Budgeting as a traveler
Undeniably, one of the perks of travel social work is that
we are generally paid a wage that is reflective of our value. I don’t even want to get started on how first
responders, teachers, social workers are compensated on a whole in the United
States, but for many people, travel work may be the first time in their careers
where they can work freely without massive financial burden.
But with great power, comes great responsibility… or that’s
what they say. An easy trap to fall in
to, and trust me, it’s super common and incredibly human, is that we walk away
from our first assignments thinking, “I made really good money, so how did I
not manage to save anything?” Simple
answer is, life happens. It’s okay.
In my past life as a music therapist, I sat on a regional
board as the treasurer. I had always
been great with other people’s money, but not amazing with my own. So I knew how to budget, but I never really
followed one for myself. I’d have a
general idea of what money needed to be saved or how my paychecks were being
spent, but I was never really disciplined about it in a way that I felt I could
carry through. This carried through
probably until my third travel assignment.
I’d make a general budget, and I’d mostly follow through, but after a
Netflix binge of Friends somewhere between my 3rd and 4th
assignments, I really decided to pay myself first.
The episode of Friends (and honestly, I remember seeing this
episode when I was in high school) was the one where Monica has to ask her
parents for money… but her Elliott Gould father can’t understand why because he
taught her to put 10% of every paycheck away in savings. It sounded good in practice, but it wasn’t until
I decided that I was paying myself with that 10% that I really started to
implement the practice. Here are the
things that work for me:
1: I apparently use the “Envelope Method” but
with bank accounts.
The Envelope Method supposes that you get paid in cash or have cash in hand. You have an envelope dedicated to each of your expenses. You funnel the appropriate amount of cash away in each envelope.
The Envelope Method supposes that you get paid in cash or have cash in hand. You have an envelope dedicated to each of your expenses. You funnel the appropriate amount of cash away in each envelope.
I do this with bank
accounts. This works really well for
me. I have an account to pay my students
loans, an account to pay my credit cards, etc.
When I get a paycheck, I divert money to the appropriate bank account,
so I don’t have to deal with it. If it’s
in my main account, I’ll think it’s play money… so everything that is not for
me to play with, has a place to go and the bills get paid from those accounts.
2: I thank my
money. This is one of my more spiritual
concepts; but I’m super grateful for my money and so I let it know. Whenever I log into my bank account, I tell
my money I love it, and I thank it for circulating. If you dread money, money will dread you.
3: I created a weekly
budget (here’s a spreadsheet I created) and once I got real about what money
was going where, down to the $5.52/week for my Planet Fitness membership, I
found that I could actually stick to it and have play money at the end of each
week. If you’re avoiding figuring out
your actual numbers, work through the resistance however your normally work
through your issues. Clear those old
belief patterns about finances out of the way.
Old beliefs, thank you for your service, you are now retired!
4: Automatic
transfers: Once I complete my budget, I
set up automatic transfers so on the morning of payday, the money is just transferred
to its new home without me ever having to see it. This is especially nice when you’re growing
your money.
5: Have one savings
account that you commit to not using.
This means, you may have multiple savings accounts. Have one for emergencies (I don’t actually
call this account “emergencies”, as I’m a firm believer in whatever you put out,
you get back), and have one that just gets to grow.
6: I name my bank
accounts. I call my accounts fun
names that remind me of where the money is going, it’s easier for me to keep
track of.
7: You don’t need
debit cards for all of your accounts.
I had been thinking about creating a budget resource for
this site for quite some time and recently got a friendly question from a
fellow traveler which prompted me to take action and get you a
spreadsheet. The weekly budget
spreadsheet is meant for you to put in your weekly debit/expense amounts for
each type of bill and if you don’t know what the weekly cost of something is for
you, I’ve put in a little calculator to take your monthly or semi-annual bill
and convert it to a weekly cost.
There’s also a way for you to calculate what your likely take-home
pay per week will be vs what a recruiter will tell you. Recruiters tend to “forget” to calculate your
pay with taxes taken out of your taxable wage.
In my experience, you take home about 71% of your taxable wage, so I account
for this in the budget.
Feel free to let me know if you have questions about how to
use this. Download your own copy. Use it, change the names of the budget
items. Everything should auto-populate
for you. Time to grow your money!
I am definitely enjoying your website. You definitely have some great insight and great stories.
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