We ran out of money, but we have more bills!

A few months ago, before my wife and I started budgeting, the unthinkable happened. Our checking was down to $500 and we had to pay for day care, which is $225, and we had one of my loans to pay which is about $300. At this time, we had about $500 in our savings and I’ve never heard of Dave Ramsey or knew anything else about saving money. So, we did what any other person in our situation would do, we moved half of our savings into the checking so we could pay the daycare bill.

I knew something had to change and that’s when I realized we had to get our financial plan in order. I sat there and listed all our payments and ordered them from what was due when. That’s also when we made our budget like I referred to in my earlier blog post here.

   I had a plan and we were sticking to it! But, nobody’s perfect and just a few days ago we went food shopping at BJ’s and spent almost $300 on groceries. We had the $300, and this trip will last us a couple of weeks so it will make up the cost but now we’re in the same boat as we were a few months ago. But this time, I’m not touching our savings.

People are human, we make mistakes and sometimes we don’t plan. The people you are paying understand that. We called our daycare and it was fine that we missed this week’s payment if we make up the payment next week. Which we will because we get paid the Thursday before. Bigger companies like school loan businesses and your mortgage company probably won’t let you skip a month, but you can move payments around when you need to pay your bills. After budgeting I realized that the second week of the month is better for our mortgage to come out so I called and moved that.

It’s not easy, and it's embarrassing, but knowing I can do this and knowing that my bills are being paid on time lifts a huge weight off my shoulders. So, give it a try if you’re pressed for money and tell me what you think!

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