Thursday, January 22, 2009

Catching Up, Moving On

I know I've been remiss with this blog and I have a list of excuses a mile long, but the bottom line is this: I don't love budgeting and writing a blog about a subject I don't love is about as fun as you'd imagine. Especially when no one is paying me to write it. (Hello Universe! Financial Planning Blogger for hire RIGHT HERE!)

Sorry, but I'm being honest.

And now I'll be EXTRA honest and tell you that I have virtually no idea how much we spent on Christmas. I have approximately 437 receipts stuffed into a big envelope, an envelope that I've licked shut and shoved into the bowels of our filing cabinet, never to be opened again. My best guess is: A LOT.

I do know that we intended to spend $200 on each kid and ended up spending more like $300 instead. Dave and I had the same budgets for each other and the same thing happened. So for JUST our little family, the Christmas bill was $300 x 4 = $1200. Not cheap! And yet - it coulda been worse.

The good news is that we continue to save money. Sure, I'd like to be saving even more and we could be if I was more dedicated to budgeting, but it's a big trade off for me. By NOT budgeting, I am actually getting something for the extra money we end up spending: I'm getting to relax and enjoy our life as it goes by. In some ways that freedom is worth more money to me than any extra padding our savings account might get. Either way, we're living well within our means and if you take nothing else from this blog, I hope you take that with you.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad you're back, even if just momentarily.

I've discovered the same thing about budgeting. I am happier at the end of the day when I simply was conscious that day about what (and WHY) I was spending, instead of being so anal to make sure that I matched what my budget ledger said I had to spend.