An Experiment in Budget Control
Living on a single income is hard. When my daughter was born and my maternity leave was up, my husband and I decided that I would not go back to work. We wanted to give my daughter as much of our time as we could by having one parent at home with her full-time. Now, this isn’t to say that parents who both work out of the home are presenting their children with a disadvantage. I fully support both working moms and stay-at-home moms. We just felt that staying at home was the best choice for us, and we were very fortunate to be able to have that choice, since I realize that many families do not.
Now, back to the money aspect. I love watching the show Till Debt Do Us Part. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a show that helps couples that are in deep debt get back on track by balancing their finances, and putting them on a strict spending budget. We are no where near the situation that these couples are in, in fact we do our absolute best not to accumulate any debt, but I am amazed at the spending budgets that these families are put on. The host puts them on a cash only spending budget and gives them jars with certain categories and dollar amounts. For example, they will only have $125/week for food, $25/week for transportation, and $12.50/week for clothing and gifts. These jars are only for their variable expenses, things that they can play around with and make adjustments to. They are not allowed to use any credit cards or use their debit cards.
I am really fascinated by this and often wonder if I could live like that. That would probably save us a lot of money and we would know exactly how much money we would be spending each week. At the beginning of the week, the money would be allocated, and you wouldn’t be drawing from your bank account at all during the week. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You would know exactly where your money is going.
So, here comes the idea that is going to make my husband really grumpy this week. I am going to institute the cash-only-jar budget!
I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with and how we’re doing. Do you think you could do it? I challenge everyone to do it along with me and see if we can all learn to take better control of our financial lives.
Good luck! We did that with envelopes rather than jars back when we were starving students. My middle child has since independently discovered the same idea :) We don't do it anymore as the way we work with finances makes it slightly illogical, the closest I come is drawing X amount of money out every fortnight and making that last til next pay (and if it doesn't well too bad, it's just "extras" money and basically whether we eat out or go on an excursion to some place that costs a bomb to get into or not XD)
You have a good concept! Thank you very much for your request. I wish you good luck:)
Very good concept and goal. I am following you here on Steemit and look forward to your progress. @steele96 wrote an excellent article on building and preserving wealth. I recommend giving it a read, Smart Stuff!
Thank you very much for your attention and good advice!
Very interesting. I hope it works out for you.
I'm not really a big spender, seeing as I don't like being in debt. The only one I accept is the mortgage on my house. I even want to pay off the mortgage faster than I have to :-)
I am not a spendthrift, too. But I will try to save even more) I wish you to pay your mortgage in advance)
I already Experiment this .. see what happen @natalyaborqo
Thank you, I would be interested to know the result)
you can see the result .. itself :)
nice experiment, nice post, hope to see more
Thank you very much for your attention to my post!
keep us in the loop on the outcome @natalyaborqo - voted up and resteemed
Wow, thank you very much, your mind is very valuable to me!
thanks for these nice words too
I am very curious how this experiment will turn out. I am tempted to try it along with you. It doesn’t matter what kind of financial situation you are in there is always a way to save a little bit more for a rainy day. Plus it is really interesting to see exactly where the money goes, isn’t it?
I'll be happy if you will join me) Yes, I'm wondering too :)
thank you very much for sharing this. I am looking forward to reading more.
... and also: you have a very sweet family.
Thank you very much, I am very glad to hear it! Thank you for your kind words!
I’ve already started doing my worksheet and plugging in the numbers. It really is a great way to see where the money is going. Now I just have to make some adjustments so that I can come up with the amounts that I am going to put in my jars. I will definitely keep you all posted.
Thank you, I like to keep track of your posts! I wish you good luck!