, we're out. Thanks for listening. Don't forget, Benjamin Franklin said, an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. You just got paid. Until next time.
SPEAKER_02:Sugar Daddy podcast, yo. Learn how to make them pockets grow. Financial freedoms where we go. Smart investments, money flow.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for listening to today's episode. We are so glad to have you as part of our Sugar Daddy community. If you learned something today, please remember to subscribe, rate, review, and share this episode with your friends, family, and extended network. Don't forget to connect with us on social media at the Sugar Daddy Podcast. You can also email us your questions you want us to answer for our past the sugar segments at thesugardaddypodcast at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail through our Instagram.
SPEAKER_00:Our content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based upon your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a license professional in connection with or independently research and verify any information you find in our podcast and which you rely upon, whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise.
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