So one of Ansen’s co-workers, Keri, on the morning show, was doing “Financial Freeze February” last month and encouraging listeners to join her. Basically, for the entire month, her family would not spend on extras. Obviously the regular bills have […]
When I (Ansen) look over the line-items in our budget, the cell-phones category always catches my eye. And not in a good way. The amount we spend on our wireless bill is over twice what we spend on television and broadband combined. It’s one of the most expensive categories in our entire budget, only behind the likes of our mortgage payments and grocery bills. Dri and I both own smartphones with service from Verizon Wireless. These phones have served us quite well and we’ve come to be pretty reliant on them. However, our 2-year contract with Verizon recently expired, giving us the opportunity to evaluate our options.
This week I began my $30/week grocery budget challenge so I can save the rest to go toward my outrageous dental bill from last week. It’s sort of retroactive, in that I hope to only spend $120 for the whole month of May even though I’m starting in the middle, and it does include any previous food that we have stocked up from last month. (That’s why there’s a “?” next to week 1, because it’s more like week 2 1/2, but it’s just the beginning.)
People get pretty nervous when they hear the word budget. It sounds a lot like some scary weapon your spouse brandishes at you to prevent you from having any fun. At best, a budget sounds like a lot of stress.
In reality, I believe a budget can be remarkably stress relieving. At least most of the time.
A budget is really just a plan. By spending your money on paper before the month even begins, you’re making sure that when the time comes for those bills to be paid and for money to start disappearing from your checking account, it’s not any more than you were already expecting. And if things are working correctly, that same amount of money will subsequently be replaced by your income…
