I am sitting in my cubicle typing away on the black keys when I get a text from my Mom. Trouble at home. It is only my first week on the job, my first real I-just-graduated-from-college job. I read her text, something is wrong. I respond. They haven’t given me much work to do yet. They just have me reading a 300 page document for eight hours. I continue texting with my mom, she wonders how I am doing. My computer beeps at me. I have a new e-mail. From the girl that sits on the other side of the cube from me. “Maybe you should find something better to do than texting.” I am instantly enraged. I click reply. I have no words. Instead I get up, walk around the grey walls and confront her to her face. “Excuse me, is there a problem?” I cried more in those first 6 months on the job than I even remember crying before.
Is this the way work is supposed to be? Sitting in a cubicle reading something that’s clearly busy work for eight hours of my life and apparently I don’t even have the freedom to text my own mother. So much for having freedom. So much for being human.
No, this is not acceptable.
I immediately started plotting for something different, but it was two years before I reached my breaking point.
When I started looking seriously at changing jobs, the biggest fear I faced is whether the next one would be better or worse. My budget is what saved me, it gave me the courage to know that no matter what happened I would be okay. I had enough in the bank that I didn’t have to put up with being treated like a prisoner. My budget was the soft cushion for my fear to land and I was able to leave that awful job and find one where I have freedom, respect and get paid a lot more money.
Budgeting is where our souls meet the surface. It is how we take care of ourselves. Our financial life gives us freedom, confidence, options, leverage and flexibility to create a life we love. Where our souls can swim free. Where we can be human.
- Budget with Purpose
The first step is to get clarity on why we want to create our budget. We want to identify that deeper meaning, so we can create a budget that is valuable to us. Some questions to ask to get the wheels turning:
- What makes you forget to eat and forget to pee?
- Where do you picture yourself five years from now, how do you want your life to be different?
- If your doctor called and gave you one week to live, what would you regret not doing the most? What did you not get to do? Who did you not get to be?
- Create a System
Our budgets are not a fix it and forget it type of activity. They need daily love and attention from us if we want them to flourish. Tracking expenses daily is one of the most powerful ways to reach your budget goals. And when it’s done daily it only takes about five minutes.
- What is part of your daily routine that you could add tracking your expenses into?
I like to do mine on my morning break at work.
You are putting that loving energy into yourself by taking care of your spending habits. It is like exfoliating your skin when you are in the shower. You give it a quick brush and make sure everything feels right.
- Simple Living
It is not about spending less money; it is about spending all our money on the things we value most highly in life. Simple living will also require that we set financial boundaries for ourselves. Our values will differ from the values of our friends and family and they may not necessarily understand our budgeting goals. This is where we need to get a little tough sometimes. Like a mama bear protecting her cubs, we protect our own goals and values. You may hear yourself saying something like “We can’t go this weekend, we are staying home and working around the house.” Or “We would love to, but we just can’t make it this time.”
- What is one boundary you know you need to be better at setting around your finances?
The stronger and deeper your connection to your values and your budget, the easier it will be to communicate your boundaries.
- Create a Zero-Based Budget
I cannot say enough about zero-based budgeting. This essentially means that each month we make a plan for every dollar. It can feel overwhelming when we are creating our first zero-based budget but it becomes easy once we have our system in place and we are looking at our budget regularly. To create a zero-based budget you start with your monthly income and then subtract out all of your debt payments, bills, expenses and then allocate whatever is left into your sinking funds.
- Have you used a zero-based budget? Has it worked for you?
There are a ton of printables out there that will help you do this or check out the TrailBound Financial Life Planning Workbook here that will help you get clear on your goals and values, identify your budget purpose and walk you through setting up your zero-based budget.
- Regular Reviews
At the end of each month we will need to close out our budget. This means we record all the actual expenses for the month (whereas at the beginning of the month we wrote down the budgeted amounts). We compare the actual amounts to the budget and see where we were over or under from our budget.
This is also when we get to see how much we can put into our sinking funds from the month. I love the feeling of seeing how much money I am saving towards my goals. It gives my life purpose and makes me feel excited about budgeting for the next month.
- What budget categories did you overspend in last month? What categories did you underspend in?
- How would you like to improve your budget for next month?
The review will also help us understand our spending habits better so we can keep improving our budgeting each month.
It is the daily action we take to achieve our goals that frees our hearts to follow what we most desire in life. It will be scary, but when we take it one day at a time and have patience and love for ourselves, we can accomplish anything!
Brianne is not only a friend of Shari’s, she is also a CPA, life coach, full-time accountant, and the owner of TrailBound Financial (follow her on instagram @trailboundfinacial). Her dedication to living life to the fullest and sharing her knowledge of finances has sparked her latest creation; the TrailBound Financial Life Planning Workbook (autumn edition here). We appreciate her excitement to guest-blog and share some of her budgeting tips with us!
The Salty Exchange 