For most of my life, hearing the word budget made me cringe. It evoked feelings of inadequacy, guilt, entrapment, and failure.
I had attempted different versions of budgeting for most of my life. In college, I projected my expenses and worked multiple jobs every summer to try to come up with the necessary amount. If unexpected things came up–I panicked. I scrambled. Sometimes I would receive a birthday check or a free dinner that made all the difference. Other times I took on part-time jobs or [gulp] charged something to a credit card.
When we were newly married, we were broke. Not like couldn’t-afford-a-vacation broke, but like it’s-a-miracle-we-made-it-through broke. We lived most of our first year of marriage off of my sporadic temp jobs (I had just graduated from college) and my husband’s part-time job while he finished college full-time. Our most common dinner back then was stew and rice. We bought cheap cans of stew in bulk. We dumped the contents of one can of stew into a bowl, warmed it in the microwave, then used it like a gravy, pouring it over our servings of rice (from a big, 50-lb. bag). Stew and rice sustained us that year. I wanted to be as careful as I could with the little we had. Plus, I knew we needed to avoid credit card debt and pay off the debt we (mostly I) had already accrued.
So I found Microsoft Money and started working on being more responsible with our money. Do you know what the game-changer was? Tracking our expenses. Suddenly, I had to account for every penny I’d spent. I had to look at it honestly instead of just shrugging things off and saying, “We are only buying the essentials.” Tracking every expense was the accountability I needed.
I remember one of my brothers (who shall remain nameless–love you, bro!) working on a Boy Scout requirement to advance to the next rank. He had to track all of his income and expenses regularly for a few months. It took him forever (like over a year) to do it. One day my mom confronted him about why this was taking him so long. His answer is family lore. He huffed and with a voice seething with frustration grumbled, “Every day I just write ‘NO MONEY! NO MONEY! NO MONEY!'”
Keeping Score in a Losing Game
It feels discouraging to track your mistakes. It is like typing something into a word processor only to find every word is underlined. Or keeping score in a pick-up game versus a pro athlete. Nobody likes that feeling. Nobody.
The good news is that the longer we consistently track our money, the more we realize that we are actually tracking our progress. The universal principle states, “What we appreciate, appreciates.” And that is always encouraging. That is why new budgeters save $600 by month two and more than $6000 their first year. Once you realize that you really are the person in control of your money, you start being in control. It’s inevitable. And encouraging.
Sadly, I dropped the ball. Microsoft Money stopped getting updates and eventually became obsolete. I tried a few other things, but nothing stuck. Weeks of searching for some other budgeting software turned into months, then years. I made inconsistent attempts at budgeting with a spreadsheet, but I wasn’t tracking our expenses, so my monthly budgets looked more like wishlists to Santa than reality. It doesn’t help that I am an incorrigible optimist. Our budget wasn’t working. No, it was broke–and so were we.
Listen to Yourself for a Change
For my entire life, I have been a snoozer. I’ve intentionally set my alarm clock for an earlier time so I could hit “snooze” two or three times before I actually get up. I’ve always justified it by saying that I prefer to wake up slowly, to ease into the day. I don’t jump into cold swimming pools either. I ease my way in slowly. I’ve gotta get used to the idea, you know? It’s who I am and nobody could convince me otherwise.
But last month I heard someone explaining how when we hit that “snooze” button in the morning, we are actually choosing to mistrust, disrespect. and ignore ourselves. Or at least that’s what I heard. She explained that if a more coherent, clearer-thinking version of yourself is telling you to do something, you need to listen.
And since last month I was focusing on listening in my journey this year to add more joy to my life, I decided to try something new. So, for the next two
But do you know what was great? I felt so much more in charge of my own destiny. I felt empowered. I recognized that if I want my children or my husband or anyone else to listen to me, I had to start by listening to myself.
And that, to me, is what a budget is. A budget is an intentional plan to do specific things with money. It is the plan I make when I am rested, prioritizing with my husband, and at home (not in the middle of Target). It is me, telling me what to do with my money. And when I listen to myself, I empower myself. When I track my expenses, I am ensuring that I am honoring my own wishes and helping myself get where I want to be–in the long run.
One of our biggest financial turning points was in finding YNAB a few years ago. I resumed a search for a budgeting software and had even purchased another product when I heard about YNAB in a blog comment on someone else’s blog. It was a simple comment someone made, “Sounds like you could use YNAB.” or something like that. But it piqued my interest. So of course, I googled it. I was skeptical at first. I signed up for the free, 34-day trial and I started taking as many of their live workshops as I could. I really wanted to learn. Twenty days in, we went on a big family vacation and I completely fell off the wagon. I never even logged into YNAB the whole two and a half weeks we were gone. But a few weeks after we got home, I emailed YNAB, confessed my stupidity and begged for mercy. They kindly gave me a 34-day extension on my free trial. I’ve been a subscribing customer ever since.
I am not perfect. Sometimes I overspend in a category, but as YNAB’s Rule #3 states, I “roll with the punches.” Together my husband and I have a plan. We have dreams. We know that we do not want debt, so instead of overspending on a credit card and floating an unpaid balance month after month (been there, done that), we can move money we have allocated to something else (like a vacation fund or “fun money” or another less-urgent category) and put it in the category where we’ve overspent (usually groceries).
In her book The Recovering Spender, Lauren Greutman describes a budget as a fence that keeps her and her family safe. It delineates her boundaries and keeps her kids from wandering too far away from home and into unsafe places. I’ve always liked her definition.
To me, though, a budget is a multi-faceted tool. Yes, it is a plan, and a fantastic fence, but it is also a vehicle helping me arrive safely at my ultimate destination. It is me empowering me to do what I really want to do without getting
It’s blinders.
It’s a power-up.
It’s exactly what I need.
