Archive for November, 2009

I’m too undisciplined to do that NaMblaPoMo whatever thing people do in November with the writing and the blogging and the updating. It’s just a coincidence that I’m posting today.

Let’s talk about budgets, shall we? Bryan and I are excellent budgeters, with every damn penny accounted for, but we’re still always looking for new ways to save money. Obviously, we set aside a certain amount of money from each pay check for the utilities and the mortgage and the savings, but we also set aside a certain amount for every eventuality: hair cuts, clothing, oil changes and other car repairs, gas, kids’ activities, etc. All of those things are fine, but I’m always looking to shave a bit of money off of our very generous grocery budget. I look at all the coupons and deals online, I subscribe to blogs like Stretching a Buck and others that my Google Reader recommends to me, but I always end up frustrated. You know why? It’s because we already have a budget and their tips don’t apply to us. I don’t go to Starbucks unless my sister or Mechelle are visiting (because that’s happy fun time and then the Starbucks comes out of our “entertainment” money, which, in anticipation of their visit, we would have built up over the preceding weeks by forgoing the dollar movie theater or the extravagant once per week eating out. That’s right, I said “or.” We can’t go to the dollar theater AND out to eat all in the same week.) We don’t eat out if we’re out of our very conservatively budgeted “entertainment” money. The kids and I eat every single meal and snack at home. Bryan takes his lunch to work. I refuse to use coupons for Fruit Roll Ups for a snack when my kids are happy to eat actual fruit for a snack.

So, in order to combat the frustration I feel when I read budgeting tips, I’ve implemented a 5-step plan so that, in a few months, I can revisit the whole budget thing again and actually get some satisfaction from implementing the most popular budget-friendly tips.

1. Start going to Starbucks 4 times a week. It will really be satisfying a few months from now when I look at my spending habits and say, “Well, by golly, I could save $84 a month by just giving up Starbucks! Just imagine what I could do with that!”
2. Bryan is going to start eating lunch out at work. And then I’m going to yell at him for it until he agrees that it would be so much cheaper to pack his own lunch.
3. We’re going to forget about the “entertainment” budget and just entertain the hell out of ourselves until we spend all of our mortgage money going out for dinner 4 times per week.
4. In order to implement tip #3, I’m going to have to stop menu planning and making a grocery list. I think it will be more helpful if, when Bryan is on his way home from work, I call him and ask him to pick up some Thai take-out because I forgot to plan for dinner. We will absolutely marvel at the money we save when we quit doing that.
5. Every time I see something I want, I’m just gonna effing buy that shit, yo! A cute little outfit for a kid? A cute little throw pillow for the couch? A cute little couch that would go better with the throw pillow than the couch we already have? WRAP IT UP! This might involve using credit cards, which is something we don’t do. We have one, but we don’t charge stuff because this one time? When we were young? We were in debt and it sucked balls. Now we’re old and we get super grumpy when we have to pay shit back with interest, even if it’s a frickin’ house. But I guess we’ll have to do it for the good of the budget.

Ok, so after I implement all of these changes for a couple of months, I’ll most definitely have a crisis wherein I say, “Gee whiz, Bryan, do you know where our money is? It seems like we should have more than this.” And then we’ll start looking into this novel thing called “budgeting,” and the first step will be to track our expenses and figure out where we’ve gone wrong. It will feel so good to “save” $8 billion dollars every month and I might not get frustrated by the stupid tips in the budgeting books and then I won’t throw them up against the wall. It will be fun.

Seriously, groceries? The first person who leaves a comment saying, “Use coupons!” is going to get a roundhouse kick to the face. Let’s examine the latest coupons from this post at Stretching a Buck, just for example. I will buy the tuna, canned tomatoes, and Kraft cheese and I will be very pleased with myself. The rest of it? No, thanks. And that is always my journey with coupons. It’s super rare that there are actual good deals on 3! things that I would buy. You don’t know how excited I am, but I’m not going to buy Keebler or Pepperidge cookies just because I can get them for cheap. I’m not going to buy “fruit” snacks and “meat” franks and all of those other things that are always on sale and then feed it to my kids who are, by the way, still growing. We eat fun stuff, but it usually doesn’t come out of the grocery budget and it doesn’t feel like I’m saving money when I’m buying something I wouldn’t normally buy just because it’s on sale for super cheap.

Now I’m all frustrated again. I don’t want to throw my laptop, so I’m going to end here. And now I’m going to go to Starbucks because, even though I’ve lost my taste for my own home coffee, I bet a pumpkin spice latte would taste super good right about now. And I’m going to put in on my credit card so it will taste even better.

P.S. One good thing about our budget is when we don’t use all of the money in the “gasoline” fund for the month, instead of rolling the extra money over to next month’s gas fund, we roll that into the “entertainment” fund and very promptly use it to go out to eat. And that’s when I feel most in love with budgeting because then it feels like it does pay off and we should reward ourselves for it whenever we can.

P.P.S. My favorite thing to do is eat out at a restaurant. Kristen made fun of me recently because when my mom was here, she bought me some $25 running pants (thanks, Mom!), but they didn’t feel right so I returned them. I looked around for some other pants, but I just couldn’t see spending $25 on pants when I knew I could get some at the thrift store. Maya was shopping with me and, out of all the kids, she seems to have inherited this live-to-eat trait from both me and Bryan, so I had that 25 bucks in my hand and I turned to Maya and said, “Do you want to go eat at a restaurant?” And she said, “Have you met me?” and I said, “Indeed, I have” and we walked arm-in-arm out of Target and into the Chinese buffet (because I let her choose because she had just lost a tooth and the tooth fairy is one cheap biotch around these parts). It was an excellent use of my mother’s money (thanks, Mom!) and I took the change to the thrift store and got running pants for $2.50, and a 2 fleece hoodies for Lena and Liberty. Kristen couldn’t believe I exchanged clothing for food, but that’s not the first time I’ve done that and it won’t be the last. Food is more important to me and if you’ve ever seen the way I dress (and, cough, how my clothes fit), that wouldn’t surprise you.