Hubby Really Does
“Wow. Those growing kids must be draining your budget.”
Large Family Mama confession: I rarely shop at thrift stores. They are too expensive.
For all of the fans of a certain financial guru, I am going to say something very controversial. We use credit cards for almost everything, and it benefits our family’s budget. I just bought nearly $400 worth of brand name clothing for $3.09 because our credit card had earned over $300 in rewards in one month. How is that possible? We play the game. We pay all of our bills through this particular high-yield card for the sole purpose of nearly eliminating our clothing line in our budget.
Speaking of the B word, this ONLY works because we, mainly Hubby, is so disciplined in maintaining our finances. His favorite and most recommended tool is the budgeting software You Need A Budget (YNAB). It is a dynamic tool that allows you to manage every part of your finances in a way that can give you control over your resources and make them work FOR you. You can use it as a digital envelope system where you can categorize purchases in real time, and it imports digital information so that you can keep all of those online purchases organized as well.
On a recent podcast I heard a couple explaining their strong-held philosophy against credit cards, and the husband made the statement that if you tell him that you pay off your credit cards every month you are lying. We are not lying. Again, we are able to use credit cards to our advantage because of the detailed, disciplined budget that Hubby pours over, especially when he needs to “de-stress”. Don’t worry. I don’t get that either. Haha
So what is in our YNAB budget? Everything. It’s very detailed, but also vague enough to meet our needs. We separate big box store purchases into grocery and household. Grocery is everything we can eat. Household is basically everything else that we use on a daily basis i.e. toilet paper, shampoo, bedding etc… Other categories include pet stuff, books, curriculum, field trips, enrichment activities, vacation, insurance, automobile maintenance, entertainment etc….
We then use that knowledge to make plans with the resources we have been blessed with using their “Savings Goals” tools. When you know where your money is going, you can make plans to make it work for you.
So, if you are intrigued and want to learn more about this budgeting tool that has transformed our family’s finances, you can use our referral link and and demo it for a month… and if you sign up, you get a free month, and we get a free month too!
