Budgeting and saving money is a lot like someone working to lose weight. It is very hard to get started and stay on track. You can make a goal to lose twenty pounds, just like making a goal to save $1,000. The first week you start out strong on an exercise program and sticking to your diet. Working extremely hard, you are able to lose four pounds your first week. Now, the second week starts, you do the same program as the week before. This time weigh in only yields a one pound loss. All that work for one pound! This is were most people quit, all that work for one pound. They forget that they have lost five pounds total and are a quarter of a way towards there goal. Saving money has that same feeling most of the time. You have a goal, starting out strong you create a budget and work really hard to stay on track. After tracking all of your expenses for the month you able to finish the month $85 ahead. Most people would have the feeling $85, big deal! What they don't think about is if they were able to continue this all year they would meet their $1,000 dollar goal.
Psychologically, we think this is why it is so hard to save money. It is very hard to get excited about saving small amounts of money. We all want to save the $1,000 the first month. If we don't achieve the goal we give up. It is very hard to stay dedicated to the plan when you don't feel you are getting to your goal fast enough. Unfortunately, it takes time to get ahead and there will be months were there are setbacks. The good news, is that if you can stay focused you can reach your goals over time!
Now, with April here and past, we want to look how our second full month of trying to stay on a single income budget. In March, we were able to come out $42.47 ahead at the end of the month. April did not go so well for us. It was a month where every time we turned around something was breaking. Our garbage disposal started leaking, we had a leak in our roof, our mower needed a tire replaced just to name a few. This meant more trips to town, which led to spending more in gas than normal along with taking the easy way out grabbing dinner while in town. When it was all said and done we ended up spending $490.61 more than our single income provided us. This was very disappointing to be over $400 in the hole after two months. We are going to work hard to get back on track in May and our goal for the year will be to not spend more on our everyday expenses than our single teacher's salary. We will all have those times where things do not go as planned. Don't give up!!! It can be very hard sometimes to see the light at the end of the tunnel and please do not think people that budget well do not stress about money because we all do at one point or another. Stay the course and the horizon will soon show!
