Buy what you need; want what you have.

I have long been a fan of Mary Hunt of Everyday Cheapskate, her free email newsletter. In her newsletter on June 7, 2010 the thought for the day was this, “Buy what you need; want what you have.” This phrase she says is the key to living below your means. This was a good reminder and inspiration article for me, as me and the hubs have just started Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (a.k.a. FPU). I know what both of these people teach is pretty basic and “easy” to do. In fact up until purchasing our home a little over a year ago we were debt free and had a small savings started. We were ecstatic to have paid off consumer debt and school loans in record time. To quote Dave Ramsey we accomplished this with “gazelle intensity.” For us paying off the debt was relatively easy.

We have since becoming debt free gone into debt to purchase our home, which even most of the conservative financial guru’s will tell you is okay. Regardless of their approval I still felt/feel sick to my stomach with the amount of the debt. Here is the hard part for us, a year later and never having successfully created a budget that we could live by we hadn’t really seen our savings account grow. This has been frustrating. Plus these two selfish sinners (me and the hubs) “try” to share money it doesn’t always go so well. We are different. First off you know the whole man (just do it) versus woman (plan it and talk it through) way of thinking, combined with different experiences and attitudes about money.

So this summer our church is finally hosting FPU, hooray! While I have to admit I’m a little bummed that we are in summer school because we have failed to come up with a passable grade on the budget, I know that with a commitment to pass and work together we can whip the budget into shape and move on to the next grade (or baby step according to Dave). Today is our second class and we’ve already put a ton of thought and effort into the simple budget, probably a little more than was required at this stage, but that’s been our sticking point.

All this time, we’ve been married five years, I realize that I’ve been pushing so hard to make the numbers look good and add up fast on paper that our budget hasn’t been realistic. This has made for many accusations on my part directed toward my hubs about his reckless spending. Meanwhile I haven’t even managed my own behaviors to get a passing grade on the “outlined” budget. I’m am so sorry. It’s not me against him. We’re in this together. At least that’s what I promised, for richer or poorer.

I’m glad to say we’ve got the start of our budget, a real and livable budget. I’m sure that the farther we get into this that I’ll realize we’ve missed a few details or things will change (a.k.a. the cost of things will most likely go up) and we will readjust. I don’t “like” the way the numbers add up on the budget anymore now and it looks like it’s gonna take forever to get some sizeable savings now. It’s gonna take us a long time before we take any big vacations or get those beautiful hardwood floors I’ve been dreaming about since buying our home. We’ll have to see how things take shape of course, but I see it now we’ve got several options.

Be patient and usually I am not. I will go to the opposite extreme and often to the detriment of other important things. In the past I have worked so much that I neglect my home and even worse important relationships—not recommended. This also means waiting until I have saved every penny needed to make that big purchase—this is really hard too!
Create more income. I used to work part time and the hubs is already working regular overtime each month. I might have to really get creative here, but I’ve always said that I’ve wanted to have my own business and dream of my creative outlet that just happens to net an income.
Learn to live with less. The budget I am speaking of still isn’t glamourous so I definitely think that this will be challenging. This aspect will also hopefully inspire creativity so that we expand our knowledge and skills. I’m seeing lots of furniture making projects in my future.
Buy what we need; want what we have. In a word be content with what the good Lord has already provided. He has already supplied us beyond our needs. So we can live on less than he has provided. The logic is there. It needs to be practiced.

So hopefully in the coming weeks and months I’ll be able to share our successes and hopefully not too many failures.

Keeping it real here is test number one for me. I just got a fab new haircut and color just this past Thursday. Of course the new do “requires” a flat iron to get it just right. Well, since I failed to plan ahead on that front, I’m gonna be saving up for my flat iron and waiting for it to go on sale. In the mean time I’ll just have to be patient and be happy with current set of beauty tools. I want to stay debt free more than I want this:

…so I will wait probably until my next hair cut before I buy this. So if I don't look totally together I'm blaming it on my lack of proper tools (although I should blame it on myself for failing to plan ahead). I'm learning.