Prosperity - More than just a spell

Let's be honest- we live in late stage capitalism here in the good old US of A - and its a dystopian nightmare. Prices keep going up, wages are stagnate, and living with 11 roommates is a real possibility for a good portion of us. In fact the stigma of "living in your mom's basement" has moved from " failure to launch" over to "fiscally responsible". Men hanging out of their best friends ride are no longer scrubs, but economically savvy car poolers. It's rough out there!

This has opened an opportunity for many to start sharing their prosperity spells, jars, rituals, candles, spell kits etc. You will find responsible practitioners shouting to the roof tops "You ALSO have to include ACTION with your intentions" but they are often drowned out by the "quick fix" spell kits you can get on Amazon. Where there is need there is opportunity, and where there is greed there is opportunism - I don't hate the player, just the game.

I want to take this opportunity to share with you, dear reader, that having a budget is a prosperity spell (Hades/Pluto really wants you to have a savings account). Balancing your checkbook, using a spreadsheet to track money in and money out, and making sure that you spend intentionally are all a prosperity spell. Not only is being fiscally responsible healthy for future you, but it helps current you survive. How do I know this? I've lived it.

There was a time when I had to decide on groceries for myself or diapers for my infant son. My son got his diapers and I survived for a week off the generosity of co-workers willing to share their sandwich. I have worked 2 jobs, 22 hours a day, 6 days a week and still barely had enough to scrape together for a roof, daycare, and food for my household. All while putting myself through college. I knew where EVERY penny was going, and there were simply too many ends to make meet. It was not my fault, but boy did I feel like a failure.

Media outlets, well meaning acquaintances, advertisements for budget applications all made me feel like I was not working hard enough. It was like I was doing too little to get out of my economic position. There are only 168 hours in a 7 day week - and I was working 80 of them, doing school work for 35 of them and driving for 20 of them. For y'all good at math that leaves just about 4.5 hours to sleep, shower, clean, wake up, get ready for work and be a person per day. There was NO WAY I could have possibly worked harder than I already was.

To even eke out an existence I was stacking tasks - doing as much homework as possible on company time, opting for grocery pickup instead of shopping in store, or shopping on my lunch break and praying no one stole my milk out of the break room fridge. I was not even a person let alone able to connect to my spiritual path. We call this the time of "zombie" Amber because I was nothing but my base nature of "Just keep going - you have no choice".

I share this because it is important background. I'm not sitting on a high horse saying "You must try HARDER you are not doing ENOUGH" because my friend, I just bet you are giving every day every ounce of YOU that you can. In the famous words of Captain Picard;

"It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose, that is not weakness, that is life"

It was during this time I realized that the only way to connect to spirit and raise my prosperity was to do something practical. Something that put my focus on where I wanted to be and not where I was. I had tried budgeting application such as Mint.com, I got fancy with Quicken and used whatever budget tools my bank had pre-built into their systems. But it was impossible to keep up. I finally figured out why when I saw my co-worker using an excel spreadsheet to track their funds - The timing was off.

Most budget tools have you look at the month as a whole. The problem for me is that I have never, in the 17 years of working on this planet, been paid monthly. Bi-weekly, semi-monthly or weekly have always been the way my employers have cut my check. Add two jobs into the mix and now its almost impossible to keep it all straight. What bill is coming out when and how? Most bills are not due on the 1st of the month- they are due whenever you happened to sign up for the service (Looking at you Netflix and T-Mobile) So how do you budget for that without having one paycheck being "all bills" and the other being " all groceries". I had to learn how to spread it out.

"When did this blog become financial Budgeting advise?" you ask. It seems a bit of a departure - but this was the very first time I learned how to set an intention in the universe and stick to it. This was how I was able to engage with the chaotic forces at play and align them for my survival. Finding the magical in the mundane and often stressful task of bill paying literally saved my life, my home, and my family from complete destitution. Not only that- I did it on zero sleep, zero energy, and with an unhealthy obsession with Monster drinks. Use my pain to see the magical in the necessary.

Step 1:

Stop budgeting with what you don't have. Saying " I'm going to take $100 and set it aside for groceries every month" feels good in the moment, but can be a devastating disappointment when after paying all your bills you only have $70. Now your anxiety has kicked in and you have to re-tool your entire shopping trip that you've had in your head for weeks.

Set yourself up for success - and budget the bills first and then split what is left over AFTER. This way you know exactly what you are working with and can make the best decisions to survive until next payday.

You can see all the bills for that pay period listed and amounting to the Total Expenses of $930 for that Bi weekly paycheck. The 'Difference' of $70 is what you have to parcel out for gas, groceries, clothes, snacks etc. before you get paid again in two weeks. You can also see that the $500 to rent is listed there- I'll tell you that this is just the first HALF of what is due next month in our example.

Step 2:

Track your expenses and your bills based on how often you get paid. I find that budgeting

monthly when I get paid bi-weekly is painful. My first check of the month leaves me with $15 to last till the second one.

By tracking things by frequency of being paid you are able to spread your bills out and have a similar amount of money each check left over in order to survive on. It's less stressful in the moment and can help you better balance when you go to the grocery store, and when you get creative with the ramen you have at home. One of the things that changed the game for me was setting aside HALF my rent on the first check- and then when my second check for the month came in paying the up coming months rent then. But how did my Neuro-divergent brain not go "ooooh pretty money" and go ham at Costco?

Step 3:

Whenever possible have two checking accounts at the same bank (thus allowing instant transfers between the two accounts as needed). The first one is for BILLS ONLY and the second one is for SPENDING MONEY ONLY. Most employers will even allow you to do split direct deposit so you can automate some of this.

I personally would have $250 per check go into my spending money checking account (as that was the minimum required to avoid bank fees) and the rest of my check would go into the bills checking account. I would ONLY carry my spending checking account bank card with me and would keep the bills card in a fire safe at home. This meant that on pay day, when I set aside half my rent payment, it lived in the bills account and I had to go through 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon to access it on a whim. Thus eliminating whims, because who has the energy to do that much work?

I would also strongly encourage anyone in the position to do so: get you a saving account at a different banking institution than your main checking accounts. Set up direct deposit as a split to this account for a $100 if you can or even just $50 (most Credit Unions don't charge a fee for an account with them). This will AUTOMATE your savings and keep it out of sight, out of mind. As you saw in the example images above- savings was listed as an expense; a requirement and a necessity. Did I sometimes have to dip into savings to put gas in the car? You bet your ass I did. But it required extra steps to access the money so I was less likely to whim it away on nonsense and truly only used it for emergencies.

To auto bill, or to not auto bill

Let's be clear - no everyone is able to get a credit card. Not everyone WANTS a credit card- and that is fine. If you fall into those categories- Skip to the next section- no one will be mad. I am just here to share a hot tip that I wished I'd learned before my 20's:

If you are going to automate billing, only ever automate it to a credit card that is designated for paying bills.

Let me dive a bit into that. Having someone auto bill your bank account can run you the risk of over draft fees because of circumstances outside of YOUR control (your direct deposit was late, the bill hit early due to a bank holiday, you are 30 cents short and capitalism is evil). So to avoid that - I did the following:

I took my LOWEST limit card (about $2,500) and set all my bills that could auto bill to hit that credit card each month. Fun fact about CC interest is if you pay the bill off by the statement ending date, you don't have to pay interest. This would buy me time during the month for my direct deposit to clear from my employer/s (that's called the float). Sometimes all you need is a days grace and that is what this system bought for me. I NEVER had a late fee to my phone company, and if I had to shift $30 by two weeks to put gas in the car I could do that without risk of over drafting my bank account.

Not only did this help my credit score IMMENSELY as I was using my revolving credit, but never having a statement read anything other than "fully paid off" but it took some stress of the billing date juggle off my shoulders. Not only that- but the credit card itself hung out in the fire safe with the bills account debit card.

I, having been young a dumb once, had multiple credit cards at this point in my life. I knew that closing those lines of credit would be a huge hit on my attempts to look good to the credit companies (scams as they are) so I kept them all open. I took my second highest credit card and put a sticker on it that read "GAS ONLY" and would use this to only fill up my car. This helped me see how much I was spending on gas and borrow time as needed between checks. This one took more self control as it was actively in use - but that neon orange sticker helped my brain make good choices. I also would pay this card off every payday (as credit cards let you pay them as often as you want as long as its on time) .

This may be Pandora's box to some- you know you better than anyone else. I just share as this helped me wrestle control of my finances from the capitalism gremlins.

But what does this have to do with witchcraft?

I love me a good money bowl. I enjoy trying to remember to throw cinnamon sticks through my doorway the first of every month (I can't do the powder cause pets). I like lighting a green candle surrounded by peppermint and green stones. This makes me happy and helps me focus my intention on a goal (new couch, car repairs, I JUST NEED $150 to get through next week). But I often struggle to commit to what I'm going to do to EARN that boon from the universe.

So, every time I make a money bowl or prosperity satchel I commit that every payday I will sit with my Google Sheets budget spreadsheet and map out what this month will look like. I will highlight in orange what I've scheduled to be paid - and mark it green once it clears my account. I will devote a few minutes to go over and make sure the amounts that show due are correct (as some things fluctuate) and re-affirm my promise to only use the gas credit card for feeding my car and the bills checking account for paying bills. This is my vow to the universe on what I am going to do in order to achieve my financial goals.

It's not much - but its honest work - it's necessary work - and it's on par with what I am asking for. I want financial stability so I will act in a way that is fiscally responsible - even if there are too many ends to make meet.

About the Attached spreadsheet

If you would like I am including an Excel version of the spreadsheet I took screenshots of in this blog post. It has formulas already built in for Bi-Weekly Budgeting so once you put in the first payday of the year it will auto fill the rest of the days. Not only that the formulas auto-calculate the bills you put in. Play around with it and let me know if you have any questions

It also includes a Monthly budget tab for those who like an overview, Student loan tracker, and a separate debt tracker so you can see how much you still owe on that car loan and how close to your goal you are.

I was given a copy of a similar spreadsheet back in 2017 by my co-worker and have made changes and additions to it since. Each year In December I would make a copy - retitle it for the new year and forecast out the due dates of the bills I still have and it makes for a fun history of how far I've come.

Bi-Weekly Bills Spreadsheet.xlsx

Download XLSX • 93KB