Day 9: Budgetastic!

Today, I found myself in a slightly better mood. I was more aware of the attack of the enemy and that kept me prepared to shield myself from those thoughts for the most part. Whenever I was faced with a frustrating situation, I purposed to stick to the old saying - "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". This is a very wise saying and once you start implementing that concept, it's even easier to say something positive in light of what your first thoughts may have been.

On to tonight's focus. I wanted to revisit my finances and continue the process of improving my fiscal position. Last week, I created a plan to get my credit card debt into a more manageable state. I used my existing balances and calculated what my monthly payment would have to be to get to a 20:80 debt to credit ratio by the end of 5 years. The good news is that on one of my credit cards, I can get there in 4 years and for one, I can even attain the goal in 3 years! I was so excited to see that!

So now the next step is for me to modify my existing budget to reflect those payments and also to see where we can cut our spending to make them. On my bank's website, it has these "handy-dandy" tools that show you where you are spending your money and how each month compares to yur monthly average in those areas. For example, it may show that on average, you spend 20% of your inflow on food and 30% on rent, etc. Then it will show in which months I spent less on food and more on rent and so on. It also shows your total inflow-outflow for the month.

On a side note, remember the last time I was talking about how we have somehow been able to make our bills, even though it doesn't make any logical sense? This may be TMI, but in order to make my point, I have to tell you that our average monthly Inflow-Outflow for the past year is a negative number. That means we are spending more than we are bringing in - but yet our balance is not negative! God defies all logic for real people!

I digress...

So, my task for today is to use these tools that the bank provides to create a more solidified budget that will help us to achieve all of our financial goals for the next year. I am going to use a serious spreadsheet to calculate all of the inflow, less all bills, and any other expenses. Anyone who knows me knows that spreadsheets are my friend! If you would like a template with formulas in it, I can email you a copy if you let me know.

Well, time to get to it!