How you spend your money whether you're an individual, organization, or system is a very personal question. In fact, it's a question that few will discuss with regard to one another.
While one individual may prioritize vacations, another may save up for new furniture or house repairs.
It's the same with systems and organizations, from system to system, budget decisions may differ for a large number of reasons.
As we consider budgets, both personal and systematic, what questions rise to the top?
First are the questions: What is it that we stand for? Who are we? What's most important about what we do and how we do it?
The next question of course is what are our financial resources? Can we make more or are we going to to work with what we have or less?
Then of course what have we done in the past, what's important today, and what does the future hold with regard to finances?
In your personal life, it's important to stop now and then and take stock of your financial life. It's also important to let everyone in the family understand that.
The same is true at school. It's important to think about what we spend money on and why, and it's similarly important that the learning/teaching community understands the budget well. Even students should have some understanding of the budget. For example when a child misuses an item, I'll often demonstrate to them that money spent on senseless misuse of items is money lost for field trips, playground equipment, and special events.
Many of us avoid the topic of money. We may think it too complicated or not our business, when in truth if everyone took an interest and made the time to understand the financial underpinnings of the work they do and life they lead, we would all make better, more informed decisions, and it's possible that we'd all find a little extra money too for the work and life events that are important to us.
