by Tina Mitts

Created on: June 23, 2009   Last Updated: June 26, 2009

As with most people, I had to learn the art of budgeting the hard way. I was married and had my first child at age twenty, my husband quit High School in order to commit to our family full time. We had no idea what we were in for, we believed as most young people do, that we could do anything and boy were we in for a rude awakening which is exactly what we got.

With only one income, a newborn and bills to pay we were lucky to put food on the table and as with most people in this situation we applied for and received help from the state. We soon learned that even with help we had to learn how to budget our money and expenses in order to be able to buy the extra things we needed each month to support our growing family.

I quickly learned the art of budgeting, I would sit down with my trusty notebook and work out a payday to payday budget sometimes doing the budget for up to three months in advance. I would begin with my husband's bring home pay, a list of bills and their due dates plus a list of extras we knew we needed each month, hence began my budgeting program. I always made sure the bills were paid on or before their due dates and then added in the extras that we needed like diapers, gas and food.

Thanks to budgeting we quickly began to realize that there was no way we could live on a one person income. We had that age old dilemma of needing two incomes but we didn't want to take our child and soon to be second child to someone else to be cared for. We needed a plan; I needed to find a job that I could do at home with our children and so began my licensed home childcare program.

We knew that even with a second income we still had to have a budget to survive, we didn't want to get behind or caught up in trying to keep up with our neighbors so it was a good thing that by this time I was a master. Budgeting kept us out of debt, kept our bills paid, food on the table and clothes on our backs. I have now been budgeting for over twenty years and have taught my children how to do their budgets also, my daughter, who is also a young mother now, lives off of a budget and anytime a friend is having difficulty with paying bills or having money for necessities my daughter will show them how she does it.

Budgeting doesn't have to be a "bad" word or a word to be ashamed of, it is just a way of living within our means. People need to be aware of how much money they have coming in, after taxes, and how much they have going out and the only way to know that is to write it all down and see it in black and white.

If there's one good thing that today's economic crisis should teach us all, it's how to live within our means. It is so important to teach our children that there is no shame in being a middle or even a low income family or person. We need to teach our kids that working in any job, no matter what the job is, should bring both self respect and respect from others and that learning to live within the means of that job is to be commended. The days of competing with the Jones' is over and it should begin with teaching our kids that it's okay to live on a budget and in fact should be commended.

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