I am the queen of writing out my budget every week and not looking at it again until I have totally blown through my paycheck. Oh, there’s a Hello Kitty clock my daughter wants! Swipe. Oner Active just dropped some new merchandise I have to have! Swipe. It really won’t matter if I eat out for the fourth time this week! Swipe. That mindset has gotten me into so much trouble.
I’ve purchased the fancy budgeting apps, and journals. You name it I’ve tried it. I’ve even been through Dave Ramsey’s program Financial Peace University. For a while after going through the classes I was on the straight and narrow path that leads to financial freedom! I learned a lot of good things after going through the program, but once it was over I felt like I didn’t have anyone holding me accountable and unfortunately, I needed that. Now that I have made a commitment to myself, I’ve been budgeting again and following the cash envelope system.
I have tried a few budgeting apps but find that I like to write out my budget. The template above is similar to what I would typically do. I think this goes without saying but don’t waste your time trying to figure out my monthly income as these are not my exact numbers and my additional income varies. I’m just providing the example above as a draft of what my budget would typically look like.
Once I have assessed my budget, I will then see how much wiggle room I have and will decide how much money I will allocate to my envelope system. Typically, I put $300 to $400 in my envelope system. If you lack discipline with your card I highly recommend using the cash envelope system. Stay tuned as I will talk about that more in a later post!
One thing I do want to share with you and be totally transparent about is my current consumer debt. I am currently $17,824.97 in debt! It feels heavy to say that out loud, well type it! I will say that most of that debt is debt that I have been carrying for years and just throwing minimum payments at. I’m committing to paying off two credit cards in the next two months and I am taking the debt snowball approach.
The debt snowball approach is designed to help you pay off debts one at a time. This method prioritizes paying off the smallest debt first and working your way up to the largest debt. For reference, my smallest debt is roughly $440 and my largest debt sits right around $7,000.
Leave a Reply