My Budget and Me

Wait, where did the money go?

Money stresses me out beyond all reason. If my finances are a mess, by extension the rest of me is, too. I will plot and scheme and write lists and do all sorts of things trying to right the boat again. I felt like living one emergency or paycheck away from complete financial insolvency was my cross to bear – the one thing that God was never going to relieve me of.

Lord, why can't I just win the lottery and be able to make all these debts go away? My car payment, my student loans, my credit card. Would that be too much to ask?

Yet as much as financial woes have always bothered me and as much as I hate feeling out of control, I have never used a budget.

I'm not sure why. It's not that I didn't understand them, I did. I just didn't like them. I felt like maybe I didn't have enough income for it to actually matter: Most of our paychecks turn immediately into bills, leaving very little leftover to be "budgeted." I felt like budgets were for people who needed to decide they would spend $40 a month on clothing and $70 a month on eating out, etc. I felt like I spent on those things what I had leftover after the bills, if anything, and felt damn happy to have it.

I wasn't living purposefully with my finances. I had no plan. Well, that's not true: I had a plan, but it usually centered around a windfall of some kind. You know what I mean, "When I get my tax return, we can get caught up ..." "When my VA check comes, we can pay that bill off..." "We can use your student loan to pay down that credit card..."

But the tax return is never big enough, and I've run out of VA and we always manage to charge up that card again. (Because we never actually get rid of it! Idiots.)

In my marriage, money has been stressful, I think especially for TJ. Because I control it. I make the most of it, I pay the bills, I decide what we have left, I do the grocery shopping. Sometimes TJ gets an "allowance" for  entertainment, but he never gets the chance to question all my lattes and their fiscal impact. I have the power.

As much as I'm a control freak, this balance has bothered me. I don't want him to resent my control and feel stifled. So TJ signed up for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at church. The class is at a time I can't go, so he goes by himself and then teaches me. We go over the workbook, read the chapters, and talk about what he learned. Then he tells me what the homework is, and we complete it together. Last week, we had to make a list of all of our "necessary" (not debt-related) expenses. This week, we created a budget.

I loved the budget exercise. Because Ramsey recognizes that there is usually one half of the pair that is the "nerd" (that is, the numbers keeper). The other half is the "Free Spirit," which is absolutely TJ. So the nerd gets to write the budget, down to the last penny. Then she has to turn it over to the Free Spirit and allow him (actually, require him) to make at least one change. And then she must accept whatever that change was. This meeting can not last more than 17 minutes. So I created the budget, I slid it over to TJ, and he adjusted a couple of amounts toward credit cards. I accepted those changes.

And I starred at this magical piece of paper. There it is in black and white (well, actually in blue and yellow — I used a legal pad): Proof that we do make enough money to get buy, with even a little over our debt payments. The budget includes gas, groceries, savings, our tithe. Everything. Even a little for eating out, if we want to.

So for the first time in my life, I have hope that this budget will work. I have hope that we're on the road to not being blown over by an emergency every month, that we won't have those paychecks anymore when we say, "Well, we aren't eating ..." That I never again have to call my mom and ask for a short loan.

I'm so encouraged by our budget, it's nearly a sacred document to me now. I'm going to put it on the fridge. It's a part of the family — that strict, rule-making, hard-enforcer Catholic aunt. We call her Budget, as in "Does Budget say we can do that this month?" "I don't think going to Red Lobster is OK with Budget this week." "You'll have to ask Budget if you can buy that DVD."

It's not a piece of paper, it's an Entity. I may just keep a copy of it in my wallet, as reassurance that we will be OK. That God is in control and that He has a plan. And now we have a plan, too.