Absence makes the heart grow...fungus? No wait...fonder!
The end of this week of January caught up with me - working on scheduling a dance-a-thon for the kids school (I took on the roll of school council chair because volunteering is awesome and this community would actually have me!), re-establishing order in our house post-holidays, sending the eldest off to her first two night camp with her Guides unit, creating a new resume and CV for the new year - there's a job with the city that has caught my eye. I am still very much engaged in the 34 Day Challenge on offer from YNAB, as I get the emails daily regarding what we are to reflect on each day. I am just going to write about Days 10,11 and 12 in this one journal entry :)
This journal is my new habit and I have written previously about the controversy regarding establishing new habits (TLDR: 21 days is a lie!). Though I'd like to write every day realistically it won't happen because of creating a balance of time and priorities. I feel no guilt about that. My journal is important to me, but so is making sure my family is cared for, that my home is looked after, that the dog is healthy and so on. I am crafting this habit and it is coming along.
The part of Day 10's topic I wanted to spend some time on is the daily budget routine. Establishing that made a big difference for me. My husband and I chose not to use automatically imported transactions in our budget so when we first started using it as a budgeting system, daily entries in YNAB were eye-opening. Patterns could be seen and truths. Where we thought we weren't very good or wasteful with money, we found we weren't so bad and vice versa. As were were getting started it was usually at the end of the day that we'd make sure we'd entered any spending of the day (no lie - cash was and is still the trickiest to maintain an accurate accounting off), make sure our accounts reconciled correctly, to talk about any large transactions, and to be honest with our finances. We faced an overly-cautious nature when it came to saving and the big trigger money was for anxiety. Creating the daily habit diffused the emotions we felt around finances and created neutral ground - no one felt attacked, no one felt wrong, the facts and numbers were there to be seen and analyzed by us both. As our knowledge of budgeting, spending and saving grew, finances evolved from a worrisome burden we were both coming at from different directions to an enjoyable cooperative operation in our relationship. We were able to tackle larger challenges of budgeting - which moves me along to Day 11.
The part of Day 10's topic I wanted to spend some time on is the daily budget routine. Establishing that made a big difference for me. My husband and I chose not to use automatically imported transactions in our budget so when we first started using it as a budgeting system, daily entries in YNAB were eye-opening. Patterns could be seen and truths. Where we thought we weren't very good or wasteful with money, we found we weren't so bad and vice versa. As were were getting started it was usually at the end of the day that we'd make sure we'd entered any spending of the day (no lie - cash was and is still the trickiest to maintain an accurate accounting off), make sure our accounts reconciled correctly, to talk about any large transactions, and to be honest with our finances. We faced an overly-cautious nature when it came to saving and the big trigger money was for anxiety. Creating the daily habit diffused the emotions we felt around finances and created neutral ground - no one felt attacked, no one felt wrong, the facts and numbers were there to be seen and analyzed by us both. As our knowledge of budgeting, spending and saving grew, finances evolved from a worrisome burden we were both coming at from different directions to an enjoyable cooperative operation in our relationship. We were able to tackle larger challenges of budgeting - which moves me along to Day 11.
One of the buzzwords that comes up with YNAB is a Wish Farm. I kind of love it. It's sounds magical, encourages dreaming and setting goals. Our first Wish Farm "harvest" was a fully funded month long trip to Wales - land of my father.
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| Overlooking Tremadog Bay and Snowdonia National Park - Harlech, Wales (my own photo) |
We planted, watered, grew and harvested a cool dream and opened the world of travel to our kids. Travel is a big focus of our Wish Farm. Last year I built up enough funds selling second-hand children items and vintage treasures to fund a solo trip to New York City, to meet a best friend and have time together free of family-management obligations (the subject of the worth of a stay-at-home parent is a huge one deserving of it's own post all together!). Oh, I love New York City, and would go back in a heartbeat. The whole trip was a feast for my heart, soul and stomach :) Plus I got to make sure the Stephen A. Schwarzman building of the NY public library was ghost free, a lifelong dream for me! 👻
Something that will keep me focused and is something I missed out on when I was new to YNAB in 2017 is their weekly round-up emails. Australia is a big goal (I'm in the process reassessing all our savings goals for the year to make sure I'm on target for the 2019 YNAB Savings Challenge too). Stories of success, strategies for savings and ways to budget to your goals will be motivating.
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