Growing Pains

A wise friend recently shared a very good quote with me:

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret." John Rohn.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was right. And not only will everyone suffer from one of these two pains, the pain of regret is always WAY worse than the pain of exercising a little self discipline. In fact, discipline is more like discomfort, really. While regret carries with it the crushing weight of wishing forever that you could go back and do things differently. I can think of almost no pain that is worse than the pain of regret.

So, ya, this quote really struck a chord with me. We were talking about budgeting at the time, and I told her how ashamed I was that Big Daddy and I never save. We should. We can. But we don't. Mostly because we have never made a plan to save. And no matter how much he earns, we seem to spend exactly that much. And I knew, could sense in my bones the way you sense upcoming snow, that the day will come when we will need money in savings and won't have it if we don't change something. Soon.

So with a particularly tight month coming up, we finally sat down yesterday and made a budget. We went through 2 months of bank statements so we could get a feel for what we spent our money on, created an Excel spread sheet to categorize everything, then we started deciding what things we could eliminate and what things we could whittle down. And you know what? After about an hour and a half, we had managed to reduce our monthly spending by 43%!!!! Can you imagine?! Not all of it was things we can permanantly get rid of. There were a few bills we'd been paying way more than the minimum. So we'll only pay the minimum this month when things are tight and then go back to bigger payments next month. And there were a few bills we could defer, but only this once. And there were a few incidentals that won't occur this month. But a lot of what we were able to reduce was frivelous spending: clothes, eating out, home decor and housewares, entertainment, etc.

This upcoming month will be tight. I'm taking all the money alloted for groceries, dates/babysitting, "blow mone," etc., and putting it in envelopes. And I won't go out without them. Everything will be paid for, CASH, with those envelopes. So when the money is gone, it's gone. And then we will just do without.

Making the budget was tough. Owning up to our spending was tough. Putting strict spending limits on ourselves was tough. Not spending anything not allowed will be really tough. Keeping track of the money will be tough. But you know what? It feels good. It feels really, really good. And I know whatever pains we experience this month will be nothing compared to the pains we would have felt if we just let ourselves overspend, go into debt, bounce checks, and get upside down. The weight I feel lifted off my shoulders, knowing we'll make it this month, is absolutely FREEING.

I think I'd like to do this every month. We might allow ourselve an adjustment in how much we can spend on a few things--groceries, eating out, etc.-- when the months are more plentiful, but we can take a good portion of the extra is earned those months and put it aside for emergencies, vacations, rainy days, etc. Yep. This feels really really good.


p.s. If you don't budget, but want to start, I recommend these Dave Ramsey worksheets to help you get started. Dave Ramsey Monthly Cash Flow pdf

Last Call For Donations

Thanks to all of you wonderful people out there who helped donate to my worthy cause: my state quarter collection. I am in need of one more quarter and then my collection will be complete. I have all the rest. Somehow, magically, even a Puerto Rico quarter showed up in my jar. Who even knew it was a state? But Pennsylvania has remained elusive. And so I ask you one last time to dig through your purse, wallet, change jar, or ash tray and see if you have a Pennsylvania quarter you'd like to donate. And just to sweeten the deal, your donation will get you this lovely certificate:




By the way, some of you have inquired if I have put all my quarters into one of those lovely commemorative quarter holders. The answer to that is how big a nerd do you think I am? Please. They're in a sandwich baggie in my bedside table of course. And as soon as I get the last quarter, I'm going to spend the whole wad on some lovely prizes to give away on my blog. So the sooner you find Pennsylvania, the sooner you get stuff. So get on it already, why don't you!?

Sincerely,
Your ever so grateful (but not as nerdy as you think) quarter collector
Arianne

The $300 Question - Answered

So, yes, I did suddnely come into a vast fortune of $300. And because it came out of the blue and wasn't part of my budget, I wanted to make sure to blow it on something fun, something I'd never usually spend money on. Something I'd get major guilt for if I ever spent $300 of my monthly stipend on it. So here's what I did...


1) I bought a new guitar for our Rock Band. I discovered a guitar online that will work with both the Wii Rock Band and Wii Guitar Hero. No, I don't actually HAVE Guitar Hero. I am going to have to wait for another windfall for that. I'm planning ahead. So this guitar will be the bass guitar to complete my band (The Mollies and Peters) when I play Rock Band, and, should I ever actually get Guitar Hero, I won't have to buy a new guitar.

2) I bought more soap making supplies. I was clean out of soap base, I was NOT satisfied with my Robert's crafts soap dyes, which bleed like a....well, I'll leave out the gross analogies and just say that they bleed a lot. And I wanted to beef up my selection of both molds and scents. So I got.

1) a leaf mold with 5 small and various leaf designs
2) a mold made of oval shaped "stones" with chinese symbols
3) a mold with little animal heads-- monkey, pig, etc.
4) pumkin pie scent (which actually smells more like hot buttered rum or something)
5) Goergoe Peach scent
6) Honey Bear scent, which unfortunately smells a lot more like baby powder than honey or bears
7) Grapefruit scent, since the one I had dumped all over my bag.
8) Pink Sugar scent. Mmmmm....
9) Chamomile scent, which I am NOT pleased with. Unless it changes drastically when it is in soap, it doesn't smell anything like chamomile.
10) 8 new liquid soap dyes
11) 3 blocks of shea butter soap base and 2 blocks of goats milk, plus a tub of clear glycerin soap base





Blowing money sure feels good. Soap making party, anyone?