Time Management 101: Create a Time Budget

Guest Post by Amy Andrews who helps with much of the behind-the-scenes work at Money Saving Mom® and blogs at BloggingWithAmy.com

Hey there Money Saving Mom® readers! I’ve communicated with many of you behind the scenes via email, so it’s fun to have the opportunity to talk to you on this side of things. Crystal asked me to introduce myself and tell you more about time budgeting as part of her Time Management 101 series. So here’s a little bit about me…

My name is Amy Andrews (not to be confused with the very classy Amy McGuire of Amy’s Finer Things — the advertising/giveaway guru here at Money Saving Mom®). My husband Brian and I have been married for 13 1/2 years and we have 4 children.

Online, I blog at BloggingWithAmy.com which is aimed at teaching others how to start a money-making blog from scratch. I also do some blog consulting and I just released an ebook about time management called Tell Your Time which, incidentally, came to be after helping Crystal with her schedule.

Time Budgeting

If you’ve read Money Saving Mom® for any length of time, it’s likely you have heard Crystal talk about the envelope system for money management. The goal of the envelope system is to pre-determine where you will spend your money so as not to overextend yourself financially.

Earlier this year when Crystal and I discussed how to make her schedule more workable, I told her about a similar concept which I refer to as “envelopes of time.” They work the same way in that you pre-determine where you will spend your time so as not to overextend yourself commitmentally (is that a word?).

This is how the concept works (excerpt from Tell Your Time):

1. Total up the hours in a day (or week). That’s easy, 24 (or 168).
2. Make a list of the activities you want to accomplish in that time (i.e. your envelopes).
3. Divvy up your activities between your allotted time envelopes.
4. If there isn’t enough time in the day to cover one of your activities, you have four choices:

• • “Steal” time from one of your other activities.
  • Figure out a way to streamline so it takes less time.
  • Get someone else to do it for you.
  • Drop it completely.

In the ebook I move on to talk about how to determine your priorities/life goals and how to accomplish them by incorporating them into your daily schedule, but here I’ll expand on the four choices we have when we don’t seem to have enough time in the day.

1. Steal time

When the total hours of our daily activities exceed the number of hours we have in a day, it often results in us stealing time from other activities in our schedule.

For example, too much time on the computer might steal from my personal time, too much time studying for an exam might steal from my sleep or too much time shopping might steal from one-on-one time with my kids.

Often we steal time from other areas without even realizing it, or, we realize it only after it leaves a gaping hole. Life happens of course, and occasionally we have no choice but to steal time from other time envelopes. Stealing will happen, we just need to proactively make room for the deficit elsewhere.

Also, we need to remember that stealing time has a domino effect. Whenever we steal time from one area, another will always be affected.

2. Streamline

I am a streamliner. Whether I’m contemplating how to get from my house to the grocery store or thinking about a new giveaway entry system on Money Saving Mom®, I’m constantly thinking, “There must be a more efficient way to do this.”

I’m on a neverending quest to figure out how to do things quicker and cheaper. Streamlining is, no doubt, very handy when it comes to shaving off precious minutes in my schedule, but it can cause its own trouble too.

Streamlining itself takes time — time which must be accounted for. If I’m determined to find a faster route to the grocery store but I end up getting lost every time, streamlining doesn’t really work in my favor at that point.

Another downside to streamlining is paring down your schedule just so you can pack more in. It’s great to be productive, but if you’re so productive that you end up cramming your day with things that do not help you accomplish your life goals, it’s not benefiting you in the long run.

Streamlining is great when it reduces stress, however, if you’re streamlining but your stress level remains the same, you might have to consider another option.

3. Get help from someone else

Another way to combat a too-full schedule is to figure out how to get others to do things for you. In our house, my husband and I take care of various responsibilities and our children are expected to help as well. We all work together to share the load.

I’m also in favor of looking to others outside our home for help. I loved what Crystal said the other day about focusing on the things you’re good at. I am guilty of trying to do everything because I’m either too cheap to pay someone else or too prideful to ask for help.

Granted, we are on a limited budget so paying someone for help is not always an option, but I am 100% in favor of this idea. I see it as a win-win — I am relieved of something I don’t like to do or don’t know how to do, and someone else gets to make a little money doing something they’re skilled at.

But lack of money doesn’t have to be prohibitive when it comes to getting outside help. Be creative! Bartering, swapping babysitting with another mom so you can go to the grocery store alone or making a few homemade pizzas to feed a group of friends willing to pitch in and paint your house are all great ways to get help, without spending money.

And there are plenty of people who are more than willing to respond to a humble, un-reciprocated request for help. All you need to do is ask.

4. Drop It

You are only one person working within a limited amount of time. You can only do so much. If you’re like me, you might simply need to let some of your commitments go. Gone. Finished. Done. Outta here.

Now, I’m the first to say this is not always easy, nor is it pleasant, but if you constantly feel overwhelmed and stressed out, it’s likely you simply have too much on your plate.

For a long time, I kept looking for things to cut out of my schedule. The problem was, I couldn’t find anything to cut! It took me a while to figure out that I was looking for the “bad” stuff to eliminate, but all the activities on my calendar were “good” things (church ministry, building my business, excellent learning opportunities for my children, etc.). It was freeing to realize that I could choose to let go of “good” stuff in order to make room for the “best” stuff.

This is how I said it in Tell Your Time:

Are your daily activities really helping you achieve your life goals, or have you gotten swept up in the tumult of your to-dos? Whether it’s an inability to say “No,” the fear of missing something, the need to keep up with the Joneses or just careless planning, many of us are masters at committing to things that sound like great ideas, but do nothing to get us closer to [reaching our life goals]. Frankly, if they’re not getting us closer to [reaching our life goals], they’re a waste of time…no matter how amazing they are.

Amy Lynn Andrews shows step by step how to make money blogging at BloggingWithAmy.com and is the author of the time management ebook, Tell Your Time.

Note from Crystal: Use the code MoneySavingMom if you want to get a copy of Amy’s ebook (and I highly recommend that you do!) for only $7! The code MoneySavingMom is good through Friday at midnight only. Tomorrow, I’ll share more about how I’ve implemented a Time Budget in my own life and how it’s revolutionized my life.