Getting your first numbers to balance
Okay. You've got your fixed bills written down, you've got your changing bills estimated with the round-up trick, and you've got your income rounded down sitting at the top of the page. Tonight's the part where we actually see if it works. Where the top number and the bottom number get compared and we find out the truth.
Here's how you do it, step by step, at your own kitchen table, with your own numbers. Not a made-up example. Yours.
Step one: add up every bill you've written down. All of it. Fixed bills, the changing ones, the estimates you rounded up. Get one total. Write it at the bottom of the page and circle it.
Step two: write your rounded-down income at the top, and subtract. Income minus bills. Whatever's left over, that's your number. That's the whole exercise tonight, really — one subtraction problem — but I want you to sit with what that number is telling you, because it's telling you something true whether you like it or not.
If the number's positive, good, we'll talk next time about what to do with it, because leftover money without a job to do is money that evaporates, I promise you that.
If the number's negative, oh my heck, okay, breathe. This is not a failure. This is the whole reason we're doing this exercise instead of just guessing and hoping. A negative number on a legal pad in October is a lot easier to deal with than a negative number in your checking account in October. You found it early. That's the win. Put it in the plus column even though the number itself is in the minus column, if that makes sense.
Step three: if it's negative, don't panic-cut everything at once. I've seen people try to slash every category the same night they see a bad number, and they burn out on the whole system in about four days because they made it too painful too fast. Instead, look at your changing bills first — groceries, eating out, the stuff that flexes — because those are the categories where a little discipline goes the farthest the fastest. We'll get into cash envelopes for those specifically in a later lesson, but tonight, just circle the categories that have the most room to move.
Now. I want to tell you about a woman I helped, years back, in my old ward.
She was younger, just starting out, and she was scared of money in the way a lot of people are scared of money — not because she was bad with it, but because nobody had ever sat down and shown her how the pieces fit together. So I did what I do. I sat with her two afternoons in a row, went through her real numbers, built the whole thing out on paper with her, helped her see where it balanced and where it didn't. She nodded along. She asked good questions. I left feeling like it had gone well.
Months later I found out she never opened the notebook again after that second afternoon.
I didn't say anything to her about it. I still think about it, though, more than I probably should. Because here's what I learned from it, and I want you to hear this part clearly: the balancing isn't a one-time event. It's not a thing I do to your numbers and then you're fixed. It's a thing you do with your numbers, every month, by yourself, at your own table, until it's just how you live. I can show you the steps. I can even do the arithmetic with you the first time. But the notebook only works if you're the one opening it in November, and December, and the January after that.
So tonight, when you get your number — positive or negative — I want you to actually write it down in your own hand. Not because I'm precious about handwriting, though I am a little, but because writing it yourself is what makes it stick as your number instead of something I told you.
One more thing while we're here, because I said I'd tell you when opinions came up: a budget with zero room for anything fun in it is not going to survive contact with real life. If your number balances right down to the dollar with nothing left for the small stuff, that's not a tight budget, that's a budget that's about to break the first time somebody wants a burger and fry sauce on a Friday night. We'll build that in on purpose later. For now, just notice if you've squeezed out every bit of joy to make the math work, because that's a sign the categories above it need another look, not that you're virtuous.
Before next time, do the subtraction. Just the one. Bring me your number, whatever it is, and don't smooth it over before you get here...