Money Wise Mom

A few weeks ago my husband looked up from his computer at me and said “It wasn’t supposed to be this easy.”

We were looking at our long term financial projections together and discussing future scenarios. The “It” he was referring to was retiring at the ripe old age of 45.

Was it easy? Kinda yeah, but also kinda no. When you are saving for the future the steps are basic.

Step 1: Save and invest money every month
Step 2: There is no step two.

That’s essentially all you need to do, when you boil it all down to basics.

To save, you must spend less than you make every month. Give every dollar a job by having a spending category for Future money. Be intentional with how much you want to commit every month and do this before you set your spending categories for discretionary stuff, like entertainment or eating out. Your Future money is transferred every month automatically to your savings and investments, like a bill you pay yourself. The best investments, in my opinion, are passive and are a balanced portfolio in a set ratio of growth stuff and safe stuff that is built on global markets with low fees.

Then you just rinse and repeat for a few decades or so. That’s really all we did.

However, while the steps are simple, the execution is not easy. We live in a world that is designed to make spending (and overspending) too easy and wants to turn us all into dissatisfied customers. The key to my family’s success has been to build in simple but effective systems that counter mindless consumerism.

The Systems that we Built

We’re both very systems oriented. We both like doing something better, or more efficiently, or simpler. So we used that to our advantage when it came to money.

Here are some of our systems that made living below our means feel easy.

#1 Meal Planning

For decades, we have taken time together to plan our meals for the upcoming week. We write down what meals we want every day and, as we write down the meal, we list out the ingredients we need to buy with a running tally of what each will cost. And, since we’re both computer nerds, I have spreadsheets back to January 1st 2010 to prove it. Go ahead and ask me what I had for dinner at any point between then and now. I likely can tell you, along with how much it cost to make!

Some of the benefits of meal planning include

• The cost of our weekly meals stay within our weekly food budget.
• Being intentional and agreeing on when to eat out; We like cooking at home together, so eating out or ordering in food is generally reserved for special occasions. What we make tastes better anyway!
• We plan to eat our leftovers and very, very, rarely throw away food.
• We work the current week’s sales into our plan and use that to guide what meals we will make.
• If you are feeling too busy or too lazy, you can copy last week’s meal plan and just tweak as needed. (or see what you ate two years ago and copy/paste that into this week)
• We plan our food around life events. We note down significant events in our weekly food plan so that we are planning food that is convenient based on time constraints and our location
• We spend time together making our food and sit together to eat it. This adds a lot of joy to our lives!
• We can meal prep for the week, if we want to. It’s sometimes easier to make a big batch of food on the weekend and portion it out for meals over the week.

#2 Planned Spending

We’ve operated from a spending plan (a.k.a budget) since we moved into our first apartment together. But a budget is not a system. The system is how we use our spending plan to make decisions together.

1. Build a budget that you can live on based on your income and expenses and commit to it.
2. Live life, spending money as planned.
3. When you get a raise, review the spending plan together and decide if you will save/invest more to reach your goals faster or allocate the money to specific budget line or a mix of those two choices.
4. When you want to make a life change, like finance a car or buy a house or move somewhere new, make a copy of your spending plan and plunk in the new numbers. Does the budget balance without sacrificing your saving and investing goals?

#3 Where is it going to live?

One of our house rules is that we won’t acquire stuff unless we already know where it’s going to be stored in our home. Sometimes that means we need to reduce other items to make room for new to us things. Sometimes it means we choose to not acquire the thing.

Our system is to set our intention to not own too many things, and then we check in with each other before making a purchase.

#4 Evaluating Joy

How much time working was required to afford the item you want? For example, how many hours of work did it take to afford eating at that restaurant? Did you enjoy it? Was it worth it?

Our system is to set our intention to appreciate our discretionary spending. We talk about money choices on a monthly basis and decide if there are spending habits we want to focus on or let go.

We don’t buy coffee, except on a road trips. We like the stuff we make at home, it doesn’t produce disposable waste, and it costs a fraction of buying from a shop.

When we were first married, I loved the idea of fresh flowers. They seemed like a luxury, and for a young couple living below to poverty line, they were! But over time, I found they were not bringing me joy in the same way anymore. I didn’t want flowers that lasted a week and then died. I preferred potted plants, which last longer and are less expensive over time.

We evaluate joy on the big stuff too. At one point, we considered buying a camp (a.k.a. cottage). But maintaining a second property would have been drudgery and would have required a significant chunk of our take home pay (which translated to time we would have had to commit to working). Through that lens, we knew renting a camp on occasion would bring us more joy than owning one.

#5 Fill up life with Free First

There are so many cool things to fill up your time with! If you want to spend less, so that you can save more, lean into filling up your calendar with free (or very low cost) stuff first. The “system” here is to be intentional; make a list of activities that you are looking forward to for the next season and then block in time in your calendar to do some of them. You may find that you are so busy with free/low cost activities that you really have to find time for any expensive excursions.

• Play cards
• Go to the library, Read books
• Practice yoga by following free YouTube videos
• Go on a hike with friends
• Take your kids and/or pets to the park
• Wander around your downtown
• Go to street fairs and festivals in your town
• Swim at a public beach
• Have a friend over for tea
• Host a table top game night
• Play free online games with friends
• Play D&D with friends
• Practice playing music or singing
• Draw or paint
• Go to an art gallery or a museum
• Learn a new language with a free app

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These are some of my systems that let me live more intentionally. What systems do you have?