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curated resources for publishing success |
Learn what best selling indy authors have done, and are planning to do next.
Staci Stallings author of the Cowboy Series interviewed at Write This Way.
Russell Blake author of Jet interviewed at When a Man Wrongs a Woman.
Kathleen Brooks author of Bluegrass series interviewed at A Blue Million Books.
Liliana hart author of the Addison Holmes Mysteries interviewed at Cynthia Woolf’s Blog.
Alexa Grace author of the Deadly Trilogy at USA Today.
I was chatting personal finance with a friend recently. Like so many of us, she carries a small balance on her credit card on a regular basis. I was telling her about sitting down with my bank statement and balancing my budget. Not actually balancing my checkbook, an old fashioned and quar-turned activity I haven’t done since seventh grade math class. Balancing my budget is somewhat more fun than that checkbook thing our grandparents did, and definitely less precise.
My friend was really surprised by how much work I put into our family budget. With the credit card and its low, not entirely paid off balance at her convenience, she didn’t see the need for the work I do. Her surprise prompted me to blog. Maybe what I do is uncommon enough to be interesting to my friends who pop by here.
I do my banking online. In years past I was able to download transactions to Quicken and run all sorts of reports on my spending. Lately Quicken and my bank have stopped speaking to each other. Something about Quicken not being able to tell the bank what the name of my first pet was every time I log in.
Nonetheless, the years of Quicken use have built spending categories into my brain. These categories translate to my paper budget.
I write my paper budget at the beginning of the month (every month since March 2003.) The italicized words are the category heads, written on their own line. Each word in that category gets its own line on my notebook paper, with a dollar amount next to it. I generally leave three spaces between each category in case something comes up that I forgot. I categorize like this:
Priorities: Tithe, Charity, Life insurance Daniel, Life Insurance Traci, Retirement Daniel, Retirement Traci, College Fund, Christmas Fund.
Home: Mortgage (includes taxes and insurance), electric, phone, internet, water, trash
Auto: Payment, Insurance, Gas (maintenance comes out of monthly misc.)
Other: Groceries, Misc., Entertainment
Irregular monthly expenses also go under Other, these would be things like doctor bills that come in, saving up for the deck, etc.
The part that really surprised my friend, is once, or twice a month, I review my actual spending against the amounts in the written budget. I go to my credit union’s personal banking page and print out my check registry. When my banking was Quicken based (that ended last year) I would just run the report and it would show my my categories. This new, low tech way takes a little more time. I look at each item, categorize it, write it on another notebook page, and add things up.
As a college kid with few expenses and as an untrained newly wed, I just spent money in a bewildered fashion and hoped for the best.
Now that I am a lean, mean SAHM machine controlling the money is my favorite brain activity. That guy I mention sometimes, Dave Ramsey, says we should tell every dollar where to go before it reaches our hot little hands. He also says we need to write our budget every month. It is really difficult to come up with a once-for-your-lifetime style budget. Needs change over time, income changes as well. To do a “budget” that tells you where to put your money for the rest of your life puts the money in control. Rewriting and reviewing each month keeps you in control.
Now, just a tid-bit more information than is necessary, I am not a very in-control person. Things easily get away from me, so retirement and college savings are paid automatically. It’s not the largest sum ever put away, but it goes there without fail each month. For me, at least, that money needs to be in control of itself before it becomes more profit for Target.
That’s all. Fairly simply stuff. But it keeps our family afloat. It keeps me able to stay at home and it keeps Daniel able to do the work he loves rather than hunting down a bigger paycheck.