Money Monday
Kyria had a post last week where she discussed her budget and spending for the first quarter of the year, while she’s been traveling in Western Europe. She’s within a few dollars of her budget (or would be if she hadn’t had to buy a new phone and laptop, one time expenditures), and is doing well. She asked if people budget when they travel, and I said no, I spend what I spend, and she then asked if I budget in my day-to-day life. The answer again, no, not really. Then Elisabeth had a post about how she keeps her grocery bill under control. Which got me to thinking about pie charts and graphs and tracking of money spent, and also about living without much money when I was growing up.
Several of you share your budgets and what you spent every month, including how much a certain category increased or decreased from the prior month. I find these posts very interesting, because I am nosey and want to know everything. Did you spend more on groceries? What did you have for breakfast? Did you complete your 30 day workout challenge? Where is your dream vacation? These are the reasons that I blog.
I keep track of my spending in that I have a spreadsheet for bills, and I keep a checkbook so I know how much money I have. But I don’t say, “This month I’m going to spend $1,100 on groceries” and then look at the end of the month to see how realistic that was. I do watch my money. I only buy certain things when they are on sale, we put money in savings and retirement accounts, we have a separate account to save for a car down payment. We plan ahead for taxes, and we try to set aside money for travel. I don’t budget for a trip, as in, we will not spend more than $x a day, but we don’t travel if we can’t afford it, and we try to avoid eating in restaurants for every meal. We look for inexpensive hotels/AirBnB and flights, and we pay with points when we can.
So when Kyria asked if I budget, I said no, but I wonder…would you count what we do as budgeting?
My mom was a single mom, and worked in relatively low income jobs (private school teacher, Catholic charities, etc.), so we never had a lot of money. We lived in a rough neighborhood and couldn’t afford to move because that would mean not only first and last month rent somewhere else, but also getting caught up on rent where we lived. There were some very lean Christmases where there were no gifts, and my mom spent the money my Grandma gave her to buy us gifts on food.
Was my mom bad with money? If you count working in low paying jobs ‘bad with money’, then yes. It’s a lot easier to be good with money when you make enough to pay for rent, food, utilities, clothes for your growing kids, and have a bit left over at the end of the month. I didn’t really ever see her spend frivolously, she always bought the cheapest of whatever, grocery brands for food, clothes at Gemco (like Target today), used cars. Our furniture was all hand me down from relatives. Pre-sliced cheese was outside of her realm of something one would ever purchase, what a waste when you could cut it yourself and save money. Single serve yogurt? Are you insane? Microwave popcorn in a bag? WTEH*? Did she get damn sick of pinching every penny until it screamed, and sometimes put presents for her kids (or car repairs) on a credit card? Yes. I don’t think she budgeted so much as knew how much she had and tried to spend less than that. Is that budgeting?
If spending less than you earn is budgeting, then yes, I do that. I am careful with money. But I don’t track and see what has changed and how I might alter my spending, unless I am balancing my checkbook and say, “Hmmm…I feel like I have more/less money than I did last month at this time, what’s different?” Then I might change my behavior a bit based on that. But no pie charts or bar graphs.
How about you? Do you track your spending in spreadsheets/pie charts? Does it help you see where you could make adjustments? Is it enjoyable for you, like ‘gosh I love numbers, it’s fun to see everything in a pie chart and I can’t imagine how J lives her life without this fun, fun exercise?’ Is it depressing when something big comes in, like a major car repair, vet bill, or new appliances, and throws everything off chart? Also, if you keep track of your money this way, do you also track your health via a smart watch/ring? In my mind these two things are connected, and again, not something I do. I figure I sleep how much I sleep, keeping track doesn’t really help. But I’ve never tried, maybe it would.
*What The Even Heck
8 Comments
Birchie
I’m with you in that I can’t get enough of other folks’ money posts, but I use the “as long as I make more than I spend and max out my 401k it’s all good” budgeting system. I got into the nuts and bolts of what I spend a few years ago as preparation for early retirement, and I use Empower Personal Capital to keep an eye on things because it’s free and easy to use. However I don’t look at it on the level of “I spent $800 at the grocery store in March and $900 in April, man I really better rein it in”.
I started out as a penny pinching frugal with a low income (shout out to your mom!) and my young adult years were a constant experiment of what saved money and what didn’t. Today I still pursue frugality for things that don’t make a difference to my quality of life. For example, I switched to Mint Mobile last year and I adore my $15/month cell bill. But also I’ve learned to spend money in ways that bring me pleasure – hello travel! I don’t ever spend money just to spend money, but I like to think that I spend “smartly” – for example for my CA trip I used travel rewards to cover my plane ticket and the final night, I’m going to take public transport (part frugal/part adventure/and mostly because I don’t enjoy driving in large cities). For lodging though, I didn’t go for the bottom dollar. I went with locations that I believe will add to my enjoyment of the trip. I will also be eating out for pretty much all of my meals and enjoying every bite.
To answer your other questions, I don’t get thrown off by surprise bills because I know that surprises happen. It’s if and not when things break and need to be fixed, and the best I can hope is that we’re talking four figure surprises and not five figure surprises and not too many surprises in a row. I think that a lot of health tracking is bogus. I’m in a stressful period of life, and my Garmin has all kinds of data to back that up – but it’s just telling me what I already know. It doesn’t tell me what to change to handle the stress or how to get better numbers, so it’s not useful info.
J
Oh, your last point is really interesting, that your health tracker both tells you what you already know, and that it doesn’t offer solutions. I guess if one is getting worrying results, one can step back and take a look at their life and see what can change. But sometimes there is nothing that can change, it just is what it is. I think about when my mom was sick, and when Mulder was sick. I lived in such a high level of anxiety, trying not to let it ruin the time I had with them was really hard. What could be done about that? Make them better, I guess. I tried, but unfortunately both times it was out of my control. At least with Mulder he didn’t suffer.
Our HVAC system is 46 years old, and of course will die at some point. That is going to be really expensive, and every year we have with it, we consider a win. Who knows, we may be able to keep it running forever…we have really good technicians who can help us know whether it is fixable or not. Thankfully it’s pretty simple.
I’m glad that you spend money on things that bring you joy. That is so important if one can do it, and yes, travel is what I want to spend my money on as well. And my calculus is the same when picking where to stay and what to do. I think you’ll do well on public transportation here, though getting from Sac to SF won’t be straightforward. I had originally thought perhaps I would drive you, or that San would drive you part way and I would drive you the rest of the way, but now I will be out of town that day. 🙁
nance
I grew up with three siblings, the daughter of a steelworker and a stay at home mom who didn’t even have a driver’s license until she was in her mid thirties. We were poor. My clothes were always hand-me-downs from another family who had little girls. I used to go with my mom on the bus downtown to pay bills and get things from the store. I didn’t really know how poor we were until embarrassingly late in my life. I just assumed that this was the way things were for everyone, and besides, I always had library books to read, so no big deal. I had no idea how bad things were.
Rick and I married in 1981 during the Recession. Teaching and construction were both hit hard. He sold shoes and I worked at the bank. We really budgeted down to the actual penny, eating meals at our parents’ on weekends and doing laundry there as well because the washer/dryers at our complex cost money.
All of that taught me to be careful. That, and having a husband in construction, a business that can be seasonal and iffy at times. We don’t have a nuts and bolts budget, per se, but we learned to live well within or even below our means, always saving for lean times whether they come or not. It helps that we have almost identical values.
I’m extremely risk-averse, but Rick is better about risk. He also is more willing to splurge, but since he is more attuned to our overall finances, I trust him implicitly. When a big expense suddenly crops up, I get concerned (after all, we’re both retired), but I know we’ve got savings and investments. We planned very carefully and early on. If worse came to worst, we’d sell the house or lakehouse.
J
See Nance, you get it. I also never knew we were poor, not until I was a teenager and started noticing how much it bothered my mom when she didn’t have money. Before that, all I needed was a library card and a box of mac and cheese. But in her case, I don’t think we were quite so poor until then anyway. I mean, we were never wealthy, we always had the hand-me-down furniture and watched every penny, lots of rice and beans just before payday, but it was when she was trying to get her own business off the ground when I was about 15 that things got really rough.
I’m glad you have the two houses, and that one can be an emergency plan if need be. Also, you are both really good with money and have similar values, so it won’t come to that. But for a risk-averse mind, it is soothing to know there is an answer if things go really south.
Suzanne
YES so much to this: “I am nosey and want to know everything. Did you spend more on groceries? What did you have for breakfast? Did you complete your 30 day workout challenge? Where is your dream vacation? These are the reasons that I blog.”
Like you, my form of “budgeting” is paying attention to what I spend, making sure that I’m not spending more than I have, and making sure that the categories of savings and retirement funding get their due before anything else. This feels like a really luxurious way of living, though. I constantly worry that it will bite me in the ass one of these days; like what if we get to retirement and have no idea how to manage living without income? I tend to worry a lot about money, though, without really doing anything to address the worrying.
J
I feel like if you’re putting money into your retirement and savings, what else should you be doing to prepare for life without an income? I guess that’s shortsighted of me, but hell if I know. And you’re right, it is luxurious to be able to save, for so many people just breaking even is a victory.
PocoBrat
First–I LOVE that Terry Pratchett quote. It lives in my head because I’ve lived it. I kept buying knockoff sneakers until about 10 years ago–and the difference was indescribable. It was an education coming to the U.S. as a graduate student and having to figure out money and all that comes with not having it, when I didn’t have to worry about any of that back home.
I came to this country with exactly 500$ and spent about 30$ on plants for the office I shared with two other grad students and 75$ on plants for my room in grad housing in my first week. That’s how terrible I was. I’m way better now, but I’ll never be pie-chart efficient.
If you think a pie chart would give you clarity, I hope you’ll go for it, J!
J
I love that that snippet from Pratchett lives in your head, Maya. My mom was a huge Pratchett fan, but I’ve never really given his work the chance it likely deserves.
The snippet that lives in my head in this way is from Barbara Kingsolver’s book, _Flight Behavior_, when an ecologist comes to the door of an impoverished woman in Appalachia to try to help her learn about more sustainable choices she might make.
“Number one. Bring your own Tupperware to a restaurant for leftovers, as often as possible.”
“I’ve not eaten at a restaurant in over two years.”
“Try bringing your own mug for tea or coffee. Does not apply, I guess. Carry your own cutlery, use no plastic utensils, ditto ditto. Okay, here’s one. Carry your own Nalgene bottle instead of buying bottled water.”
“Our well water is good. We wouldn’t pay for store-bought.”
“Okay,” he said. “Try to reduce the intake of red meat in your diet.”
“Are you crazy? I’m trying to increase our intake of red meat.”
“Why is that?”
“Because mac and cheese only gets you so far, is why. We have lamb, we produce that on our farm. But I don’t have a freezer. I have to get it from my in-laws.”
Mr. Akins went quiet. His dark eyes swam like tadpoles behind his glasses.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“No. There are five other categories.”
“Let’s hear them.”
“No really. You came all this way. To get us on board.”
“Okay,” he said, sounding a little nervous. “Skipping ahead to Everyday Necessities. Try your best to buy reused. Use Craigslist.”
“What is that?” she asked, although she had a pretty good idea.
“Craigslist,” he said. “On the Internet.”
“I don’t have a computer.”
Mr. Akins moved quickly to cover his bases. “Or find your your local reuse stores.”
“Find them,” she said.
“Plan your errand route so you drive less!” Now he sounded belligerent.
“Who wouldn’t do do that? With what gas costs?”
He went quiet again.
“What are the other categories?” she asked.
“Home-office-household-travel-financial. We don’t have to go on.”
She put down the binoculars and looked at him. She’d lost track of the butterflies anyway. “Let’s hear financial.”
Mr. Akins read in a rushed monotone: “Switch some of your stocks and mutual funds to socially responsible investments, skip, skip. Okay, Home-slash-Office. Make sure old computers get recycled. Turn your monitor off when not in use. I think we’ve got a lot of not applicable here.”
“Okay, this is the last one,” he said. “Fly less.”
“Fly less,” she repeated.
He looked at his paper as if receiving orders from some higher authority. “That’s all she wrote. Fly less.”
I love that you spent over 1/5 of your money on plants. Priorities, right? I’m afraid when I moved on my own, I made lots of decisions that were worse than that, too many cute clothes on credit cards. Not enough thrifting.
I doubt I will ever get on the pie chart bandwagon, but I do like looking at them when others do them!