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Budgeting...who, how, what?

ex-pat

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Everyone today is focused on the economy, no matter which country we live in. When you do your household budgets, which of you does the math, how are you creating a budget pleasing to God, and what things have you decided definitely are not pleasing to Him?

My husband and I are restoring a 100 year old house, and this summer's projects are painting and new eavestroughs. At this point, only my husband works, although I am job-hunting. My husband has a stable job in an unstable company, so we try to keep our expenses as low as possible.

Even though he earns the money, I keep track of our spending, and budget, and pay the bills, and provide monthly summaries of where we are, financially. We tend to grocery shop together, and to buy gifts for our family together, and generally every item comes under some scrutiny...do we need salsa con queso, even though it's only $3, or is that money better spent elsewhere? Neither of us objects if one of us REALLY wants something, please don't think we're impossible about things, but, in general, we plan meals, making allowance for sales, for unexpected hospitality, and other things. I think we tend to keep a very tight control over our spending, and we both have excellent credit.

My spiritual father has always advised that Christians should not carry large debts, because then we are free to work according to our consciences, and do what is pleasing to God. (ex: we could quit work if the choice was that, or agree to something we believed was immoral). Naturally, a portion of our budget goes to Church, and to charity, but in general we try to keep our budget as low as possible to better pay off the costs of what the house needs. Cable TV, movies, etc. for the most part are voted as "not pleasing", although one or two creep in, they are usually some we own, or that we watch at friends' houses. (If we decide our movies or books are not in keeping with a Christian lifestyle, they are weeded out, also, and thrown out or given to charity.) Restaurants are mostly vetoed, as is fast food. I love to cook, and we can have gourmet meals for less than the cost of a value meal at Burger King, so we seldom eat out. We are blessed to live in a city with many free concerts, free events, and great places to walk in, and, on the whole, we feel very well satisfied doing these things, living our lives in the Church, and dining with friends, without feeling we're hurting the budget or misusing what God gave us.

How do you all handle things?
 

JaneFW

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Like you, I deal with the budget. It's a huge responsibility, and I'm frequently irritated by our differences in opinion on what is a need and what is a want. We have three children, one of whom is in college, and it is my husband's desire that we purchase a car for each child as he becomes old enough to drive. It's not easy to balance it all out some time.

We have some spare money to spend on wants, but I try to keep us budgeted on groceries. We used to go on a huge shopping trip and pick up huge packs of frozen meat, but now we shop week to week, and we also have a menu to shop for. This has saved us a lot of waste. We eat out every so often, junk food is rare, and our major expense right now is the gun range and acquiring some guns, and then a safe for the guns .. this has been an expensive outlay, but now it is done, we have a great hobby that everyone in the family enjoys.

My h and I both have e-book readers, and books are much cheaper through that source. We both read a lot. We occasionally get PPV movies, and sometimes go to the movies, but we don't see every new release, in fact far from it. I would rather be at home, watching on the TV every time.

We are average on our stewardship of money. We are more in control than we were a few years ago. We do have debt, but we are working hard to pay it off, and then we will not incur any more!
 
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Niffer

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Remi and I budget.
We have one car, which he takes to school/work and I walk a lot. (small town, no public transpo!)
We don't have cable or satellite - we either find free shows online via www.blinkx.tv.com or we borrow them from the Library for free.
We're big library patrons, and I don't buy books any more - we just borrow.

Remi hung a huge clothes-line for me, because we're on "peak hour" hydro. Meaning most of the day are peak hour for charging, then in early morning or late evening it goes down. So I do my laundry then, then hang it out during the day.

We buy in bulk and use freezers. Costco is my best friend - I can get this huge pork hank, for 12.00ish dollars and slice it into easily 15ish pork chops with a hunk left over for roasts.
I do my own preserving and canning - just finished strawberry and raspberry jelly.
Pickles are next! :yum:

I'm looking into owning a few chickens, so I can cash in on free eggs too - they're cheaper to keep than a dog, and the cluckers are pretty cute too. (Remi's on the fence about it still. ;) )

I'm also going to be cloth-diapering, but without a diaper service.
I'll just clean them at home, and can save hundreds of dollars.

I also coupon. :D I just got Remi's new school glasses for $12.50 because of a coupon code from clearlycontacts.ca

My other favourite coupon sites are:
www.websaver.ca
www.save.ca
www.smartcanuck.ca

((Note these are Canadian...you'll have to do some digging to find the american equivalent.))

So, thats basically how we keep costs down.
Our big splurge is our internet - but even that is getting too expensive, I've found a better deal with "Primus" and will be switching soon.

Peace,
- Niffer
 
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Audiomechanic

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My wife and I both budget and neither of us makes purchases without asking the other first. At the end of each month (or the beginning), we sit down and spend about 2-3 hours closing out the previous month and planning the next one. We are debt free except our house and my wife's "new" car (04 Jetta) which we will pay off as quickly as possible (in about 3 months on a 48 month loan if all goes well). Because we are debt free except those two items (we just bought the car so up until then we were debt free for a couple years), we are able to tithe the full pre-tax amount of both our salaries. It's a pretty large sum of money and was pretty daunting at first to be "loosing" that money. But my perspective is that it's not our money. Once we adjusted the budget allowing for the tithe, the anxiety lowered and now we're used to living on about 60% of what we actually make (gross minus tithe minus tax minus insurance and other deductions). So far, even in the hardest of times financially, we still tithe, even when we're not sure how we're going to afford to eat.

When the both of us budget together, it makes us a team. Instead of dumping all of the financial pressure on one of us (usually the wife), we make financial decisions together, and we each get a vote.

That's how we glorify God with our budget. :)

If any one wants to learn how to truly budget in a God-pleasing way, listen to Dave Ramsey. Seriously. He's a professed Christian and is outspoken about it on his financial show (it's also why his "Financial Peace University" classes are always at churches) and teaches people how to become debt-free if they're not, stay debt-free if they are, and become wealthy for the God-given purpose of giving.
 
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