I’ve been thinking a lot about budgeting and stewardship lately. Now firstly a disclaimer, I am NOT claiming to be good at either of these, at least, not at the moment. I used to be really good at budgeting and living frugally, then about 18 months ago, my husband had his second major psychotic episode in four years. In the last 18 months I have been really struggling to maintain our budget. It’s not that we don’t have enough, and more than enough if I’m going to be honest it’s just that I’ve been finding it hard to keep track and say no to myself. Over the last couple of months God’s really been pushing me to work on being a better steward of the resources he provides and I’ve been trying to work out why I’ve been struggling in this area. I’ve come to a couple of conclusions. Firstly I’ve been struggling with mild depression not related to my caring responsibilities but not made any better by being ignored either. I think that because I’d been ignoring all the signs I’d just got into a “I don’t care, it will work itself out later” mindset. Of course, it won’t work itself out at all, money isn’t alive, I have to manage it not let it manage me. Secondly, I’ve decided I just can’t handle debit cards, at the moment anyway, it’s too easy to spend money without realising it. So, the plan I’ve come up with is this. Some of our income is automatically deposited and I’m going to leave it right where it is. Most of our bills are automatically debited so I’ve figure out how much this is for the month and how much more needs to be deposited and this is going into the bank, with some extra for savings, each week. All other expenses are cash only — no cash, no spend. I’ve divided up the cash into separate envelopes so I don’t, for example spend the petrol money on groceries. At the end of the month, any left over cash get’s added to the bank account.
I’ve also started using this great planner from Fab n’ free which has some really good budgeting pages that I think will really help because I’ve also decided that I am really a pen and paper person.
I’ll let you know how it goes.