Budgeting our Finances

Budgeting is a way of creating a plan to spend your money accordingly, this spending plan is called a budget. This will allow us to balance our money from our income to our expenses. It is important to balance these things so we will not overspend and put us in debt.

Proper handling of our finances always comes with proper budgeting, from paying bills, house budgets, paying rents, etc. Budgeting is never an easy task especially if you are just a minimum wage earner and all your income only relies on your salary. Mostly wives having headaches on how to budget the money given to them when it was just enough or almost not enough. To aid the situation tightening the budget is somehow the solution.

When I was not yet married I always managed my money carefully, everytime I have my salary I always have some budget allocation in each spending. I always get a portion of my salary for savings I prefer to save than in debt during emergencies. I don't buy fancy things which are not necessary, if I want to buy something new for myself or for gifts I will save for it first before buying. It's not that I lack the budget that is why I am tightening my spending it's just that, I am not used to acting like a 'one day millionaire and starve later' I always save for rainy days. What I regretted that time is that I don't have any ideas on how to invest my money wisely, I am so naive by just saving it all in banks, if I just encounter this digital asset or any investment sooner I might have gained something already or lose my money too since I am a noob lol. But I think it's not yet too late to learn. All the savings I had before was used for my child's delivery and daily expenses when I was on leave, At that time my partner was jobless his career was unlucky so I cover all the expenses since I had an unexpected pregnancy.

Now that we (me/hubby) starting to build a future for our own family. I am more kin in budgeting our finances well. So I still do the things I used to do how to budget our money. The things I do to make my budgeting works within a month.

Saving a portion or 20-30% of the money given

Before spending the budget allocation I already cut the pie and saving the 20-30% of the money I receive. It should be untouchable, in the breakdown I also include 'miscellaneous' that is to cover the unexpected expense so the save portion will remain intact.

Listing my spending

I am listing all my spendings on a note, this is to track easily, so I will know our remaining budget of the month. I purposely do this so if ever I forget something I can retract my notes, I had a forgetful habit so I have to write it down in case of questioning where the money goes. The house monthly budget notes are separated from my daughter and my spending budget, they have different category so it's easy for me to chase during the balancing.

Keeping receipts and bank statements

I keep all the receipts from monthly bills, groceries, etc as long as it is receipts I keep it. I also keep the bank statement that was sent by the mailman every month this is to check if the balance on my account and statement of the withdrawal coincide, I keep it and store it in a box, this is for record purposes. I will throw it after a year 😆

Setting Dates For Shopping

I don't shop every day or every other day, I only shop 2-3 times a month. Except for the veggies and fruits we bought near our house. For groceries and any other necessary things to buy, it falls on twice or 3x a month shopping. I don't like window shopping, I don't like checking things especially if I don't have any intended budget for it. I avoid it so I cannot spend outside on my outline budgets. I usually shop every first week, in the middle of 2nd or 3rd week, and sometimes the last days of the month. Last week's shop usually happens because my daughter was out of milk, sometimes she drinks milk so fast lol.

Balancing every end of the month

At every end of the month, I will sum up all our expenses. I won't touch the money allotted for the next month unless I am done calculating the monthly expenses, after that, I will check the balance left both cash on hand and in the bank if it was tally. There was a time I was short for almost $50, I was having a headache calculating where the heck I was wrong with my computations or did I forget to write something but it's a pretty big amount to be forgotten, $50 in our country is amounting Php2,500.00 during that time when $1 is equal to Php50.00. Only to find out I put the money in my coins.ph wallet to buy BTC 😆

Saving before buying wants/Trips/Getaway/Celebration

If there are things we want to buy outside our necessities, I will save money for it first. I will allocate the budget for the wants little by little so the budget breakdown will not be broken. Also if there are coming celebrations, events, trips I allocate the budget on that beforehand.

Pay the payables directly

In my budget breakdown first in line is the food consumption, next is the payables such as bills and debts if there are any, but I didn't have debts now we paid it already. The reason why I pay the payables asap is that I can't sleep at peace knowing I have debts or accountabilities to be paid off. I don't like payables to be piled up and due dates will haunt me my gosh! That's why a credit card is a big NO for me.

I prefer to pay cash

I don't like to use debit cards nor credit card, I always prefer to pay cash so I can manage myself not to overspend because I only rely on my cash on hand. I also don't like to see cents on my balance like 0.65 cents. Call me old school because we are now in the digital generation but I still prefer the old ways, well not unless if the merchant accepts BCH maybe that's the time I will use my digital wallet since its fees almost cost nothing. But that would take a long since BCH adoption in our country is not yet known, but I hope one day it will.

These are the things I do to keep my budgeting works. It's not that I lose my freedom in using our money instead, I have more freedom by doing it, freedom from stress because of overspending that the expenses are higher than the income. Freedom in debts, because I managed to budget well, we won't have to be in debt. Freedom to use the saved money during emergencies, we don't have to ask somebody to lend us money because we have our savings. We are also tightening our budget especially we are in a pandemic situation, also we are saving and investing for our brighter future to be financially stable one day and enjoy life when we have it even we are not yet on our retiring age, I just hope we will achieve it.

I purposely do the listing and keeping receipts to bank statements because my partner is away if ever he will have some questions about the money, I can answer him and give him hard copies. I think advance lol. As for my little incomes from my loading business and here I keep it, it's money, and I will have plans to make it grow.

Budgeting does not take away your freedom, instead, it gives you more freedom to use your money accordingly. I am not saying this will apply to you since we have different lifestyles, so we also have different techniques on how to budget or manage our finances.

How about you? Do you budget your money? Or how do you budget your money?

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