Forward with Finance

How to hop aboard that ship of pursuing a healthy lifestyle? A good start is to identify what nourishes you, and consider more than just food. While nutrition certainly plays a role, there are other ingredients necessary to achieve a healthy lifestyle. Maintaining a sense of joy through contentment in relationships, your activities, your work, and finances are all part of the recipe. Adding each ingredient at your individual pace will set you up for success in complete and balanced nourishment. I stress individual pace because we are all individual.

One area that contributes largely to stress, and thus produces a rift in wellness is finance. Taking the time to really look hard at your individual patterns of income and spending will help you to take the necessary steps to achieving financial goals over time. There is no doubt that life throws curve balls at us all the time. One day, you may feel completely content in your finances, and then a global pandemic comes along and you lose your job. This unexpected stressor undoubtedly throws a wrench in the recipe. How to mitigate it? Having experienced this 7 months ago, I can share a little of what I did to maintain balance in my overall nourishment. The first thing was to identify the concern: in this case it was finance. How will I pay my mortgage, my utilities, my truck payment without dipping into my savings or gaining credit card debt? For me I looked at the resources available to me that could help me address this concern. For a very brief moment my pride got in the way but then reality took over and told me to accept the assistance available. This pulled the stress of finance off the table so I could begin to really examine what I needed to do to maintain a healthy, happy life while also considering a major career change in the amount of time this assistance was available.

Again, we are all individual so the solution to one person’s financial concerns might differ greatly from another’s. For instance, raising a child from birth to 18 in America, on average costs a family $233,610 (U.S Dept. of Agriculture, 2017). This cost excludes the expense of college. Break that down and it’s roughly $13,000 per year per child. The choice to rear a child or multiple children should be considered if finances are a stressor to your individual self. I have no children so in my case, that was not an expense I had to reckon with. If it is for you, add it into the budget! Life is full of choices and children are a beautiful one, so make it work!

This brings me to priorities. In budgeting there are always priorities. Children for instance are at the top. Food, housing, clothing, utilities, transportation, health are also priorities. These are line items that must have figures in the budget. Items like entertainment, i.e., going out to dinner or the bar, fall to the bottom. While this all seems intuitive, the reality is putting it into practice takes self-discipline. We all deserve a little bit of life’s luxuries, no doubt! We must have joy to survive, but how to obtain and maintain joy on a strict budget?

Take a moment to examine your financial situation. How can you make it more stable? What are your priorities in spending? Are there items in this area that can be culled to free up money for more long-term financial priorities? Or, are there better, more efficient ways to spend the money you have to allow for some cushion in your budget, or maybe to add a line for saving even if it’s a small amount each month?

I’m attaching a sample of my household budget prior to and post job loss below. Within this sample I show you how to work surplus and deficits within your budget. Included are my expenses as a single woman with 6 pets, a single-family home, a truck payment, and some other expenses. This reflects where I spend my money and are just to give you an idea of how to examine your spending. It’s important to consider every place you spend money when budgeting, even that random snack you buy at the gas station. That is money coming from somewhere. For instance, all my subscriptions like Amazon prime, Netflix, Apple music are in the entertainment line. Self-care includes haircuts, gym memberships, massage, acupuncture.

Since losing my job, some line items have been drastically cut or culled completely, as they are not a priority or I have obtained assistance in covering them. I’ve actually found myself finding more joy in spending much more time doing much less expensive activities like spending lots of time on the water with friends. We all pitch on diesel fuel for the boat and bring food and drinks and we are on the water! Way better than in a bar spending 5x the amount of money I don’t have. Rule of thumb, Act your wage! When I say that I mean spend within your income to expense ratio.

The goal is to make sure the total sum of your expenses equals the total sum of your income. If it doesn’t and expenses are more than your total income, you have a deficit and one of two solutions: 1. Bring in more income. 2. Cut your spending. If you expended less than earned, you have a surplus and you can move that forward into your next month’s spending. Maybe you have a car repair you’ve been putting off, or perhaps you wish to treat yourself to a new pair of shoes. I generally move that extra money into the emergencies or vacation line where it sits in my bank account waiting for the next curve ball.

You’ll want the numbers in the columns with the months to reflect your intended spending and income. The actuals will occur as the month goes on and you really examine how much and where you are spending. It will be a tedious process to start, but believe me, it’s worth it if you have a goal of stabilizing your finances. An easy way to keep track is to carry a little note pad with you and every time you spend, write it down. Note the date, the item or service and what the amount is. You can categorize it later.

Like everything else in life, budgeting is a balancing act. I hope this is helpful and please share any comments or insights you may have to help others move forward with finances!

Some notes on this example: First, these numbers are not entirely factual but the line items are so that you can get an idea of how to look at your spending. There are comment notes

within the cells that give details to justify some numbers.

HHBFR 2020.xlsx

Download XLSX • 18KB