Friday, December 7, 2012

Adventures in Budgeting: Month one



 Unfortunately, the word budget has gotten a bum rap – it is basically just a PLAN. When you budget, you're spending on paper, on purpose, before the month begins. But many people view a budget as a straight jacket that keeps them constrained. Freedom and budget just don't seem to go together. --Dave Ramsey



December starts the first month of our family budget. I've wanted to do this for awhile and finally got motivated to jump in and get it started. We have debt but thankfully we've been pretty good and only have medical bills and student loans to pay off. If we stay on track we will be able to be debt free in a few years.

Getting started wasn't the hard part, Dave Ramsey has great tools that make it easy to set a budget and keep to it. I love the Gazelle budget. Everything is online and I can just roll over and make minor changes month to month. It lets you know what you've spent and what is left in your budget. There are also guides for how much should be spent on each catagory. 

The next awesome tool is the debt snowball. All debts except your house is added to the program. For each debt you input the total debt, minium payment, and interest rate, then by using their system it will have you debt free in months or a few years depending on the amount of debt

Talking about a budget with your spouse is probably the hardest part. My husband didn't see the need because we've always done fine. I asked him to give me three months to see how it's working. The whole point is to know where our money is going and what we might be wasting money on. The combination of the Gazelle Budget and Snowball program lets us have a real plan. The debt snowball gives us motivation to keep paying down our debt and get on the track of investing money in our future and the future of our kids. 

In the coming months I will share with you the ups and downs of our family budget and I hope you will be encouraged to take the journey with me. I'd love you hear from you. Let me know how your journey is going and we can be an encouragement to each other. 

Dave Ramsey's Total Money Maker Over

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