I sat down with the wife at the start of this month and we decided we were going to stick to a budget.
Let me tell you that this is no easy task.
You don’t really understand how hard it is not to spend until you activity try not to spend.
I am used to seeing something and going out and buying it, no matter if I could afford it or not.
Wanted a new PS3 game? Buy it!
Wanted a new 100ft ethernet cable? Buy it!
Well those days have stopped and man is it hard to stick with it.
For reference my weekly allowance is $75.
The first week I only spent $25 which meant I had $50 extra for the next week.
The next week I spent $50 which included a 4 pack of Moosehead beer and $20 in a poker game.
The $25 plus $50 from the first week brought me up to +$75.
Now comes this Saturday, Saturday the 13th.
There was a charity poker event for my friends, kids soccer team.
$60 in and another $20 to top up after the first hour.
They were expecting to have around 50 players for the evening and the top prize being $1,000.
My brother in-law was coming down to play in the game as well so I decided to book a nine hole at the White Oaks Golf Course.
I didn’t have any balls so I would have to buy some as well.
So $27 for the course fee, $6 for the balls and another $2 for the Gatorade for a grand total of $35 leaving me with $40.
This is well below the $80 I would need for poker that night so what do you do?
You cancel going to poker and you and your brother in-law go back to the house and barbecue some burgers while sucking back some beers…
Yeah right.
No you go to the bank and tell yourself “This will have to come out of next weeks $75 and hopefully I can keep up with the $20 a week spending.”
So away we go to the poker game, and 54 players are in.
Game starts at 8pm and I am finally knocked out at 6th place at midnight and I win my $60 entry fee back (for reference my Brother in-law got knocked out 8th).
So if I had not won and got my money back I would be in the red right now but now currently I am in the black.
What does this all have to do with budgeting? HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW?
Seriously though I think what I am doing is what I am referring to as the “Relaxed Budget”
What is that you ask?
It’s the budget where yes you have to make some hard choices but you still don’t have to beat yourself for making some mistakes.
Just so you know here are a couple of hard choices made in the past two weeks.
1: Not buying “UFC Undisputed” for the PS3 even when my buds all have it and are telling me to buy it.
2: Not buying a new set of headphones even though my kids ran it over with the chair (duct tape).
3: Not buying the Ethernet wall plate to clean up the hole I made last month.
4: Not taking a cab ride home after missing the train at 10:38pm but sitting around for the next one (hour later) saving $40. Normally I would do this and not stick around an hour.
Obviously these choices are not difficult in the “Will I die?” sense of it all, but for someone who never before gave these purchases a second thought… they are pretty fuckin hard!
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