Is your budget a budget of necessity or a budget of convenience?
With a budget of necessity, you are down to what you need. You may be paying off debt. You may be adding to your savings. You aren’t buying extras such a dinner out or hitting up a sale to look for new shoes for sure. You will be looking for sales for your basic needs such as food items, laundry soap, and pet food. You may even check out online resources to find the cheapest gas for your car in your area. A budget of necessity is often seen as a not fun budget and what most people think of when they hear the word budget.
A budget of convenience is one where you keep track of what you spend but you weigh your options … constantly! In a budget of convenience, you will admit that you need room in your budget. You may buy the Amazon Prime membership so you can get the free two day shipping. Or you might shop more at Walmart because you can buy your groceries, craft supplies, and clothes at the same places. Sure you won’t get the same sales as the supermarket but you are saving time. You might use discount voucher codes to buy your kids new shoes because it easier to have that cover shipping than to drag three kids to the store with you. But you do all of this while watching your bottome line.
We find ourselves in a situation of have a budget that fits both categories. We have cut our budget down to what we call the “basics plus”. We have had to weigh options such as is it cheaper to get trash pick up or to pay per bag at the county trash service. (As a note, the cost was within a few dollars plus there was the add gas costs to take our own bags so we get trash picked up.) We also still have our satellite service because the tv programs we get our one source of entertainment. We don’t go out the movies and hardly ever rent a movie. We did decide that the Netflix subscription could go when the price continued to go up and our time to watch the movies we got was less and less. So those decisions are there for us each month. The debate on if we upgraded to iPhones or not could be a whole budget post on its own for sure! The fact that we have cut our budget down to the “basic plus” level means that I can just hop online and order Matthew shoes with free shipping instead of dragging the kids to the store though. That is a big deal to me right now.
What type of budget do you have? Leave us a comment and let us know!
I would say we are at the “basic plus”. We have lived in the budget of necessity for quite a few years and this feels a little better.
I don’t really have a budget. I pay the necessities first and then whats left.