I ready Dave Ramsey’s book “Total Money Makeover” several years ago. The concepts made sense to me.
- Start with a $1,000 emergency fund.
- List debts in order from smallest to largest, pay the minimums on all but the smallest debt and throw everything else you have at the smallest debt
These are really the only two steps I paid attention to since they immediately concerned me and I figured I’d read the book when I got close to the end of 2.
What it didn’t really address was how to get the numbers to set up your budget at the beginning. (At least not that I recall)
So this year, I have read several books from other people, just seeing how other people began their debt free journeys. There is a few that I do not agree with. Several of the books that I have read say “hey, you’ve decided to get out of debt but need to create a budget. Let’s spend the next two months continuing to spend like you normally would and keep the receipts so we can create a budget based on your spending.”
I don’t agree with this. So basically, you want me to go into further debt for 2 more months just so I can keep the receipts? My recommendation would be login to your bank account, all your credit cards, whatever bank system you have a card to that you have used for the last 2 months and download and print your bank statement for 2 months. You should have a general idea of what you are buying at each store to get an idea. And start your journey immediately.
When we started poorly a couple of years ago, that’s what I did. We cut down our grocery budget and started meal planning and making a grocery list, but we started immediately, not 2 months later.
Now, we have NOT been perfect. We have fallen off, added a car loan, used the credit cards a couple more times that we should not have. My advice here would be, if your car transmission dies and you or your spouse are a delivery driver, buying a junk car is probably not a good idea. We were spending more in car repairs then we spend on our current car payment.
If you are hesitant to cut your cards up until your emergency fund is in place, take the cards our of your wallet, leave them at home, delete them from your online shopping accounts. (I finally did this this year)
Take at least a month to think over anything you are wanting to purchase, discuss it with your spouse. The exception being food, utilities, housing, debt payments, these are obvious expenses.
We do not even have a clothing budget. Our income is not too high above what our minimum payments are. So we have clothes, if we have a pair of jeans that needs to hit the trash, we discuss it, we may take some money away from our snowball for a month but the reality is, these purchases are sporadic.
My daughter luckily does not grow very fast. My sister’s kids are also a little older so we get all the hand me downs. I have not even had to purchase clothes for the most recent size because I was given plenty. Little is not very hard on clothes so we don’t run through them very much.
This month I finally decided she was 4 and it is time to transition to panties full time. She has been potty trained for potty for about 6 months now but we would put her in a pull-up for naptime and bedtime. In January we started transitioning to panties during naptime, even though she had never pooped in the potty. We ruined a couple of pairs of panties but FINALLY this week she pooped in the toilet WITHOUT getting any on the panties. A couple more weeks of successful pooping in the potty and we will start doing this overnight. We have always included diapers in the grocery budget but, cutting these down to 1 a day has saved our budget significantly. I also bought them at Aldi this last time.
So my best advice is:
- Start now, print your statements for the last couple of months to build your budget.
- Meal plan and take a list to the store with you and ONLY get things on the list
- Discuss purchases with your spouse, wait at least a month before making a decision
- Remove credit cards from your wallet, online shopping accounts, or cut them up if you want
- Give yourself grace. Life happens but as long as you keep pushing forward, you can do this! I’m still learning this one but I know it will happen.
