Per Diem Budgeting

Believe it or not budgeting can be fun.  Especially when you see the results such as an increased bank account or paying down a credit card or line of credit.

My wife and I have been recently trying out a new budgeting method we created ourselves that I have called per diem budgeting.  It works like this.

Step 1 – Set your monthly budget for the most influential budgeting category or categories that you have control over. In our case we wanted to focus on our grocery budget, our Meat budget and our gluten free budget. (My wife can’t eat Gluten)

Step 2 – In Excel create a chart that breaks down your individual budgets into three columns.  Per Diem, Amount Spent, and Balance.  Then make enough rows for each day of the month.  Ex. August has 31 days, so there will be 31 rows.

Step 3 – In each day of the per diem column put your per diem amount.  If your budget is $500 and the month is August then you would divide $500 by 31 days to get a per diem amount of  $16.13 rounded.

Step 4 – Post the chart somewhere very visible in your home like your fridge so you can update it daily.

Step 5 – Fill it out daily by adding the new daily per diem amount to the balance and subtracting the amount spent.  See my example below as to how to fill it out.

Step 6 – Save Money for more important things like paying off your house or saving for retirement!

Here is my excel sheet for those nerds like me. Grocery Limiter Tool

Randy Moore
http://www.rcmbooks.com

I have been asked this question a few times lately, so I thought I would jot down a few comments.  This is probably one of the more difficult things to face as an employee.  If we are feeling underpaid and undervalued and have not had a salary review in over a year, we start to think about planning for THAT discussion.  Even if there is a scheduled review, we still have to plan and be preprepared.  There was a key word in that sentence – “Prepared”.  That is what you must be when you are about to sit down at the bargaining table.  So what do you do to prepare.  Here are some tips:

Ahhh but I beg to differ! Even if your job title doesn’t specifically say “Customer Service” I would argue that customer service is still important in your job!

I was recently at an important medical appointment. One I had been anticipating and waiting for for quite a while. My husband came with me to the appointment. This specialist was a well educated and tenured individual. My husband and I were completely shocked at the experience we had over the 45 minute appointment. This professional was rude, unprofessional, cut me off, made me feel insignificant, and at one point even started physically pulling her hair out with both hands as if to suggest how frustrated she was. I almost walked out of the room and my husband, so shocked, stopped her and told her that the way she was conducting herself was completely unprofessional. Never EVER had we experienced anything like this in our lives. This person was very detailed as to what information she was looking for in her questions, but without knowing what was in her head, she became frustrated when she didn’t hear what she was looking for. I could go on and on here but truly without sitting in the room, it is hard to actually describe the experience. It is one I will never forget.

So, do you think that a medical specialist should provide good customer service – Absolutely! Do you think I would ever give her a recommendation? As a matter of fact, what do you think was the first thing I did when I got home? Yup…I made a call to my doctor’s office to request a new specialist and told them of my experience. I would imagine that they will think twice about referring patients her way.

How about a librarian? What about a letter carrier? What about a pooper scooper? Absolutely everyone is involved in customer service. Your “customer” may not be someone at a cash register, it may be an internal customer like another team or individual that you hand work to…We all make an impression – the goal is to make a lasting POSITIVE impression that brings in repeat business.

Have you thought about your customer service lately? How is it? Can you improve? What would your “customers” say about you?

I thought I would write a little bit of a different post today…  It has been a long cold winter here in Ontario Canada and at times, this can get people down and longing to see the sunshine and feel the warmth!  Besides weather, life can just get us down!  The news seems to be filled with bad news, as we get older we have more aches and pains and see more health problems with those around us, our jobs can overwhelm us and the list continues.  The intent is not to make this a “downer” blog, but to point out that so many people go through this same “stuff” so why is it that they don’t get down and always seem to be happy?  The truth is, they probably do get down as well, however they are able to rise above and look to see the positives.

For those of you that know me well, you know my father faced a number of life threatening illnesses throughout his 67 years of life.  He was an inspiration to many.  He fought to continue to practice medicine and fought to survive every day.  With so many obstacles in his way, many would ask…”how do you keep going?”  He would say, “because there is always someone out there worse off than me.”  And it is so true.  Many times we can get so caught up in our daily lives and feel sorry for ourselves, when really, what we are going through, is nothing compared to someone else.

Life throws us curve balls, it tests us, it can make things difficult, but we have a gift and that gift is life.  What we do with it and how we choose to respond to these challenges is up to us.  We CAN choose happiness.

I found an article that helps to answer what some people do to keep “happy”.  I hope it provides you with some inspiration to get through the tough times and enjoy life to its fullest!  No job is worth unhappiness,

http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/7-things-remarkably-happy-people-do-more.html

I teach at a local college and was teaching this morning on Effective Feedback.  This is such an important concept in the workplace both as someone who is the receiver of feedback and the one giving the feedback.  Quite often managers tend to want to be liked by their team members and are therefore afraid to give any constructive feedback…they stick to positive feedback.  This does nothing to assist the organization or the individual to improve and grow.  People are also reluctant to ask for feedback when they have not received it, but this too is important.  It shows our managers that we are keen, we are interested and we want to give back and contribute effectively to the company.

Feedback is essential in our performance reviews…telling someone that they “did very well on the XYZ project” is great, but how they did well, providing them with examples and giving some constructive feedback on what to work on for the next time takes things to a whole different level!

Here is a video that helps hit on some of the points above…enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnSE-Cuxp40