Loving your Budget

Many months ago we took on the endeavor of creating our first budget. We looked at budgeting like many people do at first--with fear in our eyes. The idea of creating one sounded like total drudgery. The first few months are almost always a complete failure. Trust me when I say we hit a point that I wanted to just throw in the towel. Some unforeseen expense pops up, or you food budget just won't cut it. I get that at these times you just want to give up. But don't! It truly takes a good 3-4 months to find a balance and even then occasionally something unexpected will occur. That is OK! Don't let these little bumps in the road get you down. Even after 7 months of doing my budget for food I hit occasional weeks when our pantry just seems to low and the food sales are just too little to make my money stretch. I just do my best and roll with the punches.

Even after getting knocked down a time or two I have learned that if I really stick to my budget to the best of my ability I am still far better off than I was before having one. So don't give up and keep working on it. If 200 for food seems to low don't feel bad about upping a little to just $225. I raised our budget 3 times before I found our comfort zone. That is the key word "comfort zone". You want your budget to be workable and to be obtainable and you don't want to have to beat yourself up in order to obtain your goals. Make it realistic. When you finally have a week or two of keeping within the budget give yourself a pat on the back! Just understand there will be weeks when it will fail and that is OK!