I'm so bad with math that I struggle to add/subtract/multiply/divide compound numbers. For a while that was okay. As a high school student or even a college student, I didn't have much money to spend because I wasn't earning a lot. The problem was that things changed, our family financial situation got better but unfortunately our money management did not. As a result, we acquired some credit card debt but honestly, we weren't doing bad. I mean we had money to pay our bills (we always made sure of that) but we didn't have money to do other things like buy clothes or enjoy ourselves on a date.
It wasn't until Reid's pending birth that we got serious about our financial situation. Ever since then, we've been steam rolling ahead. Now that isn't to say we didn't experience road bumps, like using our savings to pay for my missed pay during maternity leave. Or buying TP a new lap top for his job. But we haven't looked back and we keep moving forward.
Honestly, budgeting has saved our lives, saved us many fights, forced us to purchase things we need instead of want, and helped us exercise our self control muscle.
(actual picture of our family budget book, but now we're going digital)
Budgeting isn't fun though. It takes a lot of work and time. But you know what is fun? Dreaming.
Budgeting allows us to dream about the life we will have. Vacations, finally having a honeymoon, better clothes, a beautiful home, etc. But budgeting doesn't just help with material things. Budgeting is helping us set up retirement funds, college funds, and giving us the comfort of knowing if something happens our family will survive. Peace of mind is priceless and that's what budgeting gives us.
Oh but it is hard. It is hard to tell someone you cant afford to go to lunch or shop at the mall. It's hard to wait two extra weeks (despite the cold weather pending) to get a winter coat because other things like formula, kids, food, security deposits and the like come before that coat. It's so hard to put money into savings for Winter of 2012 when Fall of 2011 has just begun. But we do it because it has to be done. No more surprises. No more emergencies.
We took classes to learn how we can make money work for us, instead of the other way around. It was the best $90.00 we have ever spent. The class gave us much more than we could have ever imagined.
But if you don't want to go to the class begin with this budget on GoogleDocs that I made. You can customize it to fit your needs.
Happy budgeting everyone!