Money Management | Simple Mom

The Tie Between Living Simply and Financial Peace

This giveaway is now closed. Check here for the winners!

Phew. I admit it… I’m glad Project: Simplify is over. Don’t get me wrong — I was so inspired by all your hard work, and I’m happy with the results in my own home. But after five weeks of writing about home organization, I’m ready to explore another topic. Plus, I still need to visit a lot of your websites and check out your before-and-afters.

Before Project: Simplify, we talked money. From redefining a budget, to reiterating why being debt-free means withstanding the tidal waves, to showing you how my family budgets, we covered a lot about the green stuff.

Today, I thought it would be fun to sort-of merge the two recent topics — organizing and money — and share why I think the two go hand-in-hand. How does having a simplified, more organized home help you manage your finances? And how does taking care of your money help you simplify your home? Do the two even have anything to do with each other?

I definitely think so. Here are 5 ways keeping your home simple and clutter-free helps you manage your money – and how staying on top of your finances also helps you create a more peaceful home.

PLUS, I’ve got a sweet giveaway at the bottom of the post.

Written by parenting teens contributor Robin Dance of Pensieve.

My husband is an excellent financial manager. This has proven important in our marriage since I’m partial to words, not math or anything remotely associated with budgets. Charlie’s excellent Warm and Fuzzy Budgeting post was preachin’ to his choir.

As is often the case in marriage, the way we were raised informs the way we parent. For instance, I received a weekly allowance as a child but my husband didn’t. It’s understandable, then, that when we had children of our own I was in favor of an allowance and Tad wasn’t. After considering the pros and cons, we decided it wasn’t in keeping with our general parenting philosophy (perhaps another topic for another time), so we didn’t implement an allowance.

Last year, when our children were 12, 15 and 17, we had a change of heart.

With the goal of them learning how to handle money, we began paying them a bi-weekly allowance.

Our intent was not to compensate them for chores or link payment to behavior. I’m excited to share how we arrived at the amount and the surprising results of instituting an allowance.
[Read more...]

How I Budget

So… budgeting. Several of you have mentioned wanting to see our family’s budget. I’m happy to show you what we do, though I have to admit — it’s nothing fancy.

Charlie Park blew me away with last week’s post about warm and fuzzy budgeting. He’s right — it’s nothing more than hopes, and goals, and dreams … on paper.

A budget can sound so boring, and it’s easy to assume you can live without it. Well, if a budget is simply telling our money where to go, I propose that we all live by a budget — we simply see it clearer when we write it out on paper (or digitally).

So — write out your budget. You’ll feel much more in control of your money.

Here’s how we do ours.
[Read more...]

Warm and Fuzzy Budgeting

Written by money management contributor Charlie Park of Pear Budget.

Me: “Hey, SimpleMom readers! We’re going to be talking about money.”
You: “Yay, money!”
Me: “We’re going to start off talking about … get excited … budgets!”
You: *yawn*

I know, I know. Too often, budgets are the boring uncle at the cocktail party of your financial life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Stick with me on this one. It’ll be worth it.

Most budgeting articles give you a few rules about how to budget, tools to use, and other specifics about managing a budget. There’s something else they heap on, as well: a crushing sense of guilt. They rely on a vague sense of dread you have, that you “should” be budgeting. They build up budgeting as this thing you should slog through — with a mindset of fear and from a standpoint of scarcity.

I want to propose a new approach to budgeting — one of hope and promise, something I call “the warm and fuzzy side of budgeting.” But we’re not going to actually tackle the specifics of setting up a budget (although Tsh is covering that soon).

This post is all about the background of why a budget matters, and why you’d want to spend half an hour of your week looking at a bunch of numbers.

I’m going to lay it all out for you. Right now. And, since you’re reading this on Simple Mom, I’m going to do my best to make this really … simple.

[Read more...]

A Road Map for Your Financial Journey

I loved reading everyone’s responses to their most common financial frustrations. I’m not saying I love that many of you have these frustrations, of course, but it is helpful for me to see where this community is financially, and how we can possibly help each other on a solid road to financial freedom.

There were many common issues — how you and your spouse can get on the same page, how to handle retirement and saving for kids’ college, and how on earth to make a budget that’s stick-able.

We’ll get to all those. But I thought the best move for today’s post was to recap our family’s financial road map — how my family and I are planning to manage our money, both long and short-term.

And yes, it’s a plan we discovered from Dave Ramsey, and no, none of it is rocket science. But that’s what makes it so beautiful — it’s common sense. It’s a financial plan everyday Janes and Joes can follow. No finance degree required (trust me — I’m horrible at math).

[Read more...]