At the end of each year, my husband and I review the prior year and make plans for the upcoming year. We do this separately at first and then together. Finances are one of the areas that we cover.<\/p>\n
The way we do the finances in our house is that I do each month\u2019s budget and my husband makes sure that we actually stick to it. What can I say? I\u2019m the \u201cidea\u201d person. He\u2019s the \u201cimplementation\u201d one! So far, it\u2019s been working pretty well for us. We have \u201cwiggle room\u201d in our budget (for unexpected purchases) but this year, we\u2019re trying to cut down on unnecessary extra expenses. (We\u2019re hoping to adopt in the near future and adoption is EXPENSIVE!) Anyway, I \u201ctrack\u201d the extras each month and what I found is that we spend the most (outside of the budget) money on the following:<\/p>\n
-Food <\/strong>(primarily me \u2013 Starbucks, Ollie\u2019s Chinese Food, etc.)<\/p>\n -Gifts <\/strong>(primarily me \u2013 if I could, I\u2019d give a gift to practically everybody for every occasion!)<\/p>\n -Postage <\/strong>(primarily me with shipping giveaway items)<\/p>\n And<\/p>\n -School related purchases <\/strong>(my husband \u2013 teachers have to pay for a lot of things out of their own pockets!)<\/p>\n Obviously, I\u2019m the bigger budget buster! So, below are our 2009 strategies:<\/p>\n -Food:<\/strong> We (okay, I!) are cutting back on eating out. I\u2019m also taking a break from Starbucks for the year. I\u2019ll only get my caramel frapp if my husband (or someone else!) buys it for me.<\/p>\n -Gifts:<\/strong> I\u2019m not going to stop giving them. I just won\u2019t give as many. (It\u2019s my nature to just give random gifts if I see something that I think a particular person would like. Now, I\u2019ll save the gifts for special occasions.)<\/p>\n