Budgeting

Yesterday, Brandon and I sat down to go over our budget. This is something that Brandon works on regularly, but not something I've ever taken that much time to work on. Yes, I know how much we bring home each month and which bills we have, but what I didn't know was where all of the other money went. And, as you can imagine, my lack of understanding has caused some tense moments between the two of us and one of those moments occurred yesterday, which was the reason for the big sit down.

So, after much discussion on how each of us felt, we decided to pull out our bank statements, check stubs and budget (that Brandon created) and really go through it all. We covered our everyday bills that we know exist, we estimated our bills such as groceries, cell phone, etc. based on our previous spending habits, we estimated and put a max spending limit on home/yard items, personal care items (haircuts, makeup, etc.) and Koby items and we gave ourselves a "free spending" amount for each month to cover anything from shopping to golf. You might be asking if we're saving anything, and my answer is "Yes!", of course we're saving. That amount was calculated after we figured our bills/expenses that we knew existed. Next, my task is to put everything into a working spreadsheet so we can track our spending. Then, we hope to sit down each week or every other week and go over what we've spent, where we've saved, etc. At the end of each month, we hope to find the problematic areas, the areas where we over-estimated and then re-evaluate the budget. This will also be the time that we will roll-over any savings from the budget line items to our savings account and reward ourselves for not over-spending!

After all of this planning, I'm much more excited about contributing to the budget process and about keeping things in check. It is almost like a challenge for me and I like that! So, wish us luck! Also, if you have a really kick-butt budget spreadsheet that you'd like to share, we would welcome it. I'm thinking we need some "if than" cells in this spreadsheet and I just can't quite remember how to do those!