How To Live Below the Means

 

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In the past couple of weeks, I have been joining Saturday virtual meet up of Sun Life's advisor. And one of the topic is about how do we do our own budgeting. 

To be honest, I no longer do the tedious thing of writing it down or listing my expenses in a day. Read my post about it here . Since, I already know our fix expenses every month, my salary every 15th and 30th are already allocated into it. Everything is now auto debited from my account including all the investment and savings that we have.

Did you know that during this pandemic, it makes more sense to me not to list down my expenses? Why?

I no longer go out which means there is no transportation cost. And because of the quarantine, the family is no longer going out and no more eating out. My husband only goes out once or twice a month to replenish our stocks. Most of the days, we are just at home and not spending anything. Funny, because at some point when I was starting with this journey to personal finance, I have set my self to shopping fast and even no spending weekend. But nowadays, there is no need for that. We are automatically cut out of spending. We don't buy new clothes, since working from home only requires me of house clothes. Our purchases are limited for food.  

I really think, I love just being at home. 

Let me go back to the topic of budgeting. 

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Since, it was our assignment to identify how do we budget, I then retract my expenses. I look back and found my spreadsheet of budget for the past years. Truth is, I was surprised to know that our living expenses doesn't change since 2018.How does it happen?

1. Debt-free. Yes, we don't owe any debt at the moment. And that is good thing, because it only means that we have retain our living expenses the same as 2018 because we are living the same frugal way. I inculcate in the family the value of wants versus the needs. No need to buy things on sale but we will never use. No need to buy new clothes because it is trendy but because old ones still fits and usable. No need to flash new things, just because everyone has it, but because we do not need at this time.

2. Windfalls goes directly to savings or investment. Yes, I don't touch any extra bonus nor surprise windfall. It will either go directly to my savings or investment.

3. Salary increase. From 2018, I received salary increase twice. What I did is the same - 10% is automatically deducted for my Provident Fund. I also increase my contribution of Pag-Ibig MP1 and also MP2. I also increase the UITF contribution and open another EIP subscription. With all these, it only means, that what I can see in my account during payday is the same amount I was receiving back in 2018.

4. Shopee income goes directly to my MF.

5. Online and offline selling income are extra money for me that I use for "cheat days". Of course, there should be cheat days. But since, we are on quarantine, it becomes a saving at this time. 

This didn't happen overnight. It took years to finally come to this terms. 

Living below our means has thought us that we can.Over the years, we are able to work it out. Not an easy task especially we have a little girl. But, constant reminder and talks and living by example also helps. 

Sometimes, I am tempted. But I just have to think more than twice what is the purpose of it and if it will be of real use to me. We practice the 7 day rule as well specially for big purchases. If there is a second hand item of lesser amount yet with the same usage, we'd go for that.