Budgeting Time for the Year – Part 2
Budgeted Time – Part 6.2
Now that we’ve gotten beyond thinking of our year in seasons, let’s begin to look at the year from a different perspective. Let’s identify the big stones or big objects that would make budgeting our time for the year worthwhile. To do this we will consider four areas: 1) finances, 2) vacations, 3) holidays, and 4) the 12 months of the year.
Financial Impacts on a Year
Most people never combine the idea that time management and financial planning impact each other. Allow me to give you an example, planning a vacation for the end of the year might not be wise, considering a person with a large family and young kids. Your Christmas spending might make it financially difficult to take a vacation.
One of the main activities Pamela and I budget for, time-wise that is, is our fiscal year which ends in November. This way we can take the month of December to work on and update our old budget and create a new one so that when we enter a new year we’re already rolling. On the last day of November is when we close out our books for the year. The month of December, then, is very important. We plan to put all of our financial plans and goals into place and think about reevaluating how we’ve done our past finances from what we’ve learned the past 12 months.
In looking at one’s year from a financial standpoint, here are a few financially impacting time-transactions one might want to consider:
- January – Avoid any travels or making large purchases or renovation projects during January. January is the time spent recovering from excessive holiday spending. Block off your calendar so that you already know this isn’t the best time for any of those things.
- Tax Season – Depending on which side you fall (owing or receiving a refund) this will certainly impact the plans you make around tax season. Either you’re paying your taxes or planning to spend what’s been returned to you.
- Christmas – I mentioned Christmas earlier. You want to avoid other heavy financially impacting time-transactions during this season because it has the potential to place your family in a bad financial situation. There’s enough impact to both your financial and time budget during this season.
- Other times – Now that you have the problem areas and the more opportune times, use this to your advantage when it comes to planning what you can or cannot do at a certain time of the year. The goal is to budget time to give you the best life ever.
Vacations Impact Your Year
When we look at our vacations for a year, we find the most ideal places in our calendar for them. If you look at your 12-month calendar, which months are best for your vacations? First, determine how many vacations you would like to take this year. Then find those places in your calendar where they fit, like spring break. Maybe you’re a spring break person, or maybe you like summers. Find the most ideal time slots in the summer months. Maybe August isn’t the best time for a vacation. If that’s the case you want to do July, June, or even May. We often choose May because not as many people are traveling and it is right at the start of summer. Budgeting one’s annual time-transactions depends on where it best fits into your calendar. As you look at your budget, you’ll begin to narrow down the 12 months into just a few months that work for you and your family to schedule vacations.
Holidays’ Impacts on a Year
The next set of annual time-transactions is your holidays. You always want to think about how you will insert your holidays and what holiday plans into your calendar. Then execute the plan accordingly. Again, when you are budgeting your time, a year isn’t as long as you think it is. It’s only 12 months and before I mentioned the seasons, which is only four. You want to plan so that your plans guide you to the most opportune times, months, and seasons for your desired activities. There’s a Bible phrase that says “make the most of your time, make the most out of the opportunities you have.” [1] That’s something that you must do and one can do this by budgeting time. Budgeting your time is how we make the most of every opportunity that we have on our calendar.
Only 12 Months Impact Your Year
Lastly let’s talk about the 12 months. I suggest you budget month by month, since there really are only 12. To give you a better idea, within specific months some things are just expected. Therefore go ahead and plug those items in your calendar (a.k.a time-budget). In our next episode, we will provide examples for each month. For now, we will simply call those monthly time-transactions, staple items. It’s those items that show up every year without fail. You always want to consider these staple items and events. Go ahead and put those stones in place because they’re not moving. Most of your annual time-transactions for the most part, aren’t optional. If you recall, from one of our previous sections, we talked about living with margin. This is how you do that by inserting the recurring events that we consider staples into our annual time-budget.
We hope this lesson helps you think of a few areas or gives some ideas to how you can make the most of your year. We hope that by budgeting your time, it will help you achieve the best year ever. Let the ideas on how to consider financial impacts on your plans, how holidays & vacation plans impact your year, and how to manage your staple activities help you to determine how to make the most of the year that you have. Use your time-budget to take your year to the next level.
Question: what ideas are you coming up with to add to your time-budget for the next year of your life?
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[1] Colossians 4:5 NLT, Bible.com, accessed October 11, 2022, https://www.bible.com/bible/116/COL.4.5.NLT
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.
