The Good Life on a Budget

• Posted by JvW on August 21st, 2007 filed in Uncategorized

I made a mistake and forgot to pay one of the credit cards on time. It was in my excel debt snowball as paid, but not on the actual website. I feel like such a moron and I am pissed at myself.

I think as a whole, I have been paying less attention to our finances than usual. I know we have been going over our budget, especially for fun money. I have been ignoring it a little because, frankly, I am enjoying it. It’s tough to deprive yourself of things you want over and over and over. I am resentful of the choices we made that got us into this mess to begin with. Morale is low here at the base camp.

We were very good about sticking to the budget for 8 months, then summer hit and we wanted to DO things. Despite the cheap dates we’ve been going on, we’ve still spent too much money already in August. And we plan on spending more money this weekend. AND (this is the worst part) we’ve used the credit card to pay for a little of it. Oh, the shame!

I need to buckle down and get back on track if I want to get this beast. This was like a small setback in the grand journey we’re traveling on. My short-term task to fix this problem are:

• call the credit card company and get them to remove the late fee I just incurred
• revamp the budget
• pick up another day at my part time job to bring in more income
• look for other ways to make some money (eBay?) to resolve this quickly
• organize our files so bills don’t end up in a big pile

I’ll be updating on my progress when I check them off. I give myself until Sept 1 to check these items off my list and get my act together.