The Pig is Committed. Stay Committed.

A wise man once said, “you see, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.”

Be the pig & stay committed. Commit to making a budget and hold yourself accountable.  Don’t give yourself excuses, make a plan and execute.  Are you about social inequality, big banks, and the how the man keeps you down?  That’s a story for another day.  The story for today is this: control what you can and make every effort to live within your means.

Conceptually, a successful budget seems easy. In real life, it’s not so easy, but it’s doable and it will pay off I can promise you this.  First step: walk to wallet, open wallet, and cut credit card in half.  Rinse & repeat until all are dismantled beyond repair.

Congratualations! You have taken the first step to controlling your spending, mainly that you can no longer spend money you don’t have.  The basics of a budget are simple. Cash inflow should be greater than cash outflow.  Personal income should exceed personal spending. Tons of different ways to say the same thing.

Where is your money going? We need to make a list of all the different things that our money go to – start w/ necessities and work your way down.  Once you have your list of different expenses start to make rough estimates on how much each category is allocated. These are just preliminary and can still be changed so don’t worry too much.

Sleep at night and iron out details over a couple days or a week or so. You are well on your way to getting your budget into all important operational mode.

Have questions about money and budgeting? I want to help. Feel free to email me @ borrowingsense@gmail.com.

Think Differently

So picture this – you just graduated college, got that expensive piece of paper, went on the interviews and got the big job.  After about a month of working you decided it’s time to move out of the ‘rents house and get your own place.  You have more money in your bank account than you’ve ever had before.  As you look for that fancy first real apartment (we all know living in college apartments isn’t real for most of us), you also jump onto other not so minor purchases – full bedroom set, dresser draws, couch, new TV, the list goes on – but the paychecks keep coming.  Every other Friday makes that ridiculous new morning commute worth it.

Two months of work have passed and by this time you have made more money in the last two months than you have your entire life previously!  Wait…what?  Where has all the money gone?  A couple purchases here and there – how has this happened?  Forgot to mention – you got that new Nissan Altima that you’ve always wanted.  And to think the car payment came included.  Just another monthly expense to tack onto the rest.

Two months into real life and you are starting to the feel the burn and churn of real life.  Not to mention the clock has begun for that day six months after graduation.  You know – the day student loan payments start to come due.  Just another monthly expense to tack on the rest of them, you suppose.

Three months have passed since you’ve started.  You head back to campus for the weekend.  $150 in gas, food, and alcohol, ouch.  Fun times and the weekend just makes you miss college.  You tell your friends that they have no idea what “real life” is like.  They don’t know what it’s like to pay bills.  Still getting paid every other Friday, but where the hell is the money going?  It keeps fucking disappearing.

Pause.  If you think I am making this stuff up, these are my friends.  These are the people that I walked by anonymously everyday on campus last Spring; this is the future of debt-riddled America.  Their older counterparts fell down the slippery typical slope of debt and throwing money into random places and they will too.

And to think all of it can be changed with three simple words.  Make a plan.  Fix the problem.  Track your expenses.  Think differently.

You have to buy in to doing it and if you don’t you might as well click the back button and disappear forever and not come back.  Go try to find a magic way to getting more money.  Let me know how that works out for you too.  If you buy in and you’re serious, don’t just stand there.  Take the action.  Right now!

With that I will leave you all with my burning question for today: What advice do you have for the new college graduate that has a household income of $45,000?

Spend Blindly

I’m a typical American.  I have rent and bills to pay.  I have to keep current on my credit card and student loan payments.  I buy groceries, clothes for the kids, and some other stuff.  I don’t know exactly how much money I spend, but I guess I have a pretty good idea.  It can’t be that bad, right?  I make it by just fine!

PAUSE – What makes sense about this?  You don’t know how much you spend?

Are you kidding me???

I don’t know what someone’s argument could be that they tell themselves that they don’t need a budget.  If your argument is that it’s too hard, too boring, or too late for you to create a budget – WAKE UP!  No one is immune to the disease that is budgeting and I’m not telling you that it’s the most fun thing in the world to initially do.  With that said, you need a budget whether you make $5 or $5000 a month!  Without one, you can’t track where your money goes.  Contrary to the way that you and the rest of dumb America act: The money in a bank account is yours to spend, NOT the banks’ and NOT the credit card companies’.

With that I will leave you all with my burning question: What advice do you have for the newly married couple that has a household income of $35,000?