The (Not-So) Evil Budget

By Nola Redd

After living tight for the last years, we are looking forward to having all of our debts paid off. In a discussion with my dad, I mentioned that I had written up an estimated budget once we purchased our new house. He immediately became defensive and told me that we needed to relax and enjoy life, rather than live frugally until we die. In short, he had a negative association with the word 'budget.' He didn't understand that our post-debt budget was actually a good thing.

According to Larry Burkett, co-founder of Crown Financial Ministries, a budget is "telling your money where to go instead of asking where it went." A budget isn't a monster; it can, in fact, be liberating. When you have organized your life to such an extend that you are in charge of your spending - instead of your spending being in charge of you - then you feel a sense of indescribable freedom.

For my dad, a budget was drudgery. He envisioned it limiting him. For us, we were able to sit down and decide on our priorities. We determined what we wanted to do, and then we made our budget to conform. For instance, before we started looking for a home to purchase, we set up a "mock budget" estimating expenses. When the house we found exceeded what we had allotted for the house payment, we had to make a decision. Did we want the house more than we wanted to do A, B, or C? What was most important? My husband felt that investing 15% of our income into retirement was a bit excessive. I told him, "When we say that we would rather purchase this home and invest only 10% into retirement, we are saying that the house is more important to us than that extra retirement income. Is this the decision you want to make?" I could see that he had never considered it in that light before. We talked it through and decided accordingly.

The point wasn't "how much were we putting into retirement." It was, "are these our spending priorities?" Similarly, a budget isn't just for the "bad" financial times. By incorporating it into the "good" times, we still keep ourselves on track. We don't wind up eating out so much that we can't save for our kid's college, or paying so much in our children's extracurricular activities that we don't have enough for groceries. A budget helps us make certain we are investing what we want to invest, giving what we want to give, and having fun with what we want enjoy.
Our budget doesn't constrain us. It frees us.

Nola Redd is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Fiction Writing You can read more of her book reviews in her Biblio-file