Never getting ahead
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| Fri, 01-22-2010 - 12:12pm |
Every month around the 20th of the month I budget out for the next month. I budget most things higher then what they are and still it seems like we are just getting by. Next month I will be bring in my 3rd full time dayhome child so it will bump our spending/budget income up $700. This is HUGE. As right now we are going into the red a bit each month which I just dont understand at all. But hopefully Feb will be a new beginning for us yet again. One of the biggest things I see is that I told the bank to take off all our auto payments for debt to come out of our account and I will do them online myself (snowflaking here and there) and I see they have took out 2 payments adding up to over 600.00. I am very upset about this as this could be one of the main reasons we are going into red at the end of the month. I still havent paid the phone/cable/internet bill for this month, but there is no money left in the account for it. I feel so happy when I budget and snowflake, and then this happens. Sometimes I just want to cry.



You must look at the online things everyday. I hate automation because this would happen to me! I pay everything myself and don't rely on other to do it because guess what, they end doing it wrong and you have to pay for it.
Give yourself a break, learn,and move on. Congrats on getting another child in your daycare. Next month will be better!
Are you writing down everything that you spend? Not just on a budget but actually keeping track of every penny you spend. I was great for writing up a budget of what we should be spending and wondering why we were still in the red at the end of the month and not getting ahead on our LOC or CC's. I was forgetting all the little things that get bought without thinking about it. We still have to watch what we spend but now I'm better at thinking before spending, if I know I have to write it down and put my receipt in the folder. (I made a folder just for putting in daily receipts, that I then move to the appropriate one when I'm paying bills and updating Quicken.)