Manage Your Personal Finances with Grok Bot - Budget Spreadsheet Included!

0:00Welcome back to All Things EVM. My name is Aaron and on this channel we talk about all things digital currency, finance, and yield. But today, guys, I want to get into a specific subject that I've wanted to cover for a long time. And that is personal finance. I've got a great budget worksheet and I want to connect that to Grok because Grok Bot is changing the way you do personal finance. It will help you with your budget. And if you have the proper spreadsheet set up and all of the percentages based on your income, I think it'll drastically help you not only keep track of your finances, but make sure you pay

0:35bills on time and keep track of your goals. So, let's get on into it, guys. I've got a spreadsheet here and this is going to be the probably biggest piece of IP that I'd love to give away. It's I can't take full credit for it. I did start this about 15, actually 20 years ago with a Dave Ramsey course that I took, Financial Peace University. But I've updated it through the years to fit my needs. And mine doesn't look exactly like this. I've adjusted it to my income and expenses. But I'm going to go over this line by line because I think this is probably the most important part. And

1:13then I'm going to show you how to get Grok Bot and use it to to update all of your finances specifically through using its Plaid connection or finance tab connection. So, let's get on into it. So, first and foremost, let's look at the income. And this is just an a total income based on a family of four. I actually went to Google and

1:37found at the median income for US. You know, that obviously depends on where you live, but the median for the US for four, a family of four, is $126,000. And that is pretty common to have a family of four. This I have a family of six. I have two two more kids than that, four total kids. My wife and I got a teenager, actually two teenagers now, so almost got one driving, which is amazing, but all of that to say this is your starting point. So if you're hopefully you're in the neighborhood here. If you're making you've got a four people in your family, hopefully your

2:17total household income is around that $126,000 mark. So let's get back into the spreadsheet. I did want to just quick check my math here. 10,500 * 12 is $126,000. That's close enough to get that median there at 126 and and change. So how I come up with that income one is $6,000 a month, income two is $4,000 a month, and everybody's got a little bit of a side hustle these days, right? So making an extra 500, hopefully that's all adds up to about 10.5. And that gets you your goal to be able to get that medium average for for a family four. So beyond that I wanted just give you a

3:04heads up on how I want to break this up. So I've got some suggested percentages here, and obviously every family is going to be different, but I do think these are ideal for for that family size. And it really doesn't matter actually what income size you have because these percentages will really drive how the spreadsheet works. And if you're if you've got one that's way out of whack, say your groceries budget is you know, or just food in general is you know, 25% of your

3:38budget, you really need to curb that. You need to figure out how and why and even get into asking Grok like how can look at my finances of the last couple months, tell me where I'm overspending, tell me where I could be taking advantage of you know, just better cost management or you know, where am I spending too much at Starbucks? Am I getting too many energy drinks? These sorts of things can really add up. And you know, make your coffee at home, buy a pack of Red Bulls, whatever you got to do to get that down guys cuz that is the killer especially with inflation over the last several

4:12years. So, top of line um, is going to be your food budget. Your food budget should be your second largest. The the top three are going to be home, transportation which includes your cars, and your food. So, let's go through this line by line. So, groceries should be the majority of your food budget. If you're you know, eating healthy, you're saving money by going to the grocery store, going to Costco, going to

4:40Aldi, whatever, Walmart, what have you. Getting the best for your dollar is my recommendation here. And you know, for this size of family for this income, you should be spending around $1,200 in groceries. So, split that up by four to five depending on you know, how many weeks are in the month and you know, try to just budget for the month. So, for each week, get into the nitty-gritty and break that up. So, $1,200, divide that by four weeks, you have $300 per trip to the grocery store and hopefully you can get out of there with $300 for a family of four. I know it's possible because we do

5:23it with with ours. We spend about $300 every single time we go to Costco. We might spend a little more than that, but we do make more than the median. Obviously, I've got six of us in the family, so I need to. So, anyway, eating out should be relatively small in comparison. Whatever's left after you've hit that you know, rough roughly 11 to 12% of your total um, should be that grocery and then whatever's left is your eating out

5:50budget. And that kind is going to cover, you know, food that you buy while you're at work. If you need to, you know, pack a lunch if you can, but if you can't, eating out does come out of that budget there. And any coffees that you have, anything that is consumed by your mouth should be in that eating out budget beyond beyond groceries. So, moving on to home, this is the largest

6:16by far. 25% of your total income should be budgeted not only for your mortgage, but for home improvement, guys. And this is where this is where, you know, you can play with the numbers a little bit. So, your mortgage, if it's smaller, it's probably because you've been in your house for a little bit longer and you should probably increase what you're saving or putting aside for home improvement or just spending on home improvement, right? I just had a um a roof repair. I had insurance covered

6:47like a third of it. It was wind damage. And but the roof was so old that they didn't cover much of the damage, so I had to put it out of pocket, but thankfully I was socking away a good portion of, you know, my my budget for my home in this home improvement line and it's helped out massively. I didn't have to I did put it on credit cards right away just to get some points and you know, work hard to to pay it off and thankfully God praise God for the provision because we did not spend any interest money on that expense. And a lot of that does come

7:23from just being conscious of putting some money away for your home improvement. So, 25% of that is 2625. Try to make those numbers match this top number. If you if you change any of these, say say this one is 1800, it's going to have uh you know, a lesser number here than what's suggested over here. So, these are all dynamic um numbers. I need to

7:48update this so that they're all correct. But, um yeah, so this one uh this one needs to match this first one so that you have the correct percentages essentially, right? So, um so if I just back out, that's going to be uh $2,000 for mortgage and 625 for monthly repairs. Obviously, you're not going to have repairs all the time. Hopefully not. Um and hopefully you have a smaller mortgage if you have an older home and a larger um you're going to likely going to have a larger mor- mortgage if it's a it's if it's a newer home. So, hopefully

8:19you don't have um as much repairs there. So, all right, transportation's a big one. Uh again, this is the uh really the top third uh or the the top three. The some of them are a little bit larger. I do give you the chance to have a little bit larger forgiving, but if it does

8:37affects how much you have for your car. So, if your car payments are higher, you definitely want to make sure your uh your um not your giving, sorry, your uh your insurance might be lower or your child care, whatever. You have to um you know, push and pull these numbers in order to uh do the right thing. And one thing I do want to mention before that

8:56this is a giving centric budget, guys. We're we're hoping that you, you know, don't have any debt or are paying off debt. I don't have any debt lines necessarily because I don't personally have any debt. But, um you know, if you have some debt, you want to make sure that you're still able to give. Maybe

9:15you only tithe. Um this is a you know, a Christian-based uh uh platform. So, I'm going to highly suggest that you do what the Bible says and give 10% of your income. And then, you know, if you can, do an extra 2% or more to go to missions and extra giving. Maybe you have a uh a missionary you want to support or a ministry you want to support. And then the extra giving, you know, you have a maybe you have once a month a guest speaker coming and you want to be able to support their mission. So, Um and then we do have a save and invest

9:48of 10%. So, a big portion of your income 22% we're trying to sock away, guys. We're trying to make sure that we we can have an emergency fund and start investing for the future because someday you hopefully you want to retire. So, having some savings and investments is huge. The closer to you are to 65, I really hope that you are able to get into investments. The younger you are, maybe savings, you know, get 6 months 3 to 6 months of of your typical budget, right? So, if you're if you're making 10,500 a month, try to get, you know, 30-something thousand in in savings at least to cover

10:29any rainy days or, you know, maybe one of you loses your job because the economy tanks or something like that. You want to have that socked away or for a roof repair, right? But investments is huge beyond that. Investments are going to grow. Savings are going to actually lag the market and, you know, feel free to reach out with any questions about any of these concepts, guys. But, you know how inflation keeps going up while your savings don't really keep up with inflation

11:00at what you get in the bank for savings. So, make sure you do that. But, if you have any debt, especially student debt and any high interest debt, make sure that you're taking care of that first before you're doing your savings and investing. That is an investment to pay those off as soon as possible, especially if they're above something like 5%. If they're below 5%, guys, they're likely, you know, something you can put off a little bit longer and maybe your investments are going to outpace the the returns of your your debt. But, if you're in a lot of debt, guys, I really highly recommend just getting

11:39getting it taken care of because that will free you up and you'll just learn a little bit financially how to manage debt and and that will be helpful for when you do it getting into investing cuz there's some great ways to actually invest with debt. Um you know, buying a house, buying an extra house, these sorts of things um to to not to finance those projects. You want to put, you know, a good amount of money down, but maybe you have a um 7% mortgage, but you are able to rent that property out and cover all your costs and then some plus the debt that you

12:16have and you're able to make a profit on that. So, all right, that's a little bit too much in the weeds. Let's move on to uh utilities. Utilities should be around 5%. I think these are pretty reasonable. Some people are going to spend a little bit more on their phone and internet, um but hopefully your your you know, if you have a newer house, you're saving a

12:34little bit on heating and electric. Um you know, maybe you have a teenager or two in the house and your water is going to be more expensive cuz of their long showers. Um and then obviously a miscellaneous is just going to help you pad that budget a little bit. Um insurance, hopefully, you know, your teenagers are good drivers or you you've you've been good drivers to keep that cost down. But, um about 10% of your

12:58total income should be um covering this. Uh hopefully, you have a health plan for from yourself or your your spouse's um business and or employer, so that'll help with that. If you don't, there are some great Christian plans that cover a family of four for about $1,000 a month. So, it does um does cut that budget um or increase that budget quite a bit, so you have to pull from elsewhere, but um at least

13:26there is options available to you. Uh dental is, you know, that's optional. Hopefully you're able to afford that. If you're not, that's um understandable. Life insurance, definitely get a life insurance policy, guys. Uh reach out if you don't have a life insurance policy um broker because I've got a fantastic one. Um and then disability is also recommended especially for your [snorts] primary earner. Sorry, if you have one earner that's higher than the other, I highly recommend covering them with a disability um especially if their uh employer

14:00doesn't offer that um automatically. So, and then child care, about 8%. Um this can go up and down depending on how many children you have. Hopefully um your uh budget and income matches your amount of family members. Um you know, and child care doesn't go away when they're in school. You know, you have uh you know, um sports to pay for that you have um babysitters to pay for when they're younger, when they're older, you have allowances, all these all these different things, uh dues for um you know, for band and choir if you if you have those, uh rentals, whatever you have, um make sure that you cover a

14:38little bit uh um for your kids, uh not just child care, but maybe they um like my son just added um a gym membership. And we don't pay a lot for um him otherwise, but that he doesn't do sports, but he goes to the gym, so we have to pay for that, and that's going to help uh cover that with that child care um a budget there. And then shopping, shopping should really only be 5%. This

15:03is a tough one for a lot of people. Um clothes, uh households, entertainment, and gifts miscellaneous. If you're a gift giver, this is a super tough one, but uh try to rein it in. You know, try to use your AI assistant, your your Grok bot I'm going to show you in a little bit here, to uh to monitor that for you, and so you don't overspend. Um, $525 for a uh for this type of budget is generous, uh believe it or not. And uh clothing, you know, maybe save up for, you know, 6 months of that clothes budget, put it in cash if you need to,

15:37to help it help stay on top of that. Um, and and stock it away, put it in your sock drawer, literally in your sock drawer, uh every month to uh splurge on, you know, back to school shopping. Or um, you know, maybe around your anniversary. Like my wife and I love to spoil each other um with a clothes

15:56shopping spree around our anniversary. So, um stock that away for the year, and then um you'll have plenty to work with when it comes up. So, household stuff, obviously you're going to have um your your groceries really should cover, you know, some of your basics like paper towels, cleaning supplies, things like that, but obviously um you know, maybe you want to buy a furniture um item or uh these sorts of things. This could come out of your entertainment budget if you're not overspending on it, but entertainment is going to be things all your subscriptions. So, Netflix and Amazon and all these things will come

16:33out of your entertainment budget. Hopefully um that's under control, and Grok can definitely help with that, too. In fact, um uh Grok, it may be where you put your entertainment budget. Um, it's going to be, you know, minimum. In fact, let's just real quick look at the uh Grok platforms. So, um $8 a month for plus. Um, I think this is probably going to uh cover most people if you're just using it for tracking this sort of thing, like $8 a month for tracking your finances, super cheap. Um, a lot of uh consumer apps that do that sort of thing are, you know, 10 10 bucks anyway, so

17:11why not um just try it out. Um, but then I'm using actually the $100 plan. I'm using it for several different bots and uh lots of different work, but I do think most people if you're using it for work anyway or using chat or using Claude, I I think you'll find you know any obviously don't have to just use Grok bot. You could use Claude, you can use chat, but I'm going to highly recommend this because it connects with your bank accounts through their finance tab and I think that is a game changer and honestly

17:45going to going to just put it out there. I think Grok is going to be like the new iPhone. Just making a prediction there. Maybe I'll eat my words, but for for conservatives too, at least Grok is looking for truth. That's my biggest caveat I'm all going to say about that, but I think the uh other models generally are a little bit more progressive. I'm going to just put it end it right there. But anyway,

18:14getting back into this. Highly recommend um you know, if you're a Bible believing Christian, put 10% away. I know it's hard, but God will bless you. God will show up when you need him the most if you're honoring him him in your finances. So at least that tithe put that 10% towards your church. Don't don't try to you know

18:38fund a bunch of different ministries. Just give it to what whatever church community you have and God will bless you. He will use it through the leadership that you have above you and and it will get used well. So anyway, moving on. Missions obviously I I covered this before and extra giving. That's great if you can. If you can't,

18:58that's fine. You know, the Bible does say look out for the widows and orphans and tithe. So hopefully that missions covers that. Maybe maybe you're supporting a a um overseas uh through um you know, different programs and that's going to be like 48 bucks a month right now, I think for one child um with uh with with um the different programs out there. So, All right, lastly, again, is that 10%

19:26for savings. And uh really, hopefully, you have this available to you and you can use uh 10% to go towards saving up for um for expenses, but also for investments. Um this can cover things like um household if you needed to. If you want to buy a couch, save up for it. You know, don't don't put it on a credit card and then try to pay it off with your household budget line item. Um you know, save up for 4 months on your savings and then drop it into um a nice couch or something like that. So, or down payment for a house. If you're paying rent, obviously, um you don't

20:03have a mortgage. You have rent, so you're paying $2,000 plus for a family of four right now. Um and that's just, you know, in my neck of the woods in in the Midwest. So, uh you know, you don't have any home improvement costs, thankfully. Um hopefully, your landlord is taking care of all that for you and you can put that uh home improvement cost toward um towards a down payment savings. Um

20:24that's my recommendation. Anyway, that is the spreadsheet. Let's get into how to connect Grok or actually get Grok downloaded, first of all. So, you're want to go to You can go to grok.com. Um you I believe that's the easiest way to do it. I've uh found that going to cursor.com, Cursor is the uh development company that's being hired essentially by XAI to to create Grok Grok bot. I'm not sure how that all works affiliation-wise, but Grok is created by

20:56Cursor um and is made for XAI. And uh bot specifically. So, make sure you're getting the bot. You can use Grok in a browser um as a chat feature. Um, it is included, so any usage that you use at grok.com, um, and the chat does come out of your, um, your usage. And I can actually show you where your usage is, just to give you a heads-up. So, go to, um, your login here at the bottom, go to settings, and then click on where is my usage gone? Well, actually usage is already up. So, I'm 32% for the week. I actually, um, may be able to go

21:35down to that $30 a month because Grok has got more efficient. But anyway, let's, uh, so you download Grok from grok.com or Cursor, um, set up your plan, um, try it out. You think there's a 30-day free trial, which is awesome. In fact, right now they're offering half price on your first month as well. So, 15 bucks for that premium plan, or I think it's even maybe four bucks for that, um, initial plan, but check those out. And then

22:01let's get into Grok itself. So, I've pulled up the finance tab, but this is my crew of bots. Not everybody's is going to look like this. I've got my chief of staff here. I I talk to him probably more than anybody else, and, um, give him tasks to give to my the rest of my bots. But I'm not going to spend too much time on this guys because I really want to

22:24just get into the banker bot. And this is where I've connected the personal finance side of things. So, how I did that was, um, ask Prime to create a bot for me, or you can just hit this plus sign, and you say, uh, banker, you know, and then you, uh, pick I picked the the house looking icon with the brown it just automatically did actually for me,

22:48and I hit create. And then we start talking to our bot. We tell it what our income is, um, you know, what our goals are. Uh, you can connect it to a Google Sheet. So, if you just ask it, say, "Hey, can you connect to my Google Sheet?" And it has a Google Sheet connector, and you give it access to that, and it can write to that Google Sheet for you. I can show you my Google Sheet here, which gives you the total budget of what I've got going on. And this is a lot less color-coded than yours, and probably a lot more information that you need to know, but

23:20that is what Grok is actually creating for me. And it fills this out, and I get notifications if I'm overbudget on anything, and underbudget, and it's fantastic. So, how do you connect Grok to your finances? How the the game-changer for me, guys, was actually connecting it to my bank account so I could see every single transaction. And so, how you do that is you go to the bottom here, and you

23:45connect app. And all you have to do is you can type in finance, and click on this finance app, and then connect all of your bank accounts, which is incredible. You get all of your different uh your different credit cards, if you got them. Like, everybody's Almost everybody's got a Chase card now because of Amazon, right? So, if you got a a Prime Visa card, it's a Chase card. I've got different bank accounts in Wells Fargo, and credit union, as well as a Capital One card. And all of these I was

24:20able to connect by going to add account. So, all you have to do is hit add account, and this will bring up Plaid. And secure.plaid.com is is the best and ubiquitous way to connect your bank account. If you've ever opened up like a Venmo account, and connected your bank, you've probably used Plaid to send money from Venmo to your bank. So, most people don't know that they've used this before, but most of you have if you've used anything like Venmo, Cash App, etc. So, you know, set up a account at Plaid. It is free, absolutely, and this will connect all of your bank accounts, especially if you've got

25:01some of the more prominent ones. If you've got a local bank, it might be harder to connect, but usually there's a way to connect to those accounts, and Grok can see all your transactions. It can't write any transactions for you, but can see all those things and log all of that information. So, I've got it set up to actually read my emails, too. So, one thing that I found out when setting this up is that Grok may see your balances and your credit cards and your checking account, but it can't actually see what the interest is, and it can't see like when what balances are due and when. So,

25:41you want to connect it to like if you have a a Microsoft account for your email or a Gmail account, it can connect to those really super easily. Apple Mail is a little bit tougher, but there are ways to to set that up. Again, all you have to do is ask Grok. So, say, "Hey, Grok, do you have a connector for a

26:02a for Gmail?" And it absolutely does. So, it can check your Gmail to notify you of those you know, if you have your bank statements going to your Gmail, it'll read those, look for them specifically. It won't read everything. It'll look for anything from those bank accounts, read those, and give you updates on and reminders on when to pay your credit card. It's usually you can even set it up like, "Hey, 2 days before my bill is due, make sure that I know that I get a notification from you about the bill, how much it is, and let's get it paid on time." So, with that, guys, I think that covers all

26:40I wanted to cover for this. Again, happy to share this with you. For now, I think I may I may put this behind a paywall at some point, but to start, I want to make sure that this is available to anybody. So, please reach out to me. Hopefully, you can reach out to me on X. It'd be a great place. Um it's

27:02@allthingse at X. Um otherwise, if you know me in person, reach out to me via Facebook. Um you can message me in the comments in the YouTube where I'll publish this. But overall, guys, this is a game changer for me. Um I think it's well worth the you know, eight to 30 to even $100 that you're

27:23paying. Um the more you make, the more this will save you. Um it will you know, it can look at all your transactions and go you know, do you have any extra subscriptions that you're paying for that you shouldn't? Um all of these things are trackable through Grasp once you have it set up with your bank

27:39accounts through Plaid. And I have saved for sure more than $100 a month just by doing that, by canceling subscriptions, make sure I'm I'm not getting duplicate payments on different cards for the same service. Um managing my finances from a you know, grocery and gifts and and shopping budgets, all get managed so much better because I'm using this. And 100% you'll you'll save what you're paying and then be able to use Grasp for all of your different work things. So, I'm using Grasp for my primary job is at my church. I am the the creative director. I use it for marketing, for SEO, for checking metrics on social

28:21media as well as our email campaigns. So huge. You know, goal setting there is fantastic because it looks at all those metrics. If you If you're not measuring it, how are you setting goals, right? So, it's measuring those things for me, putting it in spreadsheets. Again, the easy connector to Google Sheets, just ask Grasp, "Hey, can you connect to my to my Google Sheets or Google account in general and write sheets for me. Absolutely can feed it a link to the spreadsheet guys by going to share and just dropping that share making sure that it has the edits you know viewer change it to editor and

29:03so that Grok can see it and be able to adjust it for you is the way to go. So all right so with that thank you so much for watching have a great day and always guys God bless.