Sunday, January 10, 2016

Let's compare notes on budgeting...

Okay so none of us have a chance at making a working budget out of what we get from welfare, ODSP, CPP or any of the other benefits packages, and even if Basic Income supplements show up, they'll probably only bring us a third or halfway to the poverty line. Given how big the gap is between what we get, and what we'd need to have a budget that works in any measurable way, it's easy to just not get around to making a budget. Or as soon as you try, you give up because the daily reality that it describes is so terrible. But it's not worse than the reality that actually happens when you have no planned budget.

So even if your budget is unworkable, it's still worth making a planned budget out of it. We all have our little rules of thumb, tricks and tendencies. And if we can get the courage to face the horrible, painful truth of our budgets, we can expect some benefits from applying a bit of planning to them.

The comments section is open for anonymous comments, so let's share notes on how we do this. Not tips on deals and stuff like that, but ideas for budgeting. Or example budgets.

Here's a two-step idea that's really primitive, but it's something that a lot of people start out with when they're trying to bring some order to the chaos:
  1. Sequestering some essential money and spending it on important items right away, before it disappears, and spreading the rest of the money out over the rest of the month. For example, pay rent and utilities right away, do laundry if you're a laundromat user and have been letting it go 'cause you ran out of quarters... anything that you definitely need to purchase, anything that you can save money on by getting it monthly, do it during that time, and set a maximum for the amount you're going to spend on that, because the rest of your money is gonna become your daily spending money, or your weekly spending money, or however you want to divvy it up.
  2. For many of us, our daily budget is about six bucks, so an easy way to handle that is, you release a twenty dollar bill to yourself every three days. Or do a ten every two days, or a five every day, or whatever works for you. If it's easy to conceptualize, it'll be easier to put into practice. Put 'em in envelopes with dates on them, and those envelopes are also useful for whatever other stuff needs to be divided across the month, like any drugs that you need to have sorted out. A lot of medical cannabis users are living in poverty, and since recently, they've had to pay prohibition prices for their herbs instead of being able to personally grow them at no cost. So for people trying to make $300 a month replace the $5,000 worth they used to produce for themselves every month at no cost, while suffering the effects of a sudden reduction in their medication, being able to divide something like that up into daily supplies, from one chunk purchased once a month, can be a lifesaver. And really, it's the same with daily spending money. Another way to divide the money up is to shift it to your savings account, then set up a automatic transfers, to customize the trickle of money that comes into your account. Wouldn't it be great to get whatever you need to take care of those pressing issues at the beginning of the month, and then just have the rest of it flow into your account evenly, so you never run out? Well with a bit of setup work, you can have that.
It'd be great if we could share some notes on our different setups and experiences. This is just one idea.

7 comments:

  1. Alright, I'll start... here's my budget:

    After shelter and bills are paid, I have about $400 left over. So that's like thirteen bucks a day. But I can't spend it that way, because I've got to buy things at the beginning of the month. So there's a few food items that I cannot get in dumpsters or from food banks, or from anywhere else. I spend about a hundred bucks on that stuff.

    $-100 food items that cannot be found for free

    Then I spend about sixty bucks on anything else I need to get, and fourty bucks on a couple bottles of wine.

    $-60 misc repairs, replacements, e-cigarette juice refills etc
    $-40 booooooooze!!!

    And yeah I'm one of those medical cannabis users you were talking about, who used to go through about three grams a day of it, for free, because I grew it myself under the government's old licensing program, and now I have to do what I can with what I have, and since the amount of chronic pain I have to deal with is inversely related to the amount of cannabis I can have, I spend the rest of my money all on weed, and I get half of what I used to, when it cost me nothing. So now, I'm in pain, and I now have to go to soup kitchens for at least one meal out of each day. But I've been doing the envelopes thing, or a variation of it anyway, so I don't run out, and so I don't have to make frequent purchases in order to budget it. This is why I'm really hoping for a change in the legislation, because it's not like any of my family believe me when I say "conservative cannabis legislation made me go to soup kitchens" but it's a better story than "conservative cannabis legislation put me in severe chronic pain" even though it kind of has.

    So because all my money's spent initially, there is no daily budget. But by spending it all at the beginning of the month and spreading out the stuff I buy with it, I definitely make that money go further. Spreading out my purchases in order to try to slow down my spending really backfired. But the deal is, if you do get a big chunk of something, you have to divide it up at home and schedule how you make it available to yourself. Running out of chocolate or something sucks, but it's not so bad when you just run out at the beginning of the weekend, and you've got another bag to appreciate in a couple days. Even if you break the rules and dip into the next portion, at least you know how much you've dug into yourself for. At least you know how many days' grought you have at the end of month!

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    1. well i guess if I wanted to spend 200 bux on weed per month then i'd prolly pretend im in pain too

      i don't do drugs because im not a stoner and i don't drink because not an alcoholic so i have an extra 240 maybe if you realize your just lazy and want to not be you can appreciate that 240 and spend it on life instead of zoning out

      sounds like you eat weird stuff, i make sure i have a dayily food budget because my food comes a bit at a tim, i have no kitchen so its grocery store stuff in bits and pieces and cheap take out so i take out a couple twenties every three or four days from an atm and that works best for me i have to be everywhere in town and i dont want lots of bills on me or too many atm visits

      room costs 400 a month inclusive so i have nothing extra to pay on that
      phone costs 70 a month and TTC pass costs 150
      I try to have an extra 50 for if i need to buy new headphones or shoes or something because i need to stay employable looking i am not trying to stay poor like everybody else around me so i have to invest in myself

      sorry im just sick of stoners making odsp look bad its not medicine stop pretending your playing urself not trying to judge but use your own money at least and get normal painkillers for free until then tylenol works fine there are so many babies on benefits its not for that

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    2. Wow!
      I am on my second round if cancer in 4 years...i don't. Smoke pot but they offered it...natives have used pot forever as medicine's...some people can't take pills because they. Are severely addictive...it took 5 weeks in hospital for me to get over withdrawal. From over the counter Tylenol
      Even gravol is addictive.
      I am still waiting on the stats for killing soneone with a car compared to the legs drug
      ALCOHOL 🍷
      S

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    3. I used to complain about entitled stoners too. Actually if I'd been a bit more lazy, as in putting my body through a bit less punishment at work, I wouldn't have to deal with chronic pain now. By the time I became a cannabis user, I'd had to quit my job because of the pain, and it was basically weed or opiates, and I was scared of going through what I'd seen friends go through with getting injured, getting hooked, and then moving from oxys to heroin when their prescriptions ran out. Also as Debi points out, weed's a bit safer.

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    4. Also I don't want to spend anything on the weed I'm using for my chronic pain, hence me learning how to grow it myself, which would now be a crime. So now I have to put up with the government's weed instead of the type I used to grow which worked way better.

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  2. I have a lot of food sensitivities, and I have to eat a 100% organic diet, so I spend all my available money on food. I do the big bulk purchases at the beginning of the month, and save the rest in weekly chunks. On each monday so that I have money on the weekend if I budget well during the week and so that's how I make sure I do what I need before what I want and also have a reward on weekends. If I don't have any money on a weekend then I just stay home or do some free stuff but at least I know I have enough money for the next week. I have one child to take care of, so I have to budget for him too. I'm not going to try to put my whole budget in here because it's complicated, but I just know how quickly I can go through things, based on experience, and my weekly budget holds me to account. I try to wait to buy things when I find them at the lowest prices, so I try to pounce on sales. I set aside $20 out of each weeks money and have saved up a few hundred dollars by doing this. Now I can fix my radiator, get my car working again and save a little bit more money not because it's cheaper than the TTC but it lets me save money by picking up things in larger formats. I'm going to try being an uber driver too but I can't do too much of that. It won't take much though to make a dent in my driving budget. I also use my bike with my car to save money on parking. I drive to the cheapest parking that's within biking distance of where I'm going and then I bike there. Works really well.

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  3. I really like http://www.mint.com It's free. I know where all my money went for the past two years because of it.

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