My Approach to Budgeting on a Fixed Income

Budgeting, for me, isn’t about color-coded spreadsheets and financial influencers telling me to “manifest abundance.” It’s about math. Cold, unbothered math.

Money doesn’t care how motivated I feel. It responds to numbers.

Believe it or not, if you’re full-time military in the United States, you live on a fixed income. The check shows up twice a month. The amount is set. You can earn rank, sure — but month to month, that number doesn’t flex just because prices do.

So I learned early: when income is fixed, discipline cannot be optional.

One of the funniest things about budgeting came later in my career. Before I retired, part of my job was helping people work through their budgets. We read different methods — and there are a million of them out there.

One day we ran across an article written by some uber-wealthy individual explaining how to “think about money.”

A co-worker looked up and said, “I don’t listen to folks like that. What do they know about being broke?”

We all laughed and kept working.

There’s truth in that humor.

Advice about money often comes from people who’ve never felt the tension of watching an account balance dip lower than comfort allows. It’s easier to preach strategy when scarcity isn’t in the room.

That doesn’t mean wealthy people know nothing. It just means perspective matters.

And perspective is earned.

I write down what I actually spend — not what I wish I spent. Not what I spent five years ago before groceries decided they were luxury goods. The real numbers. If the math hurts, good. At least it’s honest.

Clarity first. Comfort later.

But here’s the part people don’t like to admit: we focus on money like it’s the key to happiness. “All our problems will be solved if I had more money.”

I’ve never seen that actually be true in the long run.

More money solves the immediate crisis. It quiets the emergency. It buys breathing room. And breathing room matters.

But then prices rise. Insurance creeps up. Groceries stretch further into the month. The number that once felt like relief becomes the new baseline. Now we need more again.

It starts to feel like Groundhog Day — waking up to the same financial morning over and over. The setting changes. The numbers change. But the cycle doesn’t.

Earn more. Spend more. Adjust. Repeat.

The scenery shifts just enough to convince you something’s different, but the pattern remains intact.

I used to tease when money came up in conversation, “I was happier when I didn’t have any money.”

It wasn’t really about the money.

It was about expectation.

For years I’ve said, “Money don’t mean jack.” That philosophy caused friction. More than once I heard, “That’s easy to say for someone who has money.”

The irony was almost funny.

The person saying it had the beautiful home. The polished cars. The things people point to when they measure success. I didn’t have those things at that level. Not even close.

So what is it about our obsession with the almighty dollar?

I don’t have a clean answer.

I just know the obsession doesn’t seem to end when the number increases. It expands. It mutates. It finds a new baseline. And I don’t see that changing anytime soon — if ever.

In truth, we need to find ways to better utilize the money we have.

I can almost hear the response already — smiling, slightly defensive:
“I don’t have enough money to better utilize anything. I barely have enough to live.”

I hear that voice because I’ve been there.

As a child, we didn’t have much money. Not even close. But I never went to bed hungry. My clothes weren’t designer, but they weren’t shabby either. The lights stayed on. The rent got paid.

My mother made that happen.

She didn’t have more money. She had discipline. She had priorities. She had sacrifice.

At the time, I didn’t understand what I was watching. I didn’t recognize the quiet decisions she made — the things she went without so we didn’t have to. Wisdom looks ordinary when you’re young.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I understood what she was really doing.

She wasn’t stretching money.

She was stretching responsibility.

That lesson stayed with me.

When I retired, I finally sat down and audited my household.

Line by line.
Subscription by subscription.
Policy by policy.

My favorite phrase during that process was, “I’m paying what… for this?”

Some of it was laughable. Some of it was embarrassing. A few charges had just been riding along for years, quietly pulling from the account because I never challenged them.

After the initial shock — and yes, frustration — I started trimming.

Not drastically. Not emotionally. I didn’t slash everything and turn my life into austerity theater. I didn’t cancel things I knew I would quietly turn back on in three months.

I made decisions based on needs, not wants.

And that distinction is harder than it sounds.

It hasn’t been easy. Comfort argues. Convenience negotiates. “It’s only $19.99” multiplies when repeated often enough.

But the result?

I reduced my monthly household costs by 40%.

No lottery ticket. No raise. No windfall. Just attention and intention.

Your number won’t look like mine. That’s not the point.

The point is this: we often don’t need more money as much as we need more awareness.

And I didn’t do it with some fancy app or computer program.

I used a No. 2 pencil, blank paper, and some common sense.