Since I advocate for the well-heeled to live as if they weren’t, it’s worth establishing a new method for building a monthly budget. This will be useful for anyone, but necessary if you are planning to live on thousands less than your net pay. I break apart a budget into two pieces: the core budget and giving budget.

Core budget. This is the part of your budget that covers all the items and services we personally need or want. While you’ll find you have little control over many of these expenses, there are ways to reduce them.  Curbing excessive spending here is key to this whole idea of Humble Living.

Giving budget. Just like it sounds. Because being a disciple means personal involvement and development, we don’t just sit back and give to our church with the expectation that they will figure out who needs help.  That’s for us to work out. Maybe you end up intentionally giving everything or nothing to your church. Either way, the point is to take ownership of your giving.

Note: I will talk about a monthly budget because that’s the typical billing cycle. There are ways to normalize your pay to a monthly cycle if you aren’t paid on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule. I can do a future post on that if anyone is interested.

What follows is my process for establishing a budget.  Some parts may not apply to you, just skip them if that’s the case. Remember, the goal is to identify what normal (or typical) looks like and then adjust our budget – and lifestyle! – accordingly. If you’re already “typical” you will find this helpful nonetheless; you’ll be surprised how much fat can be trimmed from any budget.

1. Determine the typical median household income in your area.  There are many resources for this – I personally like city-data.com. You can look up the surrounding areas to get a feel for the typical household income. The key is median household income.  This amount is your gross annual core budget.

2. Using that as a guide, commit to an annual core budget that is no more than 10-15k per year more than this. This eliminates the temptation to allow your expenses to creep up and up until you’re spending most or all of your income on just you. Jesus called riches deceitful for that exact reason – they are sneaky.

3. Determine your take home annual core budget accounting for taxes and other considerations. This is necessary for those in a different tax bracket or with different sources of income than the typical household’s income.

4. Layout your existing monthly budget using all of your current expenses.  This is your start point.

5. Adjust your current budget to fit your new core budget. This may take a lot of work to trim expenses, cut out excess, and rethink your lifestyle. But it is completely possible to do.

6. Take the difference between your core budget and your actual monthly take home pay. This is yours to use to be God’s hands and feet!  If your income is already within the typical range, feel free to carve out a portion of it for this purpose. As I’ve mentioned before, you need not feel compelled to tithe. Give what you can and in the amount you desire.