Last weekend, Cam and I were both feeling tired. Life has been really busy lately for us both. So Saturday night we snuggled in on our couch, watched a wrestling pay-per-view and had take out- fish and chips. On Sunday, after our usual running around we went out for a long sushi lunch and had a great conversation. We had both been needing to reconnect and I walked out of the restaurant feeling refreshed.
But Christine, didn’t you just finish telling us in your last post that Cam quit his job and went back to school? You’re down to one income. Shouldn’t you be cooking your meals at home? You could have had just as good of a conversation there.
That may be true, but I don’t feel guilty at all. Yes, we want to be debt-free, but we also want to live our life. That’s why it’s called the debt-free lifestyle. The two need to be integrated, or I guarantee that your efforts will be temporary. Maybe you’re more persistent than we are, but without a little fun, your budget will start to feel like a bad diet, and soon, you’ll be starving.
Here’s why I didn’t feel bad spending a little extra money on enjoying ourselves this weekend.
1) Our big decision items are all in check.
The items that take up the biggest part of our budget can all be handled comfortably on our income. This is a result of two things: our original lifestyle choices around the home we purchased and all the related factors, and our commitment to accelerate our mortgage repayment. With our efforts over the last seven years we’ve put nearly $200,000 toward our debt. This means that it now costs us much less to live in our home. The choices that we’ve made around the other big items has freed up some money as well. Cam’s decision to do most of his schooling from home via correspondence has really cut down on the amount of driving and insurance cost. With the weather begin so cold and wet, I took the trade-off and have been driving to work this winter. I’ll switch back to public transit once the weather improves and I can do it without getting drenched before I start my day.
2) We have a really good handle on how much we have available to spend each week.
Using my simple budget system, every time I get paid, I know what I will owe and where that money is going. The big change now has been adjusting from a paycheque every week to just the one paycheque bi-weekly (Cam and I used to get paid on alternating weeks). It means I have to be a bit more aware of my spending during the week, but ultimately the same principals from the Simple Budget still work brilliantly.
3) We’ve worked some money for entertainment into our spending plan.
We’ve tried to do it the other way where the budget was so tight that it didn’t allow for any fun. This makes the day to day life we actually live far more painful than it needs to be. Our solution is what we call ‘fun money’ – we each get a bit with each paycheque. It does extend the time to pay off our debt by a bit – but I considered that the price of sticking to the plan. Over the long term, giving ourselves the freedom and flexibility to spend guilt-free was one of the best decisions we’ve made because our goals were long term. As we met different milestones in our debt repayment program – such as putting $100,000 toward our debt- we increased the amount of fun money we would get because our carrying costs on our debt were now lower. Now, with Cam back in school, we’ve both agreed to reduce the amount of fun money in our new budget, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll eliminate the fun altogether, it just means we spend with our eyes wide open.
