There Is No Such Thing As A Normal Month

First, you get a parking ticket. Then an unexpected medical bill appears in your mailbox. And, of course, that’s when your new puppy decides to eat a sock, resulting in a weekend trip to the emergency animal hospital.

"We were finally going to get ahead on our bills and then everything happened! We just need a normal month,” you tell yourself (again). And then you realize next month is December and December is never a normal month. It starts to feel like you’ll never get ahead. 

But what do we mean when we say a normal month? Is it a month where every single thing in your life goes exactly as planned and there are no expenses other than your standard monthly bills?

If so, I have bad news about that. 

The “normal month” is a myth. I have never met one. Neither have you. And yet almost everybody makes a plan for their money based on this highly elusive scenario. 

Why there’s no such thing as a normal month

There’s no such thing as a normal month because "normal" is a story you tell about the future, and the future doesn't cooperate.

Every month has something in it. The car, the vet, the wedding invitation, the school trip, the broken tooth. Not the same something—that's the point. You can't name it in advance. But you can be completely certain that a something is coming, because one always does.

So the question isn't how to have a normal month. It’s what you do when you realize that this month isn’t normal either. 

What to do when you have to change your plan

It’s frustrating when you make a plan for your spending and life refuses to follow the plan. It was a perfectly good plan! That’s the important part though—a plan needing to be changed doesn’t mean it was a bad plan. 

If you set aside $100 yesterday, and today you realize $100 was not enough, that doesn't mean planning doesn't work. It just means you can’t predict the future, and no one really expects you to be able to anyway. When you get new information, you make new decisions. This is true in money and in life. 

Somewhere along the way people picked up the idea that a budget is a test you pass or fail—a rigid set of numbers you impose on yourself so that you can feel guilty and terrible when you turn out not to have guessed correctly. No wonder people hate budgeting! 

That's not what it is. It was never what it is. You’re just making a plan for your spending, and plans change all the time. 

A detour is not a wrong turn

Let’s say you planned a family beach day and it’s pouring rain. Do you slather on sunscreen and bundle the kids and their bathing suits and buckets into the car because you had plans to go to the beach? Probably not. You check the weather, see what matinees are playing, and change the plan. 

Or if you're driving a route you've driven a hundred times and there's construction. You don't pull over and question your competence as a driver. You take the detour. You might be a little annoyed but you don’t feel personally at fault. 

It's the same with the plan you have for your money. You get new information and you adjust. No guilt. No judgement. Just a detour.

And once you see it that way, something changes in how the whole thing feels. Instead of feeling like a failure, you feel like a chess grand master, adapting your play to match your opponent's.

You have permission to change your plan

I'll make it official, since apparently someone has to:

I officially grant you permission here now and forevermore to change your plan whenever you want. With great power comes great responsibility—use it wisely.

Think about a coach at halftime. They came in with a plan. They spent the first half watching what actually happened. Any coach who refuses to adjust because they'd already decided what the second half would look like is not a disciplined coach. They're a bad one.

So if you get a flat tire and need to replace it, you might end up with a new tire instead of a night out. And that’s okay! Just move money from your Fun Money category to your Car Maintenance category to cover it—and that’s that. The plan absorbed that change. 

YNAB encourages you to ask what your money is for. Sometimes the answer is: for change. 

When you build in flexibility by giving yourself permission to change the plan, you’re more likely to stick with it. Nobody wants to keep doing something that makes them feel like a failure twice a month.

What to do about overspending

If you’ve overspent on a certain expense, move money from another category to cover it. That's the mechanic, and it takes about ten seconds.

The next step is a little harder because you have to be honest and realistic with yourself. 

If you overspend on groceries once, that's just another abnormal month. If you overspend on groceries every single month, that's faulty math. You've been planning for the person you intend to be rather than the one doing the shopping (which is a very relatable problem to have). So do one of two things: change the number to match your life, or change your life to match the number.

Either is fine. Both are honest. What doesn't work is overspending every month and treating it as a personal failure rather than information.

When the fix isn’t flexibility

Some expenses aren't surprises at all. They're things you knew were coming and just hadn't set money aside for—the annual insurance bill, the car registration, the holidays that arrive in December every year without fail.

Scrambling to move money each time one of these somehow surprising yet expected expenses pops up just adds to the stress. Turn financial emergencies into minor inconveniences instead by building them into your plan as sinking funds. Anticipate upcoming costs, break the total down into smaller, more manageable amounts, and start setting money aside regularly so you can pay in full instead of grieving the loss of yet another normal month. 

Rolling with the punches by changing your plan is for the punches you didn't see coming. Everything else should be part of the plan. That’s how you make your months feel more normal.

Because the reality is that you don’t need a normal month. You need a plan that you’re willing to change. 

Do you ever worry about money? You're not alone. Download YNAB, get good at money, and never worry about money again. Try YNAB for free for 34 days.