Budgeting

There are plenty of underrated life skills. For example, politicians around the world underestimate the importance of being decent human beings. Higher level executives underestimate the importance of admitting they could ever be wrong. Pretty much everyone with any influence over people’s lives underestimate the importance of empathy, a life skill that is extremely rare across the board. However, to concentrate on any or all of those would turn this post into a rant. Therefore I will look at the life skill of the title.

On a number of occasions during our marriage, Janet and I have found money very hard to come by. She has always found a way of making sure we got the maximum coming into the house from whatever source it was, while I made sure that 50p did the work of £1. So many people lack this skill, and I only realised that I had it when we were forced into the situation of having very little coming in. Budgeting is not about saving money, it’s about getting the absolute maximum from that money.

Just as an aside, if there’s anything that people in general lack completely it’s compassion for the poorest in society. I know because I got little or no understanding even from people I thought were friends.

Anyway, Janet worked out how much we had and set me a weekly limit for shopping for food and items for the children. The first thing I did was give up alcohol completely as it was an indefensible expense for me with a family to provide for. The next thing I did was to decide on what I was going to cook or what lunches I was going to prepare over the next few days. Pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, vegetables and mince were the central components in our meals because they were the cheapest elements that I could stretch to as many meals as possible. I could use spices and cheap sauces to make sure there was good flavour to everything I cooked.

Holidays and days out were as cheap as possible but totally focused on what the children would enjoy. We got every offer and discount we could, and the children did enjoy whatever we could afford. We look back on the holidays at Pontins with affection because they were very cheap and they were great for the children.

We had no extra television channels but the children’s DVD collection was expanded using market stalls, eBay and charity shops so they didn’t lack for entertainment. New DVDs were Christmas and birthday presents and even then we got them from the supermarket where special offers were common. Birthdays were days out chosen by the child whose special day it was. We then worked out how we could do it as cheaply as possible and, if needed, adjusted the weekly food shop to give us extra leeway.

The interesting aspect of budgeting is that once you have done it for an extended period of time it becomes your default approach. Even when we have been comfortably off we have always looked for the best value for everything we buy. The budget changes in level through your life but budgeting is always incredibly important.

I didn’t mention Christmas because I did a whole blog post on the subject. Here’s the link