We’ve already been working to get our money under (more) control for nearly a month. In a normal budget we would have not been able to stick with it for even three weeks.
So it’s the start of week four for us today. And I admit– it’s not as “fun” as it was three weeks ago- but guess what- that’s how the Three Piece Plan is designed. It does not have to be maintained or kept up with. Today I will go to the bank, get out the cash and we’ll spend it. The only thing we have to do is not spend more than we get out of the bank. Next Wednesday we’ll get more money out. No “household items”, “automobile expense”, etc etc blah blah blah to keep up with. We just do our thing and the money takes care of itself.
Last week I said that we had overspent some- so I subtracted that from this week’s money. It just turns out that we did find- even working off of 75% of our normal weekly amount. There is a reason for this- check out the category–”Why Use the Three Piece Plan”== it’s because the Three Piece Plan reduces consumption. We knew going into this week that we were short of money so we just simply spent less of it. Keep in mind that we got paid last Friday. We only get paid once a month…on the last working day which happened to be last Friday- three days BEFORE the first of the month. This should make for a long month but it also should have been the time of month where we are all excited and go out and eat and spend a bunch of money over the weekend.
But with the Three Piece Plan budgeting system we don’t have just one payday a month. We now have 4 or more paydays in a month! So making our money last from payday to payday is much easier.
Something different did happen this week- we were not short of money- it’s just that we needed some go go juice for the car. I had $15 with me and my wife had $20 or so with her. So, I just put the gas on the debit card. Tomorrow when we pay ourselves I will simply deduct the $30– but this week instead of being short of money we will have about the same amount we normally would have had.
The point is this– it is VERY VERY VERY (Did I say “Very”?) important that you stay on track with your “Today’s Money”. The whole idea is to spend less money now so you have it later.