Create a budget and stick to it

Nothing like an impending birth and a huge purchase (car) to make you want to get your financial shit together. I just bought the program iBank to use to get our spending organized.

We’re going to track the money that we spend during January. I’m saving receipts and writing stuff down. Hopefully after two weeks (we’ll see, maybe more) we can sit down and figure out exactly where we’re putting our money and what’s slipping through the cracks.

I’m becoming more and more aware that we walk the line financially… we really need to become more disciplined in the way we spend.

I know that this month has been hard because we started on Christmas shopping, and bought some things for ourselves that we just plain wanted… but we went in with no budget, really, and that was a mistake.

I started paying bills (we got paid yesterday) and was amazed at how much it added up to. I think I’ve been in a kind of blissful denial about our finances, and that’s silly and immature and irresponsible.

So, I really want to make a committment to this goal.

This weekend, when I did the grocery shopping, I…. gulp... I bought generic soda. We usually buy ~5 12-packs a week of pop (5 times $4 avg price = $20/wk, and that doesn’t include buying pop at school). It occurred to me that we could cut that amount in half if we bought generic soda.

Yes, it’s hard to take the cut in quality/flavor. But I went through a similar experience when I went from drinking regular to all-diet soda. Everyone says, Oh but it tastes so much less good, and I replied that the flavor wasn’t as good but the calories that I saved made it worthwhile. Hopefully, I’ll either feel that way about generic pop, or just drink less of it if I don’t like it as much. Either way, I will save money. Ten dollars a week, forty dollars a month, almost $500/year.

We’re cutting back on non-necessities, trying to reduce the regular, monthly expenses. After Xmas break we’re going from three Netflix DVDs to two, and we stopped getting proactiv in the mail (that stuff is friggin’ expensive).

I’ve been reading the Green Challenge at www.slate.com for tips in cutting down energy and water costs… our electricity bill is pretty high, and we use a ton of water for some reason. We will weather strip the windows this weekend. Small things do add up.