“Why only budget $250 for a month, that’s crazy!”

Let me first begin with my motivation for this month’s budget challenge.

I suck at budgeting

This could be due to a lot of reasons but mostly because I am simply not a planner. Planning involves foresight, scheduling and attention to detail, all things I’m not naturally astute at (unless you look on my resume). I’m more of a spontaneous, adventurous kind of guy. I plan what I have to (the big stuff usually) but the rest I’m completely content leaving to chance. Most of the time this is great recipe for fun and entertainment, unfortunately it’s always a terrible recipe for a strict budget.

I’m not saying I can’t plan, schedule or pay attention to details, I’m just saying it doesn’t come naturally to me.

I also have a tendency to over spend on frivolous things. Beer, eating out, more beer, more eating out. Then I check my monthly budget and Oh man I spent $600 on beer and eating out! Even when I grocery shop I have a hard time ‘buying what’s on sale.’ I’m usually buying what I want when I want it. Sure I ‘look for the deals’ when I’m at the grocery store but does anyone my age actually check the flyers to see what’s a ‘good deal’ that week and buy their groceries strategically?

I thought this challenge would be a real test to see if I could buckle down and overcome my nature tendencies and shortcomings to really commit to a budget.

Get out of debt

No matter what anyone tells you, good debt, bad debt, whatever, the reality is, debt sucks! It sucks being handcuffed to a mountain of debt and no matter what you do you’re always handicapped by it. “You can’t spend money on fun things, you’re trying to pay off debt.” “You can’t go on a trip, you’re trying to pay off debt.” “You can’t start a business training monkeys to build toys for other less fortunate animals and then sell the toys to pay for the cost of owning monkeys, you’re trying to pay off debt.”

I’m tired of being held back from the things I want to be doing with my life. I want to be debt free!

Social Imbalance

When thinking about this goal it occurred to me that there are a lot of people who probably have to live off of this amount of money (or less) every month. This is something that really bothers me at a core level. I mean I have a hard enough time living okay on my income, I couldn’t imagine having an income of less than $1000 a month and trying to survive. The disables, the elderly, the unemployable – how do they get by on so little without falling further and further into debt?

My friend Russ is a Community Case Worker for Interior Health. I was telling him recently about my budget challenge and his eyes lit up. “Do you know how much a person on disability gets from the government per month? $970. Do you know what the average even low income rental is in the Thompson Okanagan? $700. You are basically living off of what an average person on disability has to live on per month. Now imagine how hard it would be for someone without all the resources you have, all your connections and hookups. And you wonder why it’s so hard to escape the system and why so many people fall into drugs, crime or living on the streets.”

This really shook me. Coming from someone who know’s how hard it is and sees the struggles of people living like this everyday. I didn’t want to just do a tough budget goal anymore, I wanted to create a social spotlight on those less fortunate that have to live this life everyday.

If they can do it, than I have no excuses.

I’m excited to explore all of these challenges over the next month and I hope it’ll be a fulfilling and enlightening journey.