Laine's Letters. The Household Budget.
Dear Sisters,
I need a map to get from point A to point B in a city where I am unfamiliar with the roads. And the best maps get me faster to my destination. I view a good budget like a good map. I've seen the problems that can arise in a city, or a state, or a country when the budget is all askew. Money is being spent where it shouldn't, and then where the money should be spent, there is not enough, or none at all.
Oftentimes, the problem is not what comes in that matters the most, rather what goes out.
A family is no different. We can get into a lot of financial trouble without a proper budget. Especially if we don't adhere to it. We can't get from point A to point B unless we are indeed pointing there. My husband and I are pointing toward retirement in a couple of years. My goal is to have our budget aligned with our social security check each month. I've been crunching the numbers a lot lately. My husband has worked so hard for us all these years. I want to be ready with our Social Security budget so that he can enjoy retirement. He will never stop working, he'll just be home working with me. We'll have more time to hang out.😊
When we were first married we were both working. I was working for American Express, and Art was an MP in the army. We were stationed in Germany. I didn't know at the time, but we were setting ourselves up to live on one income for the next 38 years. All the money I made we sent back to an account in the US so that we wouldn't touch it. We lived on Art's income. We did that for a year and a half. Then I got pregnant with our first child, and we moved to our next station which was Ft. Riley, Kansas. I stopped working outside the home and started learning how to stretch Art's income in the home. One of the first things I learned was to adhere to a budget. (Along with cooking, but that is another letter.😊)
There are some things that are not on our budget. I will mention a few of them just to help clarify what we do have in the budget. We don't have cable, Netflix, Hulu, or any other paid tv programming. We have an antenna, and we use our library. We don't get our hair cut professionally, unless Art's sister is visiting from out of town as she is a hairdresser. I cut our hair otherwise. We don't have expensive phones, so our phone bill is very low. Our internet is not the highest speed, so it is the "next to the lowest" price available. We eat out rarely, and that is due to my health condition. We don't charge anything much on a credit card, and if we do we pay it off that month. (We have never paid interest charges on a Visa card due to this practice all of our marriage.) Our allowances cover any needed items throughout the month that we might individually need like clothes, household items, garage sale deals, thrift shop finds, a coffee or tea out, etc.
Here is what is on our monthly budget:
Tithe
Compassion
Electrical Dept.
Water Dept.
Cell phones
Food
Internet
Pets
Allowances (personal spending money)
Gas
Health Insurance
Dental
Car Registration
Propane
Car Insurance
Homeschool Books
Life Insurance
House Insurance
House Taxes
Piano Lessons
Birthdays
Christmas
Savings
Tithing and giving have always been important to us and are the foundation of our budget. Everything we have is because of our beautiful LORD and Savior.
"Honor the LORD with your substance, and with the firstfruits of all your increase." Proverbs 3:9
Our vacation money and household/car repair money are from our income tax refund which we receive each year. If we need a new roof in a few years, for example, I will save from our income tax refund for those few years. Likewise, if we need tires on the car, or a new part, that is where I save our money. Our vacation varies each year. This year our vacation was supposed to be in N.H. for a family wedding. The airline tickets were bought in January, the hotel and rental car were booked. Then the wedding got cancelled, so we didn't go due to the pandemic. Instead we took the money we saved, and my husband painted five rooms inside our house! 😊 It was incredible. We hung out together and painted.
I have a Bare Bones Budget that I could use if we were in dire straits, such as my husband losing his job. (I have savings also in case of that event as well.) I have a Social Security Budget, too, that I keep revising as Art gets older and our amount goes higher. I want to be ready in case we might need to use it earlier than we would like.
Some items on our monthly budget list are paid yearly. So an amount is saved each month until that bill is due. When the bill comes due, we have the money saved to pay it.
We treat savings like a bill and don't touch that money.
Our retirement money is automatically pulled from Art's check each month and deposited into a Roth/Ira.
We have had allowances ever since we lived in Germany. It's been the best thing ever. We can spend our own allowance on whatever we would like. We can save it all month and buy something bigger if we like. The first thing we did when we paid off our house was to increase our allowances and food budget, and also make a Birthday and Christmas savings. Before paying off the house I used my allowance for gifts, and both our allowances and food budget were pretty tight. So essentially, we got a bit of a raise after our last debt was gone. 😊 It was so delightful to not owe anyone... anything...anymore. Except to love!
"Owe no man anything, but to love one another." Romans 13:8
I know our budget won't look like anybody else's as it's all so individual with personal tastes and preferences in each family. This is just how we do it. For example, we decided to spend money on each of our children learning a musical instrument as they grew up. Quincy took piano, Brady took guitar, Abbie took harp, Gabe took drums, and Lucy is taking piano. Honestly, there were a lot of sacrifices we made for them to take these lessons, especially when we were paying extra on the house. But it was something we really wanted for each of them. It was on our map between Point A and Point B.😊
I didn't put the amounts next to each category in our budget, because so many of them will be different according to where you live. Rather just to give you an idea of how our budget looks, and how we spend and save our money.
A budget is really a map heading in a certain direction. For awhile our map was heading towards paying off our last debt, which was our house. Now our map is moving toward living off Social Security.
We are getting there by God's good grace. We are getting there.
Love,
Laine
Our budget is a blessing that makes our money go farther than it ever did before our budgeting days. We are retired and debt free. Over our four years of retirement I have been amazed over and over at God's incredible provision. My husband's favorite thing is eating out so in my budget I have honored that since he earned the money while I was home.
ReplyDeleteBeing Debt-free is the biggest freedom there is, and life-changing. Congrats!!!!!
DeleteExcellent post! However, I'm wondering why you over-withhold taxes and get a refund? Wouldn't it be better to withhold the correct amount and pay yourself the excess every payday? I'm not being critical here, just wondering. I suspect you have a reason!
ReplyDeleteWe also have a monthly budget and try to stick to it. For example, last year (2020) we bought more clothes and shoes, because our old ones were geting old and large, so we invested in that and tried to buy quality items that will last us longer. This year, we'll try to stick to the essentials and have already outlined our vacations trips for the year.
ReplyDeleteWhen you were talking about your earlier allowances being smaller, I remembered reading in your letters that you had a budget of 3$, I think, for each birthday present!
Reading that at the time, made me realize that you don't have to buy a costly present to tell people you love them and you remembered them.
Have a wonderful 2021, Laine and Annabel and God bless you and your families!
Thank you Annabel for posting Laine's letter, and thank you to Laine for such a helpful post/letter. I was not taught how to budget before leaving home and it is something I am still learning :)
ReplyDeleteHeidi xx
One addition point to make is that after retirement your taxes change and the big tax return goes away. We only get a token amount each year as in less than $200 so it is really not of much consequence in our budget. But, that is because as a retiree on SS you don't pay much tax. I wanted to point that out since you rely on it as part of your budget each year.
ReplyDeleteLove this, Laine! Even though I'm edging towards 60, I still learn from posts like this. I've always enjoyed seeing how others do things. You guys had it so together at such a young age. I envy that. I was late to the tightwad bandwagon at 32. I'm so grateful I was still young enough to make positive changes. The changes then were enough to get us into our first dinky little home in Southern Cal. That eventually increased enough in value to get us what we really wanted- out of the city and into a smallish town life. I'm sure your post will inspire someone else.
ReplyDeleteThank you Laine for the Beautiful "Letter".
ReplyDeleteWe are at retirement age, our home is paid off though our taxes are more than most people's mortgages. We need to save every year to pay for them, all of my SS goes into the account and any time my husband works, that money goes into the account. We have one more year to wait for him to receive SS. (Waiting gives us 16% more in payment.)
We budgeted through the years to be able to pay cash for our cars, "new to us cars". Never did believe in car payments. Now with Covid our income has been cut dramatically. Lets say bare bones living. So a 'new to us car" is on hold for many years to come.
We don't go out to eat, if husband travels for work, we take food or purchase at grocery store.
I shop only sales and always look for coupons to match up to sales, we mostly buy loss leaders and reduced meat and bakery. We save about 50% on our weekly grocery bill.
Clothing wise, my husband doesn't buy much, this last year we both ordered underwear and socks, most of my clothes come from thrift stores and Sam's Club. You can't say no to a new dress for summer at $10 and it is used for so many years to come.
We learned from our parents how to live within our means and how to save. One thing a lot of people today forget to do is listen to their elders.
Thank you Annabel for posting Laine's lovely letter and thank you Laine for the time you put into them :) .
ReplyDeleteWe took out a mortgage on our first home 2 years ago but saved a good deposit of 40% and now through hard work and need I say a fair amount of sacrifice we have paid double payments to date. In our budget we factored what we would pay extra each month and we are thankful that the interest rates have remained so low.
Also in our budget we factored in savings of over 10% of our pays each fortnight which has kept us in good stead. We have a home maintenance fund as well we deposit money into each fortnight too and do maintenance jobs as we get the budget to do so.
When we first did our budget we worked out what our bills would be and divided that amount by 26 for each fortnight and put that amount of money away in a specific bill paying account so that way when the bills come in the money is ready and waiting to pay it. It is such a relief to know that our bills can always be paid with that money.
Thank you for your wise words Laine.
Sewingcreations15 (Lorna).