Good Ole’ Country Music

I got converted to country music in the mid-nineties. I still like the sounds of my high school years (the 80s), but most of the time, I have my radio tuned to an “older” country station because Shania Twain, Brooks & Dunn, and Blackhawk are now considered classic. My, has time flown.

Speaking of 90s country, there is a song by Diamond Rio called “Meet in the Middle” that tells a cute story about how to create a healthy relationship. It’s also a fun song with which to sing along.

The word middle is synonymous with the word average. The Google definition of average is this: “a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.” And, this is the example using the word in a sentence: "the housing prices there are twice the national average" (and my thoughts on that is houses are WAY overpriced, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I am moving on).

Okay, I’m getting to the point.

Ever notice how your financial year is rolling along fairly smoothly and then BAM!, you get hit with an annual payment (like property taxes) or a semi-annual payment (like auto insurance if you don’t pay monthly)? You kind of forgot about this sneaky bill and now you have to come up with a few hundred extra dollars if not a grand or more.

“What’s a financially-savvy person to do?”

Thanks for asking. Round up all those pesky, irregular payments and find the average as described above. Yeah, I thought Google was a bit wordy, too, so here it is in layman’s terms. Add up the total of those payment amounts then divide that by the total number of bills. That is the dollar amount that you should budget for each month to cover them. If you follow this simple formula, you will have no more surprises!

I do understand that while the answer to this question is simple, it might not be all that easy to implement. Sorry, but this one is all on you. I can encourage, but only you can change. I’m here if you need me!