Budget night.

About once a quarter-schedule and data-dependent, my husband and I have budget night.

It’s only 17 minutes long-guideline by Dave Ramsey.

It involves pizza.

And wine.

And an amazon movie afterward.

In each couple, one is usually the nerd, the other the free-spirit. I know I am the nerd because I love spreadsheets and a few weekends ago. after seeing Interstellar for the second time, I now understand the 5th dimension. I also wanted to read about all 10 dimensions as we drove to meet another couple for dinner on a Saturday night. “nerd alert!”

Here’s how it goes:
For months, I tweak the family budget spreadsheet and update taxes, gifts, insurance etc.

For the next meeting, I have a cashflow cell at the top that should get to “$0” when any left over money goes towards something we are saving for or want to pay off (mortgage). That’s the new “sinking fund” category.

If I think of our budget as a company budget, we would be “Our Family Inc.”. It puts a whole new spin on it.

My job is to present the spreadsheet to my more free-spirited husband. I say “more free-spirited” because he’s business-minded with an MBA but he likes the “big picture” and I like detail. He’s not into crystals or Feng Shui-that’s me-but I do enjoy math! I very briefly explain any changes and be quiet for the next few minutes while he plunks on the laptop and makes changes that make sense to him.

Minutes later, he shows me his changes and we agree on how things are going and discuss what needs to change.

That’s it.

Then wine.
Pizza.
Movie.

Booyah!