Step 1: create a budget

In these blogs I take you on the adventure that my husband and I started a year ago. We were tired of the financial situation and decided to take a thorough approach to our finances. It started one day in a holiday, when we came to the conclusion that we wanted more freedom and control over our lives. No more work because we have to, but because we like it. Tackling everything took time, effort and a lot of trying. But the important thing was that we had to change our money mindset. And that's what we did. In these blogs, I'll tell you how we did that. So hopefully you'll be inspired.

After we decided that it was really time to tackle our finances, we started creating Excel sheets. One with all our income, one with all our expenses and one with our savings goals. What we immediately saw was that there was no logic in it. Only the fixed loads were consistent, the rest really went in all directions. We decided to deal with this first and we started setting up budgets. Making a budget doesn't sound very difficult, and it isn't. Just keeping yourself to the budget, that's the challenge.

We started with the groceries. The messages were taken from the same account as the fixed charges and all other pin transactions. Which in practice meant that at the end of the month we were regularly in the supermarket, with a debit card that didn't do it. Then we could sneak money from our savings account and pay for the groceries. Pure and only because we didn't plan or structure anything. So the first thing I did was open an extra account purely for the groceries. Together we decided that a budget of €325, - should be sufficient for our family with 2 children. I set for myself a week budget of €75, -, so I still had some spout, should there be an expensive week in between. Having this budget made me much more aware of what things cost. And also, from how disorganized I went shopping. How many times I did the weekly groceries, threw vegetables in my cart for 7 days and then found out at home that I had vegetables for 4 days... My refrigerator was always too full and at the end of the week I threw out standard food, because it was no longer good. That's never gonna happen again, because I'm much more conscious about shopping. In a next blog I will go deeper into this.

Another budget we put is for clothes. We didn't spend much on clothes anyway, but for the kids I wanted to buy something that was 'really soooo fun', to find out that my daughter already had 11 dresses in the closet. In the year before our restructuring, we spent about €1200, - a year on clothing. This is absolutely not extremely much for 4 people, but I decided it could be less. In addition, last year I also became much more aware of the concept of fast-fashion and that hit me very much. Clothing you buy, put on a couple of times and then stop wearing. That just doesn't fit us. I decided that from now on I wanted to buy as much used as possible. I made a calculation, also taking into account winter coats and new shoes for the children, and came to the conclusion that €800, - for a year should be enough for us 4 and. My husband and I regularly get second-hand clothes from family and we are very economical with our clothes. I have a summer dress that's 12 years old and I still wear it every summer, of that caliber. So we didn't need so much. The kids are growing, so of course they need new clothes. But they also have older cousins from which they get things. Plus, second-hand clothes are not so expensive. And we actually did it. We spent €771.35 on clothing last year, with four. And that included three weddings we had this year. That would never have been possible if we hadn't deliberately set a budget. And nobody is short of anything. My daughter still has more dresses than she can wear in a week, and all branded. But a Desigual dress costs second-hand a few euros, so that's not so shocking. My son of 7 runs in Z8 shirts, very nice, but also those were only a few euros. The only thing I buy new is shoes, underwear, socks, swimsuits and the occasional jeans for my son (because yes, those knees don't last long). So we are all very good, but for a fraction of what we spend earlier.

Other budgets I've put are for gasoline, gifts, home jobs, hairdresser and vacations. This last budget is very spacious, because we think holiday is very important. Experiences are much more important than stuff, so we don't cut back on experiences. On a study day from school, we go for a day to the zoo or to a museum. I also go away with each of the kids for a weekend every year. So it's certainly not that we don't live. We only spend our money on what we care about. And that leaves us money to pay off our mortgage and replenish our savings accounts.