When I download our bank and credit card data into Quicken, a quick look generally tells me when we’ve been overspending — and where. (Usually, it’s the small expenses that add up: a soda while we’re out at the mall, a small piece of jewelry that was on sale… Stuff we now actively try to avoid while out and about.)

Unfortunately, our expenses vary so much each month (more on that in another post) that it’s simply too difficult to guess how much will be used vs how much we can “save” to throw at credit card debt.

I’ve tried a few times to estimate. So far, no luck. On the other hand, they say, on average, it takes smokers 7 or more times to quit. So it may be constantly evolving.

FFB,

I think I can see where you’re coming from. But I’m not saying I can make it better. Quite the opposite, I’m saying this is probably about as good as it’s going to get.

I’d be interested in getting your thoughts on my next post, which will be about why it’s really not plausible for us to estimate or average our unexpected expenses.

That said, I’m trying to stay open to the idea that perhaps there are ways to get more of a grasp on planning for expenses.

Part of the difficulty lies in the aforementioned unexpected expenses. Part lies in the fact that I’m a depressive with fatigue issues, which means I can only handle so many items a day before I feel overwhelmed and/or too exhausted to reliably plot out numbers. And there is some difficulty with the sheer number of checks we get: one for disability on the 3rd, one each week for unemployment, and two from my contract work (which arrive 10 days after I bill). On the one hand, having a weekly influx of cash is great for buffering against overdraft. On the other, having 7 checks arriving throughout 30/31 days is a little tiring to keep up with.

Now I feel like I sound whiny. I guess my point is, based on our capabilities right now, I think the budget won’t get honed much further. That said, there may be lots of folks who agree with you about whether our plan is cohesive enough to be called a budget. I’ll be interested to see what others think!

Once I came up with those numbers I was able to figure out how much I could save per month. I have X amount of money I put towards my emergency fund, vacations, and Roth IRA. Anything else left over goes into my “for fun” savings account or can be spent.

I track all of my spending in a spreadsheet. Once I came up with something that works for me, it only takes about a minute a day to keep it updated. I will notice immediately if I am spending too much and can balance accordingly from there. Confronting your spending habits regularly really does curb the desire to overspend.