Budget Check In

All right sooo… you know how I had that budget page back in January.  It was really great right? I thought it was.  I haven’t stuck to filing it out on a monthly basis, but I’ve stayed pretty close to it. For the most part. Life likes to through curve balls, every once in a while. 

As far as the money envelopes, I need to find a better system. I like having the money with me, but then that makes me worry about my purse and keeping track of the change is always a fun adventure. Also, I try to keep track of the spending, but then I just have a bunch of receipts, and for some reason, they irritate me.

But, I have done a lot of tracking my spending on my online spending tracker. It has categories for everything and a pie chart that shows how much money I’m spending on different things. That makes it pretty easy for me. I either need a longer wallet or smaller envelopes. I have an idea to make my own, but that requires effort and time and pretty paper. All of which are beyond me at the present moment.

I can say that I have started throwing any extra money either into my cash savings spot or into my savings account. Also, the pie chart and the categorizing has helped me reign in my unnecessary spending—to a degree. 

(We won’t talk about the 30$ I dropped on books. In my defense that was extra money.)

So, this is a yes and no sort of response. Yes, I have controlled my spending. No, I haven’t stuck to it the way I had hoped.

I’m debating going back to the cash envelopes. I mean, I take out the cash immediately for my large cost things, like rent, Israel, and the car, but my petty cash not so much. I may do a DIY next month on how to make your own envelopes and go back to it then. I know I’ve got some major changes coming up soon.