Ugh! Budgeting....need I say more?? I never, ever, thought that creating a budget would be as time consuming and stressful as this has been, much less the thought of now having to FOLLOW it! You got to be kidding me Dave....seriously.... and sit down and change this budget up monthly..... You are killing me!!!
So....here we go! We are making the last minute changes to our cash flow zero budget this weekend and We start with our "monthly budget" some Monday. I want to cry...... no...I really want to go on one last shopping spree before I am constricted to such things.....
No....now let me rephrase that. Budgeting is not constricting yourself to starving and doing without. It's making you become more aware of your spending and truly seeing your outflow of money. I sat down this week and went through October's payments.....and compared them to our upcoming budget..... Ha! That was a joke! We had no idea what we were spending....especially in the grocery category...and that wasn't even the "eating out" category.... I feel like the man that said he was "eating his retirement!" No we don't have lavish, 5 course meals at our home. I think the problem is that when I see certain things on sale, I tend to "Stock up". Which isn't necessarily a bad thing unless your budgeting. Because give it 2 more weeks and that same item will probably be back on sale again...... Or like when I'm shopping at Wal-mart I hadn't been making a menu for our meals and so I would just grab this or that to have on hand just in case we made this meal or that meal..... that does not work with a budget!
Since Jeremy already had listened to the lesson, and my sister is 2 weeks ahead, this lesson wasn't as eye opening to me as the past ones. We were ahead of the other classmates as we had started to prepare our cash flow budget and start itemizing our priorities. This is starting to be fun almost. Setting limits on ourselves, sucks-yes. But challenging each other to save each others blow money for something bigger, or working extra to pay off something quicker.... what fun! Because if your marriage is anything like mine-- we like to set almost unachievable goals and since we are both stubborn and hardheaded we will go out of our way to prove each other wrong and meet that goal!
When I went into this and learned of having to use a budget, my first thought was "Oh no-- here we go again- back to beans and cornbread and scrubbing my toilets again" But that is not what a budget is. If your budget can be allocated for such needs and you still give 10%, still save, and still work towards your debt snowball, you can allocate for such things. The kicker is- how fast do you want to be debt free? Should you budget for "entertainment"? Or should you put that money towards your house/car/school loan? That's where budgeting gets you! It's learning to live like no one else now, and doing without, so later you can LIVE like no one else!
So please keep up us in your prayers as we start this task next week! I know it's going to take some work and hard discipline, and I also know that no budget ever works the first time. It takes at least 3 months to establish a working budget. So here we go my friends! I'll keep ya posted!
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