It’s January! A couple months ago I asked Aaron to please, please, please take over the management of our funds because although I love math (no, really) and numbers (yup, I promise) I get lost on details.
My favorite budget is a percentage budget where everything is broken down into line items – but larger ones such as:
Savings
Tithe
Spending
Vacation
Housing
And then breaking it out from there as to what is really going on. So lets say we put 10% into savings – well that could mean (in my head) that we’re putting 50% of the total towards “No Touch” and 30% of the total toward “Furniture” or whatever but Aaron much prefers a profit and loss statement on his spending.
Um. Yeah. Not so much.
So he took over and it’s been B-Glorious but he sat down over Christmas break and forecasted our entire year. Dot dot dot. I am not lying when I say details are lost on me. Getting from point A to point B is the fun part – but mapping out the entire step by step process looks like suffocation to me.
I’m here to say that it’s not true! There’s Adventure! Danger! Excitement! and it’s all inside of our budget. Who knew?
Being on the same page and understanding our budget in a non emotional way has been so helpful throughout this journey and it looks to be a good thing for the next year as well. Will we stick to this to the T? Probably not, I hope we can stay close, but we’ll have to hammer out a few more “budget meetings” and “changes” before we’re on any kind of autopilot with our money … but at least we’re learning now and taking charge before the charge took us. Get it? The Charge?? As in cards and debt … and … oh. Never mind.
We closed out 2010 with just a car payment as debt and were able to sucker punch it and make a large year end payment that was about 15% of the total loan left on top of our monthly payment and we hope to be able to have the car paid off by summer. We have a plan.
But this month my goal is to keep my cash envelopes free of unplanned pregnancies or STDS. No hanky panky between any two.
Love the video and especially your “subtitles” haha. You crack me up. The word Budget makes my blood run cold, I dread, dread, dread it. But after it’s done, it feels sooo good! That’s kinda how I feel about exercise too. Yikes.
Love the longer hair – I vote keep growing it (plus, then don’t you save from not spending the haircut $ and you can use it for other things? Wait – that’s envelope hanky panky, isn’t it. I think you should sent in the hanky panky term to Dave Ramsey, btw!)
I actually heard the very term “hanky panky” between the envelopes from a caller – very fun and such a good reminder to keep them SEPARATE.
Hair = long, you’re the first vote and I like it. I was growing it out so that’s what I plan to do it’s just so … in that “stage” of not really doing anything.
Sarah – you’re funny! Those subtitles are the actual thoughts that go through my mind when I’m editing. ha! Aaron and I have talked before about doing some kind of “townhall meeting” on personal budgeting just because the conversation is so fun for us. We love to think through this kind of thing and he LOVES a good chart … not for everyone, I know! But maybe we should do a video with him and see what he has to say š