Budget Overview: Jan. 2010

This was the first month we really set a budget and tried to stick with it. We actually did really good! Michael clocked a few extra hours so we had a little extra money and we were actually UNDER budget, even without the little extra. Yippee!

Over all we are able to put $141.00 extra into paying off our debt this month. I'm so excited that we are actually sticking to it, and honestly it's not hard. We've even given ourselves some extras this month too!

I re-tooled the budget for February a little bit, hopefully we will do this well next month too.

An experiment in budgeting

Last night we sat down with our budget. Talk about things I dread doing! Currently we are on page one of David Ramseys really long budget worksheet. We decided to take it one page a night so no one completely freaks out. So far it has made me realize a few things:

a) we have a horrible cell phone plan - we are paying way too much for little we use it. Plus it's lumped with our home phone and our internet - and it's still not a very good deal. I'll be looking into how we can change that.
b) I should not have a credit card. Not that I ever rack up debt we can't pay, but it just tempts me to spend. I've had a Credit Card since I was 16 years old - but now it is out of my wallet! Instead I have been given a $50 cash allowance a month to spend as I like - when that cash is gone I'm not allowed to buy anything else. This may finally break my eating out and going to target habits!
c) I have no clue what I owe on my school loans. Seriously I don't have any idea. So today I'm tracking that down.

I'm sure I'll learn even more fun stuff tonight as we move to budget page two! SCARY!