The Beautiful Life

Make-Do Budgeting

I’m not a regular participant in Make-Do Mondays. Maybe it’s because I’m not that resourceful. In fact, this week’s tip actually belongs to my husband. A lot of us have heard of Dave Ramsey’s cash envelope budgeting method. I know several friends who have used it quite successfully. But our family does much of its shopping online. Cash doesn’t work so well for those kinds of purchases. My husband also travels a lot, which would be really inconvenient without a credit card. We also earn cash back with our credit card, which comes in handy for paying taxes at the end of the year.

We are really pretty good about our spending, but lately we have needed to make a few major purchases that have made things tight around here. I really wanted to try out the envelope system, but not give up the convenience of the credit card. Enter the Make-Do Envelope Budgeting System.

It’s simple, really. Get a bunch of envelopes, and mark them with the various areas that you spend money in. Things like entertainment, food, gas, clothing, etc. Make an extra envelope and label it “spent/change.” Write the amount of your monthly budget in the corner. Now go to your game closet, find your Monopoly set, or any other game with play money that you can’t get out now that you have children. Pull out enough “cash” to cover your monthly budget, plus some extras for your “spent/change” envelope. Since you aren’t using real money, you’ll have to make change for yourself. Now put the allotted amount in each envelope, plus the extra in the “spent/change” envelope. Isn’t this getting fun?

Now every time you use your credit card, bank card, whatever, get out your stack of envelopes and redistribute the money. We like to make it easy and round off our purchases to the nearest dollar. Our budget is a tool, not an inconvenience. Plus my math skills aren’t so great, so it makes it easier on my maxed-out Mommy brain.

Don’t forget to put your envelopes in a kid-proof place just in case they decide they want to play “budget.” Unless you have a written record somewhere, it won’t be pretty.

Project 52–Week Eighteen

This week’s theme is “All Wet.” Spring is here in full force, bringing lots of rain with it. Here’s my photo:

Growing tree reflected in murky-muddy water.

This photo is part of a series on “The Ugly-Beautiful”, which you can read over at the Scrapartist blog.

The Ugly-Beautiful

I’m blogging over at Scrapartist this morning on artist dates and the ugly-beautiful.

Thinking more about slowing down…

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about slowing down. Even though our kids aren’t involved in a lot of activities, it seems like every day, especially our weekends, are hectic and busy, without really being productive…or happy. We’re always in a hurry to get from one thing to the next. And they are good things. But I’m learning that just because something is good, doesn’t mean it is what is best for us at this moment in time. A minute ago, I was a young new mom to a beautiful little girl. And now somehow she’s almost seven. Thirty seconds ago, I had three children three and under. Now they are all walking, talking, reading… And in all of our busyness, I’m missing these precious few moments to nurture and encourage, to hug and to love, before they grow up and fly away. (Although my daughter swears she will live right next door. I’d like to think it’s because she loves us, but I think she is realizing the need for a convenient babysitter.)

So after getting side-tracked for awhile, we are getting back to our roots–what do we want to make of this gift of life we’ve been given? It seems too precious to waste our days bouncing from one thing to the next, with no time to breathe, let alone remember Who gives us our very breath. There is too little time on this earth to spend it on things that we aren’t passionate about. So we are praying and planning and waiting to see where God leads us. We may end up on a farm in the country, tilling up our own plot of land. I sure hope so. But we may be called to be right where we are, learning to find rest and fulfillment in Him in the city. Wherever we go, whatever we do, I know this one thing. That I don’t want to waste my life on anything but Him, and I can’t do that when I’m in a hurry.

Related: I’ve really been inspired by this post on homesteading. It was one of those “that’s it!” moments for us.