I hope I’m not alone here, but I’m thirty years old and I’ve never kept a proper budget. I tried once, several months ago. It was scary to take a focused look at our finances, but I actually found the whole process oddly comforting.
It didn’t last.
I’m not surprised.
Life is busy. Time moves quickly and money is strangely hard to keep track of. And is it just me, or is something always popping up? Someone’s getting married. Someone’s having a baby. You get a nail in your tire. A group of college friends are renting a cabin for the weekend and have invited you along.
I can stick to a plan like the best of them. But planning for the un-plannable is where everything gets messed up.
Don’t try to convince me that you can plan for that stuff. I don’t know what kind of money wizardry you’re capable of, but unless it’s a solid, rounded out expense, it’s nearly impossible for me. Fluff and emergency budgets never fared well in this household.
I decided on a whim to factor out what we’ve spent on rent in the 6.5 years we’ve been married. If you ever need to force yourself to throw up but aren’t a fan of the finger-down-your-throat tactic, I highly recommend you give it a try.
$81, 040
Keep in mind here, folks, that we got super lucky with our housing for the two years we lived in Buies Creek. We had a lovely house for next to nothing. So that number could be way higher.
How the hell are so many of us making such poor money decisions?
No one talks about it. No one admits that they have no idea what they’re doing. No one advises high school and college students like they should. We’re all taught to keep our money talk to ourselves.
I was always making money. I started working the day I turned 11 and was deemed old enough to babysit. I had a steady part time job in middle school making $100/week. Not shabby for a pre-teen. I spent my summers nannying. I babysat practically every weekend. If I wasn’t in class in college, I was at work. But I never took the responsibility to learn how to take care of that money.
If I’d only made saving money a priority, we’d be pretty damn close to paying off a house by now.
That actually makes my stomach hurt.
I’m not sure I want to know where all my money went over the years. I mean, I have a pretty good idea. But we’re going to take a serious look at the money situation and work through some actual, tactical action steps to get a handle on that slippery green stuff.
Operation buy a house.
A couple important things to note as I start this series:
- My husband and I share our finances 100%. We do not have separate savings or checking accounts. I realize some will argue that is a horrible way to do things, however, we are a Christian home, and it works for us.
- I recently left my day job to launch a business. I did carefully & intentionally set money aside to bridge the gap from my day job and when I’d start taking a steady salary from the business.
- Edited to add (thanks to Myra’s comment :)): we only spend what we have. We no longer use credit cards.
Let me know in the comments below if you keep to a budget, or if you’re a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantser like me.
Oh man, you already know where we fall on this! Budgeting has always been such a big part of our lives. But I guess that’s expected with two accountants, lol.
One big thing: We try to always only spend what we can via Debit card as it keeps our budget up-to-date constantly. If we have a big purchase, we put that on credit cards because it helps build our credit, but we pay off monthly to avoid interest!
Love posts about budgets– they are so important to have! I always think it’s eye opening, when you stop and look back at how much you’re spending on any one expensive over time. Often things that don’t seem like that much in the moment quickly add up if you’re not being super intentional with where you’re spending your money.
I’ve eaten most of my money in the past six years. It is what it is… Andrew is starting a business and it’s ridiculously expensive (every little thing adds up… I have become SO careful about how many napkins I take now bc those things get $$$!). We’re going to have to start budgeting a lot more, but I’m a toddler stomping her foot and saying I don’t wanna!
I am so interested in personal finance. This year, I’ve read several books on the topic and I’m working on paying off old bills so I can move forward. I am single but if I was married, I would want to share finances 100 percent too. I think it’s so important to share your goals and work on them together.
We also share everything 100% and have since before we even got married. I always felt weird about that for the first 6 months or so because I was literally contributing nothing but Scott always told me everything was “ours” and that was comforting. We have friends who split bills and we kind of side-eye that. I understand why some people do it, but in the military, that makes life harder than it has to be and I don’t understand how you can follow your husband (or wife) around the world or have kids without trusting them enough to share money.
And this is why we bought a house: the cost of rent is absurd.
we don’t keep a budget *exactly* but kind of? i have tried to keep a proper budget but it never works. i do keep track of everything we spend and a hypothetical budget, like these are all our bills etc and we can afford to do this or that.
we do use credit cards though – but we are the kind of people who pay them off immediately, we never carry a balance. we use them for points/miles, and we haven’t paid for a flight around the US in a few years because of those miles. we also share finances and accounts, not for the same reason as you, but because one of us WAS a shopaholic who loved to spend money and needed the other person who was a hardcore saver to keep her in line 😉 at first i kind of resented it, but i knew i needed it. i felt like i was being restricted and couldn’t shop – now i don’t want to, and KC wanted to buy new shoes the other day and i was like WHY. you don’t need new shoes! and he was like ‘wow, the tables have turned’. haha.