A Clean Slate

If you're like many Americans, August can be a brutal month for your finances. It's a wild cocktail of end-of-summer travel, experiences with friends, back-to-school expenses, and the transition from summer to fall clothes. When all these factors combine forces, it's easy to implode our monthly budget.

This past week, I met with frustrated family after frustrated family, each feeling guilty and defeated by a busted budget and sudden financial stress. It's an easy mistake to make, and it happens to the best of us. Here's the good news if you're a family who budgets healthily. Somewhere between 1 and 30 days from now, we get a clean slate. Even when we mess up, the month eventually concludes, and a new one begins.

This may feel like splitting hairs, but it can make a huge psychological difference. Something powerful happens when we wipe the slate clean at regular intervals. Mistakes will happen (they always do), but they don't define us.....and they certainly don't need to haunt us.

This clean slate perspective can work wonders for us. My wife and I regularly have financial months we'd like to forget. Once the month wraps up, we take inventory of what happened and simply move on. With every passing month comes the opportunity to learn, adjust, and try again. This is our 168th monthly budget since getting married. We've had many bad months in there, but we've learned every step of the way. Some months are amazing, while others end with us counting down the days until the slate is wiped clean. But every time, we eventually get to start afresh.

On the flip side, even when we nail our finances in a given month, the clean slate provides us yet another opportunity to bring our dreams to life. There's a pool of money to account for this month, and therein lies the opportunity for us to live out our values through our budget. Sarah and I have a handful of fun priorities this month, ranging from future international travel, to generosity, to the kids. As we put the budget together, it's been fun to see these aspirations come to life. And next month, we get to do it again.

We don't need to budget forever......just until we die. #dadjoke. Budgeting isn't something we have to do, but rather something we get to do. It's a blessing, not a curse. It's an opportunity, not an evil. It doesn't tell us what to do.....we tell it what we're going to do. It's a beautiful tool to plan our dreams, then put one foot in front of the other to make them come alive.

Embrace the clean slate. Make the most of it. Use this opportunity to live out your values. You won't regret it.

A Fresh Start

I’m a big advocate for people creating a new budget each month. We don’t have to recreate the wheel each month, but every month is different. For most, it works well to start with last month’s budget and simply make some adjustments that are contextual to the month ahead. Doing this allows us to specifically plan for what life will bring us this month. Maybe it’s a trip coming up, a wedding you’ll attend, or some back-to-school clothes for the kids. So many different factors can play into what this month will look like.

But this post isn’t about the nuts and bolts of budgeting. Instead, I want to go a bit deeper. Some of the biggest issues we face in our finances are failure, guilt, and resentment. We screw up, then beat ourselves up, then get beat up by our partner…..and it lingers…..for a long time. This is one of the reasons why money-related issues are the #1 cause of divorce in our country. There’s so much emotion tied to it, and it’s easy for things to get tightly wound.

This is where the idea of monthly budgeting comes in. When we do it this way, sometime between 1 and 30 days from now we get a clean slate, a fresh start, and a blank canvas. It allows us to put last month’s mistakes behind us. It doesn’t make it disappear, but we learn from it, set it aside, and simply move on. This is a real game-changer for many people. That hard reset each month can be refreshing, and very much what the doctor ordered.

Though Sarah and I have been doing monthly budgets together for more than 13 years, sometimes we fail. Mistakes are made. Sometimes it’s negligence, other times it’s circumstantial, while occasionally we just get a bad break. Regardless, getting that fresh start the following month is a relief and provides us a sense of optimism.

Give yourself that fresh start. You deserve it!

Are You Tired?

After youth group last night, I was chatting with my close friends, Wendy and Heather. Mid-conversation, I asked, “Do you have any ideas for tomorrow morning’s blog? My brain feels empty…..I’m tired.” They quickly responded, “That’s your post right there. You aren’t the only one who’s tired.”

We’re in the second week of the year, coming off the heels of a 5-week holiday season, too much food, more travel than usual, winter break for the kids, and dealing with brutal weather throughout all of it. No wonder we’re exhausted! There’s something so exciting about a new year. A fresh start. A blank canvas. A clean slate. Endless possibilities! So when it seems like I’m limping into the new year, it’s embarrassing (and demoralizing).

I operate under the expectation that I must bring my best to the table each day. I’ve always been wired this way. Anything but my best feels like I’m cheating myself and those I serve. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized something. While I still believe I must bring my best each day, I’m learning my “best” isn’t the same from day to day. Some days I have the opportunity to be the best Michael Jordan I can be, but there are other days I’m striving to be the best Ron Harper I can be. Ron Harper is no Michael Jordan, but he’s still pretty good and can make an impact. Today felt like a Ron Harper type of day. My peak wasn’t as high as I would have liked, but I think I reached it. That’s all I can ask for. Maybe my peak tomorrow will be Michael Jordan, but it might be Ron Harper (or even Jud Buechler). Either way, I owe it to myself (and those I serve) to be 100% of whatever that is.

Are you tired? You’re not alone. Whatever your peak is today, whether it’s Michael Jordan or Ron Harper, strive to reach it. Give yourself grace if it’s not a Michael Jordan sort of day. Maybe tomorrow will be, but today you may need to be the best Ron Harper you can be!