Jason, Cape Town, South Africa
I am married and we recently had one child. If you are earning $1700 or more a month here in Africa, you are in the top 2% earning bracket! I'm currently working for my church. I oversee a department that helps missionaries raise finances. We do all sorts of missions--medical missions, church plants, school missions etc. I also work with teenage kids. We have a mentor program we take them through. A lot of teenage kids in South Africa have very unstable homes so we try and create a loving and warm environment for them..
Our financial position was certainly not dire. We didn't have any debt. Our biggest frustration was that we weren't going anywhere. Even though our income was increasing every year, we still had very little savings. It’s also hard to get credit in South Africa. We couldn't buy a house or do any of the things that we really wanted to do. We were stagnant in our finances--not moving backwards and not moving forwards.
My father passed away early in 2010 and he literally had nothing. I could put his entire life's worth in a box. When I closed down his bank account, he had a few hundred rand (the equivalent of about $100). He never had a long term view of his finances. I realized if I wasn't careful I could end up like him. So I decided that we needed a plan. I wrote down my financial goals: What do I want to achieve financially in the next fifty years, and what is it going to take to get there?
One of the things I knew I needed to nail down was a proper budget. I did a google search and found YNAB. I loved the fact that you can import your bank statements and then allocate each expense to your budget with one click! I used to spend an entire day manually entering my expenses. So just that feature alone sold me. My wife and I set up our budget and started to cut away at those unnecessary expenses. It worked like a charm. Between June 2010 and November 2010 we managed to save R15000 (about $2500). I couldn't believe it. Our total monthly expenses is about R20000 (just under $3000) so in less than six months we almost have an entire month’s worth of income.
For the first time we feel as if we actually know what is going on with our money. There is now a deliberate plan. The great thing is, YNAB makes it easy to do. You don't need to spend hours going through your bank statements and slips. The software reduces the time you have to spend on your budget. This helps with the motivation factor; you know that with just a few hours of work each month you can save thousands of dollars. For the first time I feel in control of my finances, and more importantly I feel like we are going somewhere financially, not just stagnating.
I feel like we are going somewhere financially, not just stagnating.