Look at these two young newlyweds! This is us in our first apartment in Durham, NC. We were able to rent this 3BR/2BA for $400 a month! (When I found this picture I told Nate that fatherhood has seriously aged him ????)

Quick history for you: out of college Nate and I both worked for a college ministry called Campus Outreach. He was at Duke and I was at UNC Chapel Hill. It was such a special season for us both, but definitely not a time of making the big bucks ????. We got married and had one year on staff as a married couple then went off staff for Nate to prep for the LSAT and I started personal training. Nate then started Law School at UNC Chapel Hill and I worked for GlaxoSmithKline as a wellness instructor. During this time, I got pregnant with John Robert and worked until I was 38 weeks pregnant. Luckily, since we had been on staff for years, Nate and I had learned how to live cheap. We saved all that we could while I worked and then would use all the money Nate made from his law school summer internships (these paid extremely well) to live off of during the year. Our first apartment was $400/month and we got that deal because we did all the lawn care for the entire apartment complex. Y’all, it is so funny to look back on and think about this season. I honestly loved it. We were young, in love, and determined to make it work. And we did!! 

This is me on the rider mower. I saw this as a huge opportunity to work on my tan. I rode this while Nate did the push mower and weeding. This task allowed us to get the major rent discount!

With that brief history….LET’S CHAT ABOUT OUR DAILY BUDGET METHOD!

To start, I need you to understand that I am not good with a monthly budget. I would always go over and just could not figure out how to plan accordingly. There were always things that would come up that we didn’t plan for and it truly just stressed me out. So, Nate and I came up with a daily budget that was really more of a game and highly motivated me. 

 

Here’s how it worked:

Nate broke down our money into how much I could spend daily. That’s right, daily. I don’t remember what it was but for the sake of easy math let’s say it was $50/day. 

 

Obviously, there were days I would spend more than $50 (grocery day, for instance) and if I did, I would calculate how many “days” I had spent and try to go that many days without spending. So If I spent $100 at the grocery, I knew I should try not to spend any the next day to make up for it. 

 

This also worked in the positive. For instance, if I went a day without spending, I knew I had racked up that money towards the next day(s). At the end of the week, any money leftover was fun and could be used however the heck we wanted, or saved. Talk about an incentive!  

 

Honestly, I think this is where the “can we go one more day?” grocery shopping principle was born! Trying my hardest to stretch the groceries one more day to keep us on track. 

 

I know this might sound like a lot and feel like a task, but we needed to be diligent. Nate was in school and I wasn’t working. This was THE budget method that was actually successful for us. I simply kept a 5×8 notecard in the kitchen, drew columns for the days of the week, and would stick any expenses in the columns. At the end of the day, I would tally it up and there would either be a surplus that would roll over to the next day or any we overspent would be subtracted from the next day.  So, on a Monday, if I spent $60, then I only had $40 for Tuesday. However, if I only spent $10 on Monday, then I had $90 saved up for Tuesday. (This was just for spending; we had already accounted for fixed costs like rent, electric bill, etc.)

 

I hope this makes sense! In short, it kept me on track and was highly incentivizing for me to pinch those pennies and have a surplus at the end of the week.