I was recently asked “Will you always be on a budget?”
I clarified with the person asking, and they were meaning, “even when you’re not paying off debt, will you still stay on a written budget?”
The answer is an enthusiastic yes!
"A budget is telling your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went." -John Maxwell
A written budget, DISCUSSED IN DETAIL WITH YOUR SPOUSE, is a map that determines where you’re going financially. This blog has discussed in detail that I believe debt of any kind to be a thief - and I’m not getting a lot of folks arguing this point. A zero dollar based budget that was developed after Christina and I read “The Total Money Makeover” was the start to our journey.
I’m borrowing from Dave Ramsey here - he identifies “four walls” - food, utilities, shelter, transportation. This particular blog will focus on them.
Food - Christina is in charge of food in our family. All meals are home-cooked. We budget $150 per week for our family of three for groceries, and we eat very well. Larger portions are cooked at supper to favour leftover lunch to be reheated at work.
Utilities - this is where you budget for lights, water/sewer and heat. We’ve switched to LED lights, and we’re conservative with our use of the heat in our apartment to save on propane.
Shelter - we budget 25% of our take home pay towards rent. This allows us to have financial space in our budget to do other things, like attack debt the way we have been.
Transportation - we have a paid for 2009 Altima and a “being paid off” Santa Fe purchased before we read Total Money Makeover and while we were spending like the Trudeau Administration. We wouldn’t buy a new vehicle again (we’ve lost enough in depreciation since purchasing it in Oct/2018 that we could cash purchase every other vehicle in our multi-generational driveway with the depreciation alone). If you’re able to, I strongly recommend carpooling and/or public transportation, even just temporarily. Christina and I carpool to Peterborough from Warsaw five days a week.
Here’s the deal - get on a written budget. Make it a tight one. Discuss it with your spouse in detail, and be flexible and listen to their input. You may be surprised by how empowered you feel! Get the four walls established and you’ll be able to see on paper how do-able your life is, or where you may need to increase income or tighten things up (one of the reasons we moved was to save on rent, it didn’t kill us). You can do this!
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