I had a roommate that came up to me one day and asked, “How do you manage to seem so calm? We make the same amount of money, pay the same amount of rent, and yet you never seem to be worried about money.” And the truth was, I wasn’t worried about money. I was doing completely fine but I couldn’t explain to her at the time how I was able to do it. I was only working an average of 20 hours per week (sometimes more sometimes less) being paid 7.50 per hour and receiving about 30 dollars in tips a month. Why was she struggling so much and I was completely fine?
Upon further analysis I learned that the way we treated our money was extremely different, and a big portion of it had to do with prioritization.
Imagine you have a jar and in it you need to put large rocks, smaller rocks, and sand in it. You know it’s possible to fit everything in the jar but it has to be done in a certain order. If it’s not, not everything will fit. So you put the big rocks in, then the smaller rocks, then the sand. The big rocks represent the things that are most important to you, these are things like family, work, and school. Smaller rocks are things that are still important but maybe not quite as big of a deal. And the sand is random things like surfing the internet and relaxing. All of these things are important but they don’t fit if you try and add them in in a different order.
When my roommate received her pay check she started spending it immediately. She spent it on the sand stuff like cute swimsuits and new beauty products. Then she realized she needed more toilet paper and shampoo, which are the small rocks, then the end of the month came and she needed to pay rent and she needed food (these were the big rocks in her financial budget.) But she didn’t have enough money for them. She’d already spent all her money. So she would ask other people to help her cover rent, and buy her food. And then the cycle would start over again next month.
It is important in what ever budgeting system you use that you always, always, always, put the big rocks first. Sit down and determine what they are. For my specific situation rent including utilities was 200 dollars a month. (I shared an apartment with 6 other girls and we split the costs.) I was single with no one else to support, and was still young enough to be covered on my parents insurance.
When I received a pay check I took care of my big rocks first. I took 100 dollars of my pay check and saved it for rent. I took 10 percent of my paycheck and gave it to my church, and I took another 10 percent of it and put it in a savings account. I designated everything that I received as tips from my work to be my play money. This was the money I used to go to movies with my friends, and save up to buy that cute jacket i’d been wanting to buy. The last bits of money I had were spent on food and household supplies.
Once all the main priorities in my life were full I was able to live comfortably and not worry about when my next paycheck was coming. I had fit everything important in my jar and was content with my lifestyle.
I owe a big part of being able to live comfortably on such a low wage to the fact that I knew I had some savings I could pull from if times got tough. That 40 ish dollars I saved each month soon began to add up and became a buffer for the times when I didn’t work enough hours at work. I rarely accessed it, but when I did it was because I really needed it.
My point in sharing this story is to show how important it is to prioritize where your money is going. This is why you hear budgets being stressed all the time. This is a physical way to prioritize where your money is going. If you can do that you’re already one step ahead of the game. You can live on a lot less than you think you can. When you make room for the most important things first, the rest falls into place.
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Juggling The Jungle 