The Cunninghams: A Budget Family

We've always said we were on a budget. I suppose I should put the word budget in quotes. We've tried and tried and never followed very strictly. Our budget consisted of paying the bills and whatever else was free for all. Things just went from bad to worse financially and we finally hit our rock bottom and found a budget that works. I've always hated budget meetings. I dreaded even looking at the budget. Now I look at it every single night. Some things come out of the bank account, some things come out of envelopes. I'm not sure if anyone else out there has at least 20 envelopes in there system, but we do! I'm adding one more after today too. We've finally found something that works for us, and we've stuck to it, and found we have had a little more money than we realized because we've been so diligent.

The only problem with our first month is I didn't take into consideration when I find a really good deal on something we need or something we've been looking for. We're going to start miscellaneous envelope for things like this. We only have on set of sheets for our bed. I have to wash them immediately when I take them off so we can put them right back on. Today, Target had 700 thread count sheets for 75% off! Fifteen dollars for sheets that were originally sixty dollars! I also found a shopping cart for my kids for $7.48, also 75% off. We've been looking for a cart like this for a long time but refused to pay thirty bucks for a toy. Thankfully, when we did our budget, we estimated extremely low on Nick's tips, so the money was there. If we weren't budgeting, I might have spent money we didn't have. If we weren't budgeting, I wouldn't have known that we are further ahead on funding envelopes this month than we anticipated.

I used to HATE budgeting with a passion. Everytime my husband said the word budget, I could feel myself making a face. Now, as much as I hate to admit this, I look forward to looking at it each night, and I enjoy putting the cash from tips into each envelope. I love knowing exactly where our money is going. I don't have to look at my bank statement at the end of this month and wonder where all of our money went. I can look through our budget and envelopes and know that we paid our bills for the month, funded all of our envelopes, and one of those is even a Christmas envelope so we're prepared when it's time for that next year! This was one of the most important things on my goals for the year, and so far, January is looking good. I hope the rest of the year is just as good.

This one has nothing to do with the budget, but it's just cute. She was sick (ear infection but didn't know yet), and she was snuggled up watching Dora.