So You Think You Can Budget?

I've never been one to back down from a challenge.  Unfortunately, not all challenges I've attempted to beat have been smart ones.

You think I can't smoke a cigarette in two drags?  Prepare to amazed...

You want me to clear the metal oil cart (at the gas station where I used to work) in one hurdle?  Just let me stretch for a minute...

A front flip into that snow bank?  Here...hold my 2L of Rockaberry for me...

Luckily, the challenge that lies before me doesn't necessitate an iron lung or teenage stupidity.  At my Tuesday morning Mom's Group, the topic was budgeting.  It's a word I've heard before but never quite understood.  Before Mike and I had good jobs, we lived on very little.  Our attitude was, "How can you budget when you don't have any money?".  Even though we are making decent money, we still don't budget.  We more or less just squeeze our eyes shut and hope there's money left at the end of the month.  Not very effective.

But this budgeting session just made so much sense and has me all fired up in the geekiest way possible.  I've always loved numbers and puzzles and that's really all budgeting is - tweeking things until you see numbers in the black instead of the red.

When I got home on Tuesday, I couldn't wait to share all of this new found wisdom with Mike.  My enthusiasm quickly gave way to a long winded lecture about how we (meaning he) can't make any more frivolous, unnecessary purchases and that we (he) both need some impulse control.  My spiel continued on for a solid ten minutes until I noticed Mike's eyes had slightly glazed over and I took that as my cue to get off my soap box for a bit.

Fast forward to Thursday.  Guess who came home with her brand new Shark Steam Blaster/Floor Cleaner?

Just the essentials, my ass.