Putting it all together, and evaluating Your Priorities

By now, we should have a complete, or near complete list of everything we spend our money on, including not only monthly, but also semi-annual, annual, and infrequent expenses we need to save up for. Let's take a look:


Well, there's everything, and we can see that we're spending more than we take in - our monthly income that we established back in "Getting a Grip on Finances" was $2946. We're $169 over our budget. How do we handle that?

This is where you think long and hard about what matters most to you, and you design your budget around those priorities. We have our necessities - Rent, food, etc - those are pretty much non-negotiables. But, can you refinance your house at a lower interest rate? Can you be more aggressive at couponing, meal planning, and strategic shopping to reduce the grocery bill? What about insurance, can you negotiate a lower rate? Can you reduce your gift spending, and maybe hand-make something, or offer to spend time or cook a meal in lieu of an expensive trinket?

What about that gym membership that you rarely use? Can you live without a couple of those streaming services, or if you have cable, "cut the cord"? Can you reduce your dining out habits? Do you need that magazine subscription that you barely skim through once a month?

The bottom line is that until we have *less* money going out than we do coming in, we'll never get ahead. The best, most fancy budget in the world can't make money come from nowhere. But what your budget can do, is show you where your money is going, and where you need to adjust it so that your spending is in line with your priorities. Like Dining Out? Ok, but you'll have to maybe adjust your grocery budget. Like to travel and want to save for that trip to Yosemite? Ok, but you might have to reign in that daily Starbucks visit during your work break. You get the idea. Think about what matters most to you, and what it will take to put your money towards those values and priorities. Once you have a clear target of where you want to go, your spending decisions will help guide you there.

Let's take a look at the budget again, this time trimming a few items, and cutting a couple of things out entirely.



We've eliminated some streaming services, trimmed up dining out, shifted our utilities to "Easy-Pay", and adjusted a couple of other amounts to get things tightened up.

Challenging? A bit, but after a few months we may find ways to save even more money, or earn more income. Either way we will be better off than we were before. And look, we even have an extra $100 a month!

What are we going to do with that extra $100? Remember that Credit Card Debt we discussed earlier? We're going to use that extra $100 to get rid of it for good. We'll discuss that later in a future post. Right now, we have to put it all together and figure out what we need to do right now. Head on over to the next post.



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