If you’re like most people, when you do your taxes once a year you’re genuinely surprised at the numbers staring up at you. You can’t believe how much you spent on various items. Maybe it’s car repair. School supplies. Travel. Eating out. Shoes. Or even groceries. You’re so surprised at how much you spent, compared to how much you earned, that you tell yourself you won’t do that again next year. Then, of course, next year rolls around and you see you’ve repeated the same pattern.

If you’re 12 times more determined than most people to exercise financial control, you go through this exercise once a month, when you look at your bank statement or credit card bill.

Budget Bee Financial Wellness is a service that sets out to break this pattern of retroactive remorse. Budget Bee turns you into a person who looks forward instead of backward, so, like a business, you know your expenses ahead of time, and you end up making a profit at the end of the month.

The founder and owner of Budget Bee Financial Wellness is Molly Richard.

If you have small children, you inevitably find yourself buying toys. If you’re trying to exercise some financial discipline and you’re looking at your monthly budget, do you put toys in the “essential” column? Or the “extravagance” column? The answer to that question is, not all toys are created equal. If you go to a big-box store or look online, there are a lot of toys of dubious quality, and with little or no educational or enriching value. That’s the reason Melissa Beese founded her company, Little Pnuts.

Melissa started Little Pnuts as a toy subscription service. You sign up and Melissa sends you a monthly box of toys curated from around the world that are high quality and, depending on the child’s age, enhance developmental progress in areas like motor skills, focus, and concentration. Melissa also makes a special Travel Box for 3 – 6 year olds that fits on a plane’s tray table, and if you’re in new Orleans, Little Pnuts also has a physical storefront, on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview.

Photos over lunch at Commander’s Palace by Jill Lafleur.