Slaying the Budget Dragon

All the flowers are beginning to bloom here in the lowcountry. The weather was absolutely gorgeous today with clear skies a slight breeze and 65 degree weather. I wish we had this kind of weather all year long. Starting last Thursday I had a three day weekend. I went home early and took Katy to Florence SC which is about 90 minutes from Goose Creek North on I-95. I was doing the speed limit the whole time and you would have thought I was standing still. That was the day that all of the storms that devastated Alabama last week came roaring through the state of SC. Luckily for us there were no tornados or much damage. It made for wonderful driving though. The trip was pretty uneventful and Katy took her mid term exam at Francis Marion University in Florence.

After I dropped Katy off at the university to take her exam I decided to go find a Starbucks so I could enjoy some of their delicious coffee and wireless Internet access. I did not know that this was possible but I found a Starbucks with no WiFi access. Is that even possible? Much to my disappointment I spent the next hour going from one book store to the next looking for Wifi access. I finally ran across an Atlanta Bread Company that did have Wifi. I had no sooner ordered a cup of coffee when my phone rang and Katy told me she was done with her test. That meant that I had to hop back in the truck and go 10 miles to pick her up. Once we did that we returned to Atlanta Bread Company and had a coffee and Wifi break.

Friday I was off and Katy went to work to tame the wild savages in her classroom once again. I spent most of Thursday night in the recliner keeping a wary eye on the weather radar just in case we had any surprise tornados. Luckily for me none showed up but we did have high wind and lots of rain. When the weather is bad I am like a caged animal. No rest for me during those times. Katy and the kids sleep like rocks , it does not matter what the weather is doing. I went to bed around 5:30 am and got up again around 10 am. Friday during the day I spent some time slaying the budget dragon. The budget dragon is that proverbial monster that causes you to have more bills at the end of the month than money. You know the drill if you have ever lived from pay check to pay check. It seems that you get paid one day and the next day it is gone. How does that happen? Very simply put it happens because we live outside of our means. We have champagne tastes and beer budgets. We live in a very materialistic world and most of the time we get confused with our wants and needs. We are surrounded by different types of media messages that continually tell us that in order to be somebody you have to dress this way, live in that neighborhood, drive that type of vehicle and wear those types of clothes. We get sucked into all the advertisements that beg us to spend our hard earned money on materialistic stuff that ultimately makes us miserable and causes us more debt than it is worth.

The budget dragon is no different than any other dragons that might be stalking the corridors of our life. Some of us have problems with weight loss, alcohol addiction, toy addiction, drug addiction, money management, relationships or whatever. If all of us are honest we can look in the mirror and recognize one or several of these dragons that need to be slain and put to rest once and for all.

The first thing I did was to stab the cable company dragon in the heart. I was able to reduce that bill by more than half. Do we have to have Digital Cable or is 99 channels enough? Do we have to have premium movie channels when all or most of the movies that they show have already been seen? The answer to those questions is absolutely not. I told the local cable company that all I want is the basic local channels which is approximately 11 of them. That took my cable bill from 58 bucks down to 11 bucks. The next thing that I did was to reduce my high speed Internet bill by removing the extra 2 mb of download speed which decreased it from 8mb download to 6 mb download.

The next budget dragon that I was able to maim our telephone bills. We got rid of Bellsouth almost 9 months ago and switched to Vonage. Bellsouth was costing us around 45.00 per month and with Vonage we were able to reduce it down to 15.00 bucks per month. That was 9 months ago. This week I will be getting rid of Vonage thanks to my being able to shave 40 percent off of my cell phone bill just by changing plans. We went from the more expensive unlimited plan to our family sharing 2500 minutes per month. From what we were told we only consume about 1500 minutes per month total between the four of us.

The next budget dragon was more difficult to slay and that is the transportation monster. Can you believe how much money it takes to drive the roadways in this day and age? First you have the payment on your vehicle which can run anywhere from 300.00 to 800.00 depending on what you drive but then on top of that you have to pay taxes on that vehicle if you live in SC , then there are insurance payments, gasoline and maintenance if it is an older vehicle. Gasoline alone can cost you and arm and a leg. I am happy to say that I was able to tame the gas pumps by beginning to ride Carta Express from N. Charleston to downtown every day vs having to drive and pay for the gasoline to do it. Just recently we purchased a new Dodge Durango. We went from having a 2003 Pontiac Grand Prix to the Durango because we thought we needed a bigger vehicle. The problem with our purchase is that the payments are twice as big. Not only that but the Durango costs more to fill up and the taxes at the end of the year are more too. While it is nice to drive this type of vehicle it was not the best decision we could have made. For now we are stuck with the vehicle until I can pay it down some and wait for the right moment to sell it.

The next budget dragon was the recurring Internet Subscription monster. That is the many little seemingly tiny and inconspicuous subscriptions for this service and that service that you can only get on the Internet. The problem with those is that all of these innocent little charges add up into one huge payment at the end of the month that can leave a surprise hole in your budget. It turns out that I was lucky recently because the credit card that all of these services had on file expired. Before I knew it I was getting that proverbial e-mail that said I needed to update my information online so that they could continue to empty my budget. The answer to that one is NO. No more charges for services that I would like to have because they are NEAT but are absolutely unnecessary.

The next dragon that will need to be maimed and eventually killed off is the eating out monster. How many of us LOVE to eat and like the convenience of just stopping by Atlanta Bread Company or Cracker Barrel for a quick meal. I know that Katy loves it when she does not have to cook or clean the kitchen after a hard days work. This dragon can slowly and surely drain your finances out of your account if you are not careful. Eating out is expensive and it also is not always the most nutritional way to eat either. We are learning to say no to eating out and eat at home more. Even with as expensive as food is these days it is still cheaper to feed your family at home than it is at a restaurant somewhere.

With time we are getting better at taming the budget monster and getting control of our financial future. This has been a long time in coming. Thanks to divorce, bankruptcy and several other unforeseen events in the life of our family our budget has taken a severe beating. There were days that I thought that there just was not any hope with regards to our finances or credit. Thanks to a dear friend of mine I learned that there is hope. Once I realized that I did have power over my finances and that I could take tiny baby steps towards a positive future then and only then was I able to change my mind and hearts attitude towards doing something vs not doing anything at all. The bottom line is this. Nothing happens over night. Credit ratings do not go down the tubes over night and they also do not get fixed over night. It takes several things to dig yourself out of a hole.

The first thing it takes is a change of heart and a positive attitude that things can get better. Ignoring the problem is the worst thing you can do. Ignoring bills and avoiding the issues only makes things much worse. The next thing that you have to do is develop a plan. Some people call it a budget and some people call it a spending plan. Whatever makes you happy call it whatever. The important thing is that you stay within your allotted funds for living and expenses. The next thing that has to happen is you have to make a commitment to be disciplined enough to do the right things. You have to set the plan in motion and follow it as closely as possible. Having a plan and not following it is like filling the car full of gasoline and then locking the keys in the trunk. Doing that gets you no where.

In closing I will say that it is never too late to start. Today is the day that you and /or your family can set an action plan in motion and work towards financial freedom. My friend told me that it took them almost 5 years to dig out of the hole that they were in because of bad spending habits and abusing credit. This friend has helped me to see that there is hope and a positive financial future on the horizon.