Man, blogging is hard. Who knew, right?
I have a million excuses, really. I had a cold. My internet was out thanks to all the storms we’ve had recently (though we never lost power, thank goodness ). Work has been insane.
But excuses are meaningless. Hoping to try to get back to some regular posting soon.
I updated my YNAB budget this weekend and man, it has been a spendy month. I clearly need to get back on track with budgeting. I know what’s gone wrong. I got a roommate. I suddenly have more funds. While I’m putting more money directly into savings because of that, I’m also spending way more than normal. Some of that is what I would call necessary spending (though it’s not exactly on necessities). I bought new running shoes and some clothes for work. These are both things that were sort of needed. I also did a bit of early Christmas shopping. And then I’ve just been spending on random things, using this extra money as an excuse to buy a few of the things I’ve been lusting after and not able to spend money on.
The problem is that I didn’t budget for any of this and so I’m already way over budget in a few areas and it’s only mid-month. Not good at all, especially with all the traveling I have coming up during September and October. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. So the plan is to just tighten the purse strings and count this as a learning experience (a fun one, that’s for sure) and go back to carefully planning my budget from now on.
The good thing is that I knew what I was doing as I was doing it. I knew I was blowing my budget. So I do have a good idea of what my funds are like. Now I just need to learn to pay attention and NOT blow the budget.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
