The Budget

Step One on the road to financial freedom

You want a fun and relaxing evening. Just sit on the couch across from your spouse and try to work out a realistic and workable budget. Bare your soul as to where all of your money goes. Let out all of the dirty little secrets about your trip for ice cream and the dollar store. What an oxymoron; the dollar store. Why is it that everytime I go to the "dollar" store I spend at least $10.00? Men and women do really spend differently. My husband enjoys golf. It is quite the expensive hobby. It would be very easy for me to point to that expense, and in the past I have, and say it has to go. But, the reality is I spend just as much money as him on stuff. Mine just happens a little at a time. It goes seemingly unnoticed, that is until we start to bounce checks and have no money left for food and gas. Talk about a humiliating and humbling experience. There were many a times that Eric wanted to stop, but we forged on through the tangle of our financial jungle. We have a ways to go and we will need to tweek and rearrange, but we have made two firm committments: PUT GOD FIRST!, and save our receipts and track our actual spending. TTFN