When to blow your budget: an exception to every rule

Clearly we love to budget. It’d be pretty tough to write a blog about responsible personal finance if we weren’t passionate about purposefully spending our money.  However, with every good plan, there are always going to be situations where the black and white of the rules get grayed out a bit.  We mentioned before when we bought our snowblower that sometimes additional expenses arise that aren’t necessarily emergencies, but are nice to be able to purchase when needed (i.e. when 10 inches of snow have fallen on the ground).  In that case we drew from savings/Christmas money to make an unplanned purchase.  We were faced with a similar predicament this week.

Being the last day of the month, our dining budget was maxed out.  We’d cleverly gotten the most out of that category and were looking forward to the start of a new month and a new budget!  We were content with going home from church to leftover chicken noodle soup for lunch.  But things changed when we ran in to some old friends — good friends — while at church.  These weren’t friends that we see every other week, but friends that we’d lost touch with for several months and that we were thrilled to catch up with.

After a couple minutes of chit chat in the church lobby, they invited us to go out to brunch after the service.  As we walked away to reserve some seats, Andrew and I quickly discussed that we shouldn’t be going out to eat since the budget was done for the month.  But then we stopped thinking practically and starting thinking emotionally and relationally.  Sometimes an overdue, much-needed conversation with friends trumps the budget.  Sometimes it’s more important to spend a few more bucks for the sake of a relationship.

So a couple of hours later we found ourselves eating omelets and drinking coffee—not feeling the least bit guilty for coming in $9 over our dining budget.  Maybe we’ll spend $9 less this month, but we’ll definitely see the true value in where our money is spent.