I love to budget because I no longer stress about how I'm going to pay for things like pool passes or license plate renewals and such but I know I am a rare bird. Most people that hear "budget" used as a verb wince in pain. Here is a a way I recently starting really making my budget fun.
We have all heard financial savvy people spout off numbers with regard to our lackadaisical spending habits with quotes like this, "you know, if you took that $3 you spend on your daily coffee at Starbucks and put it in the bank every day instead for the next 5 years and let it grow you would have $1.2 million dollars by the time your retire." We all stop and nod and say "wow" while we clutch our Starbucks coffee so no one takes it away from us. My father recently said I would really have some extra cash once I get my youngest out of diapers. I agreed thinking that I really NEED that money for other things so I know that "extra cash" post diaper life isn't likely.
So I got to thinking about this diaper thing and how I could really put the savings to work when Dillon is out of diapers. So here's what I did. I created another category or "envelope" in my budget account (see "Sample Budget Jenn's way") and I called it "Things I Did Not Buy." In that envelope I am going to put all the things that I really really wanted and might have bought but for the fact that I was disciplined and my budget is too tight to justify. For instance, I really want a new sweater. I even shopped for a new sweater. Do I NEED a new sweater? No, I have other clothes, they are just few in number and I'm tired of them. Does my budget say that I can afford a new sweater? Well with only $45 in my clothing envelope and 3 kids that keep growing feet and a husband who often needs new work clothes, no I can not afford a sweater that I WANT but do not NEED at the moment. Sure, I could squeeze it out of my budget somehow if I really wanted to. I could get the sweater and leave only $10 in my clothing account and build it up again by cutting back on something else and I have done such dumb undisciplined things in the past.
Knowing that I have done this in the past and that I could make it work I went ahead and didn't buy it. Instead, I pretended I bought it and I took out $35 from my clothing envelope and put it in my "Things I Did Not Buy" envelope. Afterall, if I really needed to get that $35 back for clothing I could just take it back from my Things I Did Not Buy envelope. That got me to thinking of all the other things I often buy that I shouldn't. The next day I drove into my driveway and noticed that our yard needed to be mowed. I so very much wanted to call the neighbor boy to mow it because I knew my husband would be busy working over the weekend. But I didn't. Instead I took out the $20 from my Home Maintenance envelope and put it in my "Things I Did Not Buy" envelope. A week later I really really wanted mums at a garden center for $15. My husband asked if those flowers "were the kind that died and never came back" which was his way of gently telling me that it was not a smart purchase with my budgetary constraints. I went home and put the $15 from my Home Maintenance Envelope (I know it isn't maintenance but I have squeezed this kind of purchase from there before) and put it in my "Things I Did Not Buy" envelope. I quickly had $70 that I could live without. So my diaper plan is to save my receipts to find out exactly how much I spend on diapers per month and instead of absorbing it other places I'm going to put that money in my "Things I Did Not Buy" envelope and for every $100 I collect from myself I'm going to transfer it to a CD and watch the millions grow through to my retirement years. :) I am very motivated to potty train now but maybe 18 months old is a bit early.
No comments:
Post a Comment