Budgeting.....Fun!

This coming weekend Ruanita and I are going to do the unthinkable. We are going to do something unheard of in these crazy modern times. We are going to sit down and write out a household budget. We have a little experience with this particular task. Well over a year ago, we worked up a nice little budget. We did a meticulous accounting of exactly how much money we had coming in and where we wanted to spend that money. I typed our budget up in a flowery little font with a bold heading that said “Pierce-Ralph Household Budget.” I printed it on pink paper. We patted ourselves on the back and held that shimmery pink paper up to the light as though we had found the holy grail of money management. Then we neatly placed the budget in a drawer in the kitchen……and we haven’t touched it or looked at it since.

Ruanita and I are not rich, by any stretch of the imagination. However, we are blessed enough that we are not struggling to pay our bills. Given that, however, we are one serious illness away from total financial ruin. Like most Americans, we are not saving like we should be. We don’t have much of a nest egg for the unexpected things that can pop up at any moment. We don’t spend foolishly, but we haven’t adjusted our spending at all to account for the ugly economy we are finding ourselves in. It’s time to rein things in a bit. Time to tighten the belt.

Part of our incentive for working up a budget is to see if it would be possible for Ruanita to shorten her hours at work. She has an extremely high-stress job, counseling people suffering from severe depression. Add to that the additional stress of our working opposite shifts and being home alone with the children every day, and it is almost unbearable at times. I know that I could not spend eight hours every single day talking to desolate, despondent, sad, sick, depressed people and retain any semblance of sanity at home. And then she comes home at 11:00pm and I am in bed asleep, so she has no one to bounce things off of…no one to vent to or “decompress” with. After four years, it is taking its toll on all of us. She would like to drop down to working four days a week. She thinks, and I agree, that a day off in the middle of the week would work wonders for her, mentally and physically. I am hoping that, by sitting down and writing out a budget, we will find areas where we can cut back to make up for the loss of income and allow Ruanita to cut back to more of a part-time schedule. Not only would it be good for her, but, rather selfishly, I would just like to have her home at least one night during the week. The kids miss her at bedtime and frankly, I would rather not go to bed by myself every night. I’m sort of a wimp that way.

So I am hoping and praying that we can find a way to cut back….at least a little bit. The problem is that we don’t live extravagantly in the least, so there may be little to cut back on. I only work part time. We don't have childcare expenses. We don’t have cable. I have already curbed my latte habit. We don’t go on a lot of vacations. We have the most basic cell phones and plan available. We don’t even text. We eat out a lot, which is probably our largest expense that could easily (or rather excruciatingly) go away. So I guess we’ll see.

Keep your fingers crossed for us.