Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Budget!

Matt & I just spent part of an hour reviewing September's budget and checking that we were on track with it all (and we didn't have any fights!). Then we spent the rest of the hour thinking about Christmas/holiday budget and how that relates to our monthly budgets for the rest of the year.

In the past 7 months (ever since we signed up for MyTotalMoneyMakover.com) I feel like we've finally gotten the hang of doing a budget. We've tried a few different methods over the past 5 years of marriage from the "ignore-it-budget" to the "try-to-guess-everything-that-we-could-possibily-face-in-the-next-12 months-and-divide-by-12-budget".

Nowadays we do a simple "Zero Based Budget" and spend every dollar on paper on purpose before the month begins taking into account each months personal idiosyncracies. It's so freeing! And we feel like we've gotten a raise!! Seriously, we are always amazed at just how much money we have to spend. And it's great to spend money on things and not have that nagging guilt feeling of "I think I just spent the money we might need for the phone bill." Because I know I budgeted for that too! Thank you Dave Ramsey for introducing us to this novel way of doing things...the simple way often is the best way.

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