ways and means

Learning to live with a budget isn't easy. Since the guilder changed to Euros, more and more people are feeling the bite and I am learning to look at money in a different light. When I was a single girl, I thought money was meant for spending. I admired my elder sister for her discipline in keeping a budget, but did I feel inclined to keep one? As long as I had a thousand pesos in my pocket, I felt I was rich, and didn't feel the need to start watching how I spent until that thousand shrunk down to a hundred pesos...but by then it was just a question of teaching my students, and earning the next thousand pesos. If you're a single girl, living at home, and you teach piano as a sideline to your other job, it's not really difficult to get by and still have lots of fun. It wasn't uncommon for me to go out on a shopping spree with girlfriends and end up blowing a couple of thousand on shoes.

Ah...those were the days. And talk about the new dress every week.

Forget that.

These days, I'm a stay at home mom. The Euro has turned budgetting and living within our means into a real adventure.

Forget about buying a new dress every week. Nice dresses cost close to a hundred euros over here, and shoes...well...let's not get started on shoes...and then, think about clothes for the kids, shoes for the kids, food, toys and the books we can't live without.

I have to laugh reading that. It sounds like I go around dressed in leaves and without shoes at all. Interesting budgetting idea, but not practical in this climate. Although hubby would probably go...woo-hoo.

When our bank statement came back for the nth time telling us that we were way over our limit, I decided it was time to do some deliberating on the budget. We couldn't keep on plundering our savings account just to fill up the gap (besides which there was nothing more left to plunder) and we didn't have any rich parents we could run to for a temporary loan. All we had was us, and God.

I decided to do a run through of my shopping list. This way, I would get an idea of what was essential, what were the things I usually bought, and what were the things we ended up not really eating or we ended up (horrors) throwing away.

My grocery list consists of:

1. basics (milk, bread, vegetables, fruit, some meat, rice and potatoes)
2. snacks (lemonade mix, healthy cookies)
3. baby things (diapers, wet ones, potted baby food for emergencies)

The first thing to go off the list was soft drinks. Before the budget, we used to buy about two bottles of family sized cola drinks, and juices in carton packs. Because of this connection, chips was also an inevitable part of the grocery list. Softdrinks meant buying chips. Hence, when I scrapped softdrinks off the list, chips got scrapped off there too.

But....but....but...

Wait! Softdrink and chip lovers mustn't go ballistic. Since getting rid of the soft drinks and the chips, I must admit I haven't gained weight. So, that's a plus :) Instead of drinking softdrinks, we drink tap water and lemonade. A cheaper alternative and quite healthy too.

The fun thing about this is that when we celebrate a party, we get to buy softdrinks and chips...and then, the softdrinks and chips are a real treat for us too.

That was my first cut in grocery spending. Not that we shot up from red into blue...but it was a start.

One of the things I had to struggle with as a migrant from a third world country was keeping up appearances. Ever heard of Hyacinth Bucket (er-um Bouquet)? She certainly beats the buck at keeping up appearances. What I love about that show is how it pokes fun at our materialistic tendencies and makes us see how ridiculous it really is to try and keep up with the Joneses or to try and be who and what you aren't.

The great thing about confessing my middleclassness and my struggle with the budget book is how it's made me feel free and released me from the need to apologize about not having say--softdrinks in house.

I simply say...well, we don't drink it, so we don't buy it.