Day 62 - Create a Personal Budget

Date: March 9th, 2010

I have been very fortunate for most of my life in that my family has been comfortable when it comes to money.  You know the old saying "champagne taste on a beer budget"?  My life has been more of a mid-grade whiskey on a mid-grade whiskey budget.  While that's been nice and simple so far... it doesn't lend itself to forming good habits about money.

Why, you might ask?  Well, think about it for a second.  If the only thing you really want is to buy sliced ham, sliced cheese and white bread for sandwiches and you know you have enough money to do that - are you going to keep close track of said money?  I'm sure some people would, but my own happy little world is a very nice place and in it, running detailed budget figures is like the big, bad monster of boredom coming to eat the schoolchildren.  In other words - not happening because things like that don't happen in a nice little world.

In any case, I don't have money in the budget to go buy 87 ponies, name each one of them Goldrina, Princess of Lightness and then set them free in the central American plains area.  Then again, I don't have a desire to do that either - and that's generally why I've been lazy about my budget.  That being said, there comes a point when it becomes clear that you're missing out on a life skill.  I don't care about the pony stunt, but I sure do like my car running smoothly and having a house to live in.  Those things are, ya know, nice...

So I sat down, with some familial help, and laid out all the major spending and saving categories and made cost estimates on a per month basis to figure out how much should be coming in and going out at the moment.  One thing in particular that we chose to do was put down all the major categories I'm likely to experience in the next decade.  So, for example, there is space on my lovely budget spreadsheet for housing taxes even though that's not something I'm responsible for yet.

It was a good exercise and now I have the framework necessary to make important life decisions - like what kind of pay I need to live on once I'm out of school.  That, ya know, seems important.

PS: No, I will not tell you what my budget looks like in detail, including numbers.  I will share one and only one detail - there is a section for soda and only soda.  Because I'm on a health food kick.