Budgeting, by the Boyers

Sunday's lesson was on budgeting, with the Relief Society and Priesthood Quorums combined.

Class began with the release of the Elder's quorum presidency (thank you Brent Stratton and counselors for your service to us!) and sustaining of the new EQ President, Marcus Boyer, and counselors, David Vagnoni and Greg Carr.

Jenny and Marcus Boyer then started their lesson by role-playing a typical month-end conversation about money...a before-learning-to-budget and an after-we-learned-to-budget example.

They talked about the importance and benefits of budgeting. One thing Marcus said stuck with me: going into debt is giving up some of your precious free agency. You commit yourself and your future time and resources to someone else in order to meet that obligation. It can limit your time with your family and your ability to serve others.

Three Parts to Budgeting

They talked about three things you need to have to successfully budget. 1) Unified commitment 2) Planning and 3) Execution.

It's important to have information to base your planning on, info about what you actually spend based on good recordkeeping, and then real-time budget info through the month so when you are looking at a purchase you can also look at the trade-offs and decide if it's worth it.

It's important to be realistic about our expectations regarding our lifestyle, and to live on a less than we earn, so we can prepare for the future.

Boyers have set up categories where they share decision-making, and other categories they individually make decisions about (i.e. groceries or investments), where each has flexibility, and the other's trust in those decisons.

They barely scratched the surface of this topic and proposed a 3-session workshop in the future, where more in-depth discussion and learning could take place. Stay tuned for further details.