Old Fashioned Money Journals May Solve Your Household Budget Problem
January 26, 2009 – 9:33 pmIf you have followed all the rules for setting up a family budget, and still the bottom line never comes out in your favor, chances are you are one of many who are being “nickled-and-dimed-to-death”. This is not unusual, nor is it an impossible problem to solve. Creating your family’s budget is the easy part. Sticking to your plan is much more difficult. How does the money keep disappearing?
Money disappears the same way a magician gets us to see any object disappear - by getting us to take our eye off the trick. No, your money is not disappearing magically. It is disappearing because you have taken your eye off your money. How so? Do you know how much money you spent today? Not paying bills, but spent? Are you seriously tracking your family’s expenses?
If you were lucky enough to spend time with a grandparent, you may have seen or heard about “household journals”. All households would have a book in which the person in charge of the money wrote in detail every single penny spent and what it was spent on. If Mother gave Junior 25 cents for a haircut, she wrote it down. If Father paid the neighbor 50 cents to sharpen his axe, he wrote it down. They knew, to the penny, where they stood every day.
If this seems extreme, I challenge you to give it a try for one month. After the month is up, tally the money spent on all the “incidentals”, those things that you did not consider including in your budget, and I guarantee you will be astounded at the money you just let trickle away… disappear.
If you’ve ever kept a change jar on your dresser, you know how quickly you can accumulate $50 to $70 without even trying. This is the same principle. Once you are aware of how everyone in the family is spending small change willy-nilly, you will be ready to adjust your family’s spending habits in order to save and build some real money for some real purpose. You work too hard to let your money disappear! Put it to work for you, for a change!