Money can be a great thing to have, and a terrible thing to be without. I’ve known people who are great at managing it even when barely making ends meet, and people who struggle financially even though they’re making six figures. Today’s post about having an austerity month is definitely more for the latter group–so if you’re struggling just to pay the bills, take a breath, and just take whatever you can out of this.

There have been multiple articles on how money doesn’t really buy happiness, at least once you get past a certain point. A 2010 article from Time indicated that your day-to-day happiness doesn’t increase once you make more than $75,000. A more recent article from Money magazine (which references the previous one) looked internationally, and found that it took up to $95,000 for those of us in North America to be happy, or $105,000 if you include long-term goals and other metrics.

Getting Personal

For us, the idea that we’re able to go out and buy a superyacht or a mansion to live in is ridiculous. Our bank accounts are far below that threshold. We are at a place, however, where we can fulfill our needs and quite a few of our wants. The trick is in those “wants”, though–it’s very easy to spend a lot of money on new toys (my weak spot), caffeine-based drinks (the wife’s), or myriad other things that you believe will bring more happiness into your life but really don’t.

RECENT PROJECT

This week’s project was Fudgy Chocolate Brownies from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book.  First off, I only got this cookbook recently as a late birthday present (thanks, Mom and Dad!).  Flipping through it, I love that it has not only the what to do to bake something, but pointers like why the recipe works well and how to perform different techniques.  So fun stuff, and I don’t even get paid to say that since I have no connection to Cook’s Illustrated whatsoever.

OK, back to the project–technically, it’s the Fudgy Triple-Chocolate Brownies (under the “Fudgy Chocolate Brownies” heading) that I made.  Why?  Well, I hadn’t had or made brownies for a while and they just sounded good.  I mean, who doesn’t like brownies?  So in went the bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa powder (plus some other non-chocolate ingredients) and out came a batch of brownies, as you can see from this top view.

Those three holes at the top are from the cake tester, and not some weird chocolate-burrowing insect.  I couldn’t quite determine the fine line between “nice and fudgy” and “overdone”, so I tested a couple times and added on a few minutes of baking.  The brownies came out, well, fudgy and chocolaty just like the recipe’s name implies.  The use of bittersweet chocolate provides that bit of bite that is both different and enjoyable.  Here’s the head-on view after coming out of the oven:

One thing that annoyed me was that my brownie, after cooling, had all these lines and crinkles along the top, rather than being perfectly smooth.  The cookbook’s picture certainly hadn’t been that way when I glanced at it, and then I checked again:  Between how they cut the brownie and where they focused the camera, their brownie didn’t LOOK like it had the same top features that mine did, but closer inspection revealed that, sure enough, they were there in the picture too.  Ego not as deflated as before?  Check.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

This post is a little more personal than my previous post about why the wife and I budget, as it’s strictly my viewpoint.  As I described in that earlier post, when it comes to Mary and I’s perspectives, I’m definitely more of the “saver” in the marriage while she’s typically the “spender”.  That leads some people to ask, “Have you always been that way?”, and “Is it always a good thing?”  Well, here come the answers.

RECENT PROJECT
After doing a lot of breads, I realized, “You know what, I should actually get to baking some other things.”  It is with that, then, that I tried my hand at some chocolate-dipped cookies; to be specific, this recipe from Food Network.  I quickly learned that, if you act like an engineer and just blast out several exact “1/2-by-3-inch strips”, you kind of get a tiny little cookie.  Thus the mixture of two-in-one cookies, narrow cookies, and kind-of-OK cookies shown below (pre-dipping).

OK, so lesson one was learned:  Take a couple extra seconds to create nice, thick cookies.  Lesson two followed quickly when I realized I don’t do the most even dipping in the world on cookies, as you can see in the image at the top of this post.  Still, even with the inconsistencies and imperfections, these were quick to make and tasty to eat–and some of them did turn out alright.

Now, you can leave these cookies undipped and they’ll taste alright, but they really are way better when you dip them in chocolate.  Hey, that’s like finances:  They’re alright without a budget, but it’s way better when you do a budget.  What a timely parallel given that today’s post is about why we budget.

TOPIC FOR TODAY
The word “budget” is a funny thing.  For some people, me included, it’s a happy word:  It’s exciting  to think of looking at your spending, seeing where your money is going, and then figure out where you can cut back in the future.  For others, and my wife originally fell into this category, it’s more of a “Really?  Do we have to?” response.

To be completely honest, the reason we had a budget initially was because I had one set up and I led the way in making it part of our activities as a couple, too.  Given the choice, Mary probably would have thrown the budget out the window within the first year of our marriage and been completely fine with it.  For that first year and even into the second, there was that bit of tension every time we sat down, pulled up the spreadsheet, and started going through where she and I were spending money–and, in some cases, overspending money.

Given the tension, why did we do it?  And why should anyone and everyone do it?  It’s simple, really:  You need to know where your money is going so that you’re not wasting it on useless things, which then lets you save more for your future goals.  This is something that, at least for Americans, we’re not doing such a bang-up job of.  This article from 2017, for example, indicates that 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, with 39% having nothing at all.  I would hazard to guess that many of those people don’t have budgets in place.

For my wife and I, the goals part of budgeting was certainly the primary item that kept us going.  It was also what helped us understand each other better.  As we went through items and realized areas that we could improve on, there were also areas that I realized were important to her:  A nice coffee from a coffee shop once a week, or having a little room to replace older clothes a couple times a year.  Those are things that seem superfluous to me but, knowing they matter to her, it makes me want to work our budget so that she can have them.  Similarly, she was able to see how happy it was making me to pay off debt and to push for an increased savings rate–which helped her begin enjoying the thought of being debt-free as well.

There you have why we budget:  A common goal of eliminating debt, increasing savings, and getting the chance to enjoy some small pleasures in life.  I’ll do another post about how we budget because that can provide insight for what works for you versus what really does not work for you.  The “how” of budgeting is not nearly as important as making sure you just go and do it!