The Spending Calendar System
I’ve never made a budget or at least one that I stick to. When I started my journey in 2017, I was adamant about two things 1) sending my savings automatically into my loans or a high-yield savings account and 2) tracking my spending. As long as my savings goals were being met, the remaining funds could be spent however I wanted. In other words, anything was fair game. If I wanted to spend the rest of my money on eating out or entertainment, I was free to do so as long as I was tracking my expenses and not surpassing my limit.
Later in my journey, I decided I wanted to plan out my future spending creatively. This lead me to creating a spending calendar with symbols to represent different spending items - groceries, eating out, entertainment tickets, birthdays, and vacations. The calendar allows me to play around with where I wanted my spending money to go for the rest of the month, prioritizing expenses.
Example 1: I’m going food shopping the first Tuesday of the week, and that weekend I also have two brunches to attend, I’d plan to get less groceries since I won’t be cooking on the weekend.
Example 2: I have three back to back work events in one week where I know I’ll be provided dinner, I might decide then to wait till the following week to do my grocery shopping.
With a spending calendar practice, I’ve become more mindful about when I make purchases to avoid food waste and curb emotional spending. When things come up, which they’re bound to, I will be moved around with the remaining calendar days. A spending calendar is used in addition to the FGM daily expense tracker, because let’s be real, you don’t always know when you’ll crave kombucha from your corner bodega.
If you’re ready to start your own spending calendar, you’ll need the following:
High-yield savings account - If you’re enrolled in direct deposit, you can add this account for automatic deposits when you receive your paycheck. Opening a high-yield savings account, means that your savings will not be in your primary checking account, therefore, making it harder to spend it.
Know your monthly income - If you're a salaried employee this is easy, review your last few paystubs. If you're an hourly or commission-based employee, review your income from the past few months and calculate the average. If those last three months were high season for you, then look at other months. After you’ll want to estimate your minimum expected income.
Know your obligations - While you probably already know when certain bills are due, I recommend writing them down and adding them to your calendar as they might impact other spending.
A calendar - I use both a Google Calendar and my FGM Spending Calendar. For me, it’s been helpful to receive pings and alerts from my Google calendar of an upcoming event or expense even when it's automatic payment.
Once you’ve gotten your basics, you can start your monthly planning. Before I look at any numbers, I review the calendar and list out all the things I know are coming up this month. This includes your bills but it also birthdays and any pre-made plans, like a concert or the happy hour.
Then, I go into planning my eating schedule (groceries vs. eating out). You might want to pause on drafting and run to the kitchen to fully understand when you’ll need to buy groceries or eat out. Aft you’ve done that you’ll enter the dates/days you foresee getting your groceries and eating out.
After all my entries have been accounted for, I ask myself the following questions to paint a vision for what and where this month might lead me. This of course, can also be done before you add anything to your calendar.
Where do I want to give this month?
Where do I want to challenge my spending this month?
What are some foreseeable bumps in this month?
Finally, you do your calculations. How much money you’ll be bringing in and how much of it will be going towards your savings goals, the remaining total here is the money you have to play with. This spending money will be used on the expenses and events that you listed in your calendar, and here you’ll want to allocate a specific dollar amount you’ll aim to spend for grocery shopping or happy hour. Simple enough!