In this instructional video, award‑winning personal‑finance expert Dominique Broadway outlines a step‑by‑step framework for handling a paycheck the moment it lands in your bank account. She begins by emphasizing the need for a concrete spending plan (budget) that lists income, expenses, and goal‑aligned allocations. She then stresses “paying yourself first” through automated transfers to a high‑yield savings account, even suggesting random‑day micro‑deposits to boost savings. Next, she makes investing a distinct line item in the budget, encouraging viewers to invest in familiar assets beyond retirement accounts. She follows with a strategy for allocating funds to debt repayment, highlighting the benefit of clearing liabilities to free cash for future savings and investments. Finally, she advises rigorous spending tracking—aiming to keep living expenses under 30‑40% of income—to prevent lifestyle creep, recommending pen‑and‑paper, spreadsheets, or specific budgeting apps. Throughout, Dominique urges viewers to adopt these habits immediately to build wealth, and she points to a caption with her favorite tools.
Chapters
What did you do the last time you got paid? Did you mentally spend it before your paycheck even came? Or did you honestly just blow it as soon as it actually hit your bank account? Well, my name is Dominique Broadway. I'm an award-winning personal finance expert and I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do as soon as your paycheck hits your bank account. The first thing we need to do— and I know that no one likes to talk about budgeting. But budgeting is actually really, really important. That's why I like to call it having a spending plan. You need to have a plan for all the dollars that are coming into your account. And when I say plan, not like actually spending it all in your mind before it even hits your bank account. But actually being intentional about where you want your money to go. And most importantly, we'll talk about this more later, how you plan to make this money grow for you, right? So, creating that spending plan is going to be the first step that you need to do. You want to sit down, Make a list of all of your income, all of your expenses, and start determining how you can best allocate this money to reach all of your goals. And ideally, once you do this, you will have some money left over, or most importantly, paying yourself first so that you can actually start saving. So that's the first step, creating a budget, also known as a spending plan, so that you can make sure that you actually have a plan and a strategy for all the money that's coming into your account. Next up is actually saving. Now, paying yourself first is a very important thing because unfortunately, if you wait to save money that's left over at the end of the month, 9 times out of 10, for most people, it ain't gonna be nothing left, okay? So that's another thing you want to do. Make sure that you're paying yourself first. And this is a very important step, which is making sure that you're not just saving when you see there's some extra money, but actually making sure that your savings is automated. This is key. This is literally why most people don't have no daggone money saved now. It's because they are not having it set up to automatically happen. So, if you ever met someone who's older, maybe about to retire or maybe even yourself included, you'll look up and see that you have some money saved in your retirement account. But in your own personal emergency fund, you may not have anything. You know why? It's because maybe in your retirement account through work, it's This saving is happening automatically. So, I challenge you to pick an amount and then set a date that this amount is going to get transferred to your savings account, your high-yield savings account every single week, every single month, every single 2 weeks, whenever your pay frequency is. And if you want to do something a little extra, a little bonus, is to set a smaller amount to go on super random days. So, one of the things that I used to do is set like $100 or $50 or even sometimes $25 that would just automatically get transferred on a super random day like a Tuesday or a Thursday or a day I'm not even thinking about it, right? That's typically an amount that you're going to spend on something anyway. So, you might as well have it set to go straight to an investment account so it can grow for you or somewhere where it can earn some more money for you, okay? Now, the next thing you need to do is obviously invest. Now, this is going to be key. Having investing as a line item in your spending plan or as a budget item is going to be key. We need to make sure that we're prioritizing, obviously paying our bills, but also saving, but also investing. If you are not having your money grow for you, let me tell you, it's going to be a really, really, really difficult time for you to get out of the rat race, and most importantly, for you to start building wealth and creating whatever life that you desire. So making sure that you have some money set aside to invest and that you're researching different investment options. I always say start investing in things that you already, um, use or own, right? So making sure that you invest some of your money from your paycheck is going to be important as well. And this is outside of the money that you're putting for retirement. Next, paying off debt. If you have debt, make sure that you have money set aside to pay this off. This is going to be key, right? Making sure that we're paying down these debts because the sooner that we get some of these debts paid down, we can use some of that money for saving. But we can also use it to start investing and growing your wealth as well, all right? So, making sure that we're allocating a little piece of that paycheck or whatever piece that needs to be towards your paycheck is going to be important. I mean towards your debt is going to be important. Also understanding that you won't have to pay this forever, right? And eventually once you pay these debts down, whatever money you have allocated towards your debt, then you can start allocating towards your investing and growing your wealth. That's when it starts to get really fun, okay? Okay, and last but certainly not least is making sure that you're tracking all of your spending. In the beginning, we talked about setting that budget, and also another thing you want to keep in mind is having that breakdown, trying to keep your expenses— like, even your living expenses ideally should be less than 30% of your entire paycheck. Now we know that's a struggle, right, in these current times, but ideally trying to keep that 30 to 40% is going to be great. But tracking your spending and making sure that you're not overspending, that you're not letting the lifestyle creep, creep up on you, right? Meaning that every time you make a little bit more money, you try to get fancier and fancier and fancier. That is the easiest way to go broke and stay broke, okay? So tracking your spending is going to be very, very important. You can do this the old school way with pen and paper. You can do it with Excel or Google Sheets, or there are some of my favorite apps that I'll list for you guys below in the caption. But tracking your spending is going to be very, very important. If you are not aware of where your dollars are going, then that means that essentially your money is in control of you. And essentially, you want your dollars to be your employees. You want your dollars to work for you to make your money work. So, understanding and tracking your spending is going to be key. So, these are some of my top things that I recommend that everyone should do as soon as your paycheck hits so that you can start to actually build wealth. Hopefully you enjoyed this video. Make sure that you follow, subscribe, and check the caption below for all of my favorite tools to use. See you soon.
