Controlling the Budget

If you've read my earlier posts, you will know I have an awesome and amazing budget spreadsheet. It is a tool I use practically every day (practically in both the sense that it's just about every day and the use of the budget is very practical). In a nutshell, you budget out your whole year on a weekly basis and each week has a bottom line which should match the amount left in your checking account after all income and spending for the week are recorded. Each week's bottom line is added to the income of the next week and then expenses are deducted leaving you with an amount that should again match the checking account. I am so wildly excited about my budget tool that I thought I'd put it in a box and sell but, alas, someone beat me to it! No kidding, the same exact idea and approach to budgeting! No such thing as new ideas. Anyway, you can have mine for free! Just send me an e-mail and I'll send you my budget spreadsheet. But that is not what this post is about. This post is about those items on the budget you can control.

Controllable line items: spending money, gas, groceries, and income are a few to start out with. My favorite one to control is INCOME. There are lots of easy ways to increase the income line of your budget besides the obvious, though not always possible, getting a job/getting a raise at existing job. Sell something on e-bay or Craig's List or, like we do in Maine, Uncle Henry's. Have a yard sale, though it isn't really the season now, is it. Start a business from home - I just put up a sign myself! Take in some freelance work from whatever your career was before having kids, write a blog and sign on with an internet ad service, baby sit for working moms (I'd stick a needle in my eye first, but hey, some of you might love other people's kids like I don't). Get creative and increase your income - you are in control of this one and as quickly as you accept this power you will see how to use it.

Groceries are another easy item to control but it takes time and planning. This will deserve a separate post, but quickly, this is what I do and I feed my family very well on very little. Write out a dinner menu for the week (lunch is typically leftovers and breakfast is a rotation of cereal, oatmeal, pancakes, eggs). Take your menu to the pantry and see what you don't have to buy to prepare it. Make grocery list accordingly. Then, price out the list. Anyone who has done some shopping has a general sense of what things cost (or else 'The Price is Right' wouldn't have ever been a show, right?). Tally it up -- did you make your grocery budget? Need to shave a little? Start with simple swaps - chicken thighs for chicken breasts. Top round for london broil. OK, now tally it up -- still off the mark? Make some bigger adjustments - cancel one dinner and have breakfast for dinner that night. Eliminate fresh broccoli for frozen peas. Pull that frozen poultry out of the freezer and utilize it this week. Another way to start is with the weekly sales flyers - base your menu on what's on sale and then go through the steps I briefly described above.

Gas and spending money go together and are very easy to control. Stay home. Just gracefully bow out of whatever thing you think you need to be at and stay home instead. The world will still turn and even better, you will be on budget. Pretend it is the olden days, pre-credit cards, and just don't go out and buy gas or anything else when the budget is tight. Instead stay home and color with your kids or make money some creative way.

Controlling the Budget is so doable once you realize you have the power. Many folks out there think they have to do and buy certain things and very simply put - they do not. Once you accept this you will see how to control your budget even when you are living paycheck to paycheck, digging out of debt, paying student loans, have little kids, etc. It is an awesome feeling - controlling the budget.