Thrifty habits vs budgetting?

 I used to be as a member of an Australian thrifty living site, and of forums to do with sharing tips on simple living. It was a result of these things and my general reading about climate change, which led us along a path of simple living, which enabled me to resign a stressful job and be confident I could retire early without putting our financial situation or lifestyle on the line. We were actually living on the amount of money we would have when I was not working, so I knew we could manage. 

Many of these practices involved learning how to be more skillful in our homemaking. If we could stop outsourcing labour to bakers, supermarkets, even farmers and shops, we could learn to make things at home which were  sturdy, wholesome, and practical. The pride of eating your own pumpkin soup, made with the stock you made from the chicken you roasted and the pumpkins you grew, is a great feeling. It is more nutritious and comes without weird ingredients and preservatives. 

Yes it was work. Work that is meaningful and enjoyable and productive! If it was too faffy - for example making cheese- we gave it a go and then gave it away. Blessed are the cheesemakers! But still there was a lot we could do with increasing skill and pride and productivity and our money went further than before. 

Thrifty living practices continue to be part of how we live:

1. Making a lot of food from scratch including bread making, jam and chutneys and yoghurt
2. Growing a proportion of our fruit and vegetables, and herbs which save us money and give us good quality food to eat. We are self sufficient in lemons! We have lots of herbs for nutrition and flavour. We pick green leaves for salad and sandwiches. 
3. Constantly learning how to avoid waste, especially in the kitchen. 
4. Maintaining and repairing our appliances where possible to keep them functional for as long as possible -for example, cleaning the dishwasher filter! 
5. Bulk grocery shopping to take advantage of cheap bulk prices and reduce the need to run to the shop too often
6. Buying second hand rather than new -includes most clothes
7. Knowing how to build entertainment around what we have rather than what we buy- reading books, playing board games, having friends over for meals, handcrafts, walking etc
8. Making our own cleaning products and laundry powder
9. My husband is our handyman and can achieve minor plumbing and house maintenance tasks, build us useful things like bread bins or picture frames and chopping boards. 

We have used a lot of budgeting methods over the years. I can remember years of using a physical cash book with ruled lines and columns. Of course we used spreadsheets from time to time. I had a subscription to MYOB but over the years they were not flexible enough for a single personal budgeter. 

We have spent years just doing no budgeting at all. If there seemed to be quite a lot of money in the bank, we would assume that we could meet our obligations and not need to worry.  After all we were thrifty people! This was not always true. It was too easy to 'feel' that we deserved another interstate holiday, and that we would be fine, but getting home to discover that we needed a new hot water system and we had used up our surplus cash, was stressful. 

Five years ago I gave YNAB a go. This is "You Need a Budget" and apart from being a happy customer I have no financial relationship with this company. They gave me a 34 day free trial, and I jumped in. It is an online software budgeting and education company and I have found it very helpful as a tool to add to our thrifty habits. I pay a subscription each year -and I find it entirely worth it. 

Joining YNAB has given us clarity and reduced anxiety over our finances, and we regularly rejoice about how YNAB has meant we don't even notice when a large recurrent expense is coming up, because we have the cash flow to be sure everything is covered a month in advance. Simple living or thrifty practice helps us live cheaply and well, but without the ability we now have in YNAB  to have funds to build infrastructure or cover recurrent expenses, we found it can only cover part of the challenge of living on a small income. I noticed that thrifty advice tends to lead some people towards a fear of spending money, and that it can be a bit joyless. 

Our five years of YNAB living have enabled us to improve our house simple living infrastructure even when my husband retired too:

1. We installed air conditioning - we live in Perth Western Australia and things are getting hotter and drier here. Airconditioning is supplemented by ceiling fans and shade structures around the house, and by the quilts I make to snuggle under in the winter. 

2. We added 3500 litres of rainwater tanks. 

3. We now have an electric vehicle and home charger so we can drive per kilometer  at one third of the cost of an Internal Combustion engine and on solar power from our solar panels. 

4. We completed the removal of dangerous asbestos fencing and made new fencing around our garden There is a new retaining wall on one side of the garden, which has enabled some pretty landscaping to occur. 

5. We needed to repair our ceilings as we live in an older house and the strapping between the beams and the ceiling panels needed renewing or they would fall down- this is a very expensive exercise but we could confidently save up for it whilst still having money for fun things like live music and community theatre. 

I find great relief from anxiety with the method of budgeting I have been taught. 

How do you budget?