You have choice here. For example, say when you calculated your variable expenses you determined that you were spending $300 a month on groceries. You can work to reduce this amount to $275 to have funds to spend on other choices. Maybe you do this by using coupons, by changing to a lower cost grocery store, by buying less prepared foods and cooking more from scratch, by purchasing generics instead of name-brands, by paying attention to sales and stocking up, by buying in bulk. If groceries are not your top priority, how can you reduce what you are spending on them in order to have funds for other choices?
Take a close look at all your variable expenses. Are there ways to cut some of the expenses to allow you to have funds to spend elsewhere? Maybe your morning stop at the coffee shop is costing you $25 a week which equates to $1300 a year. If you feel that coffee stop is worth that, you need to determine what you are going to spend less on in order to have those funds. Maybe you want to think of it as more of a once-week expense so that you spend $260 a year and have remaining $1000 to spend elsewhere.
Going through and allocating your disposable cash is going to take some time. The likelihood is you are going to have wants that are greater than what you have available. You may have to adjust the earlier allocations as you go down your variable expense list. This is where choice really becomes evident. Only you can decide which items you want to reduce in order to have funds in other areas.
For example, maybe you decide to cut back and only take a vacation every other year. In the alternate year, maybe you will do a staycation or a couple of weekends away. Maybe your vacation is sacred to you and you are willing to eat out only once a week instead of two or three times a week to make sure you can fund your vacation. Maybe you agree that your child only gets to do two activities that cost money instead of four in exchange for a larger clothing budget. The decisions of where to spend your money are your choice, your partner’s choice and to a smaller degree, your children’s choice.
This is the difference between a budget and a spending plan. While I can say you are wasting money on drinking coffee (especially since I do not drink it) if it is important to you, then you need to determine how to have the funds to drink coffee the way you want. Being mindful about where you want to spend your dollars gives you the chance to get what you want most instead of spending money on things that really do not matter to you. Only you get to decide what you most want to spend your money on.