Got to travel to NYC for work, which meant I got to see some of my friends. On Tuesday I went out with some friends from college and the talk of budgeting came up and I had to share with you the conversation. Now, I’m not condoning this method, but it works for them. Basically, they have a weekly budget and every receipt for the week is placed in a bowl in their place. So every week before the week ends, they count up all the receipts to find out how much money they’ve spent and how much they have left. Pretty simple right? If you budget $200 a week and 3 days in you’ve spent $150, you only have $50 left in your wallet to spend.

What I will say about this budget style that I do like is What they consider to be a week. Most people would start on Sunday or Monday. My friends, however, start the week on Wednesday. This suprised me and I asked why. The simple answer – They didn’t want to lose their weekends. If they started on Monday and spent too much money during the work week, they would be forced to stay at home in order to keep their budget. By starting later in the week, you allow yourself to enjoy the weekend. It’s easier to live poor during workdays than on the weekend. If you do run your budget on a weekly level, you might want to consider a midweek start day to incorporate the weekends a little better.

The next night I got to hang with one of my friends and former coworkers. He’s getting married and is leading the charge to handle all the financial budgeting and booking for the big day. One comment was, although every thing is still expensive, the original quoted prices have dropped considerably. He can thank the recession for that one!

We also talked about being self employed. Currently he is, and I have to admit I’m a little jealous. Having Fridays off every week sounds like a really good idea. I don’t have much first hand knowledge of self employment, but I do know that with the way the economy is now it might be good to have something to fall back on. That’s what is great about this country – anybody can start a business. If you have a marketable and viable skillset, you have the opportunity to be your own boss and sell yourself. There are many tax advantages as well as tax headaches that come with being your own boss, and it’s not for everyone.