The Better Way to Do Money (part 4)
Courtney Martin | 11/17/2025
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The reason I called this series ‘The Better Way to Do Money’ isn’t just because I believe in the Together System.
If you’ve ever tried to budget and fully set it up but then never actually followed through with it, this one is for you.
It’s because I believe that once we know better, and we know how to do better, we will be better.
In the last post, I showed you how to know better about your numbers. Today I’m sharing steps 3 & 4 of how to do better with them!
And this isn’t just theory - here’s how my client Jade is doing better with her numbers after working together.
During one of our first few meetings, she told me something I hear all the time from neurodivergent entrepreneurs - “I have money coming in, but I just have no idea where it’s going.”
One of the first things I did was do a review of all her expenses & pulled out which ones are recurring, the ones that happen every month. So off the bat, we could see where her money was going.
One of the first things I did was do a review of all her expenses & pulled out which ones are recurring, the ones that happen every month. So off the bat, we could see where her money was going.
But even more than that, she wasn’t sure how much she should be paying herself, and taxes weren’t even something she had planned for - so now Jade was sitting with the possibility of a 5-figure tax bill and no funds set aside to pay for it.
Using her personal budget and business expenses, we implemented a percentage-based system so that now when her invoices are paid, the money goes to specific accounts to fund her business & her life.
Not only that, we talked about pricing (she’s raising her prices!) and set a reachable sales goal based on her capacity for work to increase her revenue from last year & raise funds for taxes.
She knows better - she knows what her numbers are and has goals to continue growing them & her profit.
And now Jade also knows HOW to do better - and she can implement the plan we created together to be better.
Because this is where we stop guessing and start implementing.
Here’s the exact steps of the Together System Jade and I walked through:
Step 3 - Together we reverse engineer your baseline numbers.
I see all the business coaches talking about hitting those $20k months, the 6-figure years.
And on paper it looks great.
But what do you actually need?
In this step, we take everything we learned from Step 1 (knowing what your numbers are) and Step 2 (knowing what they mean) and use turn them into:
→ What your absolute-must-have business expenses are so we know the absolute minimum amount you need to spend on your business every month (and know which expenses you can cut if needed during leaner months!)
→ What you need to personally pay yourself to feel safe and supported, not just scraping by month after month
→ How much you should be putting aside for taxes so you’re never left feeling shocked and worried for another tax bill
We do this using the Baseline Budget Builder and Viable Pay Calculator that I’ve designed. These two tools help you know your bare minimum to survive numbers, and we figure out steady & sustainable owners pay for you.
And when you combine these 3 numbers, they give you the minimum amount your business needs to earn each month to survive.
But we don’t plan to just survive, we plan to thrive.
Which leads us to our next step:
Step 4 - Together we assign jobs to each dollar.
Instead of: Money hits your account → Expense get paid → Transfers get made → Money is gone → Panic and “where did it all go?” energy…
We decide ahead of time what happens when money comes in. Each dollar has a job, from funding your personal paycheck to purchasing business expenses, putting aside money for taxes to savings, and other categories based on your needs.
If you need a payroll fund, we account for that too.
Or maybe you want a new piece of costly tech - that can have a special account growing money like leaves on a tree too!
We do this in a way that fits your brain and capacity.
We look at simple percentages, easy buckets or accounts with auto transfers, calculators that do the math for you, visual trackers, or a mix that feels doable and builds your financial confidence each step of the way.
The goal isn’t to be perfect, the goal is to stop starting over from scratch every time you don’t have the functioning capacity to follow through.
We set this up to be as low-lift as possible so it’s running in the background always so you’re not having to run your brain 24/7.
You’ll know what’s safe to spend, what needs to be set aside, and what’s moving you toward your goals.
We don’t just have a budget, we have a plan and that plan shows you the steps forward in achieving the financial future you dream of.
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Part 5 I’m going to talk about the next 2 steps in the Together System Framework that make the rest of the work done so far sustainable.
Read about them in this post!