So it’s the end of the year and accounting time. I did rack up some credit card debt over the course of the year. Nothing I couldn’t pay off over time, but still, month to month, I didn’t do a good job of managing my expenditures. I think I just have a problem with entitlement… I’ll be so good for a while and then I get cranky and feel like I’ve been depriving myself and I “deserve” something, and then I wind up spending more money than I can really justify on something.

I’ve gotten the everyday stuff under control, I’m not running out throwing a $20 dvd on the stack every time I go to Target or anything, but the every-so-often and impulse expenditures are harder to rein in … and when I do badly, then I feel horrible about myself (sometimes out of proportion with what I actually spent). So, rather than doing what I’ve been doing—which is having a monthly budget for each category (like, $x for clothes, and $x for music/dvds, or whatever), I’m going to eliminate all those specifics and just say I have a, say, $x “fun stuff” budget, and that has to pay for my clothes and food and whatever. So hopefully that will give me some flexibility to be stupid without feeling like a complete jerk because “that wasn’t in the budget,” but still keep the spending overall in line with income, so I do not add up any more debt.