
This article is in partnership with You Need A Budget.
As the luster of the new year kicks in and we begin checking off our goals and resolutions, it should come as no surprise that getting our finances together is at the top of our lists. Last year was marked with a lot of uncertainty, especially the financial kind, making it necessary to get our houses in order. If you were to ask anyone how to take control of their finances, they'd recommend starting a budget. For those of us unfamiliar with being on a budget, the idea of having one can feel daunting.
In addition to adjusting to checking in with your checking account to track expenses, knowing how to start a budget is foundationally a task in and of itself. There's no reason this year can't be everything you dreamed of when it comes to financial stability. Coming through with the skills to pay the bills (literally) is the personal budgeting software company, You Need A Budget. Below are some YNAB-approved tried and true tips on how to start a budget.
1. Know the Rules for Successful Budgeting.
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Before even beginning to create your budget, You Need A Budget is a firm believer in knowing the rules. More specifically, the "Four Rules for Successful Budgeting". Though YNAB provides you with a plethora of tools to get you started with a finely-crafted budget that speaks to you, your life, and your budget, they pack more of a punch in conjunction with these simple but transformative rules to budgeting.
- Give Every Dollar a Job: Allocate the money that you earn to specific needs, wants, and nice-to-haves in accordance with your personal budget. It's the difference between seeing an extra $100 in your account and blowing it immediately on food or clothes, and redirecting that "extra" cash someplace that will add more value to your financial goals overall.
- Embrace Your True Expenses: Instead of feeling overwhelmed by infrequent expenses, plan for them and treat them like a monthly "bill". This means your car breaking down, your annual birthday trip, and/or Christmas presents for everyone at the end of the year won't feel like such a blow to your finances. Instead, they are funds that you have added to in increments to fund throughout your year.
- Roll with the Punches: Don't feel pressured to stick to your budget to the T, instead be flexible and make adjustments where needed. For example, if you had a grocery budget of $200 for the month, but it ended up being $300, it isn't the end of the world or your budget. Instead, it just means being creative about making a necessary adjustment in another category to accommodate the overspending in one.
- Age Your Money: Perhaps one of the most important rules in the rule of four, this rule refers to being more intentional about the way you spend money through the goal of getting a month ahead. By doing the other three rules that were mentioned and spending less money than you earn, over time you are setting yourself up to be able to use your paycheck from the month before to cover expenses for the current month. The beauty in this is that by allowing your money to "age" and stay in your account longer, you are lessening the financial burden of feeling like you are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
2. Choose a Tool to Create Your Budget
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Perhaps just as important as implementing YNAB's aforementioned budgeting rules is choosing the right tool to create your budget. Do you want to go old school and track your expenses manually on pen and paper through bullet journaling? Do you want to crunch numbers through an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Sheet? Additionally, there are online methods that allow you to create your budget like Mint.com as well as banking institutions that typically have a "free" option built into your accounts.
Another favored option for creating your budget is the ease and use of apps as a budgeting tool. Apps like You Need A Budget allow users to create and customize a personal budget at their fingertips while allowing you to stay up-to-date with your expenses in realtime, no additional legwork or calculations needed. Once you figure out the framework you wish to utilize in order to meet your budgeting needs, you can officially start filling the blanks in creating your budget.
3. Note Your Monthly Income.
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You can't begin to track or allocate what goes out of your account month to month without having a clear understanding of what you bring in each month. You can figure out how much you make each month by reviewing your bank statements or pay stubs and calculating what's been deposited. For people with a traditional employer, this should be relatively easy. Also make note of anything you earn from side jobs or passive income streams you might have.
4. Write out Your Monthly Expenses.
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Keep stock of your monthly expenses by writing them down. Truthfully, a lot of us go through each month, and spend what we have until we're back at 0 without much knowledge or understanding of what our expenses are and exactly how much we're spending each month. Use a personal budgeting app like You Need A Budget or analyze your bank statements for a span of three months to gain insight on your spending habits over a period of time. Your monthly expenses may include:
- Rent/Mortgage
- Cell phone
- Eating out
- Debt repayment/student loans
- Credit card
- Groceries
- Car note
- Car insurance
- Gas
- Utilities
- Streaming services
- Internet
- Savings
- Travel
- Clothes
- Pampering
- Personal grooming (hair, nails, wax, etc)
- Misc
5. Create Sub-sections for Fixed Expenses and Variable Expenses.
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Fixed expenses liked rent payments or mortgage payments, utilities, car payments, student loans/debt repayment, and/or childcare are expenses that don't change month-to-month, so you can write them down with confidence, knowing that the payment for these expenses are "fixed" each month. Examples of this include:
- Rent/mortgage
- Utilities
- Student loan/debt repayment
- Credit card
- Car insurance
- Health insurance
- Car payment
- Emergency fund
In contrast, variable expenses vary each month, and though you might be spending money on the same kind of expenses monthly (i.e. food, shopping, entertainment), the amount you spend changes each month. For example, you might go from spending $200 on eating out one month, $150 the next, and jump to $400 another month. That being said, expenses like groceries, eating out, entertainment, shopping, and gas tend to fall in this category.
In your budget, assign a dollar amount that you want to act as your threshold for how much you will allow yourself to spend for the month.
6. Adjust the Budget Based on Your Needs.
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Based on the numbers you've spent in all of these areas over a span of three months, acknowledge what you're spending on each category and, based on your monthly income, adjust where needed. You might find that after all of your wants and needs are written down in front of you, you actually have a surplus of money left over which actually invites you to reallocate those funds elsewhere (like putting more money onto your debt repayment or your emergency fund, for example). This will help better provide you with a baseline and a foundation for tracking your expenses.
However, if you discover that you're spending way too much money, it might mean adjusting your variable expenses to better accommodate your fixed expenses without leaving you in the red or your bank account overdrawn. Likewise, you might also consider finding ways to increase your income.
7. Add in Your Wants.
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Now that we've more than covered your needs, it is important to make room for your wants. We are not machines and it does not make sense to create a budget that focuses so much on needs that you forget to give yourself some wiggle room to use the money you earn on yourself here and there. Most importantly, where it makes sense.
Adding in your wants looks like including room for "treating yourself", budgeting for those shoes you've been eyeing even if it means putting a little money away for four months until you have enough to buy it, or a monthly facial or massage. Whatever it is, make sure you budget for it, so that when whims pop up, it doesn't obliterate your bank account in the process.
For more information on how to make your financial dreams a reality or how to create your own personalized budget, visit You Need A Budget today.
Featured image by Shutterstock
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Luxury Hairstylist On Viral 'Hey Boo' Texts & Professionalism In The Hair Industry
As Black women, our hair is our crowning glory - whether we paid for it or not. We take pride in how we wear and take care of our hair. As with everything, hair care and hair styling have evolved over the years. Long gone are the days of Blue Magic (although I hear it’s making a comeback).
Now, we have a plethora of creams, oils, conditioners, shampoos, and stylists to choose from. Beyond wearing our natural curls, we have a range of options, from wigs and sew-ins to tape-ins, I-tips, and K-tips. So much choice! But you know what they say about too much of a good thing...
The Black hair industry has definitely blossomed in the last decade with a wave of new stylists and salons popping up all over the place. As much as I love that for us, many of these stylists have become the subjects of viral TikTok and Instagram tirades because of their alleged questionable behavior and bizarre rules.
Excessive policies, strange fees, long wait times, poor performance, and the infamous “Hey boo” texts. Beauty is pain, they say… xoNecole got to the root of these issues with luxury hair extensionist Dee Michelle, who’s been in the hair game for 20 years and runs a seven-figure business - all while being a mom of four.
Antonio Livingston
“I started my business with my career in the hair industry [at] very, very young age when I was maybe like eight...So, over the years, I've just built a very successful seven-figure business very quickly just by offering high-end services and creating great experiences for my clients, many of whom are high-profile professionals,” she said. “I'm also a mother of four, including a set of triplets, which inspires me daily to show what's possible with my hard work and focus.”
Dee’s business has gone viral on social media because of what many call outrageous prices for her invisible K-Tip installs.
“When I developed my invisible K-tip extensions technique, I made sure that it wasn't just about the hair or the style, but about providing a high-end experience from start to finish. So, my clients just aren't paying for the extensions or just the style itself, but they're investing into my meticulous, seamless craft and premium hair sourced from the best suppliers…I've spent so many hours mastering my craft, creating this seamless method that gives my clients long-lasting natural results, and my pricing just reflects that - the value of my expertise and the exclusivity of the service.”
The K-tip specialist stands on business when it comes to catering to her clients and giving them an experience worth the cost.
“And it's just important for me to also say that my clients are high-profile individuals who value quality, their privacy, and their time. They want a service that fits into their lifestyle and their time. They want things that deliver perfection. And I deliver that every single time.”
I’m sure we’ve all seen the various TikTok rants about people’s nightmare experiences with stylists and uttered a silent “FELT!” We asked Dee her opinion on a few nightmare scenarios that beg the response, “please be so forreal."
On stylists charging extra to wash clients’ hair:
“I think they should just include it in the price, to be honest. Because I feel like when clients go to a stylist, they're expecting you to wash their hair. Personally, if I see that washing is extra, I just wouldn't go to the salon because it just shows a lack of professionalism, in my opinion, and a lack of experience.”
“I think they should just include it in the price, to be honest. Because I feel like when clients go to a stylist, they're expecting you to wash their hair. Personally, if I see that washing is extra, I just wouldn't go to the salon because it just shows a lack of professionalism, in my opinion, and a lack of experience.”
On ‘deposits’ that don’t go towards the cost of the service:
“I think that's kind of weird, too, for deposits to not be like a part of the service. I've seen people have booking fees and I just don't understand it, to be honest. I disagree with that kind of policy…By all means, people should do what works for them, but to me, it doesn't make sense. Why does somebody have to pay a fee just to book an appointment with you? I don't get it. It feels like exploitation.”
On stylists charging extra to style (straighten/curl) wigs, sew-ins etc., after installing:
“I don't get it. Clients come to us to get their hair done, to get it styled. So why is it extra for you to style it? If you're going to charge extra, just increase your price. I feel like it could be just a lack of confidence in those stylists, feeling like people won't pay a certain price for certain things, or just their lack of professionalism as well, because people are coming to us to get styled.”
On the infamous “Hey boo” text stylists send to clients when they need to cancel/reschedule:
“Professionalism in any industry, especially the beauty industry, is everything. So texting a client the, “Hey boo” is so unprofessional, and it's damaging to the client-stylist relationship. Clients book their appointments expecting a level of respect and care, especially when they're investing their time and money and a service. And I get it, emergencies happen, we're all humans. However, it should be done with a formal apology and a clear explanation.”
“Professionalism in any industry, especially the beauty industry, is everything. So texting a client the, “Hey boo” is so unprofessional, and it's damaging to the client-stylist relationship. Clients book their appointments expecting a level of respect and care, especially when they're investing their time and money and a service. And I get it, emergencies happen, we're all humans. However, it should be done with a formal apology and a clear explanation.”
We know all too well what kinds of things will keep us from ever gracing certain hairstylists’ chairs with our butts again. So, what should hairstylists do to provide a good service to their clients? What is good hairstylist etiquette?
“For one, being on time is an important rule for stylist etiquette. It's just not okay to require your clients to be on time, and you're not on time. Also, communication. Being able to communicate clearly, respectfully, and professionally, whether that's in person, via text, or on social media. Style is etiquette. Appearance matters. So just maintaining a clean, polished, and professional look. Clients respect you more whenever your appearance reflects your work. There's just so many things, but another thing I would say is active listening. So, being able to pay close attention to what your client wants and also clarifying any questions that they might have. Just to ensure that they feel heard and to minimize any misunderstandings.”
Dee also shared some red flags to look out for when considering a new stylist.
“Even me as a client, if I'm booking somebody and they have a long list of rules, I don't even book with them. That's, for one, just such a huge turn-off. Also, stylists who have inconsistent or unclear pricing, that's a red flag. People who change their rates too much without an explanation. Poor communication. So, if a stylist is responding very slow or responding unprofessionally, or giving vague answers to questions, that can make clients question whether or not they are respecting their time and their needs.
Another red flag - an inconsistent or low quality portfolio. And I feel like, I see this a lot with stylists stealing other people's work, and their portfolio on social media is just very inconsistent.”
We couldn’t let Dee go without getting the tea on what styles she predicts will trend in 2025.
“I feel like people are going back to natural-looking styles. So, a lot of people are ditching the wigs, the lace fronts, things like that. People are still wearing them, of course, but it is becoming more of a trend to embrace your natural hair and something that's not looking too fake. That’s one thing that we're going to be seeing a lot. I would say a lot of layers are coming back, heavy layers. Those are becoming really, really trendy. And people are leaning more towards platinum-colored hair. I've been seeing lots of like blondes coming out. Also, jet black is always going to be a trend. But I would say more like natural colors, but natural colors that are still making a statement.”
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Feature image by Antonio Livingston.
One of my favorite things to do is kiss. In fact, kissing is so important to me that I once stayed with someone longer than I should’ve, in part, because he was such a good kisser (to the point where I can confirm that “kissing orgasms” are a real thing) and I also once broke up with someone because he absolutely sucked at kissing (ugh). Kissing is sexy. Kissing is sensual. Kissing is intimate.
And science says that kissing can boost endorphin levels in your body; reduce feelings that are associated with stress and anxiety; elevate your immunity; help to lessen allergy-related symptoms; soothe headaches and period cramp discomfort; make you horny (yes, literally), and even decrease your chances of getting cavities.
Yes, kissing is a good thing. A really good thing.
Oh, but as someone who is turning out to be one of my favorite philosophers (Aristotle) once said, the excess of a virtue can indeed turn into a vice — and as far as kissing is concerned, that can prove itself to be true in a way that some may have thought was nothing more than an urban myth: getting STIs (sexually transmitted infections)/STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) from doing it.
Yep, if you heard somewhere that you can get an STI/STD from puckering up, there is indeed some truth to that, so please take a moment to read more about it. That way, you can finally separate fact from fiction.
Bottom Line, Yes…You Can. However, the Risks Are Relatively Low.
Honestly, if you let it sink in that a kiss that lasts for longer than 10 seconds will result in about 80 million bacteria being exchanged, that alone should cause it to make all of the sense in the world that a kiss isn’t something that should be taken as casually as a lot of people do. And although, when it comes to STIs/STDs, it is far easier to transmit them through penetrative or oral sex, the reality is that there are some that can you get via saliva or the mucous membranes that are in your mouth (although infected saliva that is on something like a sex toy makes your chances much lower because STIs/STDs tend to “deactivate” once they are exposed to the air).
And since “low probability” doesn’t mean “absolutely not,” I think we should look into which STIs/STDs could become an issue whenever you go in for a smooch vs. the ones that you don’t really have to concern yourself with at all.
The STIs/STDs That You CAN Get from Kissing
So, here’s the deal: If you happen to have a cut in your mouth or you’ve got a cold sore, that can significantly increase your chances of being exposed to an STI/STD if your partner happens to have one. Which ones am I speaking of specifically?
- Herpes (more specifically, HSV-1)
- Syphilis
- Cytomegalovirus (CMV)
- Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
Now something that’s important to keep in mind about three out of four of these (herpes, CMV, and HPV), is that, although they are very treatable, they currently don’t have a cure. As far as the one that does have one (syphilis), it’s important that it’s discovered and treated in its early stages; otherwise, it can lead to things like weight and hair loss, infertility and, if ignored for too long, it can even become life-threatening.
I don’t know about y’all but, to me, this all sounds like valid enough reasons to be cautious when it comes to who you share your mouth with.
The STIs/STDs That You CAN’T Get from Kissing
Okay, so what STIs/STDs does science say you don’t have to worry about when you’re kissing someone?
- Chlamydia
- Gonorrhea
- Hepatitis
- Trichomoniasis
- HIV
- Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)
The reason why is because these are all things that are spread through oral, anal, or vaginal sex acts (however, they can oftentimes be asymptomatic, so if you are sexually active, please make sure to get tested no less than once a year). That said, if you do happen to have one of these STIs/STDs, please show courtesy and respect to your partner by letting them know — even if sex isn’t currently on the table for you.
Although research does indeed say that kissing doesn’t put them at risk, they still have the right to decide if they want to move forward with intimacy, of any kind, while these health-related issues are being treated.
5 Ways to Reduce Your Chances of Getting an STI/STD from Kissing
Okay, so now that you can confidently separate what you should actually know (and take to heart) from what you may have randomly heard that couldn’t be further from the truth, if you’re curious about what you can do to decrease your chances of getting an STI/STD from kissing, I’ve got a few tips:
Take kissing seriously. Grandma said don’t put your mouth everywhere and she’s right. In a world that continually tries to gaslight us into thinking that we can (and damn near should) just do whatever with whoever without consequence, as you can see, that’s simply not true — especially when you take into account how wild it is that most of the STIs/STDs that you can get from kissing don’t have a cure.
Moral to this story: Your mouth is as valuable as every other part of your body. It is a privilege to kiss it, so please act accordingly. Oh, and don’t be afraid to ask about people’s sexual health status before letting them put their tongue all up and in your mouth. You know what they say — an ounce of prevention is always gonna be worth a pound of cure (or treatment).
Practice intentional oral hygiene. Hopefully, brushing and flossing on a daily basis are a given. What I mean here is you should look for signs of cold sores, cuts, or lesions in your mouth (including a blister that you may get from a burned tongue) on a weekly basis. If any of these are evident in you or your partner, it’s best to wait to kiss (if you haven’t BOTH recently been tested).
Y’all be careful with all of the sexy biting. Speaking of open wounds (relatively speaking, anyway), although I once read that, according to the Kama Sutra, biting lips while kissing is a sign of strong desire and sexual arousal, it can also leave cuts that could make you more vulnerable to getting sick. So, on this one, enter with caution. Straight up.
Don’t kiss when you’re feeling under the weather. Mono, colds and the flu, COVID-19, stomach viruses — these are some of the other things that you and your partner can give to one another while exchanging a kiss. Since some of the symptoms that are related to these may mimic some that come from an STI/STD, it’s best to not kiss when you are sick — not until you can confirm what you have and (preferably) the symptoms have passed.
Get tested on a regular basis. The only way that you are going to know for sure that kissing is a low-risk behavior for you and your partner is if you both get tested. If you’d prefer to do it from the comfort, convenience, and privacy of your own home, there are STI/STD tests that you can have sent to you (like the ones here, here, and here). They aren’t necessarily the cheapest in the world, yet they are pretty darn accurate and can give you the peace of mind that you seek.
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Listen, I am Team Kissing just as much as the next person. However, whenever I stop to think about all that goes on in a mouth, I thought it was important that you become aware as well. As I said earlier, a good kiss is pretty incomparable. Let’s all just make sure that we leave kisses better and not worse off after experiencing them — literally and figuratively.
Amen? I’m sayin’.
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Featured image by Vera Vita/Getty Images