a budget

I am super organized on paper. I have our meals planned for the month at the beginning of each month and I keep a strict budget in an Excel Spreadsheet. I have Christmas budgeted for next year already. I have our vacation at the end of the summer budgeted. I have all of my nieces/nephews birthdays budgeted. I have money budgeted that I put into savings each month. It makes me feel comfortable. We never used to keep a budget until about 2 years ago. We made some poor financial decisions because of that. Now, I have no idea how we managed without doing our budget the way we do it. I can't imagine ever stopping doing it now. When it's on paper (well, actually the computer screen) in front of me, it just makes everything so clear and easy. It is a lot of work creating our budget though...it takes hours and hours. Sean depends on me to deal with the money...he makes it and I manage it, although I keep him in "the know" probably more than he would like. :) I know that I wouldn't feel comfortable unless I was in "the know", so though it's hard and time consuming and a lot of pressure sometimes, I prefer it this way. I might be kind of a control freak. Okay, there you have it...I admitted it. Although most of you who read this already know that about me.

Anyway...

Sean is changing jobs as most of you know. He starts his new job on Friday. The way I do our budget is that I have each payday listed of the year and then list what bills need to be paid and what needs to be saved out of that paycheck and how much goes to those bills and savings. When I created our 2011 budget, I didn't think to take into account that Sean's paydays may be different for his new job. When I finally thought about that, I just hoped and prayed that his paydays would be the same days as he has now. We found out today...no cigar. Darn it! So now he gets paid the opposite Fridays as he got paid before. Ugh. That meant going in and adjusting our budget. I thought that might take me an hour or so today. Ya, well I was wrong. I don't even know how many hours it took, but I feel like I spent all afternoon and then another couple hours tonight adjusting it. "Adjusting" might be too loose of a term...I pretty much had to redo it.

It's done now. I feel better. I have this sense of accomplishment and comfort now that it's done...again. So I feel like that was my day...budgeting. Fun stuff.