I am really beginning to love the 1st of the month. It is on this day every month that I get a fresh new start. I get remotivated about staying within my budget. We attempt to use the cash envelope system so I also get to pull out large sums of cash for our monthly spending. Unfortunately this often leads to shopping and over spending. By the middle of the month I have gone through all our cash and am scrambling to get through the next two weeks.
Managing your money is a tricky thing. I have mentioned it before, but I think it warrants mentioning this again, I do this for a living! I am in charge of the entire Accounting department for a large organization. I am extremely knowledgeable in Finance and Business. I am a super cheapskate when it comes to spending within our organization. We have no debt and a sizable "emergency fund". But in my personal life it is a whole different story. Its not that I don't know how to balance a check book or keep track of the spending. I actually probably make it too advanced and spend too much time. My problem is that I can stop spending money.
So paying off debt has been an ongoing learning process. It is not an easy process, but I can attest that it does get easier. Now I get frustrated about overspending on dining out when it reaches $200 for the month. But in prior months $400 was not possible and sometimes it would be as high as $800. So I have to keep everything in perspective. For May I mentioned to my husband that we spent around $200 on dining out. He got excited and put up his hand for a high five! I realized at that moment that progress is to be celebrated as well. And we are certainly making progress.
But progress has not come without a lot of trial and error. The first positive step we made was to listen to Dave Ramsey. I purchased his audio cds for Financial Peace University and they helped us tremendously with coming to the conclusion that we could not afford not to be debt free. And it was then that we were also introduced to the cash envelope system. Not using debit cards is the single biggest improvement we have made with our finances. I cant tell you how much I dreaded reconciling our checking account because of all the transactions!!! I would wait several weeks and it really became an issue of just finding out how much damage was done, rather than trying to stay within budget. We are by no means perfect, but our cash envelopes have certainly made things easier.
For several months I have been pulling out our entire cash amount towards the 1st of the month for our monthly spending. But for reasons I have mentioned above, that's not working. So this month we are trying to take it weekly. Each week I will pull out the amount of money that we have allotted in each category for the week. And I can only spend that amount until the week is over. I am very hopeful about this and think that it will help to further get our spending under control. Currently our monthly cash allowance is around $800. That includes groceries, eating out, personal care, clothing, allowances, and household goods. Any fixed expenses and our gas comes out of the checking account. I am excited and think this will work out really well. I will keep you posted on our progress! Coming Soon.....June Budget.
0 comments:
Post a Comment