A thrive budget

In one of my times doing deep research into business operations, I came across a phrase: “the thrive budget.” Maybe it’ll be a little more clear with some capitalization. The Thrive budget. Or the Thriving budget. Okay, maybe not. 

Essentially, what it is is the budget that would allow you to thrive. Not just live and cover living expenses. Thrive. It doesn’t matter if you’re self-employed or employed by someone else—you probably already have a budget, even if it’s not formalized. You have a good idea of the bills every month and if you have an employer, you know how much is coming in your paycheck. 

For the self-employed, though, there’s the budget that will cover business expenses (break even or cost of doing business), then there’s the number that will cover both business and living expenses (bare minimum of surviving), and then there’s the bigger number that would allow you to thrive in your life.

Thriving means something different for everyone. The exercise for this is to write down your dreams of what you want to have in your life over the course of a year, so you would consider yourself to be thriving/enjoying life. Most people would include vacations and some material purchases. The trick is to have it written out, line by line, like a regular budget. The thrive budget covers both business and personal. In mine, I include two two-week vacations, more software subscriptions, more lenses (god they’re so expensive) and camera accessories, a bookkeeper, some money towards a house down payment, a tattoo, a second dog, and more. It’s a high number, high enough that I cannot fathom it because I’ve never made that much before. 

I think of the thrive budget as a reach goal (à la Kickstarter). There are several goals to hit before you can get to thriving. Unless you’re already thriving, then good for you and I love that for you. Seeing the thrive budget in the same spreadsheet as my cost-of-doing business budget reminds me of the life I want to live. I mean, I don’t know anyone who wants to live paycheck to paycheck and there are certainly many things that can prevent someone from actualizing the goal. However, for the things within my control, I’m going to try my hardest to thrive. 

etc.

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