The hidden cost of calendar events

Most calendar events don’t just cost time — they cost money too. And when we track those in separate places, we create hidden costs.

Here are some important tasks for nearly everyone:

1. Budget time
2. Budget money
3. Live life
4. Adjust budgets

Life is a lot -- a lot of the time. Some people forget step 3 because they're stuck on 1 and 2. Some people can't get to step 4 because, well... it's a lot.

This means that most of our budgeting goes to waste in the deceptively large gap between our calendar (time budget) and our checkbook (money budget). If our hands are occupied juggling all that life itself brings, how can we add these two items into the mix? Grow a third hand and juggle the two with it?

What we can do about it

It's simple. ...I mean, literally that -- keep it simple. We've all heard that advice. Most budgets are simple anyway because it's intuitive to do so. But there's a deeper level of simplicity that is often overlooked -- repeatability.

Why repeatability alleviates the hidden cost

If life is a lot, it's probably chaotic. But patterns emerge nonetheless. When we observe these patterns, very different from enforcing, we can build routines. And with these routines, we can build 'muscle memory'. Thus, building routines into our simple (but useful) budgets makes them a much lighter load to carry.

Think about it -- the most expensive part of budgeting is adjusting. Why is it the most expensive? Because there's usually not enough resources (time/money) available in the day to get to it accurately. Why is it hard to do this accurately? Because the budgets live in two different places with little or no integration whatsoever.

When our budgets ignore this overlap, we increase the gap between our budgets, and we pay with missed opportunities, wasted planning, mismanaged money, and unnecessary stress. That’s the hidden cost.