31 Debt Free Missions: (Re)Build Your Budget

Tips like thesehelped us pay off $127K in debt. You can read our story inSlaying the Debt Dragon: How One Family Conquered Their Money Monster and Found an Inspired Happily Ever After.

Welcome to 31 Debt Free Missions! A new feature this year on Queen of Free, during each day in January, I will provide 31 concrete missions or challenges for you to take on to #SlayDebt and take charge of your finances this year. Each mission will take you less than an hour (some will only require 15 minutes). Whereas,31 Days to Kick Debt in the Teeth(which I’m reworking this year and reposting in January, too) focused on some of the philosophical changes you need to make in order to be successful with money, 31 Debt Free Missions are action steps to put into place after you have your thinking straight. Even better, during the month of January, I’m revisiting each of these challenges in order to sharpen my money saving and debt slaying skills.

Are you ready? Your mission is as follows:

Oh the budget. It’s a dreaded “b” word for so many of us. But today I want you to lay aside any pre-conceived notions you might have about budgeting. If you thought you were going to be limited by your budget, you were wrong. If you thought that a budget was a killjoy, derived as an ancient torture device, again dead wrong. Finally if you were misinformed that budgets were limits placed upon your ability to enjoy life, eeeerrrrrrnnnttt WRONG-O.

Budgets are your sturdiest weapon in the pursuit of paying off debt. In fact, I’m such a firm believer in this fact that I devoted an entire chapter inSlaying the Debt Dragonto budgeting. While I can’t sum it all up in a blog post, I do want to give you some of the tidbits that I picked up during our journey to knock out $127K.

If you believe any of the mistruths about budgeting from the first paragraph of the mission, then you’ll probably have little success. You need to change how you see the process of building a budget. Can I tell you what helps me? It’s a simple word swap. Instead of budget I say forecast. Because after all that’s what the process truly is – forecasting what money will come and go out during a set period of time. There might be more or less income or more or fewer expenses; however, you can predict your money flow based on what you’ve made and purchased in the past.

Say it with me, “FORECAST.” Ahhhhh doesn’t that sound much better?

Your debt free mission is to build a Zero-based budget. It’s a concept we picked up from Dave Ramsey but honestly has been around for quite some time (nothing new under the sun, you know?). It’s a simple concept but ideally you want to give every dollar a marching order so that it doesn’t hang out in your checking account.

I’m found of saying, “If you leave any extra cash in your checking account at all, it will grow legs and walk to Target.” Spare your pennies, send them away. If you remove all of the money – even if you’re sending it to an envelope or a savings account, you’ll be less likely to overspend.

Now, I know some of you are fuh-reaking out right now because what would happen if you were overdrawn? Well A) Pay attention so that you don’t do that. and B) It’s ok to leave a cushion of $50-100 in there. Just don’t be surprised when you spend it and you have no idea where it went.

You should begin with at least a month. I’m most comfortable budgeting (um, forecasting) for about six months at a time. This helps me keep an eye out for expenses that aren’t paid on a monthly basis. This I learned, unfortunately, the most difficult way when existing on a month-to-month system in the past.

31 Debt Free Missions: (Re)Build Your Budget - Queen of Free (2024)

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