Living on a single income is hard. When my daughter was born and my maternity leave was up, my husband and I decided that I would not go back to work. We wanted to give my daughter as much of our time as we could by having one parent at home with her full-time. Now, this isn’t to say that parents who both work out of the home are presenting their children with a disadvantage. I fully support both working moms and stay-at-home moms. We just felt that staying at home was the best choice for us, and we were very fortunate to be able to have that choice, since I realize that many families do not.
Now, back to the money aspect. I love watching the show Till Debt Do Us Part. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a show that helps couples that are in deep debt get back on track by balancing their finances, and putting them on a strict spending budget. We are no where near the situation that these couples are in, in fact we do our absolute best not to accumulate any debt, but I am amazed at the spending budgets that these families are put on. The host puts them on a cash only spending budget and gives them jars with certain categories and dollar amounts. For example, they will only have $125/week for food, $25/week for transportation, and $12.50/week for clothing and gifts. These jars are only for their variable expenses, things that they can play around with and make adjustments to. They are not allowed to use any credit cards or use their debit cards.
I am really fascinated by this and often wonder if I could live like that. That would probably save us a lot of money and we would know exactly how much money we would be spending each week. At the beginning of the week, the money would be allocated, and you wouldn’t be drawing from your bank account at all during the week. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You would know exactly where your money is going.
So, here comes the idea that is going to make my husband really grumpy this week. I am going to institute the cash-only-jar budget!
I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with and how we’re doing. Do you think you could do it? I challenge everyone to do it along with me and see if we can all learn to take better control of our financial lives.
