Managing Money: Having a Budget

Since money does not grow on trees, being able to manage the money that you do have is important.  When you are on maternity leave and receiving a reduced amount of money it is even more important.

While I am very grateful that I live in Canada where I have a year of maternity leave and am able to receive maternity benefits, the money I receive is not the full amount of my regular paycheck.  As a teacher, I make a decent amount of money and have that drop is not always easy to get used to.  On the other hand, when I got back to work, I will have child care costs so actually getting used to having a lower amount of money to work with is a good thing.

Budgeting has become our friend.  It is amazing how a good budget actually gives us more money to spend as  certain amounts are set aside for each thing.  The Chief went online and was able to find a Personal Monthly Budget Spreadsheet from 123Spreadsheets.  These spreadsheets are free to get.

 This budget sheet contains lots of different areas for you to organize where you money is going.  We are able to budget out for different things, but then being able to adjust what we actual spent in the month.  Budgeting your money is only one part of it, but being able to see if you are staying within your budget is very important as well.

Some things that we have budgeted for include gas, groceries, insurance, hair cuts, home and car repair/ service.  We do not need to do home or car repair/ service every month.  We have it budgeted for, but if it is not used it just remains in our account for next month.  Essentially it is providing a cushion for other months where we may need to service the car.

We also set up different accounts at the bank.  We each have personal checking accounts that we put our spending money into.  We also have personal savings accounts.  We have a main account where all of money is deposited and where bills are paid.  We set up a joint savings account for travel.

What is great about giving ourselves allowances is that we know with that money it is ours to do with as we please.  We do not need to check with the other person if it is okay or if there is enough money to do so.  It is our own personal money.  Although it is somewhat difficult, we made an agreement that it doesn't matter if it is a great deal or not, we are not allowed to go over that money.  Even Benjy has an account for spending money for him.

Although we started doing this method of budgeting only a little while ago, the level of stress that we feel about our finances has diminished as we are easily able to see where our money is going and if we are sticking to our budgeted numbers.