Budget - Month One Update

A month ago or so, Jeff and I decided we needed to sit down and work out a budget.  Let me rephrase that: A month ago or so, I finally sat down and worked out our budget.  Jeff and I actually have talked about doing it for some time. 

How's it going, you ask?  It's tough, that's for sure, I'm not gonna lie.  It takes discipline and perserverance and I have to stay on top of it every day, or almost every day.  What do I mean by stay on top of it every day? Every day or just about every day I enter receipts into Pearbudget. This helps keep track of items like groceries and gas that we used our debit cards for. Jeff and I use our bank's web bill pay for all our regular monthly bills, and we have direct deposit for our paychecks. 

I've discovered that budgeting every two weeks works best for us.  Every time Jeff gets paid, I figure out what monthly bills are due and what we have left for groceries, gas, entertainment and so on, and then withdraw the actual cash from the bank and put that in our cash envelopes. I'm still working on that part.  To me, its just easier to leave the money in the bank and use the debit card, keeping track everyday in Pearbudget.  I shouldn't say "easier"; it's what I'm used to.  I haven't gotten the knack of going to the bank and withdrawing the actual cash yet.  But, I will.  I just did our budget for the next two weeks and know what we have to spend on food and gas, so I will go withdraw it from the bank.  It just makes us be more disciplined when we know the exact amount of money we have to spend, as opposed to using our debit card.

Today I am going to go through all my Money Saving blogs and find all the printable coupons I can for groceries, plus cut out the ones from our newspaper that I know I'll use. I'm also going to take a look at what stores have on sale and make a plan.  I'll let you know how that goes too. I've done all of this in the past so I know I can do it again...lol.