Necessary wants, how to fit them into the budget!

So last week I wrote about how we were pulling in on every front and guarding our finances from anything that might try and whisk them away.  This week is a little different, and in some sense, is a contrast to all that talk about saving every last penny.

Once we got back on track last week with an extremely limited budget, we were able to regain the focus on saving that we've lost in the last few months.  Things have come up that we do need money for, and not "needs".  These are things like birthday celebrations and other stuff that you just really wanna do! 

With no room in the budget for any sort of entertainment, you have to figure out how to handle it when things come up.  Sometimes you have things that are not truly needs, but are necessary wants!  For example, if friends get married, you need a gift!  If someone comes into town that you haven't seen in awhile, you'll need to make the time to see them, and if that happens to be a family gathering at a restaurant or something, you'll need to go.  You get the picture.  Life happens, and life usually costs.

So how do you fit "life" into a strict budget?

Here's how we do it.  We save $50 every two weeks into what we call our slush fund.  This is not something that we just spend when we want to, it's kept in a secondary savings account and used as an pre-emergency fund.  Every time we can gather a couple hundred bucks into that account, it gets transferred into the emergency fund so it doesn't get used on things that we don't really need.

It takes 5 business days to transfer the money from our savings account into our checking account where it can be put into whatever we need it for.  Knowing that there is a 5 day wait for what we want usually helps us to decide whether it's really worth it or not.  Generally, necessary wants are planned for at least a week before they arrive, giving us time to figure out where to get the money from.

God and others have blessed us so much though that sometimes when we think we'll need to pull from the pre-emergency account, we don't have to!

Here are some ways that I've found money to do the things I want to, even when the budget is super tight.

1. Sell stuff!  Do you have an old bookshelf or table kicking around your shed?  Sell it!  Make sure you research the going price of such items before you list.  If you need a quick sale, list it slightly less expensive than all the other options.
2. Cash in those points cards!  Do you have a points card like Petro Points, AirMiles, or any other type of points card that is just sitting there gathering points?  You can usually cash those in for gift cards or even items that you can use for gifts. 
3. Pray!  Sounds so crazy, doesn't it?  God knows what you need, and believe it or not, He even knows what you want and what you are hoping for.  I really wanted a treadmill to use through the winter, but I couldn't afford one.  I would pray for one on and off through the last year, and a couple of months ago, I found one for free!  God is bigger than we know, and far more concerned about our desires than we sometimes believe He is. 
4. Pull in a few dollars from your other budgets.  If you can get by with a little less gas money in a month, you can use that unused budget to cover for some other stuff.  If you can avoid spending quite as much money on food or electricity, you'll have a few more dollars that you can claim for the fun stuff.