Budgeting Based on Personal Values

Standard Personal Financial Advice

When it comes to basic financial advice, we all know what we're supposed to do. Spend less than you earn. Save for retirement. Pay down your debts.  This covers the what, and a little bit of the how, but skips the most important part: the why.

Your Values Impact Your Budget

 When figuring out how to budget your money, you need to know what you care about and how that influences what you spend your money on. Without thinking thorough the why, you may catch yourself spending money on things you don't really value just to keep up appearances--or because you think you should spend on those things. 

Most of us inherently know what we care about, but we have a hard time putting it into words. Fortunately, Think 2 Perform offers a free, online tool that can help you name and prioritize your values. For me, this tool helped me translate my ambiguous thoughts about what matters to me into a few helpful terms. 

I'm not sure what's up with the potato, but I just had to use this picture somewhere.

Brenda's Values

Here are my top 5 identified values:

• Happiness
• Health
• Autonomy
• Relationships
• Education

What Those Values Mean to Me

Here's what each value tangibly means to me: 

• Happiness: For me, happiness means low stress, low hassle and low drama. It includes quiet time for me to recharge, and the time and money to do things that I want to do with people I  enjoy. It also means I have choices and options and I can decide what I want to do and when I want to do it. 
• Health: After seeing friends and family members struggle with health issues that limited their mobility and quality of life, being healthy is a priority. Health means getting enough sleep, eating well, staying active, being functionally fit, having energy, not being in pain and making time for my mind and body to rest. It's important to me that I am able to take care of myself and my family and set a good example for my daughter so she doesn't have to struggle with some of these same issues.
• Autonomy: I like to have options. I like having control over my schedule and being able to decide what to do on a given day. I like to be able to work from home and work shorter hours on some days and longer hours on others depending on work demands.  I like living in an area that has so much to offer and being able to have multiple possibilities for what to do in a given day.
• Relationships: I work to maintain the strong relationships I have with my husband, my daughter, work colleagues, and friends I've made during different part of my life. My best friend and I get together weekly--even if it's just to run errands together or take a walk. My daughter and I have game night and go roller skating together. I make the time to participate in communities related to my current job, my profession, my daughter and my neighborhood. 
• Education: In day to day life, I look at each interaction as an opportunity to pick up information--whether it's a new meditation app, a great place to buy a Vera Bradley purse or characteristics of the best roller derby wrist guards. I also do the standard things like take classes, attend webinars and re ad daily.  At my professional job, I create experiences to help individuals continue grow their knowledge after initial training has been completed. Overall, education is a big part of who I am.

How Values Translate to Spending

So how do those values translate to how I choose to spend my money? Here are a few examples on how this manifests itself :

• Happiness: I budget for a monthly light rail train pass. Since driving in traffic stresses me out, I commute to work via train.
• Health: I budget for monthly massages for myself. It  helps me make time for self-care and promotes my overall physical and mental health. 
• Autonomy:  I budget for 2 vehicles.  In addition to my train pass, my family owns a car and a truck. We have a car because it's more comfortable for road trips and a truck so we can haul things. There is also less coordination of plans, and we have a backup vehicle if one needs repairs. 
• Relationships:  I budget for roller skating. Since my daughter and I both started doing roller derby earlier this year, one of our mother/daughter activities is roller skating. We usually go once a week together, and sometimes she brings a friend or we skate with other people we know. 
• Education: I budget for exercise classes. Recently, my best friend and I went to an all day yoga festival where we got to try out multiple yoga styles. 

So Now What Should You Do?

• Take the values assessment (There's a link in the "Learn More" section).
• Identify your top 5 values
• Reflect on what those values mean to you. Write it down.
• Look at your budget. Determine how your current spending fits in with your values.
• Adjust your budget accordingly.

Start with your values.

Learn More

• Free, Online Values Assessment by Think2Perform
• Money and Values Exercise from A Debt Free Stress Free Life​​