Home

For years, Dillon and I were saving up to buy a house. We never actually bought a house, but we did renovate one, and we’ve been able to spend over $90,000 on the renovation without going into debt. I’m sort of proud of that, but I also recognize the unique circumstances we’ve had to be able to do that: we literally had free housing for around seven years.

I’ve tracked money spent and kept a monthly budget for my entire adult life. I use Microsoft Money to track expenses, and I have a spreadsheet to keep track of my budget and goals.

I haven’t always been great about keeping in the budget that I set. I don’t love putting limits on each individual spending category, but I do try to have savings goals, forecast expenses, and set financial goals for myself.

I try to live frugally, and ask myself whether I really need something or not. I don’t eat a ton of meat and I don’t eat out at restaurants very often. I don’t buy candy or soda very often either. I try to wear out clothes and only buy clothing that I really need, and to find it secondhand. I look for deals and discounts when I need to, but more often, I just try to limit buying things. And I really try to avoid the attitude that I deserve to buy things.

Sometimes I do better than other times. Sometimes I spend too much money and I get a bit impulsive. I’m not perfect at all.

So how do you make and keep a budget?

What do you love to do?

I love to:

• Read books
• Take classes
• Learn things, like economics and math and philosophy and science and random other things that seem interesting
• Write blog posts
• Write novels
• Write about life and what I learn
• Play with my kids
• Spend time outside
• Play board/card games
• Talk to neighbors and friends
• Visit family members
• Assemble furniture
• Watch television and YouTube videos
• Eat something that I have baked/cooked
• Help someone else
• Design my home
• Work on my home
• Work on my yard
• Play the piano and organ
• Take/edit photographs

My two social media platforms of choice are YouTube and Instagram. I follow a lot of people who on those platforms to make content and get paid for it, usually through advertising.

Now, I don’t actually know these people and I can’t judge them personally. I can, however, judge their content to decide it I want to follow it or not.

Sometimes I learn a lot from following people. There are good educational videos on YouTube. And I’ve learned a lot about home renovation and DIY and design from Instagram.

But I was on the social media today, and I just didn’t want to see other people live their lives and value things that I don’t value very much.

Some people have their fancy homes and their fancy vacations. Some people have eyelash extensions and clothing brands. Some people have the best productivity hacks and seem to have everything figured out and are happy all the time. Some people live alternative lifestyles, milking cows or running through sparkling meadows. Most influencers obviously have a whole lot more money than I do.

And my life is messy and sort of embarrassing sometimes. I am interested in obscure things that few people actually care about. I don’t have things figured out and I struggle with a lack of direction and insecurity. I like living in a really boring way.

My best moments of living are with my children. My best conversations are with family members and neighbors. Sometimes I wonder if I would be happier if I just closed out of social media.

This isn’t a new social media problem. Before social media, we had television and radio and magazines and books and newspapers that told us how to live. Influencer is a new name for something that has existed for ages: people who we don’t know telling us how to live our lives.

And in some ways, social media is better, because I can always unfollow the voices that I don’t want to here. There are more options, meaning I can find and seek out voices that resonate more. But that also means that I can find myself in an echo chamber, without learning and growing and seeing new perspectives.

I think my conclusion is I only like influencers on rare occasion, and mostly to educate me about something I didn’t know about.

I don’t want to be told how to live, and I don’t want to live like anyone else. So most of the time, I’m just happier if I spend time with the people who are in front of me.

Most of us have heard of these four:

1. Spiritual
2. Physical
3. Social
4. Intellectual

And those are awesome, but I wanted some more detail. So I came up with the following list:

1. Spiritual
2. Physical
3. Emotional
4. Marriage
5. Family and kids
6. Relationships and service
7. Education and learning
8. Career, contributing, creating
9. Home and garden
10. Finances
11. Leisure

I don’t think one category is necessarily more important than another category, but I did put them in a specific order. Starting with the spiritual gives you a good foundation and guidance for everything else. Then I need energy and physical health to be able to do everything I want to do, and putting my physical body in order helps with my emotions and focus. I have to take care of my mental health and make sure I’m functioning well inside before I can start looking outward.

I feel like building up a better marriage is one of the most important relationships I have: having a good marriage enables me to be a better mother. And I need to take care of my kids and my own family before I can look outward.

But then I do try to look outward and be a good friend and neighbor and help other people. And I want to learn and educate myself, both to be an example to my kids, and to be able to help other people. And because learning is just awesome. With everything I learn, I want to build up a career and create things that help contribute to the world and make it a better place.

I also need to build up a good foundation in my home, keeping it clean and fixed up and functional for my family. And I need to make sure that my finances are in order so that I am prepared for whatever happens in life.

Finally, I listed leisure time, because it’s good to be intentional about free time, and to spend time playing and doing things I enjoy.

Sometimes I just write to-do lists. But I improve more when I use these categories to intentionally set goals and take care of myself.

Sometimes I think I have too high of expectations for myself, particularly when I’m planning. I think I can do twenty things in a day, even when it’s impossible. But it seems possible.

Then in the day-to-day decisions, I don’t always choose the right thing. I get lazy or distracted. I don’t meet my goals.

Do I need to change my own expectations of myself?

I want to push myself to work hard and make good choices. I don’t want to compromise that.

But the difference between my plans and my reality is very large sometimes. And I get discouraged.

Should I change my plans?

Should I keep my lofty goals and somehow figure out how not to get discouraged when I fail to achieve what I want?

Or should I just make better choices throughout my day so I’m not disappointing myself so much?

My son made a toy duck today from a toilet paper roll. He wanted it before he went to bed, but he couldn’t find it. I told him to look for it and ask his siblings. No one knew where it was. He went to bed without it.

And later, after he was asleep, I found out that I had accidentally been sitting on it the whole time.

I was with a fifth grader and we were doing some fluency reading at school. One minute timer and he just had to read as much as the passage as he could.

He kept insisting that he wasn’t good at reading.

But he read just fine–the only problem was that when he came to hard words, he would sigh and say something like, “I’m not good at this,” or, “This is hard.” He was taking a lot of time in reinforcing his bad attitude.

I wouldn’t let my daughter say she wasn’t good at math or she didn’t like it. Math is math, and you can’t really hate it–because it’s the one non-subjective subject that is founded on basic logic. There is no nuance in learning the right answers. You just learn it, step by step, and the only problems come when you skip steps.

The other day, I asked her what subject she liked. And she, a little sheepishly, admitted that she liked math. Memorizing multiplication tables was not her favorite thing, but she was liking doing things like decimals and long division.

Attitude means so much in learning. If you think you can’t learn something, you never will. If you think you are bad at something, you waste so much mental energy that could be spent learning and growing.

Having the right attitude opens up your mind and makes it receptive to learning new things. It’s sort half of learning–just believing you can learn.

I wish we would never label kids as struggling, or give them grades that tell them they can’t do something well. Just because they aren’t on the same level as someone else their own age does not mean they can’t become good at something. If we help to instill belief in themselves, that they can learn and grow, then they have such a bigger chance of succeeding.

In many areas, there aren’t enough homes to meet supply. In my community, a house that goes up for rent is rented out within a few days with nothing more than a sign posted out front.

I have considered at times that I could use my mountain home as a cabin or short-term rental and then live somewhere closer to the city. Many people do this. My county is so full of second homes that they literally have two different property tax rates: if your home is a primary residence, you get a huge discount.

There are so many homes sitting vacant while people struggle to figure out where to live. There are people overwhelmed with rent and mortgage payments while a few wealthy people enjoy having a second home just for fun.

I want this home I live in to remain a primary residence. I feel like this is the only responsible thing to do.

No one needs a second home. It’s a huge luxury, and it feels like one we can’t afford in our society right now. If all the rich people and all the investors would take those empty homes and open them up to people that need them, so many lives would be blessed and it would start to solve the affordable housing crisis.