So how are those budgets looking? Have you been reviewing them regularly to make sure that they are living/working documents? We are almost at the end of January and it will soon be time to see how you did. Excited? Scared? Discouraged? I’ve been all three.
Steph and I have been on a budget for about four years now. We are still refining our budget. You’d think by now we’d have it down pat, but you’d be wrong. There have been three perpetual problematic perplexes (say that three times fast) in our budget: Dining Out, Household, and Entertainment. We addressed the Entertainment area a while back by breaking in out into sub-categories. It definitely helped us to see exactly where we were overspending and to reign in our spending in that category. You’d think we’d have the common sense to try that with other areas. But no, it takes us over a year to do it in the Dining Out category.
Just last month, we applied the same logic and broke the Dining Out category into four different sub-categories. You know what? Darn, if it didn’t work again. AMAZING!
So that leaves us one troublesome category left, Household. I don’t hold this category in the same contempt as the others. Steph does an awesome job managing this category and is very conscientious about not going over. Once in a while it happens though. We haven’t broken it down yet, but we might.
So the moral of this story is, if at first you don’t succeed, DON’T GIVE UP! I know it can be discouraging if the numbers don’t come out the way you thought they would. But keep at it and soon you will reaping the rewards of being a good steward with the money God has blessed you with.
See you next week!
)
myself into my skinny jeans post wash because of MUFFIN TOP!
