Credit Card Debt
Oy. Matt and I have quite a bit of credit card debt at the moment. It’s been a year of spending beyond our means: first it was expensive doctors appointments (not covered by insurance) related to Henry and Tate’s genetic issues with not processing folic acid. Then it was deciding to plan a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia. Then it was deciding that we had to replace the temporary wood railings that were crumbling on our front and back decks (we had had them for four years) and deciding that we should install a shade sail at the same time in order to make our back deck more usable. And then our pool pump broke.
It’s time to get back on track. At the end of October, I got our budget ready for next year. We planned to resume tracking our expenses on Mint.com throughout November, but I forgot to reset the budgets (certain budgets accumulate from month-to-month), so it wasn’t a tremendously helpful process.
But now we are all set to start tracking religiously in December. It’s crazy to me how much willpower it takes to track daily expenses, even though Mint.com makes it so easy!
Anyway, thanks for bearing with me as I publicly recommit to getting back on track with our budget! We have to pay property taxes in January (we don’t escrow them throughout the year), so it might be a while before we get out of debt. The faster we can hunker down, the faster we will get out of debt!
3 Comments
BethanyBoo
I like You Need a Budget way more than Mint. It's much more proactive and the categories can be as broad or granular as you'd like. However it requires completely rewiring how you think about your money so there's a learning curve.
Sara E. Cotner
Hi, BethanyBoo! I've heard great things about You Need a Budget. I am not thrilled by the idea of entering every single expense. It's already enough work to properly code every single expense! I feel like Matt and I are way more likely to track expenses if we only have to code versus enter and code, but everyone has to figure out what works for them! Thanks for sharing!
BethanyBoo
You no longer have to enter every single expense! They link up with your banks now. 🙂