A few of you have mentioned, that my weekly amounts seem overly generous. That remains to be seen; however, I did intentionally put a cushion in each week’s “allowance.” Our cash budget is going to have to cover the following inevitable items: car repair (Jeremy buying parts), doctor co-pay, clothing/ shoes, garden maintenance, sanity date, and babysitting. I also don’t really want to publicly fail at this budget, so I’ve been a little bit more generous than I need to be in the hopes of inspiring you to beat me at my own game.
Also, and maybe this should go in the Cheapness Background, we don’t really have savings. (Pause for chastisement by all.) Okay, breathe. This money we are living off of is our “savings”. We do this every year. At some point, we hope to have a bit of savings, but so far we have needed to spend everything that we have. We could cut back our giving away and make a little cushion for ourselves, but we’d rather not. God makes it pretty clear that we don’t need to worry about tomorrow and that our heart will be where our treasure is, so, while we do want to be wise, we don’t want our security to rest in a nest egg. So we are planning to spend what we have and if there is leftover, we will probably just give it away. I know . . . we are such losers. Don’t tell Dave Ramsey or my brother. But maybe this cash budget will be a massive success and then my tune will change; let’s see.
Katrina,
I’m excited about your endeavor this summer, and I really appreciate the sacrifices that you and your family make so that you can support our work here!
Are you SERIOUS!? $140/week wouldn’t even pay our food bill here in Ukarumpa!! We are at about $600/month in food – absurd and obscene, I think. I could stop giving food away to PNG neighbors and friends, or I could stop having company, but like you said with giving money, we don’t want to and feel like God enables us to be generous (although we don’t want to cross the line from generous into stupid). We don’t buy very much prepared stuff at all and we don’t eat very much, just the three of us (although yogurt goes like water around here and the powdered milk is over $10/bag). I don’t know how big families afford to live here. When I returned from furlough I was horrified at the prices of food. But then again, that’s about all I have to spend money on. 🙂 Gavin, however, can load up at the Joinery and Hardware . . . At least I get beautiful furniture out of it!