Change is hard. Establishing new habits is hard.
I said this blog would detail those ins and outs, and I’d fallen off a bit because I was feeling a bit uninspired. A friend reminded me that continuing to share may be just what someone else needs.
So here I am, back to bring you along with me on my journey. Here are the basics:
- I am a single woman responsible for all my own bills.
- Due to mostly poor financial decisions made in my younger days, I have approximately $55,000 in consumer debt, and $140,000 in student loan debt.
- I have three autoimmune diseases that will sometimes keep me from what I want to do or feel I need to do. (One of my specialists told me in the past I could work OR go to school, but not both. I didn’t listen, which played a part in the student loan debt.)
- I am a single parent of an awesome kid and am so glad I do not have to worry about things like childcare and after-school activities anymore (mentioned only so you know why my kid costs are so low).
As you can see from the picture above, my current plan leaves me short about $325 a month.
I take full responsibility for this.
My goal is to improve my financial situation a little bit at a time.
- I still need to be able to enjoy my life and do not plan to adopt a “scorched earth” policy to tackle my debt.
- I have a small but supportive group of friends and family that I am incredibly grateful to have in my life.
Now that you’ve made it this far, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
As I am running at a budgeted deficit each month, I use more of a paycheck allocation method to plan out how I am going to pay what bills each time I get paid. I have found that The Budget Mom’s method (thebudgetmom.com) seemed to work more in line with what I was already doing, so I attempted to follow it.
It was pretty y’all! The numbers drilled down to a zero-based budget. I was proud.
Then I tried to match it up with the way I actually have my funds allocated on my Excel spreadsheet, and it just didn’t work. *heavy eye roll*
So what you have here is this:
I got tired of fooling with it and said I’ll figure it out when I do my review.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It happens. It seems to be generally accepted that it will take 3-4 months to get used to your budget and get it under control, and that’s when you can get it down to a zero-based budget to start with; even longer if (like me) there isn’t enough to go around.
But it’s okay. The important thing is I have a renewed interest to keep working at it. So follow along with me. Help me out if you can. As Stacey Flowers (staceyflowers.com) would say, I am a student. I am not an expert by any means, just sharing what I find along the way.
Welcome.