Follow us as we get out of debt and be more purposeful with our money! This week, we are struggling with nailing down the zero-based budget and running into a couple of unexpected snags.
Dave Ramsey recommends keeping track of your money with a zero based monthly budget. This means that you track every bit of income and expenses for the month, down to the penny so that there is nothing left over. This doesn’t mean that you spend everything, just that all of your money has a home, whether it is to pay off the electric bill or to put money aside for a vacation.
One of the snags that we have run into is dealing with annual or semi annual expenses. Expenses that come up once or twice a year instead of every month. A logical way to pay these expenses in a month budget is to divide the cost out over the twelve months of the year and then set that divided cost aside to be used to pay the expense when it is due.
This can get a little complicated. Where do you put that money? How can you make sure that it doesn’t get used for something else?
This week, we decided to join a local CSA (community supported agriculture) farm. In return for an initial investment, we are provided with fresh organic produce throughout the season. We opted to do a half share, meaning that we pick up our produce every other week.
The cost of the half share was $390. For next year, we can budget in this cost, but what do we do for the current year? We decided that it was easiest to have a clean slate, so we will take that cost out of this month’s grocery bill and try to get by on what is left I scored some great deals on food last week and will be extra careful about meal planning for the next two weeks, mostly cooking from the pantry. As an extra blessing, this weekend also happens to coincide with a huge set of church events, so I won’t have to supply food for three meals. God finds a way to provide!
Since the CSA will allow us to upgrade to a full share, we can decide if we want to do that and save up each month for the difference in price.
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