There are times, more often than I would like to admit, when R and I overspend our budget.  We will use more grocery money than we have in the budget, and carry a deficit over to the new month.  I hate doing this.  It’s not so much about our failure to stick to our committed grocery costs.  And it’s not as if we are unable to cover the cost from another section of the budget.  My qualm is that we keep doing it! 

When we first began keeping a joint budget, we carefully reviewed our spending habits from the months before.  We came up with monthly averages for groceries, entertainment, utilities, etc.  We compared summer costs with winter costs.  And we budgeted accordingly.  For the most part, I think it works out well.  But when we spend $50 more from our grocery budget than we actually have, we end up with $50 less the next month.  The problem with this is, of course, that we still end up spending our full grocery budget, carrying the $50 deficit into another new month!  We can’t seem to spend less than the full amount of the grocery budget.  This will happen until we overspend again, and then we’re carrying a $75 deficit.  And on and on it goes. 

As you would expect, this brings me great frustration.  R and I have had many a battle over this issue.  We would both agree to spend only what we budgeted for groceries, or entertainment, or whatever else.  If we didn’t have it, we said, we wouldn’t spend it.  I’ll tell ya, that’s a whole lot easier than it sounds.  At the grocery store, to pick up the one last thing our grocery budget can accommodate, R wants to grab a bag of coffee.  The money’s not there, I’ll say.  But we need this, he’ll counter.  We’ll get it next month, I’ll insist.  His next move: “And be cranky every morning until then?”  Checkmate.  So we get the coffee.  And the chips.  Salsa too, because what are chips without salsa?  Then I find myself at the end of the month, staring at a $50 deficit in our grocery budget.  How does this keep happening?

June began, and I was again lamenting our pathetic inability to live within our budget.  It is quite funny, I think, because we always have the money.  We’re not whipping out the plastic every time we want another cocktail.  But it drives me up the wall to spend the money that is designated elsewhere.  R patiently listened to my tirade about the budget, and how can we ever expect to get ahead financially if we can’t even stick to our grocery budget?  He calmly suggested we “do the cash thing.” 

We would withdraw the funds from our grocery, entertainment, yard/household, movies and liquor budgets, separate them into envelopes, and store them in the safe.  That way, we would need to get the cash before using it, which would help us to plan for what we needed.  And when it was gone – well, it was gone.

I should explain my resistance to the cash budget, and provide some insight about why we had not been doing this before.  If I have cash in my wallet, I spend it.  Period.  There is no accountability for me; I can’t log on to my checking account and see exactly where my money was spent, and how much of it.  It works for a lot of people – I just didn’t think that I would be one of them. 

So here we are in July.  And I have to say, it worked pretty well for us!  We did use our debit card on a couple of occasions, but not because we didn’t have enough in cash.  It was because we are not yet in the habit of visiting the safe before we go out.  But we stuck to our budgeted amounts, and for that, I feel very proud.  We’ll try it again in July, and see what happens as August begins. 

I just hope we don’t run out of coffee.