Well, here’s a nice surprise: As this month’s budget cycle draws to a close, I’m $47 to the good in spite of having diddled away $275 on a swell leather purse. With five more days to go, all the food the dog and I need is in the house, and I shouldn’t need to buy gas or anything else for another week.
Last November, I cut the month-to-month discretionary spending budget (i.e., all costs other than regularly recurring bills and utilities) from $1,500 a month to $1,200, planning to put the extra $300 into savings. At first, staying within the new parameters was a challenge. Most months ran into the red. Last month was the first success, but with only $11 to spare.
In microbudgeting, a month’s budget cycle (here based on the American Express billing cycle, ensuring that enough cash will be available to pay that bill in full each month) is broken into four approximately week-long chunks. Thus if you run in the red one week, the budget overrun can be made up in the following week.Theoretically.
The last week of this month’s budget slipped into red ink because of an unexpected $177 bill: Greg the Handyman had said he would install a houseful of blinds and then backed out, so I had to arrange for Lowe’s to do it. Greg’s hourly rate is a lot cheaper; had he done the job as agreed, week 4 probably would have been in the black. But because two of the other three weeks are deep in the black, the month overall is also in the black.
I’d planned to pay for the handbag extravagance out of monthly savings, which just now contains more than enough for an indulgence. However, because this month’s budget is so fully in the black, ordinary cash flow actually will cover the cost and still leave the budget $47 in the black!
Ordinarily, a month with two large extraordinary expenses would put a $1,200 budget into the red. That’s why I put $200 to $400 a month into savings: to cover overruns. Had I not purchased the bag this month, the budget would have been $322 to the good. That is with a trip to the mechanic’s for car maintenance!
And—hallelujah, sisters and brothers!—that is an all-time record. It means that in ordinary expenses (as opposed to a certain wild extravagance), I spent only $878 this month.
What accounts for such a wonder?
Well, first, because of the train I won’t have to buy another tank of gas before the end of the budget cycle. Ordinarily, gasoline runs about $75 for three fill-ups. This month, I’ve spent $41 at Costco’s gas pumps. If I ride the train to work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, trips to the Great Desert University will take all of $3.75 out of the remaining $47 next week.
Second, except for the handbag, I haven’t had any really large extraordinary expenses: no serious repair or veterinary bills. When you own a house and occupy it with a dog, some hulking budget-buster comes along almost every month.
Otherwise, I’m not sure. I haven’t gone into full ascetic mode at any time. The only explanation is the freezer + stockpiling, which has hugely cut the number of grocery-store runs. It’s the miracle of staying out of stores! The theorythat going into grocery and big-box stores, even with a shopping list firmly in hand, leads to untold numbers of impulse buys seems to be true.
If this isn’t a fluke and I actually can cut discretionary spending to under $1,000 a month without much pain, I may just be able to get by in unemployment retirement.
