#54 Develop a Budget IN PROGRESS

Inspired by my aunt and uncle's fantastic book, Debt Free on Any Income, I have started a budget.

I've tried doing this numerous times before, with very little luck. But I always just wanted to sit down for an hour or two, map it out, and then go to work. I never put much time into it. So this time, instead of just arbitrarily assigning numbers to the various categories (Um, I think I can get by on only $150 for groceries and then I can put $1500 in savings! Yeah, right!) I'm going to thoroughly research my spending habits for the last few months, and see where I can make the most changes. Then, since there have been several changes recently to our income, and hopefully a few more coming up very soon, I need to monitor spending over the next couple months as well. It doesn't help to budget a certain amount toward savings if we end up having twice the income, and even a percentage doesn't always vary quite the same way. 10% of $1000 per month may be all we could afford, but if we were bringing in $10,000 per month (I wish!) then we could afford a bit more than 10%.

So it will take a little while before I have the true budget fully in place. And then I have to stick to it...

But, there are a few things that I'm going to implement right off the bat, based on looking at just the last month's spending:

1. Limit eating out to once per week or less - we eat out all the time! We could save a lot of money by cooking at home. Did you know the average home-cooked meal is anywhere from $3-$5 per person? Good luck getting anything more than Taco Bell for that price! Gosh, is eating out really worth it to spend $15 or more per person? That's a week's worth of dinners in one sitting. I mean, leftovers usually make at least another meal for me, but still! We can definitely cut back here.

2. Plan meals in advance each week and then only buy what is necessary to use for those meals. One of our biggest bad habits is buying food that we don't really need and then forgetting about it. It is especially true in our new house, because we have a fridge in the garage as well, and I usually forget to look there. We're always going to costco and saying, "mmmm....check out those strawberries! They look so yummy!" So we buy the big giant tub of strawberries, get home and eat one or two, and then forget about it. Oops, there went all those strawberries. So I'm going to monitor that a lot more closely.

3. I downloaded Quicken to manage our finances, especially since I have my own business now, and we have ideas for a couple other side businesses to run. One of the great things I've found so far in the program is that it can link to all of your various bank accounts and show you all the transactions, and you have to accept each one individually. That means that you hold yourself accountable for every single transaction. You can't slip one in. Everything gets categorized. Plus, this helps eliminate identity theft, because you are on top of it all. And it only takes a couple minutes per day once you get it up and running. I feel very much more in control.

I'll keep updating my budgeting ideas as they come to me. :)