Creating your first budget can be pretty stressful. I recommend taking a rejuvenating lavender bath or hitting the trails for a refreshing run to celebrate this first step and prepare yourself for the next. It’s important to realize that creating your white-picket-fence budget isn’t enough for a Spender and you can’t stop there. You’ll need to figure out ways to keep yourself inside that fence and make healthy choices. To the average Sue, keeping a debit/credit card handy may seem like a good thing, but to a Spender it’s like playing with fire. Having a debit/credit card while in a store is like carrying around your drug of choice. It is harder to say no when it is so readily available.

When Mark and I decided to make the change in our finances, the very first thing we did was shred our credit cards. Yes, I actually put them through the paper shredder. We were nervous about it at first, worried what would happen if we had an emergency. We ultimately came to the conclusion that it was more damaging to keep the credit cards than to ask a family member for money if we had a life-altering emergency. I didn’t have any self-control, so I took the opportunity away. Now, whenever I went shopping, I had to have cash to make the purchases I needed, not the ones I wanted.

I absolutely had to stop carrying my cards with me, because I was just too swipe happy. I had zero self-control, and when it came to purchasing things I would often swipe my card and pray there was money in the account. Most of the time I had no idea if there was enough in our checking account to cover the debit card, and I would literally pray at the checkout that it would go through, because I didn’t want to face the embarrassment of having to put things back. Sometimes my prayers would work, but oftentimes I would stand at the checkout calculating which items I needed to take off the order. It became the norm, and even though I was embarrassed at first, it became something I was proud of. Proud because I was finally budgeting.

So, after shredding the credit cards, I gave myself just two options for paying for purchases, other than checks I wrote for bills:

1. CASH

2. Prepaid debit cards

Let’s talk about cash for a minute. I am talking about actual cash, not debit cards. You know, that green stuff made out of paper that we all used to use to pay for things. Remember that?

My first experience on an all-cash shopping trip was a nightmare! I had taken my cash out for the week for groceries and thought I was prepared to go grocery shopping and stick to my budget. I spent the night before planning my triple-coupon strategies, which took me about three hours. I sat in my comfortable office inside my huge house, carefully printing and cutting coupons all night. Since we had only $50 per week in our grocery budget, I worked very hard to plan my shopping lists so we could eat healthfully.

I drove to the store that morning, excited that if all went well I would be able to get $200 worth of food for less than $50. I had four different transactions planned out, and I was so excited about executing my plan! I had just had my second child, so I strapped my little six-week-old baby into the baby carrier, put my son in the shopping cart, and I was off. An hour of shopping and deal hunting later, I handed my coupons over to the cashier and watched my total drop from $200 to only $44! I was thrilled! My planning and hard work had paid off. I figured I had just made $50 per hour by spending those three hours to save $150.

Pleased with myself, I pulled out my wallet. Empty. I had left my cash on the kitchen counter. I had no debit card with me, no checkbook or money in my checking account to pay for the food, so I was stuck at the register penniless. I had given my son a package of Goldfish crackers that we were getting for only 10 cents after coupons, so he was munching away happily in the cart until the cashier ripped his half-eaten bag of crackers right out of his hands because we couldn’t pay for them. Andrew began to cry, those big ugly loud sobs that make you want to hide behind the candy bars and pretend it isn’t happening. After I told the cashier that I had forgotten my money at home, she had to dig the massive pile of coupons she had just scanned out of the register box, and I had to set my cart aside so I could come back and pay later. I was mortified.

I walked out of the grocery store empty-handed, with a crying six-week-old and a four-year-old screaming, “Why don’t we have money to buy food?” I felt as if all eyes in the store were on me. I imagined that everyone thought I was a mom who was too poor to buy groceries. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Here I was trying to make good financial decisions for my family, and I had just screwed it up, again. But had I? Looking back, the ultimate screwup would have been if I had put the groceries on a credit card to avoid the embarrassment. The only thing that saved the day in my son’s eyes was the blue helium balloon and free cookie he got on our way out of the grocery store.

As I wrangled the kids back into their car seats, I pondered what had just happened. It was a day that I will never forget, because it was the first day that I didn’t give up. The old Lauren would have paid with a credit or debit card even though there was no money in the account. The old Lauren would have felt defeated. The old Lauren would have never gotten back up again. The old Lauren would have gone deeper into debt to avoid being embarrassed.

The new Lauren drove fifteen minutes to her home, picked up her cash off the kitchen counter, drove fifteen minutes back to the store, got her kids back out of the car and back into the grocery cart, grabbed her cart full of groceries, and got back in line at that same store. After the cashier rang up my huge stack of coupons for the second time that morning, and I paid her with the cash, I felt empowered. While loading those groceries into the car, I cried.

A day that could have turned into another credit card–charging disaster, pushing us further into debt, had turned into a day of rejoicing. Day by day, I was gaining confidence that maybe I could do this. Had I not set up the boundaries beforehand, it would have been just like any other day. Boundaries are your best friend, and you can count on them to keep you safe and secure within your fence.

You may have read this story and thought to yourself, “That’s why I use credit/debit cards. Cash is too much of a hassle and credit cards are easier.” Cash is more of a hassle, but if you are a Spender you need to learn how to handle the hassle. You need to use cash and you need to be able to physically see the money leaving your hands in order to make an emotional connection with it.

You have to retrain your brain in a way when you starting using cash, because swiping a card is just too easy for a Spender. You have no visual of how much is gone, no emotional connection to the money changing hands, and no idea how much is left. The danger of continuing to go over budget is always there if you continue to just swipe a card for every purchase.

To help myself, I set up a system where every week I would take cash out in the amount I needed. I would only take out this cash for the type of purchases I would typically overspend on, such as:

Again, you should always use cash in areas where you will be tempted to overspend. Areas that are safe from overspending, for instance, could be something like gas for the car. I’ve never heard someone say, “I decided to get crazy and spend $500 on gas today.” That just wouldn’t happen, because who has room for $500 of gas in her tank? So in instances like that I decided it was safe to use our debit card. Besides, have you ever taken four small children into a gas station to prepay your gas with cash in a snowstorm when it’s ten degrees out? It is not fun! Trust me, we tried for a little while to pay for gas with cash, and I was so frustrated every time. I was able to find one gas station where I didn’t have to prepay, but it was on the outskirts of town and it took me an extra eight minutes to get there. Usually, I tried to rely on Mark to fill up the tank in the evening when I came home, or sometimes I would run out while he watched the kids. It was an extra effort, an extra trip after a long, busy day. After three months of this, we decided to allow ourselves to use debit cards for gas purchases. It was the right decision for the family.

Now let’s talk about those cash-only purchases. Every week I would pull cash out of the ATM and put it in white paper envelopes all labeled on the front with what they were for. I covered my first set of envelopes in clear packing tape, reinforcing them so that they could be used over and over rather than only lasting for only one month.

It was so helpful to have those envelopes with the words written on the front for each category. I could see exactly how much money I had spent for each category that month, and how much I had left over. It helped me make better decisions on how I handled our money.

At the grocery store, if I went over my budget and didn’t have enough cash, I had to get used to putting items back in order to lower my bill. It helped me make healthier food purchases, because if I went over budget, I wasn’t going to put back the bananas in favor of Pop-Tarts that we didn’t need.

When I started using cash, there was one problem I found that I hadn’t anticipated. I shop a lot online. Shopping online is a Recovering Spender’s worst trap, because you literally don’t have to think. For example, Amazon saves your credit card information and passwords, so you can buy something in one click and have it at your house in two days.

When I was a child, I would often spend a week during the summer at my aunt’s home. She loved to watch QVC and Home Shopping Network at night. Way past my bedtime, I would watch those shopping channels with her in absolute awe. The countdown of the deals and how much longer each one was available made my ten-year-old self want to get my own credit card and start making purchases right then and there. I was a sucker for marketing from a very early age. Back then, you had to make a phone call to purchase something, but it’s so much easier to buy stuff now. This makes shopping online so much more dangerous for a Spender.

We did find a solution for shopping online, though. In order to keep myself safe from spending too much, we signed up for a prepaid debit card and I would prefund that debit card for what my online spending budget was. Typically I kept enough money in there to buy diapers (because I love the Amazon Family program). This was a way to keep me accountable, within my budget, and happily within my fence.

Another thing I would do is stop allowing shopping sites to save my credit card information and passwords, in order to make it harder for me to buy from them. Mark and I would sit down during our budget night and talk about how much money I would need to shop online that month. Then we would put that money onto a prepaid debit card and that was all I could spend. I couldn’t add any more because we didn’t have any more.

In conclusion, budgeting takes a lot of time and mental energy, but it also saves you so much stress and heartache. Remember that when you do your budget before the month begins and set up your boundaries beforehand, your month should be a lot less stressful. In order to keep myself on track every day, I would do a quick five-minute money check. I would take inventory of my day, what events I had coming up and what I needed money for. This is a great exercise to do with your spouse each morning so that you are on the same track for what you need. Random issues will pop up, which is why you have that Miscellaneous category. But these morning check-in meetings are great for seeing if you’ll need money for work meetings or to pay the ballet teacher. This quick five-minute checkup is a great way to ensure that you’re prepared for each day. By making sure that you are prepared before the day starts, you’re better able to prevent any unexpected spending.

I am a true believer in making time for the things that are important to you, and that the way you spend your time is a great indicator of your values. If you tell me that budgeting takes too much time, then you are saying that it isn’t valuable to you. Trust me, when you get to the point where you cannot pay your bills and your car is being towed away, you should and hopefully will make the time!

Creating a budget and setting boundaries is a great way to care for yourself. It means you love yourself and want a better future. Those boundaries are there to keep you safe. Embrace them with a sense of thankfulness and your future will be much brighter.

1. Figure out your weaknesses. Are they online shopping, clothing stores, malls, supermarkets?

2. Set boundaries for yourself and write them into your budget.

3. Set up a prepaid debit card account and use that to budget for online shopping.

4. Start using cash for things that you typically overspend on and put that cash in envelopes weekly.

5. Take time for a five-minute money check each day.

6. Erase all debit and credit card information from shopping sites on your computer.

Chapter 20

Recovering Spender Step 7:

Create Your Boundaries

ACTION STEPS FOR THE RECOVERING SPENDER

STEP 7