I am writing a little early in the month and while I know it’s nothing to apologize for, I hope you, my readers, find the quality still up to your standards. Not that I’ve ever intended to write and post my blog entries around the 23rd of the month, but it’s something I’ve noticed I do. Years ago, I hoped to write on a weekly basis. I wanted to compete with full-time bloggers, but that’s just not realistic given I also work a regular 40-hour a week job and in the past while also completing two graduate degrees. With my time constraints as well, I am finding there are a lot of profiles I once followed that I no longer find interesting. The amount of time I was wasting looking over their content inspired me to cull the accounts I followed (and honestly, how many of us find ourselves in that place from time to time?).
As a consumer of social media, like other forms of media, I am starting to take a more critical eye to what I see. I remind myself scrolling through social media is still a journey that expands what I read in a day, has the potential to teach me about subjects I know little about or might rarely come across in other media formats, and is a place for me to unwind. For the time I do spend on social media, I don’t want to be constantly confronted with posts encouraging me to “buy buy buy” or to hustle my life existence away. Could I use more money?! Absolutely. Do I need to exist solely for the purpose of making and spending money? No. I have friends and family I want to spend time with and if I “live to work” and “live to consume (content or material goods)” then I am not paying adequate attention to the social connections that matter to me. In 2023, I lost two family members on my mom’s side to sudden, unexpected deaths and earlier this week, I was greeted with the news an uncle on the same side of my family passed away. Life is short, people. How do you want to spend the days you’re given? For me, it’s about being more confident with the slow, steady progress I’ve made with our finances, traveling, and catching up with friends and family (even though a lot of those moments occur via text and social media based on the distance between us).
There hasn’t been a whole lot of time since I last wrote, but I am continuing to embrace 2024 with a positive mindset and I think it’s important to touch base on how things have changed in this short amount of time. Not only would my family members who passed away want me to enjoy life, I know I also owe it to them to embrace the potential of each and every new day I receive. I do want to discuss money today because the establishment of a new yearly budget is something that I think is one of most people’s least favorite life responsibilities. In my household, I make the budget, but my husband takes on paying certain bills so not everything falls on me. He tends to be spender personality (unless it’s groceries and then I need someone to reign in my spending) and I am the saver personality in the house. Coming together as a team is a commitment and I think more so when you have joint accounts. I see the start of a new budget the same way I used to greet getting new school supplies and clothes as a kid. I love the potential of what hasn’t happened yet and writing a new chapter in my life. In those moments, I am envisioning being more confident, having fun with friends, and being the best version of myself. And that’s what your budget can be as well.
My goal this year (since I no longer make resolutions) was to purchase the Clever Girl Finance Budget Planner available through erincondren.com. On and off again, in previous jobs where I had more time to listen to podcasts, I would listen to The Clever Girls Know Podcast. I liked listening to Bola Sokunbi’s views on finance; each female podcaster that lends her voice in finance is helping to expand the conversation that for too long been a male-dominated space. It’s one thing for men to share how they succeed financially, but women often encounter more challenges regarding equitable pay and equitable childcare and housing responsibilities. Unfortunately, the planner went out of stock in late December and is still not back in stock. Being that I don’t want to wait to write my budget out in this planner, I opted to use a Sugar Paper lined notebook I already had in my home. To build my “dream” budget, I decided it needed to be laid out in a format that I haven’t found encompassed in one budget planner alone.
I’ve tried the cash flow/zero based budget with Dave Ramsey, I’ve used the Kakeibo method a few times, I also had a Clever Fox budget planner, and last year, I bought The Minimalist Planner by Kayelle Daily, but none of these completely worked for me and the last worked the least because I don’t need a planner that is built around meal planning, blocking off time, marking off “to do’s” and budgeting. I prefer a bunch of space to mull over the budget and that planner ended up being a lot of wasted pages for me. I don’t need to break down my work day and I don’t really meal plan the way other people do. I think it’s ok to admit that there was something I didn’t like about each option and others might gravitate towards these and absolutely love them. More recently, I have also gone back to looking at the 50/30/20 budget (50% of income is for needs, 30% for wants, and 20% for savings and debt repayment). If you want a calculator for that budget focus, there is an easy one at NerdWallet. My budget for 2024 is akin to America’s bastardization of other countries’ cuisines. I mushed together the ideas from each that I liked and chucked the other elements.
My budget had to start with one big overall idea. In this case, I do agree with Dave Ramsey and his preaching of a zero-based budget, meaning that each dollar has a purpose. All the other ideas that he promotes I am veering away significantly because living a heavily cash-based lifestyle was exhausting for me and stressful. If someone steals my purse with cash, I am out that cash. If someone steals my debit card and spends money from my account, I can work with my bank to get my money refunded to me. End of story. The second step was to make a 50/30/20 breakdown that works for us. Our breakdown of our zero-based budget is 50% needs, 30% savings and debt repayment because we want to add more to savings, and 20% wants. Some people like using technology to build their budget. I used NerdWallet’s 50/30/20 calculator to make the breakdowns easy, but afterwards, I used the Kakeibo method and wrote my budget down on paper. That works for me. I haven’t found a Kakeibo in a spiral bound workbook, so that’s why I used my coil bound plain paper notebook instead to budget by hand. From Clever Fox and The Minimalist Planner I previously purchased, I learned to assess my lifestyle. We must keep in mind we are not budgeting for strangers and here to impress them. I am budgeting for a family of three–a family that lives dining out, finding new things at the grocery store, that loves some serious home conveniences like our Cove dishwasher we bought last year, and we know we want to travel, not to just enjoy staycations. Our budget has multiple financial goals and we must stop or reduce spending in certain areas to focus on our priorities.
Moving into 2024, here are our considered money goals:
- Get promoted at work. (If we both got promotions that would be even better!)
- Sell 2nd house and consider renting/buying a less expensive house since interest rates are higher and we don’t want to see a big increase in our monthly housing costs. It doesn’t look like we’ll be moving out-of-state as had been our goal, but a move is still worth considering to reduce commute costs if the overall numbers work out.
- Order new passports.
- Travel: 1 big trip (We are still figuring out where to go, but I wanted to visit RI shortly to celebrate my 40th birthday with family, including my twin, and then spending time as a family of three in Cape Cod. If I get promoted this year, I might not have the same leave window, so a big trip is tentative.)
- Travel: 3 staycations (I haven’t yet seen Mission San Xavier del Bac; I wouldn’t mind going up to Sedona again; and I learned about a place called Arcosanti from Instagram posts that I think I would enjoy based on my previous enjoyment visiting Taliesin West a few years back.)
I know I am not choosing to share our full budget, but I hope the breakdown of my budgeting style serves as a source of inspiration to others who dread this activity. I will do my best to keep you posted on the progress of all these goals. For now though, I am happy to report that I closed out 2023 with my first fully successful round of sourdough bread prep and it was baked on Jan. 1st. As one of my goals that is not financial in nature, I am quite proud because baking sourdough was a nightmare in 2023. I couldn’t seem to get everything to line up. I used the beginner sourdough recipe from The Perfect Loaf and I will be going back to that recipe here shortly for my second batch of sourdough for the year. We shared this bread with my next-door neighbor and dear friend and one of her friends who was in town and it was the perfect way to start 2024. (P.S. No compensation for the recommendation. I just wanted to share it’s a solid recipe.)
~Cheryl
She Wears Dogtags 