April 9, 2025 • 12 mins
Money doesn’t manage itself—you do. And if you’re not intentional, it’s going to disappear faster than you think. But here’s the thing: being intentional with money isn’t about restriction—it’s about freedom.
In this episode, we’re talking about how to take control of your finances without feeling boxed in. You’ll learn:
✅ The difference between reactive and intentional money management
✅ Why every dollar in your business needs a job (and how to allocate revenue wisely)
✅ How budgeting can actually create more financial freedom, not less
✅ Simple systems to track spending and plan ahead without stress
✅ How to build a financial roadmap that supports your goals
If you want to grow your business and still pay yourself well, you have to be intentional with your money. Hit play now to learn how!
Resources & Links
Website: https://www.firestormfinance.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firestormfinance/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@firestormfinance?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-e-8796b6176/
Newsletter: https://firestormfinance.myflodesk.com/podcastnewsletter
1099 Decision Tree: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGdgjX_nR0/ymLV35UTG6TJfDrHQyTZgw/view?utm_content=DAGdgjX_nR0&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=hf2b858c341
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker (00:00):
Welcome to CreativeMind Smart Money, the podcast where
creativity and business smarts collide.
I'm your host, Samantha Eck,bookkeeper, business coach, and
your go to guide for building thecreative business of your dreams.
Whether it's mastering your money,streamlining your systems, or growing
your business, I'm here to shareinsights that empower you to thrive.
Plus, I'll be bringing in industryexperts to dive into all aspects
(00:22):
of entrepreneurship, so you canturn your passion into profit
without losing your creative spark.
Let's get started
Samantha (00:29):
You are listening to the Creative Mind Smart Mini podcast, and
today I wanna get into a topic thatis a little bit more conversational
and a little bit more personal.
And I wanna talk about gettingintentional with money.
A lot of the times on this podcast,I've talked about being very intentional
and mindful with your spending.
And we even had that episode a coupleweeks back where we talked about.
(00:54):
Investments and investingwith intentionality, but also
having those reflections.
And I'm a big person whothinks that you should be very
intentional with your money.
And a lot of people might think,okay, you know, I don't like that.
I just wanna spend my moneywilly-nilly, or I wanna have
the freedom to spend your money.
(01:15):
But being intentional with moneyisn't supposed to be restrictive
and it's not meant to be.
This sort of strict guidelinetelling you that you can't spend.
It's more just saying, I want mymoney to go here, and it's giving you
that intentionality and purpose sothat you're not spending your money
on things that might not serve you.
(01:36):
I. Because money doesn't magicallymanage itself, and if you're really
not intentional with it, it's gonnadisappear faster than you realize.
So small business owners need a planwhen it comes to their finances, whether
that's a really strict budget, whetherit's a flexible budget, whatever it is.
(02:00):
You need some sort of plan and Iam gonna get a little bit into some
budgeting topics today, such as YNAB.
And I'm actually going to create anepisode around this because I love
YNAB and I just thought about thatand I really need to talk about it.
And of course you guysknow that I'm getting more
conversational in these podcasts.
(02:20):
The more I do them, themore comfortable I feel and.
I just love everybody who's beentalking to me about how they're such a
big fan of the podcast and they reallyappreciate the podcast, and I just
love making this a resource for you.
So I do wanna remind you as well thatif you have a topic that you are so
(02:41):
excited to hear about or you havesomething that you're like, Samantha
hasn't touched on that yet, but I'mreally interested in knowing about it.
I do have a form in my description box youcan fill out and request a specific topic.
So there's a difference between beingreactive and being intentional with money.
If you are someone who has a $5,000in your business bank account.
(03:05):
You know, you have subscriptions comingout, so you make sure you have the money
for the subscriptions, but then whatever'sleft over, you pay yourself and then
you have still some money left over.
You're like, okay, I'm justgonna leave that in my bank.
Here's what this looks like, especiallyif you don't have some way of tracking
this or knowing where it's going.
(03:26):
You are going to be whatI like to call reactive.
Let's say you saw an ad for a new softwareand you get that shiny pen syndrome
that we've talked about before, and youimmediately react and purchase that.
If you don't know if that moneyis meant for subscriptions or for
something else, or you haven'ttechnically set it aside, you're being
(03:49):
very reactive with your money and youcould end up hurting yourself because.
A lot of us nowadays, we don't,we don't track our subscriptions.
We don't track that stuff.
But if you're being very intentionalwith it, maybe you do have $200 set
aside and you're like, Hey, I canafford $200 worth of random purchases
this month because maybe I saw a coursethat just, I absolutely needed it.
(04:10):
But for someone like me, I use YNAB,and I'm very intentional with my money.
When I put.
When it comes in.
So all of my money comes in on thefirst, and I've set it up this way
so that my cash flow is airtight.
Because a lot of the times, as serviceproviders will have cash flow coming
in on the fifth, on the 10th, onthe 15th, and it just causes us to
(04:32):
have these massive gaps in betweenour cash where we can cover things.
Whereas if I have all my money coming inon the first, I can appropriately plan
my entire month out and then say, okay.
This is where all my money is going.
This is what I have left over.
And that is called being intentional.
And within YNAB, I assign allof that money to its categories.
(04:54):
And this is where I'm kind of rolling intothis next topic that I wanna talk about.
Why every dollar needs a job.
So allocating revenue instead of justseeing what's left is so important.
And again, I wanna just mentionthat especially in this day and age
where a lot of us are so distracted,we have a DHD, we have, you know.
(05:15):
Neuro minds.
We have all those things goingon where our brains are just.
They short circuit because there's somuch going on that you really need to
think about allocating your money wiselybecause if you have a place where you can
see where everything is going and you knowthat you have extra money or you know that
you don't have extra money, you're goingto be less reactive and more intentional.
(05:38):
Like I said, if you only have$200 to make on random purchases.
You're going to be moreintentional about what you buy.
So if you see an ad for a courseand you're like, Hmm, that's a
little bit over my budget, you'renot going to react immediately.
And this is where we were talkingabout that reflection period and
looking at those investments.
This plays into that because if you'reintentional with your money, you're
(06:02):
going to reflect and be more intentionalabout what you're purchasing and less
emotional and reactive because you knowyou don't have the funds to get there.
Now there's often common money leaksthat we see ourselves having, again,
like subscriptions, tracking expenses,underpricing, and if you don't list these
(06:23):
out, you're never going to see them.
Now, of course, you can just lookin QuickBooks and say, okay, here's
what I have every month, and youcan use that to formulate a list.
But looking in QuickBooks is still beingreactive and not being intentional.
Whereas if you have a list andyou're like, okay, this month.
I have 12 subscriptionsthat I'm paying for.
(06:44):
I know they're coming out on this date,this date, this date, and this date.
That's $200 that I need to set aside.
Oh wait, this subscriptionI'm not using anymore.
I'm gonna cancel that so that I cansave myself that money this month.
That's where that intentionality comes in.
And we've talked about a lotof these different topics.
We've talked about subscriptions,we've talked about impulse PR spending.
(07:05):
We've talked about pricing, but we haven'ttalked about the intentionality behind it.
And that's why I'm so excited aboutthis topic is because it's one of the
things that I talked to my clientsabout being in intentional the most.
Because when you're intentionalwith your funds, everything kind
of comes into a full circle loop.
One of my talks that I talk aboutoften is financial goals, and I
(07:27):
always talk about setting certaingoals like a pay goal for yourself.
Because if you set up a pay goal,and then let's say you set up an
expense goal, you're like, I wannaspend 20% of my revenue on expenses,
but I want to keep 40% of my revenue.
You know that 60% of your revenueis already allocated, so that
60% is already put somewhere.
(07:48):
So now if you're like, okay,this is how much I need to make.
Let's just say it.
Throw a number out there.
Let's say it's 5,000.
Between paying yourself and expenses,you now know that in order to
have a little bit of a buffer,your pricing needs to be higher.
So this is where I'm saying likeall that comes into a full circle
moment where it all connects.
So when you have that financialroadmap, and I know that sounds.
(08:11):
So like goofy when you talk aboutit that way, the financial roadmap.
But when you set those goals,you track those expenses and
you plan for all of that stuff.
It is so powerful because it gives youthese key elements all over the place.
And I know that your brainmight not think like that.
Trust me.
Because again, with this, in thisday and age where we're distracted,
there are so many things going on.
(08:32):
We have a million differentthings running through our head.
That's where people like me come in tobe your partner and help you think in
different ways that actually matter.
So there are simple systemsthat build intentionality.
And if you're not someone who'slike, okay, I just wanna be reactive
with my money, I don't wanna trackit, I promise you, I promise you
(08:53):
that a budget is not restrictive.
I am not saying that every singledollar of yours needs to have.
In exact place it needs to be.
You can make a vague bucket of,Hey, this is random stuff I wanna
purchase, or Hey, I wanna purchasecoffee, or I wanna have a food budget.
That is totally okay because it, thepoint and purpose of this is for you to be
(09:17):
intentional and say, okay, you know what?
I don't wanna spend more than$300 on coffee this month.
I'm going to set up, a pocketin my budget for that so
that I can spend for that.
So.
Simple systems, again, are budgetingand one of my favorites to use is YNAB
and I'm now going to do an episodeon it, so keep an arrow for that.
It'll be, probably in thenext couple weeks as well.
(09:39):
So that we can get into that.
The next thing you can do is forecasting.
Forecasting is difficult becauseespecially if you have a fluctuating
income, it's very difficult toforecast because you don't know
if you're gonna make that moneynext month or if you're not gonna
make that money next month because.
Industries are so volatile,if you know what I mean.
Some one month you can have like 20 k,and the next month you can have $200.
(10:02):
So forecasting is very volatile.
There is a way to forecast, but most ofthe time the best forecast comes when
you have monthly recurring revenue.
So if you do have monthly recurringrevenue, it's easy to forecast, okay,
here's what I know I'm going to have,here's what I think I'm going to
have, and then like actually looking.
And then of course, intentionality comeswith looking at your numbers regularly.
(10:25):
I know I've talked about this a lot,but setting up a regular money date
and checking in with yourself and beingintentional with your money is going to
be so helpful because if you're like,Hey, I wanna be intentional and set aside
money for a bookkeeper, then it's goingto be better for you in the long run.
Because you're gonna actuallyknow that you wanna intentionally
(10:46):
set aside those funds.
This all kind of ties back intoa little bit of my faith as well.
You guys know I'm a Christian as well,and you don't need to be a Christian, but
this does tie back to that intentionalityand that point of stewarding your money
well, because when you steward yourmoney well, it kind of ends up giving
(11:09):
you space to grow and space to bloom.
Because like I said, if you have 60% whereyou are allocating that specifically for
expenses and preparing yourself, and thenthat other 40% you can reinvest back into
your business, you again, you can put itinto those random categories for things
like that, you can put it into a buffer.
(11:29):
You can build up the business ofyour dreams and the fin, the personal
lifestyle of your dreams if youjust be intentional with your money.
And again, I wanna remind you that beingintentional isn't about restriction.
It's about.
Freedom and making sure that yourbusiness supports the life that you want.
So I want to encourage you to starttracking and planning today because
(11:52):
those small steps will add up.
And if you're like, I'mcurious about this yNAB.
Samantha, make sure you hitsubscribe and leave a review.
And then of course share this witha friend because in a couple weeks
I'll come up with a come out withthat YNAB episode and we'll dive
into budgeting and all those things.
'cause I'm so excited.
YNAB is one of my favorite thingsand I actually help a couple clients
(12:13):
with personal budgeting as well tokind of get that into their game
plan because I just love YNAB andI love messing around in there.
So we'll deep dive into that later.
But as always, again.
I hope you have a wonderfulrest of your week.
I really appreciate you listening,and I love you guys so much for
(12:33):
sticking around with me and listeningto my conversational kind of
chatty rants and YNABpping all day.
But I wish you the best week ever.
We'll see you next week.
Farewell fellow travelers.
Welcome to CreativeMind Smart Money, the podcast where
creativity and business smarts collide.
I'm your host, Samantha Eck,bookkeeper, business coach, and
your go to guide for building thecreative business of your dreams.
Whether it's mastering your money,streamlining your systems, or growing
your business, I'm here to shareinsights that empower you to thrive.
Plus, I'll be bringing in industryexperts to dive into all aspects
(00:22):
of entrepreneurship, so you canturn your passion into profit
without losing your creative spark.
Let's get started
Samantha (00:29):
You are listening to the Creative Mind Smart Mini podcast, and
today I wanna get into a topic thatis a little bit more conversational
and a little bit more personal.
And I wanna talk about gettingintentional with money.
A lot of the times on this podcast,I've talked about being very intentional
and mindful with your spending.
And we even had that episode a coupleweeks back where we talked about.
(00:54):
Investments and investingwith intentionality, but also
having those reflections.
And I'm a big person whothinks that you should be very
intentional with your money.
And a lot of people might think,okay, you know, I don't like that.
I just wanna spend my moneywilly-nilly, or I wanna have
the freedom to spend your money.
(01:15):
But being intentional with moneyisn't supposed to be restrictive
and it's not meant to be.
This sort of strict guidelinetelling you that you can't spend.
It's more just saying, I want mymoney to go here, and it's giving you
that intentionality and purpose sothat you're not spending your money
on things that might not serve you.
(01:36):
I. Because money doesn't magicallymanage itself, and if you're really
not intentional with it, it's gonnadisappear faster than you realize.
So small business owners need a planwhen it comes to their finances, whether
that's a really strict budget, whetherit's a flexible budget, whatever it is.
(02:00):
You need some sort of plan and Iam gonna get a little bit into some
budgeting topics today, such as YNAB.
And I'm actually going to create anepisode around this because I love
YNAB and I just thought about thatand I really need to talk about it.
And of course you guysknow that I'm getting more
conversational in these podcasts.
(02:20):
The more I do them, themore comfortable I feel and.
I just love everybody who's beentalking to me about how they're such a
big fan of the podcast and they reallyappreciate the podcast, and I just
love making this a resource for you.
So I do wanna remind you as well thatif you have a topic that you are so
(02:41):
excited to hear about or you havesomething that you're like, Samantha
hasn't touched on that yet, but I'mreally interested in knowing about it.
I do have a form in my description box youcan fill out and request a specific topic.
So there's a difference between beingreactive and being intentional with money.
If you are someone who has a $5,000in your business bank account.
(03:05):
You know, you have subscriptions comingout, so you make sure you have the money
for the subscriptions, but then whatever'sleft over, you pay yourself and then
you have still some money left over.
You're like, okay, I'm justgonna leave that in my bank.
Here's what this looks like, especiallyif you don't have some way of tracking
this or knowing where it's going.
(03:26):
You are going to be whatI like to call reactive.
Let's say you saw an ad for a new softwareand you get that shiny pen syndrome
that we've talked about before, and youimmediately react and purchase that.
If you don't know if that moneyis meant for subscriptions or for
something else, or you haven'ttechnically set it aside, you're being
(03:49):
very reactive with your money and youcould end up hurting yourself because.
A lot of us nowadays, we don't,we don't track our subscriptions.
We don't track that stuff.
But if you're being very intentionalwith it, maybe you do have $200 set
aside and you're like, Hey, I canafford $200 worth of random purchases
this month because maybe I saw a coursethat just, I absolutely needed it.
(04:10):
But for someone like me, I use YNAB,and I'm very intentional with my money.
When I put.
When it comes in.
So all of my money comes in on thefirst, and I've set it up this way
so that my cash flow is airtight.
Because a lot of the times, as serviceproviders will have cash flow coming
in on the fifth, on the 10th, onthe 15th, and it just causes us to
(04:32):
have these massive gaps in betweenour cash where we can cover things.
Whereas if I have all my money coming inon the first, I can appropriately plan
my entire month out and then say, okay.
This is where all my money is going.
This is what I have left over.
And that is called being intentional.
And within YNAB, I assign allof that money to its categories.
(04:54):
And this is where I'm kind of rolling intothis next topic that I wanna talk about.
Why every dollar needs a job.
So allocating revenue instead of justseeing what's left is so important.
And again, I wanna just mentionthat especially in this day and age
where a lot of us are so distracted,we have a DHD, we have, you know.
(05:15):
Neuro minds.
We have all those things goingon where our brains are just.
They short circuit because there's somuch going on that you really need to
think about allocating your money wiselybecause if you have a place where you can
see where everything is going and you knowthat you have extra money or you know that
you don't have extra money, you're goingto be less reactive and more intentional.
(05:38):
Like I said, if you only have$200 to make on random purchases.
You're going to be moreintentional about what you buy.
So if you see an ad for a courseand you're like, Hmm, that's a
little bit over my budget, you'renot going to react immediately.
And this is where we were talkingabout that reflection period and
looking at those investments.
This plays into that because if you'reintentional with your money, you're
(06:02):
going to reflect and be more intentionalabout what you're purchasing and less
emotional and reactive because you knowyou don't have the funds to get there.
Now there's often common money leaksthat we see ourselves having, again,
like subscriptions, tracking expenses,underpricing, and if you don't list these
(06:23):
out, you're never going to see them.
Now, of course, you can just lookin QuickBooks and say, okay, here's
what I have every month, and youcan use that to formulate a list.
But looking in QuickBooks is still beingreactive and not being intentional.
Whereas if you have a list andyou're like, okay, this month.
I have 12 subscriptionsthat I'm paying for.
(06:44):
I know they're coming out on this date,this date, this date, and this date.
That's $200 that I need to set aside.
Oh wait, this subscriptionI'm not using anymore.
I'm gonna cancel that so that I cansave myself that money this month.
That's where that intentionality comes in.
And we've talked about a lotof these different topics.
We've talked about subscriptions,we've talked about impulse PR spending.
(07:05):
We've talked about pricing, but we haven'ttalked about the intentionality behind it.
And that's why I'm so excited aboutthis topic is because it's one of the
things that I talked to my clientsabout being in intentional the most.
Because when you're intentionalwith your funds, everything kind
of comes into a full circle loop.
One of my talks that I talk aboutoften is financial goals, and I
(07:27):
always talk about setting certaingoals like a pay goal for yourself.
Because if you set up a pay goal,and then let's say you set up an
expense goal, you're like, I wannaspend 20% of my revenue on expenses,
but I want to keep 40% of my revenue.
You know that 60% of your revenueis already allocated, so that
60% is already put somewhere.
(07:48):
So now if you're like, okay,this is how much I need to make.
Let's just say it.
Throw a number out there.
Let's say it's 5,000.
Between paying yourself and expenses,you now know that in order to
have a little bit of a buffer,your pricing needs to be higher.
So this is where I'm saying likeall that comes into a full circle
moment where it all connects.
So when you have that financialroadmap, and I know that sounds.
(08:11):
So like goofy when you talk aboutit that way, the financial roadmap.
But when you set those goals,you track those expenses and
you plan for all of that stuff.
It is so powerful because it gives youthese key elements all over the place.
And I know that your brainmight not think like that.
Trust me.
Because again, with this, in thisday and age where we're distracted,
there are so many things going on.
(08:32):
We have a million differentthings running through our head.
That's where people like me come in tobe your partner and help you think in
different ways that actually matter.
So there are simple systemsthat build intentionality.
And if you're not someone who'slike, okay, I just wanna be reactive
with my money, I don't wanna trackit, I promise you, I promise you
(08:53):
that a budget is not restrictive.
I am not saying that every singledollar of yours needs to have.
In exact place it needs to be.
You can make a vague bucket of,Hey, this is random stuff I wanna
purchase, or Hey, I wanna purchasecoffee, or I wanna have a food budget.
That is totally okay because it, thepoint and purpose of this is for you to be
(09:17):
intentional and say, okay, you know what?
I don't wanna spend more than$300 on coffee this month.
I'm going to set up, a pocketin my budget for that so
that I can spend for that.
So.
Simple systems, again, are budgetingand one of my favorites to use is YNAB
and I'm now going to do an episodeon it, so keep an arrow for that.
It'll be, probably in thenext couple weeks as well.
(09:39):
So that we can get into that.
The next thing you can do is forecasting.
Forecasting is difficult becauseespecially if you have a fluctuating
income, it's very difficult toforecast because you don't know
if you're gonna make that moneynext month or if you're not gonna
make that money next month because.
Industries are so volatile,if you know what I mean.
Some one month you can have like 20 k,and the next month you can have $200.
(10:02):
So forecasting is very volatile.
There is a way to forecast, but most ofthe time the best forecast comes when
you have monthly recurring revenue.
So if you do have monthly recurringrevenue, it's easy to forecast, okay,
here's what I know I'm going to have,here's what I think I'm going to
have, and then like actually looking.
And then of course, intentionality comeswith looking at your numbers regularly.
(10:25):
I know I've talked about this a lot,but setting up a regular money date
and checking in with yourself and beingintentional with your money is going to
be so helpful because if you're like,Hey, I wanna be intentional and set aside
money for a bookkeeper, then it's goingto be better for you in the long run.
Because you're gonna actuallyknow that you wanna intentionally
(10:46):
set aside those funds.
This all kind of ties back intoa little bit of my faith as well.
You guys know I'm a Christian as well,and you don't need to be a Christian, but
this does tie back to that intentionalityand that point of stewarding your money
well, because when you steward yourmoney well, it kind of ends up giving
(11:09):
you space to grow and space to bloom.
Because like I said, if you have 60% whereyou are allocating that specifically for
expenses and preparing yourself, and thenthat other 40% you can reinvest back into
your business, you again, you can put itinto those random categories for things
like that, you can put it into a buffer.
(11:29):
You can build up the business ofyour dreams and the fin, the personal
lifestyle of your dreams if youjust be intentional with your money.
And again, I wanna remind you that beingintentional isn't about restriction.
It's about.
Freedom and making sure that yourbusiness supports the life that you want.
So I want to encourage you to starttracking and planning today because
(11:52):
those small steps will add up.
And if you're like, I'mcurious about this yNAB.
Samantha, make sure you hitsubscribe and leave a review.
And then of course share this witha friend because in a couple weeks
I'll come up with a come out withthat YNAB episode and we'll dive
into budgeting and all those things.
'cause I'm so excited.
YNAB is one of my favorite thingsand I actually help a couple clients
(12:13):
with personal budgeting as well tokind of get that into their game
plan because I just love YNAB andI love messing around in there.
So we'll deep dive into that later.
But as always, again.
I hope you have a wonderfulrest of your week.
I really appreciate you listening,and I love you guys so much for
(12:33):
sticking around with me and listeningto my conversational kind of
chatty rants and YNABpping all day.
But I wish you the best week ever.
We'll see you next week.
Farewell fellow travelers.
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