Now, where else did I save money? I started on my other “Others”… eating out, shopping, Christmas, etc. (Yes, I really did list Christmas in there!)
I spoke with one of my girlfriends who lives diligently by her budget and they manage very well on their salaries and I was curious about how she did it. I did so with the disclaimer that she didn’t have to tell me anything because it is quite a personal subject, but she divulged without divulging everything and what an eye opener!! I will start with saying that I’ve heard through the grape vine that she was very controlling about their money but honestly, I don’t see it. They have everything they need and are able to have extra money, they don’t freak out when something goes wrong and an extra expense pops up and I was very envious. How did she do this?
Her answer was very simple… the envelope system. Now I had heard about this envelope system from various websites but didn’t really think much of it but with the days of credit cards, debit cards and checking accounts why would anyone want to take their money out of their account and just let it sit there in envelopes at home? BUT she said that it works for them. Her hubs gets paid once a month so on that day she goes to the bank and withdraws cash (she even tells them what denomination she wants the money in) and takes this home and puts in her envelopes.
Her envelopes are things that she can control…
Groceries
Birthdays
Eating out
Christmas
His Allowance
Her Allowance
Granted, those are only a few of them, but just taking control of a few things allows you to have better grasp of everything as a whole. If you only saved in four areas of your budget how much could you save? Think about it… I was spending a hellacious amount on groceries and just that one area is Bug’s day care for the entire year! That’s a huge difference. We spend too much on eating out, especially the hubs and I for lunch, but we’re about to get that back into “check” here very shortly and go back to our weekly allowance.
We did attempt to budget our Christmas last year and it worked out wonderfully. We had gone away to South Beach Miami for my birthday last summer and on the way back (since he couldn’t run away from me on the airplane) I approached the idea of budgeting Christmas. We listed everyone we had to buy for and how much we would spend on them. We divided the total by the number of pay days between “here” and the end of November and that’s how much we took out in cash each week and put in our Christmas budget. This was a huge sanity saver last year. As I found things that people would like (especially the girls) that were on clearance I went ahead and bought them. Not to mention that it didn’t hit us all at one time! That was nice. We will be doing it again this year and I need to go ahead and start on that.
Allowance is definitely the way to go. Hubs and I were (and are about to implement again) an allowance of $20 each per week. This was great. I took it out in cash each week so we wouldn’t be tempted to try and keep to the $20 while using our cards. This is for everything that isn’t included in the budget… a coke from the gas station, eating out for lunch, tobacco products, if I want a book from the store, magazines, new shirt, and just anything that’s not from the house pretty much. We do buy clothes every now and again but normally when we find something on a good sale, but because we save everywhere else it’s not a big deal.
Eating out… my friend would take out $20 per month to eat out (they only had an infant child at that time so that budget wouldn’t work for my family of four) but this forced them to be creative! Finding the specials, using coupons, ordering take out instead of eating there so they didn’t have to pay $1.50 for each tea/soft drink or tip for the server and things like that. I implemented this in a way that would work for me. We took out $10 per week and when we had enough to eat where we wanted then we would use it. I also had coupons for a tons of places and searched for deals online before going. Sometimes we would also throw our allowances together to be able to eat out somewhere we really wanted. it worked well.
Birthdays… my friend and her hubs sat down and wrote a list of everyone they needed to buy birthday presents for and the amount to spend on each. They took this out each month and tried to think of ahead. Example… after mother’s and father’s day a ton of stuff goes on sale and this is when they go out and buy some of the birthday presents for people that are coming up. She also bought Christmas stuff at this time with money from their Christmas fund. This allowed them to come in under budget in both areas and left them with a surplus that they then spent on a mini vacation for themselves.
See… being frugal, saving money, being smart does pay off. The smarter you try and plan things the better the work in the long run. My friends had money left over and therefore didn’t feel the least bit guilty on spending that on themselves because every other area is taken care of.
Next… see my list on ways to save in other ways. You may call this my “Other OTHERS List”
No comments:
Post a Comment