Friday, January 9, 2015

2015 Planning: Budget Goals

Last year was a major transition for us, going from two incomes to one and putting money towards starting a new business. There was a lot of scrambling to adjust and to make ends meet each month. There was a lot of money shuffling and juggling to get bills paid and deal with some of the unforeseen events. Add in all the extra hours spent at my “real” job, my side jobs, and hustling money and it led to a lot less tracking of actual expenses than I would have liked and a whole lot more spending than we should have done.

For 2015, I intend to do a better job of tracking exactly where all the dollars are going. Hopefully, I can uncover some ways to reduce expenditures by taking a closer look at how and on what we are spending our hard earned money on. I would have thought by three years into the budget/ debt reduction mission things would have been set, instead I have learned over the years that there is a constant need to track, assess, reallocate, and reduce as possible.

Budget Goals:

Track actual expenditures across our budget categories for each month and make adjustments/ goals for each coming month.

Do a thorough review off all budget line items for reductions. Focus on bulk meal planning, reducing grocery costs, eliminating food wastes (it drives me crazy having to toss things that have gone bad sitting in our fridge), and cutting back eating out.

Cut spending on wants. Slowly but surely some of my old habits of giving into my wants has crept back into my lifestyle. Time to buckle down and keep my eye on the debt elimination prize.

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