The Family Accountant: Budgeting

I am going to take a moment and talk a little bit about money.  There are many reasons that it is fitting for me to do so here.  One of these reasons is that, as the homemaker, I control and manage our money.  My husband earns the money, and it is by my efforts that we save or spend what we have.  The other thing about money though is that by our choosing for me to be a full-time homemaker, we have less of it. (*Notice I said, Our choosing, as this is definitely a joint decision.) My being a homemaker is a financial choice that my husband and I have made together, as it means that our income is approximately 50% lower than it might otherwise be.  My staying home as a homemaker is so important to us, that we have given up that income in order to make it happen.

The question then arises, how do we do it?  How do we pay our bills, eat healthy meals, live in a comfortable home, and still save money?  The answer is, with hard work and a budget.  After our son was born, almost five years ago, my job allowed me to work part-time from home. Three years ago we moved to our current home and I became a full-time homemaker and the extra income stopped.  Up to this point in our marriage we had always had two incomes, but we had only ever lived off of one.  We always saved the entirety of my salary, so we hadn’t relied on it in any way for our living expenses.  What did change and what I have had to adjust to, is the fact that I no longer put large amounts of money into our savings account each month.  This change also meant that I needed to work harder with sticking to our budget if I wanted us to be able to save any money at all. 

The thing about budgeting is that it is always a challenge.  It is something that you really have to stick to, otherwise it is so easy to just spend, spend, spend, especially when you want something.  There are lots of different ways to budget, but the one that I have found that works the best for me is this.  I wrote down absolutely everything that we spend money on; food, gasoline, mortgage, electricity, clothes, presents, tithe, savings, car insurance, eye glasses, co-pays, home-repairs, decorating, the garden, etc.  I categorized and budgeted for absolutely every penny that we make.  After calculating approximately how much a year that we spend in each area, I divided it by twelve and made certain that the result per month was less than my husband’s monthly salary.  Then, for every category in the month that the money doesn’t get spent, that money goes into savings for a later date.  For example: if in the month of June I have budgeted $75 for clothing, but we don’t buy any clothing in June, I move that $75 dollars into savings so that when July rolls around and I need $150 to buy my husband some new work clothes, the money is there.  In the same way, we pay our car insurance every six months.  If I have budgeted $50 a month for car insurance, but I am not paying it in the months of June, July, August, September, and October, each of those months I move the money into savings so that when the bill comes in November, I have $300 to pay it.  This at least is the plan that I have for budgeting our money.  Does it always work out? No, but that is because I fail, not the system.  I am still working on managing our money well and some months are definitely better than others.