theamazingaaron-blog1

[theamazingaaron-blog1]

Why I am an advocate of a personal spending allowance

Everyone likes to spend; It releases a ‘pressure’ that comes from wanting something new. For me, it’s very hard to not spend money on things I don’t need. I am constantly shopping around for that new tool, that new accessory for my gun, or those sneakers that I think would look SO cool! I feel that we have been able to do many things with our money that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise if it weren’t for this one concept:

Using a personal spending allowance each month.

Note: This wouldn’t be the best practice for everyone. There is no “one size fits all” in financial strategy.  It has sure worked for us, though.

Celeste came up with the idea when we were newly married. We found ourselves spending small amounts on nearly everything. We mostly found it easy to spend on eating out, activities, items we didn’t need on Amazon, and clothes. We first said we would relieve this problem by talking to each other first if we wanted to spend over $20. Then I (being the spender I am) started finding ways around that, by making lots of purchases that were $10, $15, $19.99, just to stay under the limit. When we reviewed our statements at the end of each month, there were dozens of purchases made by me, and they valued even more than we were spending before. We put a halt on this spending by setting a personal spending allowance.

Spending allowances can be set to any amount you want, as long as they are equal. They are given out either on a personal debit card, or in cash. Celeste and I set our first monthly spending allowance to $30 each. We decided that for the whole month, if either of us wanted to purchase something that wasn’t in the family budget, we would have to use our allowance. For me, this included lunches on university campus, random activities with my friends, and online shopping. You know how hard it is to spend $30 across the whole  month, on everything you want!!? $1 a day... doesn’t get you very far. I found myself only going out to fast food with friends every other month or so, and never buying food out. Also, I reserved my whole $30 to something I actually wanted pretty bad, instead of the Amazon purchase here and there, which were just spur-of-the-moment thoughts. This was very difficult for me, but over time, we realized that we were saving hundreds of dollars a month because all of our frivolous spending was throwing our money out the window.

Fast forward to today. Our personal allowance has changed, mainly due to a job change. We still pay ourselves in cash at the beginning of each month, and if we want to make a purchase the other doesn’t consent to (which happens frequently), we save up our cash and buy it. One time, I wanted this $450 gun, and it was a mean machine. I mean, there was no way I couldn’t buy this. It was also about $100 off. I had to basically not spend money for multiple months, along with selling a couple things I already had, in order to buy it....but I did. I would have had to charge a credit card, and maybe carry a small balance for awhile, had we just caved and let me buy it. The lifestyle of saving for things we want has carried us through the years to this day. It may not be for everyone, but I firmly believe in the concept of saving up for things and making personal sacrifices before we buy things, especially if those things are just plain “wants.” Otherwise, we will be making the sacrifice for it after the fact, which, knowing how interest works, will definitely be a greater sacrifice than that which is pre-meditated.

Every family has a different way of budgeting, but this technique (which I give thanks for my wife to helping us to implement), is one that I’m not so sure I want to give up, now. I will be nudging my other half to let us increase our allowance amount sooner or later, but it would have to have a business case if we were to do so (I.e., how will this increase in funds help us be more united? Help us experience more spending freedom while still letting us meet our savings goals?)

Hope this post was of some help to you. Have a great weekend!

[theamazingaaron-blog1]

Social Media, Feelings, and Being a Guy

Call me old school, but ever since I was about 18 years old, I have had the thought in the back of my mind that the digital world is killing our ability to truly communicate our feelings.

Texting was big when I was in high school, but there were always only a few lines you could get out onto the screen before your thumbs went numb. The iPhone and other smart phones inserted themselves into everyone’s front pocket while I served a mission in Peru around 2010. When I got back, I realized that in order to keep up with the crowd, I’d need to purchase a smart phone with a touch screen. Now a days, you can’t enter a public building or drive your car 5 miles without seeing someone either scrolling or typing away at a phone. Why do we immediately reach for our phone instead of talk to the person next to us or do the next thing on our ever-long To-do list?

The reason is it’s easy. We’ve subconsciously evolved into a society that takes the shortcut. We also like to hide behind our phones since it doesn’t eat away at the social energy we have stocked up for the day. Why spend 5 minutes talking to someone on the phone if we can simply make a few light presses on our phones and send a text? Why drive to a friend’s house and have a long conversation if we can simply send them a message on Facebook and insert a few emojis?

There is a huge problem in this, my friends. Studies from psychologists over 50 years ago, supplemented by newer research suggests that between 70% and 90% of true communication (messages sent from one human to another) is nonverbal. This means, facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture, and other body language, makes up over HALF of what real communication entails.

Texting, no matter how many emojis we insert, is nothing more than verbal.

I cannot bear to hear when people conclude that just because they are inserting a winky-face behind a text, or an ‘lol,’ or even a ‘hahaha’ it conveys the true message of what they are trying to say. Textual CUES will never replace a human hug, a gentle nod, a flirty wink, or an “I love you” over the phone. They are simply shortcuts to items in our Godly-designed body language that we have been blessed to share with others in this life.

Is it wrong to send a text or send someone a winky-face over text? Heck-to-the no—keep ‘em coming. But, what my point is, (and you will see more as you read on), is that over-use of this kind of communication is detrimental to our emotional well-being.

-Social media-

Social media goes along the same lines as texting, except pictures mingled with text, offers the world a glimpse of your way of life and a state of your well-being. Many get onto social media to simply pass time, others get on it to feel a sense of connectivity to the world around them. I’ll have to warn you, this blog gets a little personal. I am an open book- and oftentimes I feel unleashed and happier when I express myself to those around me.

Social media to me started out as a simple app that helped me stay connected to my friends. Where you draw the line, then, impacts what social media can do to your soul. I let the line drift toward the “open it several times a day, checking my notifications repeatedly” zone, and this was because I became addicted to it. One comment on my posts here, a handful of ‘likes’ there, the dopamine started flowing to my brain countless times, and I started getting on it subconsciously, while I was having conversations with my WIFE, or playing with my KID. The extent to which I would open up Facebook started becoming far greater than I wanted.

Another one of the downsides to social media is it makes us compare our lives to those of our friends. We may not be thinking it consciously, but say you live happily with your spouse and child(ren); You think your life is good, and you live the normal day-to-day life, arguing with your spouse from time to time, making amends, (repentance) making goals and slowly but surely meeting them (enduring to the end), and then you go online and see nothing but the picture-perfect family, all dressed up in matching clothes, mom posts a picture about how perfect her husband and her kids are, and then you start thinking her life is peachy, with 0 problems and 0 stress.

Social media is fake. It isn’t real. When was the last time you saw a post from someone showing what they really felt like, after yelling at their spouse, or kid started throwing a fit, or they felt insecure about something? We don’t naturally want to share our downsides with the world. It makes sense. It’s like you go into an interview and say “yeah, I like to come in slightly late, but not too late that anyone really says anything about it.” You just don’t do that. You want the camera of life to always be pointing at your best side. We also want the world to be ‘real’ with us; so it’s a necessary conundrum. There are studies out there that show how over-use of social media can tear into the fibers of our emotional well-being. See article-

https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-the-more-you-use-facebook-the-worse-you-feel

-Being a Guy-

After understanding the issues involved with over-using social media, add being a guy on top of that. We dudes don’t openly share our feelings with those around us. While many guys feel that they don’t need to, it is because they are trained in today’s society to cover them up. This article was very helpful for me to understand this:

http://www.upworthy.com/i-spent-a-week-sharing-my-feelings-with-everyone-heres-what-happened

If you are a guy, and you want to be accepted in the world around you, what kinds of things are you going to do/ talk about that will make you look masculine? Just think about it…. does anything on your list include talking about your feelings? I would assume not; and if you can find a place like this, I would like to go bring that bunker out into the light and make it visible to the rest of the world.

The combination of comparing myself to others, over-using the internet and social media, and not feeling like anyone would accept my expression of feelings, brought me into a dark hole recently. Satan worked overtime to get me to plummet into despair. I believe he is all over the internet, not just in explicitly-labeled content, but in the regular sites we frequent. It takes strong willpower to overcome the enticing pleas of Satan, and overcome negativity. What I had to do is make goals to limit my use of Facebook, talk to my wife and others about how I felt, and do productive activities that would help build my mind and body, instead of sitting in my living room scrolling on my phone.

Many of you reading this will think “I don’t get on Facebook or my phone as much as this guy, I’m good.”

Stop yourself from being complacent. Realize that when you say “All is well in Zion” and are “at ease,” that is the moment the devil slowly pulls you down.

You may not think you have anything to personally change, but what can you do to help others in this rocky path of life? How can you personally lend a helping hand to someone who feels unfit for the kingdom, or compares him/herself to others frequently?

I hope these words have been of high worth to you, and you’ve been able to glean something from them. Until we meet again—-

Aaron

[theamazingaaron-blog1]

Personal Finance- How We Save Money

*Disclaimer*

The following ideas/strategies are ones that we personally have followed, but that doesn’t mean they are true for everyone, or that everyone should follow them. Sometimes extenuating circumstances like illness, disaster, divorce, etc. make these things more difficult to live by. This list is meant to be an idea-sparker if you read it with an open mind. If you disagree with any of the following, that is your opinion, and you are free to have it. I am expecting some of things to be different than things you believe, or have practiced. Good thing we are all different, right?

Ways we have saved money:

1.       Treat debt like it is the plague. (See disclaimer in previous paragraph if you disagree with this statement). Every financial decision we make in this life either 1) Makes us more money, or 2) Takes money from us. If you can stay out of debt, DO IT. Of course, a home loan or car loan may be a necessity, but try to pay down balances as quickly as possible. Every time you keep your original loan amount down or put down extra principle on your loans, you are saving yourself hundreds or even thousands of dollars of interest. This money could be in your hands instead of the bank’s if you keep debt balances low.

2.       At the beginning of each month, we add up all of the expected income and expenses. Document this in a live Excel file or Google Sheet. We prefer Google sheets because you can update it from your phone and it can be accessed on any computer.

3.       Make a savings goal (how much you want to add to your savings account), and list it as one of your expenses for the month. Savings = the holy grail of your financial health. We don’t take out of savings, unless a big emergency comes up, or we plan to withdraw for a big purchase (i.e, house down payment, vehicle, or investment opportunity)

4.       PAY YOURSELF FIRST (as in reach your savings goal). Treat your savings goal every month like it cannot be deviated from. If you do this, you will make things work with other bills and credit spending so you can stay out of debt. When we were saving for our house down payment, we made a game out of hitting our savings goal every month. “How fast can we put that savings goal into our account? How much higher can we put in while still meeting our other obligations?”

5.       After setting your savings goal, listing out expected expenses, and balancing out the cash flow for the month, analyze your “spending” allowance for the month. How will you keep your expenses under/on target with this amount?

6.       Use credit cards only if you would have paid cash for the purchases. Credit cards are designed to be a crutch for those who easily get entangled in debt, but can be a value-added for those who use them responsibly. Rewards from a credit card = free money if you don’t ever carry a balance. We try to have $0 balances on our credit cards at the end of every month, because it only makes it easier to keep the balances to the desired level by the end of the next month. Also, try to avoid automatic payments tacking onto your cards. If you manually and purposefully make bill payments, you know exactly how much you are spending for that thing, and you are now motivated to keep unnecessary bills off the spending agenda.

7.       Eliminate unnecessary expenses. (These are detailed below). These can eat up your allotted credit card spending for the month before Week 1 is over. Keep these tamed.

8.       Food out- Restaurant spending can add up quick- if going out often is your thing, go to fast food or cheaper options but go more often. If you are one who likes the quality places, this will limit your frequency of going out to them. Make restaurant spending something you can look forward to, but perhaps not over-indulge in it. If you want great food, a great date, and an even more enjoyable time than sitting in a booth, waiting for your bill to arrive, buy the groceries together and make dinner at home.

9.       Gasoline spending- Look for ways to be efficient in your driving. If you find yourself making circles around the typical stores you shop at, perhaps make one day a week your “shopping day.” Hit up all of the intended stores back-to-back. This will save you at least a few gallons of gas every month, if not more.

10.   Subscription services- These include Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Sports apps, Vudu, etc. Try to group your bill with loved ones who also use those services. The companies who sell these make profit off of people who have an auto-bill set up and who forget to use them. Subscription services may seem necessary in our day in age, but you must keep them to a minimal while accessing the things you need.

11.   Coupon, coupon, coupon. This may seem like something only your mom did, but who wouldn’t want to spend less, and receive more? Use apps like Groupon, Retail Me Not, Cartwheel, Ebates, etc. to find the best coupons you can get.

12.   Buy used- Especially those with kids. Have you counted how many times your growing baby has used that new shirt or dress that you thought she’d wear all the time? I know personally, our T-Rex has used some of the new stuff we’ve bought less than 5 times before he outgrew it. Buy used at consignment shops. Prices will most likely be between 0.1 and 0.5 x how much you can get it new for. The same strategy applies to our items as adults as well!

13.   Sell unused household items/clothes/furniture before purchasing new ones. When you do this, you apply a cash “down payment” to your new items, making the expenditure less. Also, you reduce clutter in your house. We recently sold an old drill, an old Samsung phone, a speaker that was just sitting in our closet, and a beat up kitchen chair, and made about $200 in cash. Little payday!

14.   Most importantly, keep a positive and happy outlook on saving. Don’t look at saving like it is impossible or out of grasp. As stated in #3 and 4, YOUR SAVINGS= YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. Every dollar you spend is your responsibility. That will, in turn affect how likely you will be able to reach your savings goal. Have fun with it! Running a household is like owning a company. How ‘lean’ can your company be? Which processes or common spending habits you may have can be eliminated? Which new tricks will you pick up and want to share with others?

This is not an all-inclusive list, nor is it something we are perfect at. We have engaged ourselves in all of these strategies at least once in our marriage, and we fail on some at times. The goal in financial independence and health is not to beat yourself up over the small frailties we all have. It is to allow us to have less stress, more freedom to do the things we want to do.

 What spending and saving tricks have you acquired so far? Which ones have you found that are not on this list?

 Thanks for reading!