I Heart Budgeting

I love to budget.  That makes me weird.  I like being weird. Weird means not pretending to be like everyone else. Weird means no debt.  I partly love it because the nerd in me loves a good puzzle. Budgets are basically huge puzzles. I mostly love it because after I pay the bills I pay down the debt. Excess money from each paycheck goes straight to debt.  As the debt decreases, our peace increases. 

Is budgeting always easy?  Of course not!  It takes a few months to work out the kinks. When we began our budget we forgot a few small things that felt big!  We forgot to budget for the yearly truck registration. We forgot to budget for our contribution on the sneaky fifth Sunday. Before long, we stopped forgetting things. After a full year of budgeting our budget chugged along like a well oiled machine. We now do very little before each month begins to fine tune our budget. 

I always look forward to payday!  I know, everyone loves payday.  But I love payday because that means I get to pay bills. Yes, get to. Everything has a cost and I am certainly not entitled to live for free. Getting to pay bills means I get to see my plan in action!  I get to watch my machine work through all those numbers.  

Many people are afraid of the word budget. They see it as restrictive.  They feel it will eliminate spontainaity.  I suppose that could be true if someone else budgeted your life.  But you are creating a budget to fit you.  A budget is more freeing than confining. It frees you from worrying about your splurge at Target dipping into your mortgage payment. If you enjoy splurging at Target, have a Target budget each month. If you always go out to eat on Tuesdays for lunch, have a specific amount allottted. for Tuesday lunches. If you are trying to pay off debt, you may want reconsider some of these budgeted items, but that is your choice. Know where your money goes.