Budget Planning Can be FUN

With the little one’s arrival coming in double-digit days, now is the time to get serious about our budget once again. We have been kind of living free and easy. Loosened up the belt on the spending a bit more than was necessary. As much as it stinks to have to budget, it has obvious rewards and lets me practice my mad planner skills.

Levi and I both tend to start small by spending a little more on groceries here and buying an extra lunch out there. It’s crazy just how fast those few extra dollars spent daily at the gas station or coffee shop can add up to hundreds of dollars at the end of the month. Ask Levi, I think he previously did most of his shopping at the local Shell Station.

As you may or may not know I LOVE a good planner. I found a company called, The Lamare just a few months ago while doing some research online. I quickly fell in love with their products. They are gorgeous, practical, and affordable.

To tackle our budget head-on, I purchased the Wealth & Abundance: Financial Planner alongside the Align Budget Envelopes. I know, it might seem silly to think about buying something to save money. But you need the right tools to do a job correctly, right? If I have a pretty planner with inspirational quotes to motivate me, a clean, complete, and concise list of my debt, bills, and income, and a visual chart to watch my progress, I can guarantee you I am setting myself up for success.

My next purchase (after we budget accordingly, obviously) will be the Wander Always: Travel Planner & Journal, but alas that is to share in another post at another time.

Years and years ago Levi and I took a Dave Ramsey course. It truly helped get the two of us in line. Realizing the debt we had accrued made us take a good hard look at what we needed to do to get where we wanted to be financially. All in all the class was eye-opening and gave us the basic knowledge of budgeting and paying down debt. So now armed with my awesome planner we have kickstarted our ambition to put our budget into action once again.

Wealth & Abundance: Financial Planner

The first day Levi and I sat down to get serious about budgeting we completed the first few pages of the planner: our annual income, expenses (fixed and variable), and our monthly calendar. At the end of this month, we sit down together again and enter all our totals from the receipts in our envelopes (I will explain the envelopes more later). This check-in gives us a good idea of our spending so we can access how we did during the month. It helps us learn where we need to make adjustments like putting more money in a different area or where we need to cut back next month. Levi and I also spent time filling out the debt tracker in the back of the book. There is a section on savings if that’s what you might be working towards, but right now we have a goal to pay off a few debts before the baby is born. So we spent our time putting the debts in one place in order to see the progress we are making paying off what we have accrued. We chose to do a snowball method to really pay down our debt fast as we have less than three months to get this under wraps!! If you want to learn more about snowballing debt, I highly suggest this website.

Align Budget Envelopes

Envelopes help keep us honest and accountable. We picked several categories and filled envelopes with the dollar amounts we felt were within our budget. For example, we have envelopes for Groceries, Recreation, Gas, Eating Out…you get the idea. Once we are out of cash in a specific envelope, that’s all she wrote. We are done spending in that area until the next payday when we fill them back up. I find it incredibly true that handing over cold hard cash is an entirely different experience than just swiping a debit or credit card. It makes me think twice about the cost vs benefit.

Having a set amount of cash to buy groceries is kind of stressful but also has made us better about planning meals and having a well thought out grocery list. Who knew that by budgeting our money we would also become better about planning meals?

We have 95 days until the baby joins our little crew. Setting these new budgetary goals of paying off a few doctor bills and credit cards by the time this little one arrives has me excited. I love a good goal to work towards, and setting some hard limits on spending with an achievable objective is right up my alley. So goodbye my sweet Chai Tea Lattes it was fun while it lasted but I must bid you farewell. We would love to hear your success stories and/or any other strategies you found helpful!