The Weight of Money

There are many things people can do to stay on budget. If you have a budget or spending plan already planned out, the best thing you can do is check in with it during the month. Don’t wait until the month is coming to a close; check your budget progress every week or every other week.

I have been lax on my budgeting lately and it is having a negative impact this month. I have not entered any budget numbers this month at all and it has been a busy month. It started with a week at camp, which should have been no-spend days but was quite the opposite, and went through the weeks of moving. I should have been watching where my money was going, but I convinced myself that I just didn’t have the time.

So, I’ve now run the numbers for this month and I am way off budget. By several hundred dollars off budget and I still haven’t accounted for this weekend’s spending or the spending at the grocery store that I am about to do. If I had taken 10 minutes, two weeks ago, I would have known that I’d already spent too much in frivolous categories and had already put a hefty ding in my dining out budget. If I had done this, I would have made some better financial choices throughout the rest of the month. But, I didn’t and now I am looking at numbers that are making me cringe.

Soon, this month will end and the partner and I will start on our financial journey together. I am somewhat disappointed that this move follows a month of overspending and poor budget control. That just isn’t the encouragement and foundation I was to build from. But, I know that I am good at staying on track and that the circumstances of this month lent themselves to poor money managements – something that won’t be happening again anytime soon (I’m far to practical to say “won’t ever happen again”).

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 2:15 pm and is filed under budget/goals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.