We Don’t Have a Budget (and Why I’m Okay with That!)

January 24, 2013

“Have a written budget, and stick to it.”

You have probably read this advice at least a hundred times. I have. It is good financial advice. If you have a budget, that’s wonderful. Stick to it and enjoy it!

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We don’t have a budget and never have had one.

That used to really bug me.

I’ve always been the nerdy-type when it comes to money. I love excel spreadsheets and knowing exactly how much money we have in the bank, down to the last penny.

Joshua is not a money-nerd. If we have money to tithe faithfully, save for our goals, and take care of our needs (and many wants!), it doesn’t bother him if we have $3.58 less left over this month than last month.

Over the course of our marriage, I’ve come to realize a few things about budgets.

Budgets are never once commanded (or even mentioned) in Scripture. The Bible has a lot to say about money. It is full of warnings against the pitfalls of greed, about the dangers of wantonness, about the need to cheerfully give and diligently provide. Not a single verse anywhere says that faithful Christians must have a written budget.

You can have a solid marriage, financially, without a budget. An author I admire once wrote (I paraphrase), “If you don’t have a budget, and your spouse refuses to make one with you, you have serious marital problems.” I’ve thought about this a lot, but think she’s wrong (at least about many marriages.) Budgeting is not a requirement of a good husband or wife. If I were to insist on having a written budget, I would almost certainly be the one writing it and policing it. I would basically be telling my husband when and how he could spend the money he earns. In my opinion, that would be detrimental to our marriage. (After all, when we married I promised to trust him, and he’s never once proved unfaithful in how he handles money.)

You can faithfully use money, without having a budget. Money has a purpose. Each of the purposes of money can be fulfilled without a budget. When you get a paycheck, you can set aside money for tithe/giving, pay your bills and put money into savings for future needs, and enjoy the leftovers with a grateful heart. All without having a budget.

If you have a budget or are thinking about making a budget (and your husband likes the idea!) that’s wonderful. Budgeting often makes it easier to faithfully use money.

But I’ve talked to moms who are discouraged because they don’t have a budget. Sometimes, budgets get pushed so hard these days that it’s easy to get the idea that “budgeting is next to godliness.”

It isn’t.

Budgeting may be a good and wise thing for your marriage. It might not. And that’s perfectly okay.

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Feminine Adventures

Jenn and I would love to have you join us for our weekly Thrifty Thursday Link Up! Posts about living frugally, thrifty tips and tricks, money-saving DIY projects and gardening, frugal recipes, and encouraging posts on financial stewardship are all welcome. Link up to either of our blogs–your post will be displayed in both places.

We’d be very grateful if you’d share only thrifty-themed posts. (Read full guidelines here.) Grab the button or give us a text link back, so others can join in on the fun!

We’re now sharing some of our favorites each week over on our Thrifty Thursday Pinterest board!


Linked up at Thriving Thursdays and Walking Redeemed

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10 Ways to Encourage Healthier Eating

November 20, 2012

A love for healthy whole foods is a great blessing we can give our children. But like so much in life, developing a love for good foods is  learned.

I wrote this list with my munchkins in mind, but I have a confession to make. My children have actually helped me be a better eater. Their willingness to try new foods has challenged me. Before I had children, I didn’t like olives, dark chocolate, seven grain cereal and many other foods. They love these foods and I’ve finally developed a taste for them.

We’re still learning, but here are some things that have helped my children (and, ahem, me!) be better eaters.

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10 Ways to Encourage Healthier Eating

  1. Apply the Green Eggs & Ham Rule– don’t say you don’t like a new food unless you’ve tried it. Obvious, I know. But it’s amazing how many times I’ve heard a child vehemently declare they don’t like a food… only to have them love it once they’ve tried it. Try new foods with an open mind (unless, of course, they’re dyed with half a cup of green food coloring!)
  2. Offer Healthy Foods When They’re Hungry- There’s nothing quite like hunger to make a food taste good. Feed salads and vegetables first at meals. It is the easiest way to help kids learn to love them. If your kids complain about being hungry mid-afternoon, offer them healthy choices, not junk food. If they’re really hungry, they’ll learn to appreciate them. (Here are 11 of my favorite healthy snacks.)
  3. Keep trying– If your first attempt at trying to get your kids to eat homemade yogurt is disastrous, next time make it into a parfait or blend it into a fruit smoothy. Once you’ve found something they like, talk about it. The goal isn’t just to sneak healthy foods into the diet. The goal is to encourage them to consciously appreciate good foods.
  4. Buy vegetables and fruits in season- if all they’ve tried is a mealy tomato picked green that’s been sitting for weeks before it gets to your grocery cart, it’s not much of a surprise if they don’t like tomatoes. Buy ripe food or, better yet, grow it yourself with the children (if you don’t have a brown thumb!) It’s much easier to develop a taste for ripe, fresh food! Plus, food in season is generally cheapest anyway!
  5. Make the Servings Small-it’s much better (waste-wise and psychologically)  to have your child ask for more than to force them to finish food* they don’t like or have to throw it away. Serve a bite or two at first. If they don’t like it, you can drop it or try again later. If they love it, yay! Give them seconds.
  6. Incorporate Their (Healthy) Favorites - Everyone’s tastebuds are different. Rose absolutely loves seven grain cereal and oatmeal. Will downs bowl after bowl of honey-sweetened homemade yogurt. Meg eats more eggs than me. All three are good choices, so I serve them regularly for breakfast. (Here are a few other of our favorite healthy breakfasts.)
  7. Learn to Love Flavor, Not Just Sugar/Salt- Creation is full of so many flavors. Sadly though, flavor tends to be masked by loads of sugar (or salt). Gradually cut back on the sweeteners in recipes and focus on appreciating the flavor. Get to the point where you add just enough to enhance the flavor of a dish, not drown it.
  8. Discuss the Health Benefits- talking about why something is good for you and what exactly it helps your body do, not only helps educate your child, but encourages them to take an active part in choosing healthy foods. When I taught Rose, then four, about the importance of protein, she asked “is this good protein” about practically everything, and regularly requested foods that were “good protein.”
  9. Model Gratitude- maybe your grocery budget doesn’t allow you to buy all the foods you want. Maybe the selection where you live isn’t great. If there’s food on the table, that’s cause for gratitude! 
  10. Don’t be Too Strict- When Rose asked “are cookies good protein?” I had to share the sad truth that they don’t have much protein and aren’t really good for us. Her face fell. But, food and taste have been given to us by a good God. We ate the cookies anyway and celebrated His goodness to us.

*To force your child to finish his food, or not? The debate rages. Since sometimes the first sign of a food allergy is a child refusing to eat it, I’ve become more sensitive when my generally-good-eater children don’t want to finish.

 How to you encourage your children to be good eaters? 

Linked up at Living Green, Healthy 2Day, Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, Works for Me, Encourage One Another, Natural Living, & Simple Lives

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House Hunting Adventure, Part 1

July 6, 2012

After an adventurous trip, the munchkins and I made it safely to my parents home to start our house hunt. Let the real fun begin!

When Joshua and I first started talking about buying a home instead of renting (since rental properties are so expensive back home!) we made a list of requirements. Our new home had to have

  • room for four chairs around a kitchen table
  • more than three feet of counter space
  • a hook-up for a dryer inside, preferably not in the kitchen
  • a shower without a window in it

Surprisingly enough, 99% of homes listed online met every single one of those requirements. So, we started to be more picky and tacked things like move-in-ready and space for an office onto our list. We spent hours looking at pictures, maps and descriptions of houses for sale. I left home armed with a list of houses to look at.

We arrived Wednesday evening and I was ready to start looking first thing Thursday morning. The morning dragged by as we waited for our appointment with the realtor. Finally it was time. My mom, sister and sister-in-law came with me to help look (and make it much more fun.)

We pulled up at the first home only to discover a “Sold” sign in the front yard.

The next home was on the corner of a very busy street. I quickly added not-on-a-busy-street-corner to our list of requirements. Based on that, our realtor was able to eliminate two or three more houses from our list.

I was really excited about the next home. The pictures looked so promising. We pulled onto the street and my heart sank. The driveway was perfect for a sledding hill, but we didn’t even dare pull the car into it. Another strike.

What about the next house? It wasn’t built yet. Not exactly sure where they came up with the pretty pictures posted online.

I was beginning to get nervous. We were plowing through our list of possibilities at an alarming rate. So far none of the homes we’d looked at were even remote possibilities. “God, please guide our steps!” I pleaded.

Then we decided to go look at a home we’d driven past. The pictures online were not very flattering, but it couldn’t get much worse than the houses we’d already looked at!

I stepped through the front door. It just felt like home.

A beautiful hardwood floor entryway led into a pefectly laid out home. The kitchen, dining area and living room opened into each other nicely without feeling like just one big room. Off to the side was a small carpeted “formal dining” room that would serve as the perfect schoolroom. (Not a requirement, but certainly a dream!) The bedrooms weren’t huge but, unlike many homes we’d looked at, all on the same floor. (Traipsing up a flight of stairs at 3 a.m. just doesn’t sound fun to me.)

I was ready to put an offer in right then.

However, since this was the only house that even would work, I thought maybe I was just jumping at the chance to sign papers and get back home. So, we decided to look at a few more homes on Friday before rushing to a decision.

We eliminated the home with the dead bird, the cheaply remodeled flipped home, and a way over-priced cookie-cutter home. That left two decent possibilites, but I kept comparing everything to the home we’d looked at the day before.

Joshua and I talked it over and were pretty confident that “that was it.” After dinner, my father-in-law was going to come do an informal inspection and (assuming all looked good) we’d make an offer.

Thrilled to my toes, I got back to my parent’s home happy, but exhausted.

Then the phone rang.

(to be continued) 

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The Power of the Tongue

May 9, 2012
Bad attitudes tend to rub off. Easily.

The other day, a friend told me about how one of her daughters had mocked something her little sister loved to do. Immediately, the little sister’s attitude started to change. She began to question the activity. Soon she decided she didn’t like it either.

Thankfully, her mother was wise and was able to see the problem and correct the attitudes.

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Sadly, it’s not just kids that struggle with defiling attitudes.

Often we adults are more subtle, but in our day and age it’s socially acceptable (and sometimes even “cool”) to complain about school or work or kids. Other times our attitudes take the form of “prayer requests” or “just being honest.”

Granted, there is a time for unburdening our hearts and letting a friend help us carry our load. There is a time to ask for honest help. There is a time to express real grievances.

However, we must be so careful to set a guard over our lips, because our words can defile. The tongue can be a “deadly poison.” Bad attitudes toward work or family rub off and poison our children, our husband, our friends, and our church.

Thankfully, the flip side is equally true.

Instead of a poison, “a wholesome tongue is a tree of life.” (Prov 15:4) Many times a friend’s joyful words have breathed fresh life into my day. The mess of mommyhood instantly seems less overwhelming when a friend happily asks, “Isn’t it just amazing that we’ve been entrusted with little souls to nurture and raise?!”

Our words hold great power.

With David may we pray, ” Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.”

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Think Like Great-Grandma (Thrifty Thursday)

May 3, 2012

Yesterday morning, when I went to “fluff up” a few line-dried clothes, the dryer made a weird whining sound and refused to turn on.

We bought our dryer used almost six years ago and we’ve had it on our covered back porch for nearly four. It wasn’t terribly shocking that it decided to give us troubles. Immediately I began to wonder if we could make it until our move to purchase a replacement.

I like hanging out clothes and generally hang out the big stuff anyway. I’m sure we could manage, I thought, besides, there’s a laundromat right down the road if we really need a dryer. 

Then I laughed. Here I was mentally trying to calculate if we could survive a few months without a dryer, when my great-grandma didn’t even own one.


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Modern conveniences, from indoor ovens to boxed pasta, are wonderful. They free up thousands of hours each year and make our task as homemakers way simpler.

Some modern inventions (like refrigerators) are practically a necessity. Sometimes though, we come to view a convenience as a necessity. 

Though I have no desire or intention of giving up my oven or washing machine, part of learning to live frugally is learning to “think like great-grandma would” when the need arises.

Maybe we’ll find that we can live without a microwave or dryer after all. Or we might discover that we like homemade nursing pads much better than disposable.

Have you lived without a normal modern convenience? How did you do it? Do you prefer “grandma’s way” over the modern? 

 

Feminine Adventures

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And now, join Jenn (from The Purposeful Mom) and me for our weekly Thrifty Thursday Blog Hop!

Posts about living frugally, thrifty tips and tricks, money-saving DIY projects and gardening, frugal recipes, and encouraging posts on financial stewardship are all welcome. Link up to either of our blogs–your post will be displayed in both places.

We’d be very grateful if you’d share only thrifty-themed posts. (Read full guidelines here)

 Linked up at Homemaking Link Up, Handful of Heart and Motivation Monday. 

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