My husband, Matt, has earned the title “The Budget Master” in our home. He does a yearly budget, monthly budget, weekly budget, and I haven’t asked but I imagine he has an hourly budget in his head. He budgets EVERYTHING! He even has money in his “wife doesn’t stick to the budget” budget. He pays the credit cards weekly, instead of monthly. He slides money around from one budget to the other to compensate for the unexpected, but he has a budget for the unexpected so he rarely has to do that. He also has what I call “magic money” which just seems to appear whenever one budget needs cushioning. He budgets for groceries, electricity, Christmas, gas, car, haircuts, video games, fun, co-pays, and the list goes on forever. I rarely bring any money into the home, although, I won’t say never because just yesterday when I was taking the boys for a walk, we found a penny on the ground and brought it home – but most of the bacon comes from the Budget Master.
Matt makes about $58,000 a year, and after taxes we have about $8 (kidding), so this is what we live on and, in my opinion, we are loaded! My husband and I don’t share this view. He thinks we scrape by, but I’ve scraped before and there’s nothing scraping about $58K. Of course, we can’t buy everything we want and most of what we can buy has to wait until we can save the money to afford it, but any time I want a Stewart’s coffee, I can afford one. Having spent way too many years without that luxury, I’ve decided that I’m rich!
Needless to say, I have always been horrible with money. I don’t manage it well and get buried in playing financial catch up for the penalty of my poor managing skills until I end up living paycheck to paycheck – except that I would usually be living next week’s paycheck to the following week’s paycheck and mailing out checks I couldn’t cover with my fingers crossed that I would figure something out before they got deposited. If I had a dollar for every time my electric was shut off…well I could have paid my electric bill.
So this was a no-brainer, my husband would manage the money. I have a credit card with a billion dollar limit. I honestly have never asked what the limit on it is, I just imagine it’s a billion dollars, and this is how I pay for everything I do. Every time I use it, I text the hubby the amount and that is the level of my accountability in this whole scheme. My hubby thinks that I do a good job of sticking to the budgets, but the truth is that he has done a great job of creating budgets that match what I do. He often says “be careful how much you travel this week, there is only $30 left in the gas budget.” I like to nod as if this means anything at all to me and offer something reassuring like “I don’t really have many plans for this week.” Then I like to forget what he said and do whatever I want. Most of the time this works really well…for me. You would have to ask him if he is happy with this arrangement but most weeks he says “thanks for sticking to the budget” so I assume he is content with it.
We rarely fight about money, which is a huge relief because in each of my past relationships even the sound of the letter “M” started a fight. Oh money, you evil little beautiful thing. If I could sit down and just have a chat with money, I think I would start out thanking it. Truly it’s brought me some wonderful things and overall has been good to me, but if we had a couple of drinks together I would probably tell it what a menace it can sometimes be. “You weren’t there when I needed you, and when you were there I felt like you were always somewhere else.” And then I imagine money would be all, “Well you didn’t take good care of me.” and then I’d say, “ARE you serious???!!! I gave you a bank to live in, and I cried every time I had to spend you.” I imagine by the end we would make up, but there would be a lot of tears and probably a few punches. Anyway, Matt has always had a better relationship with money. They “get” each other.
Recently, I have been researching preschools in our area because my oldest son, Landon, is four years old, and I am looking into one for the Fall. I have considered homeschooling because, having been homeschooled myself, I have a lot of appreciation for what it offers but have also been looking into local private schools as well. I found one that I am very happy with and have since sent in our application. We “interviewed” this weekend, and found out today that our application was accepted. It costs $5,000 a year for one child. I thought to ask my husband if he had a “My wife has this crazy idea to send the kids to a private school” budget, but then I thought a better way to approach the subject would be to let him read about it in this week’s blog.
Well Budget Master, get your magic money ready, Momma’s got a new idea!
