Clutter and Debt 2: Budget

Another piece of advice I learn from Dave Ramsey's getting started guide is to set a budget. In an article, they wrote, "budget is just spending your money with intention" He also said in his podcast that money just disappear if you don't tell them where to go. How true that is also for our use of time!

From my last week's experience, I found myself not being able to do the dishes right after breakfast because I need to drive the kids to school. If only I had the morning starts 15 minutes earlier, I could have dishes done leisurely without the kids being late for school.

Ditch Perfect

How many of you have thought of a better plan of the day would make it run more smoothly? Yes, I did. So many times in my life. Back when I was in college, I already start trying to plan for study time. But I could sit for an hour without coming up with any proper schedule.

One problem I have is to think that I need to be perfect. In The Truth About Budgeting, it says, "It won't be perfect the first time you do it." It needs constant attention. It needs to be adjusted to fit our goals. So, I do not need a schedule that work well for the entire year, not even the entire month. I should have some kind of template to work with and then adjust it for each day.

What should be in the template then?

Start with the Basics

Another piece of budget related advice I heard often from the Dave Ramsey Show was about priority. When money is tight, you need to take care of food, shelter, clothing and transportation first. The bare bone basics, in other words.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I do feel like we moms wear so many hats. And I am not even working. By focusing on the basics, it is somewhat freeing. We can still live without all these other tasks that we might feel obligated to do!

So, what are our survival tasks?

Meals
This include the time for meals, dishes, grocery shopping, putting away grocery, preparation that needs to be done ahead (like to defrost or marinate meat) and cooking time. 

Laundry
Have I said enough on laundry already? But I guess we just had to keep this on our list until the ends of days! 

Driving Time
Dropping off and picking up kids may not need a lot of time. But it is something that we cannot reschedule or skip. 

Pay Bills
So that we may still have our shelter at the least. Unless, of course, your home is already paid off! 

What Else?

Of course, we cannot forget the tasks we have from last week. Those habits that could keep us from building up clutter. The nice thing is handling paperwork and going to bed earlier are the only ones that is not already on the above list.

So, I will start off by planning my day around these tasks. I may not have an hour to hour schedule but I certainly need to have some kind of plan around them so that I could live a clutter-free life.

How About You?

Perhaps, you could come up with a different list. But I encourage you to rethink the tasks that you think you need to do. Are those truly necessary? Or, you just don't want to ignore it? If it is not survival, perhaps, you just want them there.

You may still want to put them into your schedule. The only difference is, now you are doing so because you want to, not because you have to.

How about we all work our week with a little more planning and share how our daily plan goes on Saturday? 

It is not Friday this week, just because, I like to report for each weekday and it is difficult to report on Friday with it not being over :)

I am again linking this post to Org Junkie's 52 weeks of Organizing.

[ Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Dave Ramsey, his website, his show or his company. I am not getting any profit if you click one of those links to his website. I am just inspired by his debt free plan to become clutter free. From listening to his show and the many debt-free calls, I am however happy to be linking to their website. ]