I have a confession to make.  I have developed a Scrooge Syndrome.  I have been trying to hard to save money and pay off debt that I have been depriving me (us) of pretty much anything extra.  It’s made me irritable, cranky, and downright blah.  I’ve decided that I’m going to relax a little bit on how much we spend and live life a little bit.  You only live once, right?

I am tired of pinching pennies.  I have become obsessed with saving money. Hoarding it, basically.  I want to save every penny I can, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.  For example, I had been keeping the air conditioning set at over 80 degrees.  One night I got so hot and tired of not being able to fall asleep that I got up and went and turned it down to 75.  I figured that was a happy medium.  The other day I wanted Mr. Money to come out to my work and go to lunch with me, but being that it’s so far away and gas is so expensive, I decided I would just eat lunch by myself.  Then I decided that I really don’t see him that often and that I would take advantage of being able to spend time with him and make a memory that I called him and asked him to go to lunch with me.  And I don’t regret it one bit.

I don’t know if it’s my personality or what, but it just seems like sometimes I go to extremes.  I have gone past frugal and cheap and went all the way to Scrooge!  I am kind of disappointed in myself, but I also feel better now that I’ve realized what I’ve been doing and I have a plan to correct it.

What crosses the line of frugal vs cheap? Have you found yourself doing some of the same things as me?

Posted under Budget

I know there are a lot of people that use Dave Ramsey’s Envelope Budgeting system. While I think it is an amazing budgeting system that works for so many people, I just can’t do it myself. I decided I was going to put my own spin on the envelope budgeting system to make it work for myself. I’m happy to say it’s been working out quite well!

Here’s how Dave Ramsey’s envelope budgeting system works: You have a bunch of envelopes for each category you spend money on each month, such as food, clothing, eating out, entertainment, fun money, gas, etc. When you get paid, you fill up each envelope and throughout the month you subtract your cash from the appropriate envelope as you need. When the money is gone, it’s gone, and you can visually track how much money you have to spend. My problem is that it’s such a hassle to have so many separate envelopes to track and make sure you don’t lose money! I am just worried that when we go out to eat, I’d forget to take the envelope, or I’d lose the money or something. I’d hate to have to carry around all those envelopes with me, so I devised my own envelope system.

How my envelope system works is like this: when Mr. Money gets paid (every two weeks), I take out $120. I know this doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but trust me, it works! I don’t pay for groceries out of this money. Grocery money is used with my debit card. I pay for gas with my gas rewards credit card and when I buy gas, I make a transfer over to the credit card from our checking account. The $120 cash is used for extra trips to the grocery stores to pick up small items I forgot (helps me limit these!), clothing, haircuts, eating out, and whatever else I want.  I know the $120 is going to have to last me two weeks, so I am very careful about how much I spend, and it gives myself and Mr. Money a visual on how much we have left to eat out on.  If we don’t have the money, we don’t go out to eat!

This system has been working very well for us. We don’t have to worry about keeping the separate envelopes in the house and carrying them with us.  I would highly recommend you give it a try.  I find that I spend less and am more careful when I’ve got the cash there in front of me.  When I have my debit card and I make the frequent trips to the store, I end up getting a bunch of stuff that I wasn’t intending on getting.

How do you budget- do you do the envelope system, or are you a debit card user? Do you do something else?

Posted under Budget, Save Your Money

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I don’t have a budget. I’ve seen the forms, I’ve read about other peoples’ budgets, but I just can’t bring myself to make one for our family. It just seems too overwhelming for me. I think probably my biggest obstacle with the budget is the revolving parts of the budget, such as the electric bill. Do you allow more money in the budget than you think it will take?

We are currently trying to live off of one income, sort of as a trial run to see if it’s possible for me to be a stay at home mom when we have children. I’ve got my paycheck directly deposited into my “secret account” at our bank, so that if we need access to it, it’s not hard to get to, unlike our ING savings account. We want that to be hard to access!

I would love to get a budget going, but I don’t know where to start. What are your favorite budget forms? Any tips?

Posted under Budget