First I would like to congratulate you for making it through your first month of you new budget. Yay you. The second month is almost more important than the first month. It requires commitment. More than the first month because now you are out of the honeymoon phase. You got that “OMG my budget is ugly” slap in the face over with from month one. My month two is especially ugly because as usual, we seem to come up with our own special set of issues.
Budgeting takes commitment….
However, I need to inform you that here we are on May 11th and I haven’t even completed mine, let alone input any money spent. I will semi-qualify it by the fact that yes, I was 2500 miles from my home and at Disney World with my family. However, I did have my laptop. I just wish that this was my complete issue with month two in my new budget but it’s not.
Instead, one of the biggest problems I find with month two of the new budget is that I really screwed up month one. I didn’t stick with it. I wasn’t able to accurately keep up with all of the transactions. Mainly because I was doing it wrong from the beginning. The influx of extra cash from our tax return, although nice to have, didn’t do me any favors as far as spending control. I crashed my truck, and if you’re into that kind of fun reading, you can do a little of that HERE. You can get the full story of the Financial Moron Mobile HERE. And of course, I traveled to Disney World with my family for my daughter’s Competitive Cheer competition.
Sooooo….yeah….
Obviously, being at Disney World, one wouldn’t expect to have any time or desire, to sit down and log all of your expenses, but it must be done. Here is the problem with this theory. In our infinite Financial Moron wisdom, we attached the Disney MagicBands to our credit card. That way we don’t have to carry any cash around the parks and worry about losing it. For those of you that are unaware, the Disney MagicBands are supplied by Disney World for use in their parks for this very purpose. It’s totally ingenious for them to offer this convenience for the exact same reason that it’s a total Financial Moron move to have one. It causes you to spend more money. We had them, or rather, they had us, Hook, Line, and Sinker….
These things are genius
As an added bonus, the small purchases that you pay for, i.e. buying an overpriced soda at the food court, or paying for a pretzel or souvenir at the park, don’t show up on your credit card immediately as little individual purchases. This way, you can’t keep checking your credit card app on your smartphone to see where you are at with your spending and how out of control it has gotten. Smart Disney, very smart. We decided, that to be a complete Financial Moron, you must also attach the credit card to your children’s MagicBands. This way even if they are not with you at the moment, they can get that much needed water or snack to keep them going, or souvenir, or sweatshirt, or Disney refillable mug, etc. Yeah….
The logistical nightmare….
So how can I possibly log all of the purchases and spending that we have a done even in these first few days of May? I probably can’t, at least not yet. We have just returned from the trip so it’s time to sit down and fill out all of the many transactions that took place. This includes bills that I paid as well. I did get a paycheck while I was out there and I did the right thing with it as usual. I paid as many bills as I could.
The income tax thing, yeah that is a mess as well. I spoke a little about that HERE, when I first received the income tax return. The extra influx of money makes it very difficult to start a new budget and expect to stick to it. At least this is true for people like myself and my Financial Moron family that have serious spending err, um, concerns. Having the extra money makes it so that you are a little more comfortable with frivolous spending than you normally would be. This comfort even carries through to the point when the extra cash is depleted. It’s a mindset more so than a physical act.
A cause and effect type thing.
Now that we have returned from the Disney trip, I have been able to see the effect of the MagicBands on my credit card. It’s not pretty. The cool part about it is that it’s on my credit card and doesn’t come directly out of my day to day finances. The bad part is that it’s on my credit card and now I have to concern myself with paying that much more off before I am truly financially free. There really is no happy ending to spending money. It’s all a give and take.
Symantics…
Suppose you had a million dollars sitting in your savings account and no bills to pay. Then you spent $100 taking your wife out to dinner, as good as that dinner may have been, you now only have $999,900.00. Just not quite a million dollars anymore. Is this a big issue? Not really, maybe just in bragging rights, “I have a MILLION DOLLARS!”, “Look at me!!, I’m a MILLIONAIRE!” I guess if that is a big deal for you then you may have to wait until you have $1,000,100.00 to take your wife out to dinner. She can wait, she probably wasn’t very hungry anyway.
WTF….
Month two causes you to sit down and try to figure out where month one went wrong, then fix it. I have said it before, the first few months are the adjustment phase. They take determination and commitment to get through. This is where you must find your financial pace. Where you figure out how much you need per category to survive and not break the budget. If everything was status quo, and your expenses were exactly the same from month to month, this would be easy. All you would have to do is verify your first month expenses by doing the same in the second month, and poof, your there, budget in hand.
But i don’t work that way. I never have. I like, or rather am used to, doing things the hard way.
Month two is a necessary evil.
If you don’t attack month two with the same vim and vigor as you did on month one, you may just fall of the wagon. The budget wagon. There is one thing that I can promise you. That’s if you can muster up the commitment to get through month two, every month from here will get easier. How do I know this and how can I say it with such conviction? That’s easy. It’s because month two sucks and it can only go up from here. You just have to take those steps. It’s a journey along a path that leads to financial freedom. Every time you stop because the journey gets difficult, the next time you start again, you have to start at the beginning. You should trust me on this one.
I have experience. Lots of it.
So if you have set up your month two budget already, good for you. We are in fact damn near the middle of the month. However, if you haven’t done so yet, sit your butt down and get it done. If you don’t do it now then you wasted a whole month last month trying to start something that you pissed away just because it wasn’t easy.
Don’t be a quitter. You gots this.
Dave
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