March Budget Review and April Budget

I read a lot of blogs and some of you post things about your finances. We all have bad months and whenever someone says they are over with their spending and the month is only half done or just beginning, I'm pretty consistent with my advice- "Stay on track until the end." "Don't let this get you down, stick with it." or "Learn from this for next month's budget."

Well, well, well, aren't I a know-it-all hypocrit-that-really-needed-to-take-my-own-advice-but-totally-didn't?

Yup, that's me!

Our March budget was baaaaaad, probably the worst month since we started the Dave Ramsey program over a year ago. It was like as soon as I knew we had screwed up (forgot to budget for my friend's visit), I just stopped paying attention. I even went 2 weeks without balancing my checkbook which illustrates how little I paid attention this past month.

Here are just a few examples:
Groceries - $140 over
Fuel - $15 over
Amusement - $97 over (ouch! WTF!?!?)
Fast Food - $54 over
Coffee shops - $25

I even had $4 in ATM fees because we forgot to get cash out for the concert and had to use one of the ATM's there. Yes, it IS only $4, but that's just poor planning...

I've become very aware of how much things fall apart in my world when work isn't going well. Ugh... I won't go into it but it's just been terrible lately. It's like I was trying to make myself happier by buying a Starbucks every few days or going shopping- not smart! Awareness is key though so now I plan to be more careful and not self-medicate by spending money!

But, there's no go back and nothing I can do about it now. All I can do is plan better and be more disciplined in April right?

I have to admit, I'm not entirely happy with our budget for April. We're spending a lot of money on ourselves, which you'll see. We're still putting almost $3,000 to our New Car Savings Fund but we're also spending money on garage storage ($75), new phones ($200), a new camera ($375), our family visiting ($100), and pet grooming/de-shedding ($112).

For us, it's a lot of money to spend on things that aren't necessities. We have a camera (although it sucks). We already have fairly nice phones (yet we're not happy with them). Our dog is shedding like crazy but we could just deal with it by sweeping every hour. You get the idea.

I try to remind myself that we became debt free, have an emergency fund, and sacrificed for a year for a reason...so we could buy these things without guilt. But I'm naturally a saver so spending money is not easy. When we add things like the above to the budget, I deliberate with every line item. It sounds stupid, but just because we have the money, doesn't mean we need to spend it...we'll always be able to find things we want to spend it on right?

So here it is- our April budget-

How does your budget look for April? How much are you investing in your future?

Kelsalynn