The ‘Fuck It’ budget

For the past 15+ years, I’ve kept a budget. To the dollar, every month, without fail. Why the dedication/obsessiveness? In 2004-2005, three $10,000+ gigs fell through at once directly after I scheduled a kitchen remodel. So … oops.

The budget is mostly as you’d expect, with a couple of caveats. And, since several of those caveats relates to creativity, to the blog it is.

When rules earn their wings, they become guidelines

Budgeting is like dog-training; the more your budget/dog follows the rules, the more it earns its freedom. At first, I had to be strict (with my budget and my dog). I’d taken out a home equity loan (for the kitchen, not the dog), and I was now -$15,000 instead of +$30,000. (The dog fared much better; his adoption fees came in roughly halfway between a sink and a dishwasher.)

When you’re first starting out on a creative project, your rules need to be stricter. One of the best parts about becoming more efficient is that you get to give yourself more of a break. In creativity, E = E(-n)/TP. Efficiency = less need for efficiency over time as you progress.

What’s your creativity range

As Lonely Planet book authors, we were given one set amount of money to complete our books. We didn’t want to spend too much, of course, and lose out on income. But you also didn’t want to spend too little, and lose out on knowledge. So budget categories like hobbies and entertainment — which I can scrimp on when times are tight — have not only maximums but (very loose) minimums. Both are equally as important.

Ditto creativity. Too much time on our hands is as bad or even worse for our well-being than too little. But working three jobs and supporting six kids won’t help our sculpting career, either. We all have a creative range in which we operate. I need deadlines, but not too tight. Editors, but not too mean. An organized desk, but not sterile.

The ‘Fuck It’ budget

One of my very favorite budgeting tools I’ve added over the years is the ‘fuck it’ budget category. It’s a privilege, for sure, but can be tempered to match your income. I started it when making $24,000 a year as a guidebook author in San Francisco.

The fuck-it budget is this: I now set aside a monthly budget of $25 for pain points: parking tickets, mistakes, fees, miscalculations, losing receipts for things I’d planned on returning, all those small annoyances that grate on your soul. My partner sets aside $50. We are absolutely allowed to harrumph and lose sleep over those financial annoyances … but only after they eclipse our fuck-it budget. Because the pain point has already been predicted.

The Creativity Fuck-It Budget

Creativity needs a fuck-it budget. I.e., creative thinking requires its owner to predict a creativity pain point, for themselves and for others. You know those brainstorming meetings where people shit all over everything and nothing gets accomplished? No fuck-it budget.

Granted, group fuck-it budgets are hard. Who gets the $50 if everyone wants to try parking in the wrong spot? My students get creativity homework to do on their own because fuck-it budgets require privacy. Hey, I don’t want anyone to watch me as I’m realizing I just got a parking ticket or am frustratedly looking for a lost receipt.

In fact, I just hosted a naming brainstorm for an international global health consortium, and we used Mentimeter. Everyone’s results were anonymous (unless they called them out), so they each had the fuck-it budget to write down whatever ideas they wanted. In fact, I told them specifically to try to get a parking ticket (i.e., write down the silliest, most nonsensical idea their brains were throwing out). Sometimes you need to park in the wrong spot to know where to park.

The creative process is ugly and requires a lot more mistakes, miscalculations, social-media reading, TV-watching, processed cheese product-eating, unnecessary impromptu cleaning sessions, and annoyingly painful dumb ideas and time wasters than anyone would have ever, ahem, predicted. Trying to nail an idea on the first try is antithetical to creativity. So why do we still expect that, from ourselves or from our groups or employees?

The fuck-it budget is a privilege, absolutely. Even if it’s minuscule, we all could use a fuck-it budget.