I’m back! The last few years have been very busy. While COVID may have stopped some in their tracks, we’ve been really busy at home, realigning priorities. Lately I’ve been feeling a real push to share a very important aspect of my life, personal budgeting.

I was in a grocery store recently and overheard a young customer ask an also young cashier how to prepare a chuck roast. Yummmm…my favorite way to cook chuck roast is in the crock pot with potatoes, onions, and carrots.

The cashier shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not really sure. Never done one.”

Mom that I am, I spoke up. I first asked if the young lady had a crock pot. When she said she did, I gave her step-by-step instructions on cooking that roast in a crock pot. It took all of about a minute.

Some things you know; some things you don’t. If you don’t know and you want to know, you learn. If you want to learn, you ask someone who’s done it. Then you do it. Then you know.

There are a lot of things I don’t know, but some that I do.

I can:

Crochet – I only know four stitches, but almost all crocheting is based on these four (I think), so I can usually follow a pattern and get the right outcome. It’s a hobby that I save for winter so I can watch TV and be covered with nice, warm yarn.

Sew – I used to sew better than I do now because I made more clothes when my kids were little. Instead of sewing being a passion, it was a chore. But I can if needed.

Cook – Since cooking is one of the necessary steps to eating, I’ve learned enough to be able to prepare the same fifteen or twenty meals on a regular basis. I do experiment occasionally when in the mood to be creative, but cooking is not my passion, either. It’s a chore.

The list could go on and on. I have a some experience in a lot of different things, but there is one thing that I’m really passionate about: money and our household budget.

Let me rephrase that. I’m passionate about controlling money – instead of letting it control me.

If you read my message long enough, you’ll notice I say that over and over again. I don’t want to let money control me. And I hate to see it when it’s happening to someone else.

There are a lot of people that I’ve given money advice. Nothing to do with stock market, or get-rich-quick schemes. Sometime it has to do with retirement savings as part of my job as a tax preparer. Mostly, though, I focus on budgets.

Budgeting seems to be a bad word to a lot of people. They have a pre-conceived notion that budgeting is restricting. Or they might think that they have so many bills and only so much money that a budget is moot. Others believe that they have plenty and therefore have no need of controlling spending, that they can get what they want when they want.

I fit all of those descriptions at one time or another in my past. When I was single, I had a great job and could spend whatever I pleased, and did. After having a bunch of kiddos, we had so many bills to pay on military pay that we couldn’t afford squat. We were even on food stamps. I didn’t think a budget could help that. Once I learned that budgeting was not restricting, but actually freed up resources, time, and worry, I was convinced that budgeting was going to be a lifesaver for our family.

It wasn’t easy. Yes, there are restrictions, but you quickly learn what you can and can’t live without. Our horizons had to expand to compensate for a strapped budget. We found that Chuck-E-Cheese wasn’t nearly as much fun as a day at the beach. We could live without a movie theatre date once a week, but we could rent a movie to watch after kids went to bed. We learned lots of new skills to make gifts instead of buying them. I learned to cook healthier meals for seven hungry mouths and nobody starved.

In short, it was work, but it was work that was necessary to take care of a large family. The end result, however, was much better than just stretching money. The end result was a can-do attitude that has benefited our lives considerably.

So why am I telling you all this?

Easy peasy. I’m getting older. I still have knowledge to offer. I’m most interested in teaching young people how to deal with money, but open to helping any age or income get a handle on personal money management.

Things that we learned in school, like how to balance a checkbook, are no longer taught in our schools. Money management is a skill that every household can use to advantage.

While everybody in the house doesn’t have to have the same aptitude, what happens when your babies leave the nest? Are you still going to take care of their expenses for them? What happens if you lose your money-managing spouse, whether by death or divorce? Can you competently take over the financial reins and be confident in it? What happens if you are suddenly out of a job with no notice? Can you survive until your first paycheck on your next job?

That did happen to us, and you know what? We made it, because we had trained ourselves in how to handle money issues.

If you are already budgeting and have a good handle on your finances, great. I hope you’ll read my posts anyway, and send me feedback on how things have worked for you. If you’re not budgeting, I hope you’ll read my posts and learn some tricks here and there. I don’t offer individual counseling or classes any more, but if enough peeps are asking for it, I may consider it in the future.

Have a great day!