Cash Rules Everything Around Me: Personal Finance 101

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Class fee is on a sliding scale of $10-$30, with suggested amount of $15, tea and sweets included!
Like it or not, cash rules everything around us, so we gotta get a handle on things to meet our goals and build security in the future. Wonder where your money goes every month? Want to start investing? Can’t decide how much to save for retirement? In debt and want a better strategy? Employer benefit indecision? Always surprised at tax time??
These are a few topics I’ll cover in several different workshops over the next few months, among many others. But it all has to start with getting to know the in’s and out’s of your money flows. That’s what these first two sessions are about. See below for what's being covered in 101. This will be a group workshop with discussions and activities.

### BEFORE YOU ARRIVE

Bring a laptop and make sure you either have a Google account set up or Microsoft Excel installed. Bring to class exports of the last three complete months of transactions from all your accounts. In this case that would be Nov 2025 - Jan 2026. CSV files will be the easiest to work with. Contact me with question how to download these. Don't forget credit cards, checking accounts, Venmo, everything that your money flows through. Working with real numbers is really important to making a solid plan. Your financial data will not be shown to the class and will stay private.

### Learning Goals of Personal Finance 101

1. Get more comfortable talking about money (everyone’s situation is unique and you can share as much or as little with the group as you feel comfortable)
2. Learn about my Timed Envelope approach to building budgets. Using a Google Sheets template I've built, we’ll make a practice budget together, discussing how to handle less frequent spending like travel or annual bills. How to BUILD IN long term savings to your budget. We’ll use made up transactions for this exercise.
3. Build your draft budget based on 3 months of your actual transactions. You’ll make a copy of my spreadsheet template to help speed this up. This’ll be a individual work, but I’ll be available to to answer questions or give advice. Your privacy will be respected.
4. Learn about a few different tools available to track your money and stay organized.

HW: You’re homework for after this session will be to set up your system for tracking your spending and income against the budget you’ve created. You can use one of the tools I talk about or do things manually.
During this session, no one will comment on anyone else’s spending. And in general during the series, I will never tell you that you need to spend less or more on X or Y. All levels of experience in personal finance and income are welcome.
Personal Finance 102 we’ll dive deeper into revising your budget based on your real spending and your goals and values. Money is just a means to an end. How does you spending reflect what you value? We’ll talk tips for tracking cash, organizing receipts, and lowering your bills. Further sessions will cover more specific situations like those named at the top. I consider 101 and 102 to be prerequisites for further sessions.