I can't sleep. And what does JC do when he can't sleep? He heads over to The Christian Dollar to read through the archives. Lo and behold he stumbles upon this article about spending the previous month's income for the next month. This starts him thinking about budgeting and how it's working.
A little over a month and a half ago, I posted about our first budget, and how we were taking each dollar and giving it a name and purpose. We started out budgeting from what we had from August's income. Then, the next month, we budgeted from September's income. Now, looking at the budget for November, we are going to be using October's income. Make's sense, right?
I think one of the reasons that this system is working for us, is that I like to see things in concrete terms. I like knowing that I have so many apples, so many bananas, and so many dollars. That allows me to parcel out my budget, knowing that I have exactly this amount of money for this amount of expenses. What's funny about this is that not too long ago I was very undisciplined with my money. I had a vague idea of where it was going and what it needed to do, but I would impulse buy and that occasionally had me skating along a cliff.
Now that Brianna and I are married, the accountability and the goals we have set makes it a lot easier to keep to a budget. Plus I also have a renewed sense of stewardship. The money we have is not our own and I want to treat this gift with the diligence it deserves.
And part of that is spending last month's income in this month's budget.
How do you set up your budget? How do you look at your money? Is it concrete or vague?
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