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.