I can sit here and talk a great game about budgeting and the importance of it and how our family really transformed to rock our budget {which we did}, but the truth is, I am totally a spender not a saver!
It’s almost comical how I cannot save money to save my life. When we bought our house last year, I couldn’t even check the bank account because if I saw all of that money sitting there, a million things would have come to mind on how I can spend it before we needed to write that awful savings-draining check!
So, probably not unlike a lot of you, I have to really reign myself in. Luckily, I am married to a non-spender. I can’t say saver because he’s not that at all, but he literally just doesn’t spend money. Like ever. On anything – except gas for his car. So it’s super frustrating to try to explain that I absolutely needed to spend all that money in Target on new pillows for the couch when I was literally just complaining that we needed to really buckle down for some big ticket things coming up.
This was a really big issue when I was relying solely on unsteady income. We went a year on nothing from me but freelance writing. It paid the bills and we survived, but we never knew how much to expect or when, so budgeting was incredibly hard. Add to this my husband only gets paid once a month and any extra spending could have really thrown everything off. Once I decided to go back to a regular job and our income was once again predictable, the stress was lessened and we could really do a better job budgeting.
Therefore, I needed to figure out a way to make a budget work for me with my occasional spontaneous spending.
The first thing I did was to look at when and why I spent extra money that we didn’t plan for. For me, I shop when I’m stressed. Kind of like stress eating, which I also do. The correct step would be to recognize when I’m starting to feel that way and stop myself, but the realistic way I’m dealing with it is to pad my budget so we have room for those small shopping sprees.
One thing to note is that I buy a few items, not hundreds or thousands of dollars-worth of items on these shopping occasions. This is not a manic phase by any means, usually just a little pick me up like a new book, a new pair of shoes, or a new journal.
Now how did I leave room in an already tight budget for little pick-me-ups? Easy. I budget down.
We already use a zero-dollar budgeting system so that we tell every dollar where to go. In doing this, there isn’t usually extra money. But what I do is round down to the lowest whole number, leaving myself a little bit of wiggle room each month. Meaning, if we got a check for $1574, I would budget for $1500. That $74 doesn’t really have a place to go, so it’s ok if I buy that extra book. Or, let’s not lie, something for the girls, because that’s where most of my money goes anyway!
I’m sure financial gurus out there are shuddering at this post, but fear not, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not always crazy-stressed out, and I don’t always use this money, so that means that come the next pay day, if there is money left, it goes toward debt or toward something we are saving up for instead of just useless crap.
Another benefit to this is that we have instituted a rule that if something new comes in, something old goes out. This is awesome because it is helping us {slowly} declutter and is making us money by selling the things we don’t use. More about that to come!
Lastly, the best thing this brings is it alleviates the money arguments. Kevin never gets mad that I bought something because he knows that I have left room in the budget for it. And I never, ever make big purchase decisions without him and our 3-month budget in hand!
What are your tricks to staying on budget when you just want to spend!?
