Even being a parent and having tracked my expenditures for several months, I could see a definite pattern. Each and every month that I have been doing so have been financially crazy in their own right. The constants are still there. Things like rent, car insurance, cellphone bill, credit card bills, etc. The variables are pretty friken variable though. Things like groceries, gas, and restaurants vary so widely it almost sickening. It’s tractable, but the pattern is so very random that it only correlates to the other expenses like hotels, flights, amusement parks and kids’ events.
Still, being able to see where the money is being spent is huge. Now I just have to nail down the hard numbers and stick tightly to them. The variables? My life is a little more fluid than some, but there are many of you just like me. We are kind of in an elite group, and there is a name for it.
We are called “Parents”.
As a parent, we sometimes have to make those adjustments to our normal schedule. Those adjustments may be small, or they may be huge, but it most cases they have to happen whether we want them to or not. With any luck, we will know about these adjustments with a decent amount of forewarning. But if your kids are anything like mine, you will be notified the morning of an event that you must give them money or that they need something for a class, that day.
For the big things, like trips and such, you will have more notice but it only matters because you have time to plan. It still doesn’t make it any easier when you have to come up with the money. This is why you need to have a variable portion of your budget. Some people will have a small variable portion. This portion for them might be for eating out, or a night at the movies, or car repairs, or any number of things. Yes, you can budget for them. If that special friend happens to end up in your neck of the woods, you could always decline to spend time with them for budgeting reasons, or you could have a bit of variable built into your budget that will allow some flexibility.
SURPRISE!!!
When you’re a parent, that built in flexibility can easily consume your budget entirely. Especially if you get as much notice of expenditures as I get from my kids. It seems almost daily that I have to give my daughter the only $20 bill that I have in my wallet for something that she needs to cover. Almost daily I get the text from her asking to transfer money into her debit account for gas or food while she’s out at events. Yes, she is my expensive child. Every parent has one. God help the young man that takes on that financial challenge….err, umm, I mean…. marries her.
As I type this, we are prepping for our second (and LAST!!!) trip to Disney World. The happiest friken place on earth. My daughter has an International Cheer Competition coming up in a week or so. We have already had to shell out thousands to cover reservations and flights. Thousands. And we haven’t left the house yet.
Short lived bliss
With my wife getting her job recently, things were looking up. For about a week. Now we have this trip which has sucked the life out of our finances and any hope of breaking free of debt until we return from the Mickey Mouse Money Pit. So far, we have been able to cover all of the expenses without going further into debt, but we haven’t gotten to the “Magic Bands” yet. I already went off on my little finance-sucking soapbox about these diabolical little contraptions once before. So, I’ll spare you the repeat, but if you really want to read my thoughts on them and Disney in general, well, HERE YOU GO.
Since my daughter ages out of Cheer this year, we will be dropping a significant expense from our budget. It will be nice for a while. For like the summer. Then she starts college in the fall and we have a whole new set of expenses to deal with. Continuing with typical parent issues.
The best advice that I can give you is to maximize your debt payoff when you can, if you can. There always seems to be something lurking around the corner for us parents. Since you can’t always plan for it to happen, you have to plan for when it doesn’t.
Proactive versus reactive.
People on a budget can’t be reactive for long. Parents on a budget need to prep for such things if at all possible. This is where an Emergency Fund comes in handy. As long as you don’t touch it. Then you just have to figure out what constitutes an emergency.
This is why budgeting is so much more difficult if you a parent. It’s not bad in the beginning, but once the little curtain climbers become highly mobile, independent thinkers, it’s tough to prepare for what’s around the next corner.
It’s a great time of life. With my kids being teenagers, we can spend some quality time with them doing cool stuff. You just have to be prepared not to be prepared. Teenagers are financially fluid beings and can go from $0 to $1000 in no time flat. So do the best you can to hammer those debts as fast and frequently as possible.
For me, I spent the better part of this week planning on how I was going to be in Disney World and yet pay all of my monthly expenses. I think I’ve got it figured out but it is going to take a little finagling as usual. Meh, they say that adversity builds character. So as you can imagine, I’m definitely not lacking in character.
If only I could use it as a form of payment…..
Dave
CONS: Spending thousands for a Disney trip that nobody wants to go on, the Competitive Cheer meets Disney is comparable to Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein and Wolfman.
PROS: Spending time with the family, getting away from work for a week, it’s the last cheer competition EVER, and it’s almost over.