The Town of Odyssey

One of the dreaded things among most in adulthood is the budget. Personally, I kind of like doing the budget every two weeks. I kinda do the zero based budget. I start with my checking account balance right after my paycheck hits and subtract each expense one by one with the balance after each expense. If I haven't gone below my checking account cushion number, whatever is left after I subtract everything is potential spending money.

How about you? Do you like budgeting? Do you do yours different? Have you gained any wisdom from budgeting?

So the way I started my budget was I just took a few months to record what I spent without too much judgement towards myself. At that point I gave myself an amount I was allowed to spend for each category.

I do like budgeting. It took me awhile to get used to it but after the last year+ it's starting to become second nature. It makes me hyper aware of what I'm spending and where I'm wasting money. It also helped me become more consistent in tithing/giving, just knowing how much I'm making and then tithing out of that was really nice.

I use a spreadsheet and do one month at a time.

I also read this book a couple years ago called The Millionaire Booklet -- https://youberelentless.com/millionaire ... ok-review/ this guy has a decent review of it.

What I got out of it is you should be broke all the time. You need to live barebones and take any extra money you make and put it into a different bank account where you will use it eventually to invest. The rule is money can't go from the investing bank account to the spending bank account. The way he did it is he figured out how much he needed to live on and then he asked his HR team at work to split his earnings, the spending part goes to his spending bank account and his investing portion goes to his investing bank account. You could invest it in stocks, or real estate (which is his thing), or a business, but he's just saying that you have to prepare for opportunities that could come along to invest in and instead of wishing you could invest you now have money to do so.

The only budgeting I've done is remove all my bills from my income check, which I get monthly, and then save/mildly spend whatever is leftover..

So Sir doesn't trust me to budget because in college I kept to my very strict budget that had $75 for food. I was already underweight and I lost more weight. I was 80 pounds and could pay cash for my next term but recked my health.

radgeek wrote:So Sir doesn't trust me to budget because in college I kept to my very strict budget that had $75 for food. I was already underweight and I lost more weight. I was 80 pounds and could pay cash for my next term but recked my health.

That's the hardest thing with budgeting for me. You want to still be healthy and use your money wisely in terms of taking care of yourself, but being miserly can take over especially when you're on a budget. I almost feel guilty spending money even though I know I budgeted for it..

Since getting the new job, the budget has proved to be quite a challenge. I'm not usually one to pack a lunch for work. Since I work at Walmart, I just buy something while I'm there. So, I have my work meal categor, my grocery category, and general spending all going to one store.

Do you get any kind of discount as an employee?

I stayed loyal to a local grocery store for years and years. It's right around the corner so I do still stop in to pick up something or another occasionally, but I finally had to switch to Walmart for main grocery shopping because the prices are just so much better... but with an employee discount...!?

Weird Walmart side note… Walmart+ is SICK, it’s like $12 a month and they just drop your groceries off at your door. I never have to actually go there.

EK wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:32 pm Weird Walmart side note… Walmart+ is SICK, it’s like $12 a month and they just drop your groceries off at your door. I never have to actually go there.

It's tempting, but Walmart isn't super far so I usually do the curbside pickup instead of having to tip the delivery person, because I'm cheap!