You Can't Afford Not To

Before we go too wild with the budgeting talk, there are a few things to think about. It's only natural to begin a budget and then start looking at cutting expenses wildly. After all, that's how this is supposed to work, right?

Well slow down there sparky, you may be doing more harm than good. Budgeting is like dieting-- it only works when you stick with it. A chocoholic cannot cut all things chocolate from her diet and expect that to last long. Likewise with your budget. Also like a diet, going overboard can actually hurt you. Starving yourself of vital nutrients can cause your body to work against you, and cutting vital things in your budget can actually cost you more in the long run.

Let's look over a list, shall we?

Nutrition:
It's tempting, I know. That grocery bill is often a family's largest flexible expenditure each month. Those twenty-five cent boxes of mac-n-cheeseproduct seem to call to you with a voice of their own in hard times. Filling...comforting...cheap...NUTRITIONALLY VOID OF VALUE. It's easy to get caught in the trap of buying garbage because it's cheap or easier to do. But when push comes to shove, you're only hurting yourself.

Preventative health care:
When health care costs are skyrocketing, it can be hard to bring yourself to go in for a checkup or fill that costly prescription. Just remember, allergy medicine is cheaper than bronchitis. Checkups are cheaper than heart attacks, and flu shots are cheaper than missed work.

Dental Care:
Just like health care, dental is pricey. But there are a lot of dollars between a filling and a root canal, and if you skip the one, you might suddenly find yourself in need of the other. Regular cleanings are cheaper than fillings, and fillings are cheaper than extractions and root canals. Oh, and by the way...floss is cheaper than all of these.

Fitness:
Health club memberships are expensive, no doubt. Some of them are month to month or usage-based, and others are long term contracts that are very hard to get out of. If you can't get out of your contract, you may as well get your money's worth. If you aren't stuck and choose to let your membership go, don't let your fitness go along the way! Regular exercise relieves tension, lowers blood pressure, and boosts stress-fighting chemicals all day. It's easy to get in the rut of "I'm stressed out and don't feel like it," but that's the worst thing you can do to yourself in tough times.

Clothing:
Don't get me wrong here-- cotton t's and children's clothes are perfectly fine to purchase from the big discount store. I'm talking about professional clothing. You can't afford to go into a job interview with your elbows showing through your jacket. Buy mix and match separates in quality fabrics, and your dollars will go a lot farther. It's easy to sew a button back on, but neigh impossible to fix a hole worn in a cheap fabric.

Auto Maintenance:
Car repairs can get costly, but ignoring that service engine light can cost you more if you ignore it. One malfunctioning part, if left unrepaired for too long, can cause others to fail as well. That could leave you with a much bigger repair bill than necessary.

Credit Cards:
If you have outstanding bills, you have GOT to pay off the high-interest stuff ASAP. In the words of Dr. Elizabeth Warren, "as long as they'll make minimum monthly payments, skipping one here, making one there ... that's the single most profitable customer in the credit card portfolio." In fact, on the average credit card balance, only about 2/3 of it is actual principle. The rest is interest, late fees, and over-limit penalties. If you don't get rid of that credit card balance, you're throwing away your money.



This list just goes to show you that a budget is not just the big, scary list of what you can't buy. It's about spending smart, and taking good care of yourself. There are so many other things out there that are much more important than money. Your health, your family, and your peace of mind are all irreplaceable, and in hard times, defend those first.

Note: As is the eternal truth, I no more than completed this list when another blogger posted something I forgot. Check out this post at Almost Frugal to learn about the importance of caring for your appliances!

In The Beginning

We are hard working people. We always have been. Our work ethic is what makes us the dream of any employer. We are the people who take pride in our work, show up on time, and excel at what we do every day. We stay late whenever necessary, and our customers ask for us by name.

Fat lot of good it's done us.

As I lay awake in bed last night, I could hear my husband's brain working overtime in spite of his stationary body.

"Stop thinking about work baby, " I said with a sigh.
"You too?" He asked.
"Yeah. I'm scared."
"Me too honey, me too."

No matter how hard we work, no matter what we do, there's nothing we can do to change our lot. Times are hard, stocks are dropping, and hours are being slashed. I guess we should be grateful. There are a lot of people who don't have jobs at all, let alone hours to cut. There were people at work hurting long before it got to us. There are people right now who are losing their homes, their jobs, and their stability. We're just getting our share.

I guess it's easier for me to just lower my head and accept our lot. After all, we've been here before. Just a few years ago in northern Michigan, my husband and I watched the first stirrings of the recession that has spread across the nation. NAFTA crippled the steel industry and mines began to close or lay off thousands of workers. Jobs got scarce fast, times got hard, and families suffered. Unemployment checks ran out with no jobs to follow, and savings dwindled one week at a time. We got really good at making our dollars stretch.

When the army took us to Germany, we experienced serious upward mobility. Our introduction to the middle class was a shock, and our frugal habits lent themselves well toward building up savings. We stopped budgeting and counting every penny, because there was no need to. There was plenty to go around and plenty to save. We paid off our meager debts, built up a respectable savings, and still enjoyed life with no worries.

Now that we're civilians again, it's time for a hard reality check. We returned to the US and moved across the country in hopes of finding a better job market than we left. We found exactly what we were looking for, and stepped right into good jobs. Now those jobs are maybe not as secure as we'd hoped. Like thousands of others, we are looking at our paychecks and wondering how long we will hold out and if our jobs will be there next month. It's time to get back to the hard stuff that will help us get by.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm here. I am not an economist or a financial analyst. This blog is not terribly political or particularly controversial. I'm just a woman experiencing hard times, and I'm here to share what I know with those who feel the same pain. When I was little, I was told that the strength of our country was in how we stood together in hard times. Now is that time. If we teach and inspire each other, maybe we can all get through this just a little bit stronger.

When we lift up those around us, we all win.