Be careful what you ask for. What did I ask for? A budget. A grocery budget, to be specific. We had always had one, but when I asked for a somewhat updated one, I regretted asking!
I was looking for the lazy man's budget, where you look at what you've spent in the past and then just either tried to stay at that same level or better it by a few dollars each month either through sales or flyers or just eating less expensively. My husband challenged me to do a real budget where I actually tracked what each meal cost, where I actually wrote down how many pounds of butter I used each month, etc. He wanted to know how many loaves of bread we went through, how many liters of milk, etc. I couldn't tell him exactly. I knew only generally. He wanted to know how it's possible to make a budget if you don't know those things. He and I discovered, sadly, I'm budget-illiterate.
I'm sure most moms out there know that stuff, but I really didn't. Actually I do know people who know those things, but they are my accounting friends. I remember seeing their spreadsheet one day. They knew how many dollars they spent on diapers each month, each year. I couldn't say for myself. I remember being in awe and thinking, "I should probably know that", but then I went home and didn't exactly follow through. My mind doesn't like to think about that. It meant entering every receipt and everything on that receipt, in order to track all the spending. Again, someone out there might shake their head...perhaps I'm the only one who doesn't do that.
I couldn't get my head around it for the longest time. My husband was in shock as he has to itemize all of his spending for every project he does. How else would he know what to order or how much he's made on each project, etc., etc.. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. But can't I just spend what I want to spend when I want to spend it? I thought as long as I was using the flyer/savings techniques I'd recently acquired, wasn't that good enough? Sure, he said, if you don't want to get out of debt and if you don't care where each dollar goes. I care, I care!
So, he called me out on the very thing I was asking for. I was asking for a budget. I was asking to do whatever it took to get out of debt. I was asking where every dollar went. He showed me what I needed to do in order to get all of those things done and guess what....I didn't want to do it. I was so overwhelmed by the task ahead of me. I simply didn't know where to start. He was in shock at my response! I kind of was, too!
The only way to describe it is I just haven't ever thought that way. He quickly showed me all his spreadsheets and how simple it was. I still couldn't picture it. All the receipts, all the entering of every item, all the formulas, unit pricing, dollar per meal....arrrrgggghh!!!!!!! Too much for my non-mathematical mind to handle. I felt like exploding groceretically!! New word. It means "too overwhelmed to figure out the grocery budget". My husband could see I was self-destructing and calmly said, "I'll do it for you, don't worry!" No, no, no. There was no way I was going to have him do it.
Here I was writing almost daily about debt, budgets, financial goals, etc., and here I was being challenged to do the very thing I was trying live out....I knew it was just another step I had to take in our debt challenge, but seriously, I think it's been one of the toughest challenges for me personally. I'll call it the debt-sanctification process. I tried to explain it to my mathematical husband who honestly couldn't figure out my problem. I said, "It's as if I don't know how to read. You tell me it's easy to learn, but when you don't know how to read, at first it seems like you'll never be able to learn. That's how I feel." The truth is I'm just lazy and I don't feel like doing all that's he's suggesting I do. I think once I start I will discover that it isn't that hard to track, especially if I use a spreadsheet system. It's just a matter of a new habit I need to create. When I go to the grocery store, I'll unpack the groceries and then I'll go upstairs and enter it all in. Seems simple enough, except that I have to do it for a whole year!
My grocery self-destruction moment only lasted for a few minutes. After I took a shower and picked up all the pieces of me off the floor, I was fine. RM was a little worried about me for a bit there! I assured him I could do it. I'll keep better track. I can't have him do it as then my girls will never learn. In fact, I might even have them help me with all the data entry as it'll be a great pattern for them to learn. I don't want them to be overwhelmed by budgets, by numbers. I want it to be as natural to them as breathing. It just isn't easy for me. That's perhaps why I relate so well to my son who struggles in math. He can write poetry! He's amazing with words. Get him to do some mental math and he almost self-destructs, too.
"In some ways it seems pointless. We should have been doing this a long time ago," I told my husband. But he reminded me, "Yes, we should have, but it's not too late." It some ways, it won't necessarily change our budget dramatically as we'll still need to eat, but in other ways, it'll be very helpful, very revealing of areas where we could make serious improvements. If I find out that we go through 6 jars of honey a year, then when I see a major sale on honey, I'll buy all 6 then and there knowing I've bought what we need for the whole year at a great savings. I'll also know, once we are through the 6 jars, then that's it. Anyway, I get how this is important. I'm going to do my best to be the best budget-conscious mom there is! I can only figure I need to be able to explain this to my kids, so it's always good to have to learn it first myself.
I did a quick tally on our meal last night. It was very interesting. I'm using estimates, but this is what we ate and what it cost:
Salmon Fettuccine:
$6 (I used 2 cans of salmon...way cheaper)
$1 bag of noodles
$1 fresh dill
garlic
butter
onion
parmesan cheese (those last four items are hard to itemize for one meal....that's where it'll be helpful to keep track, to see how much I actually go through in a year)
milk/cream in sauce
$2 lettuce
salad dressing
Total - $10 plus all the incidental ingredients. Not a super expensive meal. I got some of those ingredients from a while back when we got the grocery delivery/gift, so it didn't cost us too much at all.
That in itself was an interesting exercise. Our lunch meal was $23 because I splurged and got prime rib for Christmas Day. It was on a great sale, but still expensive. I got two roasts. We had the second one yesterday as leftovers - super expensive leftovers!
So, I can see why this is important to do. I will do it. I'll learn "to read". It's not too late to be a better budgeter. At this point in the debt-reduction game, I'm willing to do whatever it takes, even if it means making my mind get stretched in a new direction. That's what it's going to be for me - financial gymnastics! I have sore muscles just thinking about it!
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