means to an end?

one of my goals this month is to establish a realistic budget of outgoing expenses vs. incoming moolah.  i hate to admit that i have never in my life lived on a true budget; not when i was single and bringing in my own dough, and not since i've been married and living off someone's else's hard earned bacon.   i've never decided i could only spend x on clothes or x on groceries or x on eating out and then stuck to it and skimped when i went over. never.  i used to blame my upper middle class upbringing.  then my right brained-ness--putting something down on paper felt too scary and too structured-- but i think the real factor was that i was too lazy to take a serious look at my spending patterns  and too scared to get serious about being restrictive on my wants.   

money is stressful.  and, shocker,  i really think i agree with the bible, it is the root of all evil.  materialism, greed, keeping up with the jones'...it all boils down to what's in your bank account.  there is never enough since wants are insatiable and there is always so much good stuff to buy!  in my own marriage, i'd say that we conform to the statistics, money is the number 1 thing we fight about.   these few weeks spending so little have made me feel powerful and in control. it has made me see what i'm capable of resisting and how much better i can be at controlling my wants.  i mean nothing, NOTHING, i buy can equal the piece of mind i FEEL from doing right by my family's means.  

i think i mentioned before that we aren't into outrageous debt or anything but there are definite euphemistic "expenses"  that accrue interest in our world!  i am not a huge dave ramsey listener or subscriber, but i like his encouragement of never using credit cards.  cash, cash, cash! i know that when checks first came about people were suspicious of them.  it wasn't cold hard cash so it seemed fake.  but now, checks even seem credible!  i remember my mom meticulously recording every check into a little register log in her checkbook.  who does that with their debit cards?   

it seems strange that money could ever turn into anything else, but somehow we've turned it into credit. and credit, seems to be causing the lot of us a big problem.  credit isn't real because it doesn't always accurately reflect what we have and yet we don't seem to care and neither do the retailers. BUY NOW AND PAY LATER!  0% for 24 MONTHS...and on and on.  these offers, credit, set us up for an unhealthy relationship with our money.   i am working hard to revert back to a cash only system and i think the best tool i have to make that a reality is a true budget.  i've been exploring a free online program called pear budget that looks like a no-nonsense beginner's budgeting program.  i need something to make me accountable and something to make me manage my expenses.   i hope this is the ticket. i'll keep you posted on my experience.

and in the spirit of people being very accountable for their spending habits, i wanted to share one of my favorite artists and her very cool project.  kate bingaman-burt records her spending patterns in a cool blog called http://www.obsessiveconsumption.com/ 

she records what she's buys in simple but beautiful illustrations...originally she drew everything she bought but now she's too busy so she kind of cherry picks what she draws, but it is still amazing.  and, my favorite thing is that she draws word for word her credit card statements each and every month.  i find so much bravery in this because don't we all hate to get those statements each month, and i would never want to read each and every word on them, but kate does it and recreates them in her own one-off style.  i also respect the openness it takes to share your debt and what you spend money on or how much money you have.  i know in my own family these subjects feel pretty much taboo so i admire kate's willingness to turn the specifics into public art to be scrutinized and admired.  if you have a second, i'd really recommend looking at kate's flicker page and all her drawings and statements posted there. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateconsumption/sets/1520842/    

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateconsumption/sets/72157603933005907/

she's amazing and the project is super inspiring.  enjoy!  

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