The 30-Day Money Reset (Free, No App Required)

Can't hire a coach yet? Steal our opener. This is the exact four-week sequence we run with new coaching clients, condensed so you can do it solo.

Week 1 — Look at everything (yes, everything)

Assignment: Open every account. Make a list: checking, savings, credit cards, loans, retirement, the app you forgot existed. Write balances and minimum payments. No judgment, no fixing yet — just the full picture.

Why it's week one: Avoidance is the actual problem. Once you've looked, the monster is 80% smaller. People routinely find accounts — good and bad — they'd forgotten.

Week 2 — Find the leaks

Assignment: Go through 60 days of transactions and mark the three biggest "huh, that adds up" categories. Typical: food delivery, subscriptions, impulse online orders, the grocery store you treat like a hobby.

Don't cut anything yet. Just find and total. Leaks you can see are leaks you can fix.

Week 3 — Build the skeleton system

Assignment: Do four things:

1. Put every fixed bill on autopay.
2. Open a separate no-card savings account and schedule an automatic transfer for the day after payday — start embarrassingly small.
3. Pick three spending buckets: Bills · Life · Future.
4. Build a starter buffer target: $500.

That's it. You're not tracking 12 categories. You're building the skeleton that a real budget hangs on later.

Week 4 — Run a 10-minute check-in + write the 90-day plan

Assignment: On Sunday, do the 10-minute check-in: look at balances, note what's coming, adjust one thing. Then write your 90-day plan on one page:

• The debt I'm attacking first (and why).
• The buffer number I'm hitting.
• The one spending leak I'm fixing.
• The one weekly habit I'm keeping.

What happens next

Do the four weeks and you'll have the foundation most people never build: full visibility, a skeleton system, a first win in progress, and a written plan. That's genuinely most of the way to a functioning money life.

If you want a coach to go deeper — plans, accountability, and a system tuned to your actual situation — that's what the 12-week Reset is for. But start here, free. The first four weeks are yours.

Darrul provides financial coaching and education, not investment or legal advice.