Four children, three dogs, two middle of the road incomes, and one stretched (like an orthodontics rubber band) budget!
Actually, in the beginning, there was no budget. There was David, my husband. He was our budget. His idea of budgeting money was to pay our bills when a bill collector called and asked for the money. Yeah, so I don't really like that.
I sat down with a stack of bills and an excel spreadsheet. We were going on a budget. The plan was to pay off what we had and not create anything new. For two years I fought with this plan. I moved and shifted bills. I copied cells from one month to the next. I had formulas plugged in all over the place and still, we were getting nowhere. This is where the harsh truth comes in. If I had to pinpoint the exact problem - well <gulp> apparently it was me, but at the time, I would have sworn it was David. I was frustrated with his lack of interest in our finances so I gave him the budget and asked him (very nicely) to take over.
Ok so that's not the truth. I think I THREW the budget at him and told him that I'm SICK of it and I QUIT! I said a few other things about how he's never been responsible a day in his life, blah, blah, blah. Just a teensy little temper tantrum is all it was. No big deal.
What happened next proves that I struck a nerve. He didn't just start tinkering with my spreadsheet, he changed our lives. I thought he was trying to torture the family with his insane new rules, but I stood my ground. I could live with whatever he dished out. Bring it on!
The biggest change came from the new rule that we would live on $300 a week. No exceptions. (I had to laugh) Sure, $300 sounds like plenty of money, but I knew our spending habits and there was no way this would ever work. David had no idea what he was doing, but I didn't say anything. He'd figure it out.
By my calculations, in a given week, we spent the following: Groceries ($120), Gas in 2 vehicles ($70), School lunches ($40), extra stops at the store for milk, bread, cereal ($20), lunch at work ($20 x 2 people). With his budget, that left only $10 a week for anything unexpected. With kids, there's always something unexpected - someone lost their gym suit, someone has a science project, the youth group is having movie night. Oh look, it's time to buy year books. What's that? Someone needs a class ring? What about getting my oil changed? Uh-oh, someone's sick - pays and prescriptions galore - if one of them gets sick, another will soon follow. His plan was not going to work.
Another change to come about was this thing where I could no longer use the debit card. What? How do you buy things without a debit card? For example, gas. It's not nearly as easy to pay cash for gas as it is to swipe a card (removing it very quickly as the machine instructs). Did you know they won't let you pump first and pay afterwards? What happened to trusting people? What was I supposed to do, guess how much I needed ahead of time as if I could see into my tank and know that I needed 12 gallons and then multiply that in my head by $1.89 (or $3.89 as was the case at one point)?
Then my favorite change to come along was that my grocery budget was cut drastically. Not only was it cut down below any kind of reasonable level to feed a family of six (plus 3 dogs, let's not forget), I wasn't allowed to "go over" just a little bit and have the security of using the debit card. To ensure I stuck to the budget (what, like I wouldn't?) David moved all extra money (except for one lousy dollar) out of our regular bank account and into a separate account. I was given $80 a week in cash. No margin for error. This was impossible and if it wasn't for the fact that I was over thirty years old, I might have resorted to stomping my foot in protest.
David took over the grocery shopping. He said he didn't want me to worry about it. Yeah, right! There was NO WAY this man was ever going to be able to feed our family. I can almost feel my head and neck swaying as I told him, "Fine! Knock yourself out if you think you can do it!" Then I mumbled something under my breath about how he's going to learn a thing or two about what I go through.
Anybody ever prove you wrong just because they can? Well, that's how David is. He totally showed me up! In my defense I have never liked to grocery shop and so it stands to reason that I didn't do it very well, but still, he didn't have to go and make me look THAT bad!
We started eating whatever was on sale that week. Food Lion became the dictator of our meal plan. If chicken was on sale, we had it in a large variety of dishes. Instead of pre-made cookies, we got a pack of cookie mix (just add water). Instead of 4 gallons of milk, we were going to make it on 3. According to David, the children would not be malnourished. His argument was that the kids pour at least a gallon of milk down the drain from their cereal bowls. Since when did he take notice of such things?
The days of the cute little yogurt cups ... gone. We were given one larger tub of yogurt, a bag of granola and some bananas. It was a new "make your own" yogurt parfait. I have to say I was impressed. They were good.
The process that David used was odd for me. He would take $300 out of the bank each week and separate it into piles. $80 was for groceries. $70 was for gas. The kids were given lunch money and the rest he held. Any money spent after that needed his approval and he wasn't into approving anything.
At the end of week one, he told me that we had made it on the $300 and actually had $8 left over. Well whoop-dee-doo! Eight dollars! What were we going to do with $8? He put it in a box and left it there. I giggled.
The following week, we made it on even less. There was $15 left over. He put it in the box.
The end of three weeks and we had made it with $42 left over. David took $25 and bought us Chinese food for celebration and put the other $17 in his box. By my calculations we had $40 saved up in that little box. Forty-dollars is not that much, but it was looking like half a weeks worth of groceries to me.
After three months, our entire way of life had changed. We stopped eating out for lunch and started bringing leftovers. I'd all but forgotten the P.I.N. number for my debit card and had learned the value of using real cash. Watching as it left my hand triggered a thought process in my brain, "that's real money," not just the mindless swipe of a card.
Gone are pre-made foods, but now we have teenagers who can cook a meal without using a microwave. The kids stopped asking for things because they thought it was great to get to the end of a week with money still in dad's pocket and even better when David and I could surprise them randomly with small gifts - a journala $10 gas carda ticket to the movies. How much more it all came to mean.
At this same three month point, David sent me an e-mail showing where he'd paid off one of my credit cards. I asked where he got the money. It had come from the box - that little box that started with $8 - that same box that I laughed at. There had been one week when he only had two dollars to add to it because car repairs had torn through most of our allotment that week. No matter, he took that $2, he put it away. Like a planted seed, it would grow.
We've been living with this self-imposed budget for a couple of years now. While getting out of debt is the ultimate goal, the blessings along the way have been unexpected. We're still the same family - four kids, three dogs, two middle of the road incomes, but the budget is no longer a central focus in our lives. It seems the less we live on, the more we have.