So you have created your budget. You have logged all of your purchases and expenditures and although you are pretty proud of yourself, you just haven’t seemed to move forward at all financially. You have even paid attention to the little things. So what the hell am I missing, says you. Could it be, Sacrifice?
Sacrifice….
Writing things down is great and all and you should be proud of keeping with it even when things looked bleak. Keeping track of your expenses is a big deal. Without doing so, you would have no idea where your money is going. That is where we were only a few months ago. We knew how much came in, simply because it was listed on our bank account and we knew when we were at zero left, because it was listed on our bank account. But we didn’t know to where that money went.
None of it.
Oh I would tell my wife that I spend X amount here and paid a credit card with X amount there, and she would do the same. She would buy things for the house and the kids, necessary things, like…ummm…food. The problem was that we didn’t have a plan and no clue to where all of the money was going, as it was going. We were just acutely aware when it was gone.
But we’re better now….
Now we know where our money is going. The problem is that nothing has changed, except that we now have documented proof that we are poor, haha. It’s not that bad, but sometimes it can certainly feel like it.
It’s a mental game.
Doing the same things every month and expecting something to change it ludicrous. We have been going on like this for decades. Yes, decades. In as much as the word Sacrifice sounds negative, you will be turning it into a positive by the outcome of your actions. It’s a mental game. If you allow yourself to be negative about what you have to do, you will never achieve what you want to do. It’s just a speed bump in the road.
My daughter does Competitive Cheer and the gym that she does this with had a saying on the wall.
Pretty cool huh? I though so anyway. It’s a Thomas Jefferson quote. He was a pretty smart dude. It makes sense, and yet it is so easy to overlook. So what we need to do now is to sacrifice some of our everyday expenditures for the greater good. Maybe not forever, but at least for now, until we get our finances where we want them.
This is where I have a problem with Dave Ramsey’s plan.
Dave wants you to forgo everything in light of a better future. I get why, and I know that it would work and be the fastest way to Financial Freedom, but when you already have a life, to include kids and their expenses, the logic gets a little muddy. I’ll talk more about that in a future post, I promise.
My family’s sacrifices will be minuscule by comparison to the Dave Ramsey plan. That’s ok though, because they will be different than what we have ever done and they will be reaching for the same goal. While it most certainly won’t be as fast as the Dave Ramsey plan, it also won’t be as intrusive to our lives. That fact may be the one thing that allows us to stick with it longer.
Mmmm….Coffee…
For instance. Last month alone we spent $130 on coffee. That’s pretty much Dunkin Donuts, not even the over-priced gourmet crap that they peddle at Starbucks. Some of this coffee product is the frozen ones from DD and they aren’t cheap, but damn are they tasty. The point is, $130 could go a long way to paying things off. Especially if you factor in that we spent another $135 on restaurants last month as well. So between the two, we could have thrown an additional $265 at a credit card. That would have paid off my Amazon card.
Huh….who knew….
That is just the easy stuff, the tip of the iceberg. From there you can dive into things like groceries and miscellaneous household stuff ($540) and of course gas for the vehicles ($314). Can you cut these out completely, hell no you can’t but you can certainly work to knock them down to a lower amount. We are getting better at grocery shopping but we aren’t great at it yet. Baby steps I guess. You can read a bit more about our food expenditure issues HERE.
Duck season….
So you see, now that you have your ducks in a row, it’s time to start picking them off, one by one. Each of these ducks (expenses) that you can eliminate gets you that much closer to Financial Freedom. But you have to make a change. You have to make sacrifices. It won’t be so bad, trust me. What you may lose in everyday lifestyle stuff you gain back in satisfaction of paying things down or off quicker. Each elimination of debt becomes a victory and each victory makes the sacrifices seem to fade away that much further.
But you have to take those first few steps….
Dave
Disclaimer: No ducks were injured during the course of this blog post.
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