I have never been good with math or money.
Always came up short between paychecks and I would be running to the bank for more overdraft.
Our system has always been to pay bills first, fuel up the car for the week, grocery shop and then whatever is left over gets saved. Smart, right?
Well, let me tell you that besides a scattered 20$ here and there (that will get spent within a couple of days) - there isn't anything left to save.
And this isn't because I go crazy at the stores. I don't buy clothes unless we need them and then it's the cheapest clothes possible. I don't spend insane amounts of money on knick knacks around the house - in fact I might buy a couple of cute things at the dollar store. That's about it.
We don't have a credit card, we don't have car payments as we always buy a slightly older car and we buy it outright.
Where is our money going?
I've looked through countless of websites and blogs, trying to figure out a system that works.
Feeling lost and confused, I gave up! There is no possible way that a person that is horrible with money and that has mutual allergies with math - can do this!
This will be our life - we will live from paycheck to paycheck with 0 dollars saved for emergencies.
Not anymore!
I found it! The system that makes sense to me!
I sat down, pulled out all of our monthly bills and did up the numbers.
We can do this! It is actually possible.
http://www.onebeautifulhomeblog.com/2015/11/soon-debt-free-2016/
I haven't printed anything out yet - I came across this post and decided to try this.
Instead of only listing out the dollars - I actually gave myself a budget for each a category and worked out the percentages.
Groceries - x amount of $ is 15% of our weekly check.
Gas - x amount of $ is 17%.
Regular house bills - x amount of $ is 30%.
Company bills....
You get it.
I also decided to run with the lowest paychecks as a base.
My husband's work is fairly irregular from week to week which has also made it harder for me to make and stick with a budget.
But lo and behold! This works for me!
The first time I ran the numbers, it added up to be 104% of our paycheck!
No wonder we are always broke!
It was easier for me to take those 4 % and adjust the budget accordingly.
Aaaaand! I labelled our savings as a bill!
I will never save money if it keeps being the lowest priority.
I can actually (in theory at least), save a whopping 100$ per week!
This is huge!
I also did it up so that we have 0$ left at the end of the week.
Bills (including our savings), gas, groceries and company bills get paid and then there is a certain amount for each a week for buying coffee, the scattered bagel, etc.
I will be starting this in 3 weeks.
Only because we have an extra bill for this month that throws this budget out the window!
I'm not pressing my "luck" by trying to figure that out as we technically can't afford this bill, even if I apply the future savings of a 100$ a week to it.
The countdown is on! I can't wait to try this.
I already stashed away 50$ of this weeks non-existing money.
Because - now it's a bill!
I will follow Dave Ramsey's advice too and start by having a 1000$ in a baby emergency fund to keep from accumulating smaller debts, before I start paying off our debts.
I wrote down the few debts we do have and I will do the snowball pay-off thing!
This is where you list off all of your debts - smallest to largest.
Then you pay as much as you can on the smallest one, until it's gone!
Then you can take the money you always used to pay that monthly bill and put it on bill #2 on top of the regular amount that you pay into that!
Brilliant!
