What is a sustainable budget?
A sustainable budget is a budget that allows you to still enjoy the things you love while saving moderately for future and near events. Creating a sustainable budget takes time and a lot of effort on your part. But it is not impossible nor is it unachievable.
You will still be doing the same things you love. But you learn to be more frugal along the way and shopping does not hurt your budget as bad.
The reason you need to kind of budget is because you need to thrive, but you also need to save. Unexpected things happen every day and you never know when you may need this money. However, it is carefully planned for events.
That you can predict in the future. An example is your car needing new tires or maintenance. You cannot predict when it will happen but you know it will happen.
The economy right now is not the best so saving for things such as groceries and gas is unavoidable. We must be flexible, but still give our minds the love and desire it needs to buy new things. Why I need a sustainable budget?
About me, The Shopaholic
As a shopaholic , I know there are things that I am going to want to buy in the upcoming months prior to Christmas that I cannot avoid or starve myself from.
I celebrate every holiday, but I really love Halloween and Christmas.
It’s safe to say the fall is my favorite part of the year. So for my addiction, this time of the year is the hardest for me to save money.
But I always make it work by using these methods I discuss.
Last year I saved $2000 for Christmas and that was also in the later part of the year. I had the baby so this year I’m starting to save a few months later than normal.
Why do I need this kind of budget ? A Sustainable Budget
My budget is very frugal right now it’s right around $2000 per month. I make around $500 per week and in my area this is considered very low income.
Side Note: That’s why creating multiple sources of income has been on my mind.
During the late evenings I work as a cashier, and during the day I am a full time mom. I have a passion for shopping on a budget. And I want to create an online boutique where I share my unique finds from my shopping adventures and showcase my beautiful fizz jewelry. But I also want to teach others how they can do to the same.
Setting Goals for Low Income Side Hustlers
The first I thing I’ve done to make this a reality is I set goals. The goals I set included reaching my school goals (I’m currently enrolled as a full time student at UOP.)
My financial goals like how much money I want to save for Christmas or my “Holiday decor” envelope.
And my goals to grow my online brand. Following those goals will not only allow me to grow my network and achieve a degree. But also will teach me more about entrepreneurship and small businesses.
Secondly (sustainable budget) ,
I started my first steps in my small business plan and started a blog.
A blog can bring you many sources of income. You can learn more about blogging by reading these posts here on my blog. I’ve also created a social media account on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Where I showcase my love for small businesses but also me and my family on a day to day.
Next, I plan on creating a product the people love.
his will come sooner rather than later because I want to create my first course on creating a social media platform and growing it to 5000 followers, which is coming soon.
Also, I am working on building my jewelry business by using my TIKTOK and links in my bios showcasing my online store and also becoming part of my team.
By doing all this I have been securing my budget because I am growing my networks and also maintaining a part time job. By doing this I have created multiple streams of income and started to create a possible passive income stream which will be my course.
Creating the Budget
I created a budget for myself using you typical budgeting system and I quickly realized that I am in no way saving money.
This helped me to realize I need something that is functional but also fulfills every need and want.
Start by creating an overall income for yourself.
For me this was easy, I have my sales from my jewelry business and my for sure income of about $500 a week from my job. For now, I am only including the money I for sure know I have which is from my job because sales is very low for me right now.
After I calculated that I have about $2000 a month in income.
I need to save about 20% of my overall income and plan to spend the other 80%. However, I will be putting my 80% into mostly sinking funds which is money I plan to spend in the near future from holidays to birthdays . and in my cash envelopes .
So from that 80% , fifty of that is going toward sinking funds and the left over 30% is going into my Daily Cash envelopes.
If you haven’t already guessed it I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey. I love his money saving tips, but for me being low income I cannot exactly match his practice. For me, it wasn’t working I needed something easier to follow that was a little less complicated.
Also, for my situation I do not have rent nor bills that I need to pay outside of my car, phone, and subscriptions. I don’t have rent or other bills yet because currently I am saving to live on my own again. So I live with my family. But hopefully not for much longer.
20% goes into your immediate savings, so as soon as you get the money you put 20% into your separate savings account. I have an account with one bank just with a separate savings so it makes it easy.
Then, 80% of what’s left comes out in cash to stuff your envelopes with. Which means you’ll leave a little bit in your bank account just incase a subscription or something comes out.
50 perfect of that eighty percent will go into your sinking funds. Your sinking funds could be anything from Christmas to Halloween, or birthday parties to car repairs. I have 5 sinking funds:
Halloween
Christmas
Car Repairs
Birthdays
Last you put 30% of you cash into different cash envelopes.
I have quite a few but my main ones are:
Gas
Groceries
Eating Out
Home
Jaxon
Harleigh
With each paycheck all of these look different, but they all get filled. For my cash envelopes, they usually all get spent within that pay period. However, sometimes there’s leftover and those as well and I’ll move that over to my sinking funds before I fill everything again.
Sticking to it: Sustainable Budget
Sticking to your budget will be harder than you think. You’ll dream about it plan it up but it’s going to take some time to get used too.
I set up a motivational morning routine to keep me going. This helps give me the Motivation & inspiration to get through my week. It helped me visualize the things that I want in life and what I have to do to get there.
The plan I created for myself, may not work for you, but it’s easy to stick to.
I set intentions for each day, and I move through my day with them. This way everything as planned out and I know exactly what I need to do each day.
Creating your own 20/50/30 rule and figuring out what you want to do each day to make it through. Will help you out a lot.
Conclusion
It’s taken me three weeks for me to come up with this blog post. I am so sorry for that. Right now I have a lot going on but I got a new job that pays weekly are fridays. That’s so much fun. Plus I got a raise and this new job is an office job which I really wanted to apply too.
I am so excited for this new job and I cannot wait to come out with some more content for ya’ll.
