Eating is a basic human need, yet for many it is often surrounded by mystery, mystique and confusion – differentiating healthy from non-healthy is often a difficult task. This, coupled with the challenge of eating healthy while on a budget, intensifies the issue to epidemic proportions. Searching out the proper way to eat, while also saving on costs, can be an overwhelming task. Below, I outline the best ways to eat well on a budget, and I hope this will aid in your mission!
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Budget
Excuse Busters For Not Having A Budget
Yesterday I wrote about 9 common excuses why you don’t have a budget. Today I’m going to bust those excuses and show you why you need a budget.
Excuse Busters For Not Having A Budget:
- You Don’t Want To Be Told What To Do – Really? You don’t want something to tell you how to spend your money. Well how do you like the bills you pay every month? Or looking at your bank account and being told you don’t have funds to cover an expense? Truth is, when you have an effective budget you are in control of your money and you can see what you are doing. The only one doing the telling is you with a budget.
- You Feel Constrained – Yes, a budget tells you how much money you may have for different expenses. And you may not be able to spend indiscriminately. But the truth is a budget can be liberating! You know exactly what you can afford and you know where your money is going. When you know your expenses you can re-allocate your spending to fit your needs and wants. Without a budget it’s more like a high wire without a net.
- You Can’t Do What you Want – Not the case. A budget will tell you what you can afford. With a good budget you can change your spending to allocate more money for things that are important to you. You cut out the frivolous spending for things with more purpose.
- Can’t Give up Your Ego And Admit You Need to Control Your Spending – Get over yourself and take a good look at the bills you have and the stress you go through every month to pay them. Look at how quickly your paycheck disappears and how your bank account dwindles. You want the best stuff, I get it. But you have to reign in your spending. The lifestyle you are trying to live is an illusion and it’s much healthier for you to truly live your life instead. Don’t worry so much about appearances because appearances lie. Be!
- Your Expenses Are Too Big To Get your Head Around – It can be a daunting task to start a budget if you haven’t done one before. Start small. Gather up your bills. If you don’t have them then as they come in write down their totals in a spreadsheet (or a notebook). After you have put together your expenses, compare that to your income (for most that’s you paycheck stubs over the month). Once you can see you expenses and income you can start to go more into the details. Start holding on to receipts as you spend and mark them down. Track down the little expenses. Take a look at those bills and see what they are made up of. The point is, if you want to start a budget you can. Don’t think you have to do it all at once. For most a budget is work in process.
- You’re Afraid – Liberate yourself from this fear. If you are afraid then you probably think your expenses/spending are out of control. It may not be as bad as you think. Even if it is, once you can put a definite figure on it you’ve taken a step to start attacking it. It’s not going to get better until you decide to do something about it and a big first step is starting a budget!
- It Takes Too Much Energy And Time – Maybe at first it takes some time. But once you know your recurring bills it gets a lot quicker. Get yourself organized and you’ll find it doesn’t take much time at all (personal finance software like Mint, Mvelopes, or Moneydance – review can help). And you will also find that tracking things like your taxes expenses will be easier since you’ve been keeping track of spending all year.
- It’s Depressing – It doesn’t make me happy all the time to see what money I have left for the month. Or to see how much I pay out. But a budget is empowering. With you budget you are in control and you see exactly what you spend. What makes me happy (not depressed) is knowing that I have a handle on my money. It’s a powerful feeling in fact!
- You Manage To Get By Without One – That’s great if you get all of your bills paid and still have money left over without a budget. You might even have money going into savings and a retirement account. Some people are naturally good at keeping track. But if you put together a budget you may find lots of small “money leaks” that you weren’t aware of previously. You may find that your savings and such will grow considerably when you see exactly what your spending is. From personal experience, my wife and I were surprised to see how much we spent on the weekends on little things. Had we known then what we know now we’d have much nicer savings!
- Your Spouse Isn’t On the Same Page As You – You need to sit down and talk to your spouse and have a serious money talk. A budget doesn’t mean you can’t use money any more it just means you know where that money is going and why. A budget allows you to align your goals for your family.
Hey, you know what? A budget isn’t that tough! Stop making excuses and get started on one. You just might find things are easier once you see where your money is going.
Bonus: I just discovered these templates to help manage your finances in Google Docs! They’re free and there’s a whole bunch of them!
No More Excuses!
See Part I: 9 Excuses Why You Haven’t Started A Budget
photo credit: peasap
9 Excuses Why You Haven’t Started A Budget Yet
I was thinking about why more people and families don’t have a budget.
It’s really the thing to do to keep track of your expenses and income and make sure you don’t go over with your spending. I thought about all the different excuses I’ve heard and seen from people.
So why haven’t you started a budget? Here are some common reasons:
You Don’t Want To Be Told What To Do
A budget can tell you how much you actually have to spend and what you can afford every month. You don’t want to be told where your money has to go and you don’t want to hear that you can’t spend when you want.
A Budget Constrains You
You feel choked by the limitations of a budget. Can’t spend what I want on clothes. {Cough, cough.} Can’t go out for coffee drinks every day. {Choke.} The mere thought of a budget starts to make you feel walled in.
You Can’t Do What You Want
What fun is it to know you can’t afford to go out to eat four times a week? Who wants that. You want to be able to spend freely and do what you feel at the moment. That’s what freedom is, isn’t it?
Can’t Give Up Your Ego And Admit You Need To Control Your Spending
You refuse to believe that you have a spending problem. You’re living an illusion. Even though it causes stress you always find a way out of your financial messes without learning the lessons. When there’s a will there’s a way and you can spend what you want. Everything’s ok.
Your Expenses Are Too Big To Get Your Head Around
You want to have a budget but you don’t know where to start. You’ve tried to get a few bills together but the task seems too big so you end up giving up. You’re not organized enough to get everything together. You may not even know all of the bills you pay every month. It’s too much.
You’re Afraid
You don’t even want to see what your finances are! To actually put a number to your expenses would give you a heart attack (not literally but close enough). You know it’s bad but you really can’t stand to see the actual figures.
It Takes Too Much Energy And Time
You don’t have the time to put all of your receipts and bills together. You work a 9 to 5 five that’s rarely just that and when you come home the last thing you want to do is more work.
It’s Depressing
It just doesn’t make you feel good to see your finances in a budget. You would rather not put yourself into a funk so you ignore the idea of a budget.
You Manage To Get By Without One
Your bills get paid. Money goes into savings. You invest. What do you need a budget for? (I’ll answer that one in another post).
That’s nine excuses a person might not have a budget. Does one of these resemble you? Can you think of others?
See Part II: Excuse Busters For Not Having A Budget!
6 Ways Eating Out Less Has Made Our Family Better
As you know we are living off of one income now. It’s been a bit different but I think we’re doing well so far. One thing we’ve done to help stretch my paycheck is to cut back eating out so often. I didn’t think we ate out too much before the income switch but now I can see that we had a budget leak that could have been more savings for us. And we’ve discovered there are more benefits than saving money!
We were already in the habit of making dinner at home and having family time together. It was the weekends when we usually ate out. Saturdays were probably the worst culprits. We would get up and go to our favorite diner for breakfast. Then as we’d go and take care of things during the day we’d find lunch somewhere. This would also tend to be pretty unhealthy. I’m talking mall food here. Afterward we’d be too beat to make dinner so we go out for dinner or order in. Three meals may not seem like a lot but it would drain my wallet pretty quick! I would usually go to the bank on Friday to take money out for the weekend and often I’d find that I was broke by Sunday!
And that was just eating out on Saturday! I didn’t even get to eating out on Sunday or during the week. Sundays would usually be breakfast and lunch out again. During the week we usually ate in but if we were tired we would easily get food out!
Overall we’re really happy with the fact that we have been eating at home more.
Here are six ways eating out less has made our family better:
- We have more more family time together. When we eat we eat together at the dinner table. We have more time for conversation to talk about our days. Our daughter knows that dinner time is “family dinner.” “A family that eats together stays together.
- We are eating healthier. Sometimes we would eat out at a nice restaurant with great food but most of the time it would be at a chain type restaurant. Yeah, we filled up but the food wasn’t really great for us. Now the food we eat is prepared by us and we know better what the ingredients are.
- We’re setting a better example for our children. By eating together at home our kids see that we don’t have to eat out for every meal and they can learn how food is prepared. This will set them up to take care of themselves later on in life.
- We’re saving money. This is a big one for us. This is Free From Broke after all! It’s tough to put a dollar figure on what we’re saving but I can tell you that I don’t have to go to the ATM twice in one weekend anymore!! We’re finding that although our food shopping expenses have gone up some we still have extra money at the end of the month that we didn’t have when we ate out more often.
- We’re being more efficient. Now when we go food shopping we know that everything we buy on our grocery shopping list will be used. It used to be we would go out to eat and the food we had would spoil. Even when we ate out our meals were so big most of it would go uneaten.
- Our home is a home! It’s hard to explain but our home is more complete now that we eat out less. We’re using our home to it’s fullest extent. All those things we got for our wedding like salad spinners and cooking sets are being used rather than sitting up on shelves. It just feels like this is what it’s supposed to be.
It’s a shame it took our going to one income to take advantage of all of these benefits! Imagine what we could have been saving when we had two incomes?!? Or how much healthier we would have been eating?
We haven’t completely given up eating out. We still have the occasional pizza night. And we’ll get together with friends every now and then at a nice restaurant. But eating out less has definitely benefited our family in more ways than we would have thought!
Goals Are Great Motivators
Goals can be great motivators to help you achieve! I find that when I have a specific goal it’s much easier to focus on what I want to accomplish. For example: For me to save money is one thing but when I have something specific to save for I find that I can save up much quicker. When I was younger I wanted a new stereo (the hand-me-down I was given still had an 8-track in it). I made a goal of saving up for a new stereo. When I sacrificed some expense for savings I knew i was to help me get that stereo. When I worked extra hours in the supermarket I knew it was for the stereo. In no time I had enough to go out and buy a new stereo, equipped with not one but two tape decks! (Have I dated myself or what?)
Let me give you some other goals I’ve set for myself and accomplished:
Ran the NYC Marathon – In 2005 I decided I wanted to run the NYC Marathon. I knew I needed time to train and run enough races (you have to run 9 NYC RoadRunner races for guaranteed entree). In 2006 I mapped out what races I would run to qualify for the next year’s race. It was tough to keep up but I ran and finished all nine races for entry. In 2007 I started a training program to get me in shape for the marathon. In June I started my longs runs every weekend to get me ready for the distance. The first Sunday last November I woke up at the crack of dawn and hopped on the Staten Island ferry to get to the start of the marathon. Later that afternoon I would be able to call myself a marathon runner. I don’t think I ever would have run the distance without a specific goal of running the marathon.
Paid off my credit cards – Some years ago I finally got fed up with how much I was paying monthly in interest for my credit cards. I resolved to pay them off. It started slowly but bit by bit I started to gain ground. After an incident that led me to move back with the ‘rents I was able to turbo charge my payments and finish off my credit card debt. I haven’t had more than a month’s charges since then (I pay my cards off in full every month). Without resolving to pay off my credit cards once and for all I would still be idling along with minimum payments and a ton of debt piling up.
Started a personal finance blog/site – In October of 2007 I had discovered blogging via Zen Habits then Get Rich Slowly. I was already itching to find something productive to do with my time and had healthy interest in personal finance. I set a goal of starting up my own blog and making it successful. I’m still in the middle of this goal but I feel like what I’ve done so far has been a success, especially when I look back at my first month of original posts on my Blogger site. Without my goal I might be surfing fantasy baseball sites instead of writing this article.
Build up our savings – My wife and I wanted to make sure we had enough in savings for any emergency and then some. Rather than hope to put some money away with what was left over at the end of every month we calculated a specific amount we could afford to do without and set up our ING savings to automatically withdraw money from our checking every week. We have since achieved our emergency savings goal and exceeded it. If we didn’t create a specific plan our savings would be considerably less and we’d be scratching our heads wondering where our money went.
The lesson here is that I was motivated to accomplish different things because I set a goal to achieve! Having a goal in mind keeps my mind focused. Without a goal set I would have just floated along in many cases. My savings would be lower, my credit card debt still existing, my running much less, this site just a thought…
One way to accomplish a goal is to make it SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. (Thanks to Cash Money Life for turning me onto that concept.)
I also like to think in terms of short and long term goals. For example – The goal of saving up for a down payment on a home, while an admirable goal, may seem a bit too big to ever accomplish. That could be a long-term goal. To make it more achievable you can create a short-term goal of saving X dollars a month towards a down payment. This way you see your small goals achieved which helps build up the confidence to achieve your bigger goal.
Check out this article on the science of setting goals. When you set a goal you are actively engaging your brain to help you with your goal!
What goals have you accomplished? What are your current goals and how will you achieve them?
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photo credit: Martineric
