Before:

After:

This brings me to a point about people who need a wake-up call. Really, there are certain people (hopefully you are not one of them) who has said to me, “I’m always broke.”

Yet, they spend $40 per week on cigarettes.

They are always buying drinks for people at the bar.

They are living in places where rent is more than they can afford. I live in an awesome apartment and the rent is $450 plus utilities. There are people without jobs I know living in $700+ rent apartments and wonder why their heat gets shut off.

At Solid Cactus we are paid weekly, and I’m budgeted out enough that a certain portion of my check is deposited into a separate checking account for “bills” The money builds up every week until the last week of the month when online banking sends a $450 check to my landlord, $xxx to my cable company, $xx to my phone bill, etc. I then go in every month as bills come in for variable expenses and manually queue those bills for payment.

The balance of my check is split between a “spending money” account and a “Rainy Day Fund” — sort of like a Christmas Club account only I manage it myself.

Now, I’m not saying people need to be as technical as this. It works for me. What I don’t want to hear is, “I can’t pay my rent because I don’t make enough money.” People need to get their priorities straight and in my opinion having heat when the temperature outside is 20 degrees below freezing is more important than drinking another beer, smoking another cigarette.