New Year, New You, New Budget

Do you make New Year's Resolutions? I don't, really, but sometimes I think I probably should. Like, maybe not neglect my blog? Who knows. Anyway, I don't particularly subscribe to the notion that January is the time to make all the changes, but since it's January, and I've got to talk about something, I'm gonna talk about that.

If you've been on the fence about making (and sticking to) a budget, now is totally a great time to hop off the fence, and get to it. It's easy, and you still get to buy the things you want. Just maybe not as much of them all on the same day.

I have already talked a bit about the magic of the grocery budget, so I'll try not to repeat myself, here, but seriously, budgeting is amazing. Aside from the births of my children, consistently budgeting has probably had the biggest positive impact on my life in the last 5 years. Is that nerdy? Probably. But it's also kind of cool.

Pre-budget, I had a few hang ups about making a budget. In my mind, I (mistakenly) thought that only people in financial ruin needed to budget. Turns out, budgeting is a really great tool to help keep you out of financial ruin. I was extremely reluctant to sit down and work on a budget with my husband. Below, please find my (lame) excuses why:

1. "We don't have a problem with money"

Who cares? As I mentioned above, you don't have to have a problem with money to benefit from a budget. A budget is a means to help keep you on track to reach your financial goals. Do you want to save up for a trip? A new car? Do you just want to make sure you're not spending more than you're making? A budget will help you do this. Or, maybe you do have a problem with money. That's okay, too. A budget can help you get back on track, and keep you accountable. I've been the total opposite of a Type A personality my whole life, but I'm coming to realize that things really do work out better when you have a plan. At least with money. I still wing it most everywhere else.

2. "A budget is just a way for my spouse to police what I spend money on"

I don't like to admit that I'm wrong, but maaaaaaan, I was super wrong. Contrary to my hyper-sensitive brain being hyper-sensitive, my husband was never actually interested in policing my spending. What he was interested in (and what we should all be interested in, really) is making sure we were using our money for things we actually wanted to spend money on, and making sure we had enough money to allocate to all of those things. Plus, with a budget, no one ever has to feel guilty about spending money. If there's something you want to spend money on, build it into your budget. Maybe you don't want to drop your Starbucks habit, and that's fine. When you're building your budget, allocate money for that. There might be weeks when you need to replace a windshield or get an oil change or host a party where Starbucks might have to be sacrificed, but if you collaborate on the budget, and make a plan, there are no surprises and no policing, just a mutually agreed upon plan for your money.

3. "I don't have time to make a budget"

Guess what I do have time for, though? Instagram. Facebook. Trying not to fall asleep beside my kids while they watch My Little Pony. Aside from the very first budget building day, where we spent about 2 hours getting everything sorted out, the budget charges us about 20-40 minutes of our time every 2 weeks. We reconcile the budget and make a new one every 2 weeks, the day before payday (if your income fluctuates from paycheque to paycheque, you could make your budgets on actual payday so you know how much money you're working with). 20-40 minutes every 14 days. That's like one shower.

This was a big old "oof" for me the first time I read it. Next time you feel like saying you don't have time, replace it with "I don't want to" and see if you still feel the same way.

4. "A budget is too limiting."

I was worried that I would run out of toilet paper, and laundry soap, and diapers and all the expensive pantry staples all in the same week, and not have enough money to cover it all. But guess what? Budgets are flexible. What you budget for groceries in one pay period may not be the same as what you budget for in the next one. If you know you need to buy those things, you plan for them in the budget. We pretty consistently budget the same amounts in most of our spending categories each cycle. Except for when we don't. We build our 2 week budget with the calendar in front of us. If there's a birthday party, the gift budget goes up, if we're hosting people for dinner or a party, the grocery budget goes up. But that means somewhere else goes down. Maybe we put less money into our wishlist account this cycle, or we drop the entertainment budget down. It's not set in stone. What works for you for 2 weeks in December isn't going to look the same as 2 weeks in July. We try to leave room in our budget to save for home and vehicle repairs and maintenance as well as emergency situations. This way, if the engine falls out of my car, or the dishwasher explodes, we have funds set aside, already, to ease the cost of the unexpected, so that we can still buy groceries or even order a pizza without worrying about a crazy high credit card bill.

5. "I'm a stubborn baby and you can't tell me what to do."

This one is still true. We didn't make the budget until I came home one day and was like "you know what we should totally do? We should totally start budgeting." Which, I am shamefully realizing as I type this, is something I give my husband shit for doing quite regularly. (Coming in all excited about an idea I've been trying to pitch for years). So, sorry, babe. Officially apologizing. Hope you read my blog.

Related: Many years ago, my husband's mom gifted us a program called Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. Of course, I was immediately offended because "we don't have a problem with money" (See number 1) and shoved in under our bed for a long long time. Then, I went and listened to my friend Selina Gray talk about budgeting and was inspired. Then, my husband and I watched the first.... 40 minutes? of the first disc of the Dave Ramsey kit, and were like "oh. We can do this." And shut it off and made a budget, and we've been rolling with our 40 minutes of knowledge ever since. So, what I'm saying, I think, is that you don't need to be an expert to make a budget. But, if you do need some help, that Dave Ramsay program seemed pretty good. At least, the beginning of it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, a budget is a huge piece of the financial puzzle. If you've been inspired by this blog, so far, to pay more attention at the grocery store, that's awesome. I've had many, many messages from people who have saved by price matching, buying less, and double checking their receipts before leaving the grocery store, and it's amazing. Don't ever stop messaging me about this stuff, because I love it. But if you're price matching, and spending less, but still not reconciling your spending with your income, how much better off are you? I do all these things to spend less money at the grocery store as a means to stay on budget. Every dollar of our income is accounted for in our budgets, and we have managed to keep our grocery budget pretty low because of these strategies. A low grocery budget means we have more funds to allocate to different areas like entertainment or our wishlist (hellooooo new van), or paying down our mortgage.

Without a budget, I might price match for a great deal, but still be overspending overall. Or maybe I take my price match savings and buy myself a treat without recognizing that the "savings" was not a surplus, but necessary to stay under budget. Sometimes my grocery strategies do result in a surplus at the end of the budget cycle, and I can move it to a wish list account, or treat myself. More often than not, though, the budget is simply balanced, and the grocery strategies are the reason why. I keep track of my price match savings in my grocery notebook not so that I can take my $52 at the end of the month and spend it on Starbucks or shoes or even move it to a savings account. I keep track so that I can see how much it pays to pay attention, and to show that it's possible, with a little bit of effort, to keep to a relatively low grocery budget while still buying the items that are important to me.

Budgeting like this, and paying attention to where our money was going allowed us to pay off a $20,000 line of credit debt in less than a year. Since then, we have been able to save for vacations, increase our RRSP contributions and more, and it has just been so. dang. freeing. Yes, sometimes in a budget you make sacrifices. There were weeks where our entertainment budget for 2 weeks was $40, or our own personal shopping budgets were dropped to $0, but because of those small things, we also no longer have a car payment and weren't paying off a trip to Hawaii on our credit card for months after we returned.

Small changes make a big difference. If you're thinking about budgeting, now is as good a time as any to give it a shot. What's holding you back?