Budgeting

Managing monthly expenses is a challenge. One that, according to Ashley Gardner, requires both personal forgiveness and discipline.

Budgeting is the process of evaluating how much money is spent compared to how much money is made. In personal budgeting, this is comparing expenses to income.

Ashley Gardner, a Bainbridge Certified Personal Accountant (CPA), spends his days working on his clients’ finances. As a CPA, he helps clients with bookkeeping, financial planning and preparing financial documents like tax returns and profit-andloss statements. Budgeting was a struggle for Gardner and his family.

“The hardest thing to do is coming up with that initial budget,” Gardner said. “I had our income, I had our expenses, and everything accounted for. And at the end of each month, I would reconcile our checkbook and realize we were still over budget.”

Creating a budget is setting an allowance for certain expenses — $500 for groceries, $100 for restaurants, etc. Gardner said individuals should develop budgets to reach financial goals. Goals can look like saving for retirement, making a big purchase such as a car, or, in Gardner’s case, eliminating debt.

His budgeting journey began after he attended a Dave

Ramsey seminar at his church. Ramsey is a notable personal finance consultant. Ramsey suggested the “Cash Stuffing” approach to budgeting.

Cash stuffing is a monthly budgeting method that involves creating envelopes with the names of expenses on them and putting cash in them at the beginning of each month.

“You have an envelope for groceries. You have an envelope for utility bills, for clothing, for entertainment,” Gardner explained. “And you pull from that envelope until the money is gone.”

Gardner found success with this method but said if an individual budgets differently, they should keep the concept of cash stuffing: allocate money for expenses at the beginning of the month and only spend that much. According to Gardner, this way, individuals can see how much money they have left during the month.

He said creating a budget like this makes it easier to recognize where an individual can reduce spending. It can also feel like a game of guess and check.

He and his wife spent months evaluating their budget before they got it right.

“Finding out how much money to divide up and put in the envelope takes a little bit of work,” Gardner said. “It took three or four months of adjustments for us to figure that out.”

Gardner said it’s important for individuals to give themselves mercy in the early stages of budgeting. He said budgeting can be frustrating and take time and that individuals should forgive themselves in advance for the road bumps in their budgeting journey.

“The very first step is to forgive yourself,” Gardner said. “I mean, you’re going to make mistakes. And just because it did not work the first pay period or the first month doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”

After enough time with a budgeting method, Gardner said individuals will understand how much they are spending and won’t have to rely on a system. He said it’s not easy, and the timeline will look different for everybody. It took him multiple years to pull back on cash stuffing.

“My advice is, especially for somebody who needs to get out of debt, this is going to take a lot of discipline and a lot of giving up some conveniences to master your budget,” Gardner said.

“Once you improve your financial situation, once you get rid of some of that debt,... it becomes a lot easier.”

Gardner said anyone who wants to budget can. Budgeting templates along with educational resources and content are available online. According to Gardner, money is “complicated,” but with discipline, he said financial goals can be reached by budgeting.

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