On Budgeting.

We are just now getting caught up from Christmas, which was financially more stressful than usual this year what with Wess being laid off at the beginning of December.

Budgeting is something that I struggle with almost constantly. Mathematically, it's pretty straightforward; take your income, subtract your necessary expenses, and what's left over is your laugh 'n' play, rainy day money. The problem is that while my income is greater than my expenses on paper, in reality it doesn't often seem to work out that way. There's always a bill that's a little higher this month, or an emergency situation involving pants*, or even just an extra tank or two of gas to get away and get some perspective for a couple of days. So now that we're all caught up, I'm going back to my tried-and-true budgeting method:

1) Calculate out my expenses, MONTHLY.
2) Divide all expenses by 2.
3) Pay bills/allocate moneys into appropriate accounts (e.g. rent, grocery, etc.) BIWEEKLY, based on pay periods.
4) Transfer at lease 60% of any remaining funds into long-term savings/RRSP's.

I did this before, when Wess was laid off for several months and we were living first off of my employment income, and then off of my (significantly lower) maternity leave benefits. And it worked extremely well, right up until an emergency (a real one, not a pants one**) required me to dip into my long-term savings. I'm determined to get to that point again - the point where I feel confident that we could get by for a month or two without having the heat, power, or phones cut off imminently (not that any of the above actually happened, but that's what it's felt like the last few months).

So, a 2-months-late New Year's Resolution:

To get my Budget Mojo back!




*The pants emergency: I was down to literally my last pair of pants that fit and had no holes in them (I'm sure you see where this is going)... when they burst a seam. Thankfully, the seam burst before I got to church.

**Wess's truck, our only reliable vehicle at the time, blew a tire beyond repair. Which, of course, meant that he needed not one but TWO new tires.