I’m sitting at Starbucks with my good friend Jimmy because we are having a blog party. Jimmy’s brain is always firing at 1,000 miles a minute and he periodically blogs at (Pick) My Brain about whatever thought stays in his head long enough for the words to flow out of his fingers.
Jimmy has recently embarked upon a quest to spend only $100 over a seven-day-span. He actually started his journey weeks ago, and has failed twice. The first week he failed miserably. The second, he missed by a few dollars. He’s in the middle of a third week and I’m rooting for him.
As soon as he accomplishes his feat, he will be guest posting here about his experiences; why he failed his first few tries and how he fixed it (if he ever does win).
While I think it’s great he’s playing a game to control his spending, I don’t think I could ever do it. You know why?
I summed this up pretty succiently on Budgets Are Sexy in a response to his post Spent $100 in 20 Minutes Yesterday.
The point of a budget is not to stop yourself from spending money; it’s to make sure the money you spend is worth it.
I can’t waste money on crap because there’s no room for crap in the budget. That means I only spend money on AWESOME. Okay, sometimes I mess up and make a bad purchase, but you get my point.
Today’s Thousandaire Question: Why do you (or don’t you) have a budget?
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
I don’t have a budget because I’m bad at following directions, even if they are given to me by me. And I hate failure. I track my spending, but lately that just means jotting down just how much I’m spending over my income. I think I will actually try a budget for the hardest month of all – December. Dun dun dun.
That sounds like a fantastic goal. And it’ll be a great head start on what sounds like a good goal for 2011.
The first year I was serious with my budget, I made it one of my yearly goals to update it every month.
I don’t have a budget because I’m independently wealthy. I could spend endless amounts of money and it would only be a drop in the bucket. I have a job simply to keep myself occupied. Therefore, I need no budget; what Kevin wants, Kevin gets.
Congratulations to you sir. Let me know if you ever decide you’d like to invest in a young entrepreneur. I’ve got ideas!
We have a budget but only record our purchases there at the end of every month. It’s mainly a way for us to make sure we aren’t going nuts in certain aspects of our lives (like restaurants). We only budget in what is important to us, so very little crap makes it through, lol. 🙂