Making Ends Meet

When a stunt man jumps off a building he doesn’t hit the air bag standing up. He sits down- it spreads out the force of the fall- it just hurts less. Houses, cars, and everything else are all designed to do the same thing… spread out the force of the weight on them.

So the question is this- would you rather go without food for 8 straight days or for 2 days at a time four times?  Going two days hurts your belly a lot less than going foodless for 8!  As a matter of fact, you would barely notice if you went two days- where eight would make for some crazy shaky legs and one grumpy family.

So here is where the Three Piece Plan comes in–  even if you get paid monthly- with the TPP you get money every week. So, if you pay yourself on Wednesday and run out of money on Monday- then you only have to scrimp for two days.

The old way of doing things was spending like crazy till you ran out of money. and 1. Suffering for a full week at the end of the month. or 2. Just put it on a credit card- or heck, just use your home equity to eat on. Oh wait, this ain’t 2006 anymore.

So this is just to make the case- if you pay yourself your “Everyday Money” every week then you spread out your scrimping days.

Each of these “Ten Reasons” needs their own blog post. But if I want to get them in here for you site visitors to be able to see.

Ask me questions about them-  then once you read them you should fill out the form below to get started with your own Three Piece Plan.

1. It requires no continuous work- no entering categories, dividing up receipts, etc-   who has time for that?

2. You get paid every week. Or at least that is the way you will feel when you are on the Three Piece Plan.

3. You are doing SOMETHING.  Doing nothing won’t work. So having a simple system helps you keep your mind focused on getting out of debt and not overspending.

4. The Three Piece Plan decreases consumption. Because now you feel like you run out of money more often. So every week you find yourself eating at home, not shopping, etc. And the best part is that you don’t mind it!  You know you have money in the bank and that “pay day” is just a few days away.

5. You build an emergency fund almost automatically. Enough said!

6. You KNOW, instead of guessing and overshooting, exactly how much money you have to spend. This keeps you from bouncing checks, etc.  No more, “Whoops, I thought that check had cleared!”

7. You enjoy your money so it motivates you to spend it right. It is an UPWARD spiral. You spend less, you stress less, you worry less, you take care of things faster, etc.

8.  It is easy to adjust. If you get extra income you are not inclined to spend it so fast. If your income goes down it is easy to look at where you are and adjust accordingly.

9. Communication. It gets much easier on the Three Piece Plan. You look at how much cash you have, or how much you have in your “Today’s Money” account and know exactly what you have to spend. So it is easier to tell your spouse, “Uh, honey, we only have $25 to last two days, can you wait until Wednesday to get your hair cut?”

10. The Three Piece Plan family budget system is sooooo easy to set up. I can literally set up the basis for one in less than five minutes. It also works well for budgeting on a variable income.

Why use the Three Piece Plan?
Because you don’t have to keep up with it daily!

I think this is the number one reason that people can’t do a category or software based budget.

Constantly having to divide up receipts, enter categories, shuffle money between envelopes (the only thing the envelope method gets most people is paper cuts!), and what do you do when you can’t figure out those last few pennies? You just quit.

I think it’s the same thing for diet plans that have you count calories! The only people who make money on that plan is Weight Watchers. No one has time to count calories every day… and no one has time to count every penny they spend!

So, why use the Three Piece Plan? Because it does not take any daily work.
Set it up once, let it work for you, and make minor adjustments when your income or your outflow changes.