A Busted Budget

Years and years ago, I did  Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University classes, and I was introduced to him and his financial lifestyle. A lot of his stuff made so much sense to me. You don't need a brand-new car, buy one a few years older! You need to be saving for retirement! Pay down your debts smallest to largest! He has so many excellent points that make up a solid financial base for a successful life.

One of his items never really worked for me, though; his zero based budget. He has the mentality that every penny needs a job, otherwise too much of your income will be spent frivolously. He has a budget form available here that was nice, but it never worked for me. I am paid hourly, so it was impossible to predict how much I would make. I would fill out the form, find myself frustrated that I had to give every dollar a job before I even knew how much I would make each month, and I'd give up on it.

This last week on Pinterest, however, I found a blogger who made a budget template that just... spoke to me. Of course, she wanted $40 for her 'budget package' and I, being the stubborn Scrooge I am said no way, and I made my husband recreate the template on Excel for free-ninety-free. She really does have a 'budget package' that included templates for savings plans, the cash-envelope system and a spending tracker. You can find her post here.

I just jumped right in to her budgeting mentality. I got myself a monthly calendar for fifty cents and planned out all my bills. I looked at our spending since my last paycheck on the 7th and wrote them all out. I set up my bi-monthly budget sheet in preparation for my upcoming paycheck this Thursday. Then I crunched the numbers and... yikes. We spent $762 more than I earned in that paycheck.

Crap.

As you may know, we aren't living paycheck to paycheck. We are doing this 'Year of Less' to avoid taking out a student loan. The overall goal is to budget so we can pay tuition monthly, and avoid touching the nest egg we have in our savings account. We are lucky to be able to make the tuition payment on our credit card, so while we make the 'promise to pay' on the last day of the month, the money will actually leave our account once the second paycheck of the next month posts. This means one paycheck a month covers the tuition payment and the other check has to cover our rent and all other expenses, and last us the entire month.

So we know where we are now, we can't spend any money until payday in four days, and we've been sorta slapped in the face with the reality of our spending situation.

I'm glad i've found this budget that makes sense to me, and I'll have to see how everything goes once I've filled out the form on Thursday.

Wish us luck.