Well, it is has been a long time since I have made a post. All of the people who actually read my blog – and I think there are three of them now – have requested an update on what is going on with us. Well, I have spent the last month or so on a quest to research and try out every budget software program in the universe. I have been doing the free trial period, loading my whole financial empire into the program, spending hours configuring it to suit my unique financial situation (borderline broke at all times), trying it for a couple of weeks, and then becoming disappointed for one reason or another, abandoning it, and then moving on to the next one. As you can imagine, this kind of intensive research has consumed my entire life.
But, I am happy to report that I have finally landed on one program that is really slick – and fun – and I am completely happy with it (well, almost!) If you want to check it out, go to: http://www.mvelopes.com/ Yes folks, that’s Mvelopes. The idea is that you budget your money into virtual envelopes and then make all of your spending decisions based on how much $$ you have left in the appropriate envelope. It has been an eye-opening experience to see how much money I spend in the “restaurant” envelope. Sheesh! I am really glad that the program makes it easy to transfer money from one envelope to another, because I have had to steal money from other categories and move it into the restaurant envelope a number of times! I am thinking about including some money in the budget next month to buy a big stack of brown paper bags so I can bring my lunch to work to save money – and to keep from getting carpal tunnel syndrome from all of the data entry I am doing entering my expenditures into the restaurant envelope! I’m a quick learner, huh? Yep. I’ve got this budget stuff down pat. Anyway, so that’s what I’ve been doing, and that is why I have been far too busy to write a post to my blog. I’m sure all three of my readers will understand and forgive me.
We’ve been working on a similar system called “we’re broke so cash makes us more careful.” It’s a modified version of the Dave Ramsey plan (I really like Dave Ramsey’s stuff) and I’ll tell you, walking into a grocery store with a limited amount of cash and sticking with it really changes my spending habits. I am very pleased with it.
We learned this in the Dave Ramsey thing too…uggg…..