It's About Time We Budget

In the first few months of our marriage we would spend the income Taylor made and save the income that I made. We were spending more than what we should have been, but it wasn't that big of a deal because we were still putting enough into savings each month. Then I lost my job for at least a little while because the father of the kids I watch lost his job. Well there goes my income and the money we were putting into savings. I also start school again next month which means more spending and less money that I can bring in. I had talked before about how we needed to make a budget, but now I knew that we really didn't have a choice.

I was absolutely shocked when I added up all of our spending from July. I had no idea how two people could spend so much on what seemed like nothing. It was a huge wake up call for me. We want to pay off the one student loan I have before I finish school, and we're planing on buying a car within the next couple of weeks so we don't have any room for the kinda spending we were doing.

I didn't really know where to start, but I knew how much our rent/utilities were each month and I kinda just went from there. I decided to make a meal plan like I did in the very beginning of our marriage. I figured this would stop the "I can't think of anything to make tonight, but we have some KFC coupons so lets just do that." Well an unnecessary eight dollars later, and I'm starting to think that we should have just made something at home.

One thing that I have done is written down every single time we have swiped our cards or spend money. Almost all of our spending is done with cards which isn't really a problem, but simply watching our overall amount get smaller wasn't enough to show us how much we were spending. Even though every transaction is listed on our account online I feel like physically writing it down on paper, and adding up the amount we have spent every couple transactions has really helped me to see how much we are spending.

I didn't make a budget until about a week into this month which means that it hasn't been perfect. We might have spent a little too much money between our trip to Grace and going to the rodeo, but having some fun is a necessity. Even though we aren't where we should be with the budget I made we're still trying not to buy anything for the rest of the month, and that is different than ever before. Hopefully we'll do better with our spending next month and kick butt at budgeting!