I have
two weakness – food and money. Okay, you can make this three if you add in
house cleaning.
In
these three areas, I just don’t give a shit. More accurately, I don’t give
enough of a shit to limit myself. I try to eat healthy, stick to a certain
number of meals and snacks a day, plan my daily food intake. But I lose interest after
a few days (sometimes weeks if I’m really pushing myself).
I spend money
without much regard to whether I can actually afford the stuff I’m buying. I
take friends for breakfast, I buy clothes for my two favourite kids, I stock my
house with fruit and veg that end up in the bin because they go off before I feel
like eating them.
And I’m just not concerned with living in a mess most of the
time. However, I am trying to force myself take more pride in my little shoebox
– washing dishes daily and putting away the things that clutter the counter.
I’ve
tried budgeting before – listing out all of my expenses to see how much money I
have left over for things like groceries and coffee with friends. But I’ve
never been able to stick to it. I always forget about money I’ve spent, or
overestimate how much I’ve got available for a certain activity. I’m also
really bad when it comes to spending money on other people – I have gotten into
a fair bit of debt over the years spending money I shouldn’t during a crisis
or holiday.
This
morning I looked at my salary from different angle. It’s been over a decade
since I last earned a weekly wage, so I don’t usually budget weekly anymore. But
today, after my salary was paid, I added the amount to my spreadsheet of expenses,
took the leftover R1,400 and divided it up into four weekly wages. I was
shocked at what I saw.
Essentially
I have to find a way to live on R50 a day. Eek. Petrol doesn’t count, it has its
own budget, which is quite tight and will require some serious management.
Let
me give you a little look into my current situation. I am living alone, on a single income. I have a small bond and I'm paying off a car. Both the townhouse and car are insured. I have medical aid. I pay for a cleaner to come and
put my house in order twice a month. I have a pet parrot. But I also have two
credit cards (both currently maxed) and two store cards (both with decent
available credit). And then there the ridiculous overdraft and a personal loan
from living beyond my means for the last 10 years. Despite all this, banks are
jumping at the chance to give me more credit and the telesales people are
offended when I tell them that I’m not interested in getting into more debt.
So
I’m not surprised at my current situation, but I’m not happy about it either. Part
of the problem is that, being single and living alone, I am not financially accountable
to anyone else. There’s no one asking me why I bought a new book when I don’t
have the money. No one to question where the new DVD came from, or how I could
pay someone to paint my nails when I have to service so much debt each month. It’s
easy to forget that I don’t have money for a Seattle grande cappuccino when I’m
putting in petrol, or extend my overdraft when I discover that I have no more
money for petrol.
I
keep saying that when I get a better job, I’ll be able to get the situation
under control, but the reality is that unless I change my spending habits, even
a new job with a better salary isn’t going to help. While I don’t relish the
idea of living on R50 a day, I know it’s possible. Heck, I know someone who fed
a family of four on this amount a few years ago.
A friend
is in a similar situation. She doesn’t have debt, but her salary doesn’t allow
for much discretionary spending. So we’ve decided to be each other’s
accountability partner to see if that will help us manage our money better.
The
idea is that we’ll sit down once a week and go through the money we’ve spent to
see if we were able to stick to our weekly budgets. If we went over budget, we’ll
need to explain why and where the money will come from to cover it.
My
hope is that having to justify a giant cup of coffee will make me think twice
about buying it.
Having never done something like this before, neither of us is
sure it’ll work, or whether we’ll become offended by someone making us explain
how we spend our money. But it’s certainly worth a try.
Aside
from petrol, I’m moving away from the culture of card swiping and going back to
cash. I’ll draw R350 a week and once that’s gone, that’s it until next week. I’ll
be scouring newspapers for grocery specials and adding up the shopping basket
as I put things in.
It’s
going to be tough, but the end result will be completely worthwhile. I’ll let
you know how it goes.
