This last part of the showcase your motivation series is a little less motivational than the savings jar and dream board but no less important.
I saw the idea for the calendar on Pinterest (really is anyone surprised?) and thought it would be perfect to help keep track of your budget if you're on a savings journey.
It's kind of self explanatory. I visited Bunnings and raided their paint colour card racks (thank you Rocky Bunnings and btw you're out of emerald green) took them home and retrieved a large frame from the shed (there are only three hooks in the rental house we are in and I have over a dozen frames with various artworks in, I won't go into the dilemma I had picking which disney pictures went up and which got stored in the shed) gave the frame a wipe down and covered the board with white paper then went about sticking down my colour cards.
Now I lack talent like you would not believe when it comes to anything artsy or crafty so my board looks like Miss Four put it together, the important thing to remember if you make one of these gigantic calendars is that it's for you and not the world. If you are happy with it then it's perfect.
So with my 'perfect' calendar ready to go here's what I did...
I got the easy stuff out of the way. Birthdays, Miss Fours kindy days and any appointments we have. Then I logged into Internet banking and scrolled through until I found each day that a direct debit came out.
When I found one I wrote down in that day the amount that would be leaving our account. I also added rent days and went back through our phone bills to see when they are usually due and then added it to the calendar as well.
Now at a quick glance each month we have all our outgoings clear as day in front of us so there is no forgetting a payment, no being surprised when a bill is due as it would have been on the calendar for us to see for weeks.
As the husband is on wages now and being paid weekly - after years of being on salary and paid monthly - this helps us budget from week to week as due to overtime he doesn't bring home the same amount each week now and some weeks are tighter depending on what we have coming out. Like for example when a rent week falls in the same week as our personal loan repayment...ouch!
With this new calendar though it's there for me to see so I have no excuse for not bring prepared.
If you like you can use any free space to write down how much you saved the previous month and try and match it or exceed it, keep a total in the corner so you can see how all your hard work is paying off - literally - over the year.
Skye
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