As I help people become more conscious and more effective with their spending, I find that a lot of key expenses get pushed by the wayside in order for clients to feel like they aren’t “wasting” money. But here’s the thing: caring for yourself, your home or your loved ones needs to happen regardless of how much money you have.
Our busy lives get in the way of our real priorities; often, we allow things to become a priority by default because we haven’t stopped to think about how our values interact with everyday life. This means we push these things to the side until we absolutely cannot tolerate our life anymore—and then self care and other meaningful things become a money “binge” item and we end up feeling guilty for what we spent to get our equilibrium back.
Budgets Should Always Have These Line Items
I’ve seen a lot of people suffer through the past several years of our economic crisis, and the results of trying to cut back without being mindful about it can have disastrous results on your relationships, your environment, your health and ultimately, your peace of mind. Here are the things that you should only cut out at your own peril:
Health Care – I know from personal experience that it’s easier to maintain your health than to try and get it back! I stopped exercising regularly when I went through a particularly stressful time in my life and the domino effect on my health was overwhelming. Whatever your routine—if it makes you happy and healthy–NEVER compromise it.
Date Night – During stressful economic times, it’s easy to say that you can’t afford to go out with your partner. Yet stressful money times are EXACTLY when you need to make sure you’re connecting on a regular basis. You can go for a walk, or a picnic; date night doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of money, but there should be a regular budget item for it!
Vacations – When I was a kid, my mom was an expert at creating relaxing, fun experiences during our summer vacation . . . and she also knew how essential it was to have a break from our regular routine and home. Vacations help our brains recharge and get our creative juices flowing again, as a new environment helps us see our world in new ways.
Self Care – Especially for women, it’s easy to feel guilty over spending money to get haircuts, manicures and things to make us feel girly and feminine (do you think guys would ever ask us to cut this out if they knew how sexy and confident a cut/color, massage or a pedicure can make us??) :o) It’s also easy to go overboard in this area, so the key is to notice what feels REALLY great and what just feels obligatory. I know for me, I don’t care at all about manicures, but pedicures? LOVE THEM.
There might be overlap from one area to another; for example, my client’s dance lessons felt like Health Care and Self Care because she enjoyed them so much. Another client realized that she could cut out $150 per month from her family’s restaurant eating and pay for a personal trainer, which would make her feel both more cared for AND result in better health. So the answer is never to cut things out completely, it’s to be mindful about how you’re using that budget.
Three Steps To Always Include Essential Budget Line items
Most people have figured out their spending if it happens every month, but things get fuzzy when you fund things that DON’T happen that frequently. There are 3 steps to always having money for your essentials:
Translate Buying “Events” Into Monthly Cash Flow. Decide how much you want to spend for the specific item by year—you’ll be surprised how reasonable some things can become! For example, let’s say a haircut and color costs you $150 and you have been going 4 times a year = $600. Divide that by 12 months means this expense should be a line item of $50 per month. What if you went 5 times per year? Then $750 annually divided by 12 months means you just spend $13 more per month . . . BUT HOW MUCH HAPPIER ARE YOU? I bet you can find an excess $13 in lots of places to redirect toward more self care.
Go Out Multiple Years To Factor In Everything. In the last example, you’ll notice I put the budget item in context of a year before making it a monthly expense. But it can be even more than one year . . . Let’s say you want to go on vacation every two years to somewhere nice and it will cost $5,000—but every year in between, you want a mini vacation that will be $2,000. I’d make the mini vacation fund annual ($166 per month) but every other year you’ll need another $3,000 on top of that for the nicer vacation, which will translate to another $125 per month ($3,000 saved over 2 years is $125 monthly). So your total vacation fund needs to be $291 per month ongoing, to fund both vacations.
Set Up A Bucket. If you don’t spend your line item every single week or month, you still need to treat it like a bill that you’re paying. Set up a savings account to funnel this money every month so it stays outside of your checking account. It’s very motivating to see those funds increasing! When I was a kid and didn’t review my parents’ savings accounts, they drew a big thermometer on a poster board and put the goal at the top and filled in our savings every week. It really motivated my sister and I to avoid asking for extraneous things, since we knew every extra cent went toward an awesome vacation that year!
Actions To Take
- List all of the things you’re missing out on that you would like to do, and figure out how you can add that back into your monthly spending plan; it might take cutting back a little on other stuff, but you’d be surprised and what you won’t mind cutting back on!
- Set up savings accounts, schedule appointments and identify other processes to help you structure those things back into your life
- Set up autodrafts for the savings accounts and for the new activities you’ll be starting to improve your health, relationship and self care!
P.S. You might like my free ebook, Getting Started with Conscious Spending, which helps you work on the process of less budgeting and more consciousness (always a good thing with money!)…you can download that here.
photo credit: baciloplus via photopin cc