Lifestyle Budget

For the last few years towards the beginning of each year my wife and I sit down and create a budget of the money we will spend, the money we will invest, and the money we will save and each year we have refined this process and have gotten better and more realistic with regards to our spending and saving habits to a point where we have a good balance. . . there is still room for improvement.

For the first time though we decided to create what we have called a 'lifestyle budget' to better allocate our most valuable asset, our time. We are still building out what exactly this will look like but we have realised that with our growing commitments we haven't done a good job balancing the allocation of our time. The draft of the plan for now is to focus primarily on weekends and perhaps add a few midweek events. It feels a little clinical as I type out this plan but our hope is that by doing so we better invest our spare time with our kids, friends, family, and each other. After all what is the point of the financial budget if there is no free time to enjoy some of your hardwork?

I envisage that there will be a crossover between certain areas of these budgets for example we have an ING account for vacations and we only have so many vacation days a year so when I build out my 'lifestyle budget' I hope to marry these and other factors together. Hopefully by the next post I will have a more complete approach to share.