Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Week 3! 33.3333% done!

Well, this is how I started out week 3:


Budgets. Scare. Me. I'm not good at them. (although it should be easy...i don't have a whole lotta numbers to be throwing around in there!)
 

When I took a first glance at the full budget worksheet, I felt like an extremely scared Nemo and Dory!


I mean seriously...there's so many categories and lines and adding and subtracting!!!! But, as always, after it was broken down, it didn't seem like such a giant shark.

This budget is a "zero-balance" budget, which means you give every dollar a name. This much goes in savings, this much to groceries, this much to clothing (ooohhh...clothing...), etc. So at the end, you have a big fat ZERO. That doesn't mean you don't have any money...it just means you've told your money where to go. 

That kind of budget makes sense for me, and it fits with my personality. It's structured, and I love me some structure!! And without structure, I fail miserably, in nearly every aspect of my life.

For the past FOREVER i've been thinking "if i just had more money...." everything would be good, right? But then Dave brought up a good point. If you can't manage a small amount of money, how are you going to manage a lot of it? I wrote this down, because I think it's true, and I need to be more diligent about this, when it comes to finances:



I would love to have huge ginormous numbers to plug into my budget (NOT the debt part, of course)...but for right now, I need to manage my teeny weeny numbers, to get to the huge ginormous numbers. And one day, I'm going to look back at this blog, and laugh at the way I have described said numbers.

So, another reason I'm sweating, is that Brett, my boyfriend and new accountability partner, are having a budget committee meeting. Which means we write out our budgets, review them with each other and help each other out. For example, he might say "Rachel, I think you should concentrate more on groceries and less on clothes" (and in case you are reading this dear...you should follow that statement up with something like "because seriously, you can't get any cuter").

But not only are we reviewing our budgets, we are making each other stick to them. Which means no more big-ass diet cokes from Tigermarket or buying a cute dress because it was ONLY $10. Unless of course it comes out of my "blow" money.

Anyway, as nervous as I am, I am looking forward to inching my way to financial freedom!