Growing up, I saw the stress of having very little money and experienced the feeling of having less than my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I was fine, but you know that feeling when you’re suddenly aware that you can’t have everything? That’s what I mean. When I began driving, I was given an “allowance” basically for driving my brother around in the summer and driving to my dad’s every other weekend. That was the only interaction that I had with money and I never really learned how to manage it successfully.
If I wanted a burger, I would “guesstimate” how much was in my account (or look it up depending on what technology was available to me). If I had enough to cover what I assumed the meal would be, the decision was set and the money was spent! I will be completely honest with you…this way of making decisions lasted until I began budgeting more seriously. When I was hired full-time in my first real job, I began to plan a little more by putting the due dates of my bills in my google calendar. I would look to see when I was getting paid next and would add up all my bills to see if I could pay them with my next paycheck. I made that work for several years, but it was always so stressful each time. It was this terribly un-fun game of “Will Erika be able to pay her rent?!” and I came close to losing that game more than a few times.
As I began dating my now-husband, my finances really took a hit. I began using credit cards more regularly and telling myself, “I’ll have enough money to pay this when it’s due” when I had no way of actually knowing that to be true. When we got engaged, I basically lived entirely off my credit card and put many of our wedding expenses on cards. Let me tell you right now, DON’T DO THIS if you can avoid it. It’s one thing if you pay off your cards each month and it’s another when you’re spending money your account can’t afford.
I was spending money out at Starbucks, going out to lunch, grabbing an afternoon pick-me-up, or even just walking around Target and grabbing something for myself. Not to mention the money I would spend when it was my turn to pay for us eating out together or for date nights at the movies (and popcorn!). Basically, this all led to nights of stress and crying in bed. We were fighting and it was hard to see where this path would lead us if we didn’t do something about it.
In sheer desperation, I reached out to a financial class and through that we found the budgeting tool that literally saved us from complete destruction.
If you’re new to budgeting or just looking for the right tool to help you budget, look no further than You Need A Budget (YNAB pronounced “why-nab” if you’re cool). It’s a budgeting software that allows you the flexibility to budget money how you want and can help you accomplish all of your financial goals. They even have a 34-day free trial (which, if you’re interested use my referral link to start your free trial) which might sound boring but I thought it was very helpful because it allows enough time to use the system for free and get in a few paychecks to see if this is something that could work for you.
My husband and I started off slow, just budgeting for the basics (food, gas, rent) and I took advantage of every class they offered (which were also free!) to learn how to use their system. It’s different from most budgeting tools because you only budget money you actually have in your account. This takes the guesswork out of “how much can I spend on groceries right now?” because you can pull up the YNAB app and it will say how much you have in the bank set aside for groceries! The first few months are just learning how you spend money and then learning how you can adjust your categories so that you can better predict what you spend and how much money needs to be set aside in each category.
I can’t even explain the relief we felt when bills were funded and money seemed to last so much longer! We would have weekly “budget meetings” to talk about how we should adjust our categories with either more or less money and it brought us together and made sure we were on the same page with how our money is spent. It also helped that we got a joint account and all of our incomes are put into the same account. That was important for us to feel like this isn’t “my” money or “his” money but instead it was “ours” to be spent like we decided when we budgeted that week.
Now we have funds for future items like new furniture or even buying another car and each month we set aside time to talk about our goals and what we want to accomplish with our money. We were saving for a vacation road-trip but obviously that was cancelled and the funds were moved into other categories to be used for things we know we’ll need this year (like that new furniture we discussed!). When the world opens up again, we’ll start planning and saving for that trip! Slowly but surely we’ll save enough and there won’t be any stress about spending money when we’re on the road because it will all have been planned and accounted for in our budget. I fully trust my husband to spend money wisely and he trusts me. I don’t know where we would be without our budget, but I know it wouldn’t be a happy place.
I recently was on a podcast and got to talk about my love for budgeting and YNAB and I encourage you to listen and see if this is something you want for your financial life. Click here to listen: buff.ly/3rWlhMj
Look, budgeting isn’t sexy or always fun…but if you do it enough, you’ll find freedom in knowing what your money is doing and you control where it’s spent. That’s true freedom to spend wisely and give generously! If you want help on budgeting, please reach out to me and let’s set up a session to get you on the path towards financial freedom and budget harmony!
Everyday Erika 