Money Obedience

When we set up a budget we make all kinds of little mistakes. That is not a big problem since mistakes are kind of built into it. As long as we understand that setting up a budget is a process and not an once-in-a-lifetime event, we should be ok. We learn from our little mistakes and correct them when we work on our budget the second, third, fourth,…. time around. If you would like to see a short list of mistakes people make, read Sharon’s blog “The Frugal Dutchess” where she recently published “How I Plan to Create a Better Budget”. There, she discusses four of her budget-making mistakes and how she intends to fix them.

We ourselves sort of made a budgeting “mistake” last weekend. We were lucky enough that some friends stayed with us over the weekend. That kind of visit usually leads to higher expenses, for which we do not have a separate budget item set up. (We are good cooks and good eaters, so most of the extra expense comes in the form of food anyway!) It’s fine to include these rare higher expenses under “groceries,” which is what we did. But I guess if we had friends stay over all the time, we should set up a separate budget item. Unfortunately it does not happen that often. (Do we just live too far in the “Boonies”? Or are our friends trying to send us a message?) Anyway, regarding the budget, we will continue on the same road as we have so far – greater savings, and increased happiness.

As you well know by now, our blog is about the interaction between our financial decisions and our happiness. Our ultimate goal is our happiness, not having a zillion dollars in the bank or a zillion dollars in debt. It makes us very happy when we have good company. When our company chooses to extend the visit like our friends did last weekend, it is even better for us. It was almost like a holiday to expand our budget a little bit to enjoy the weekend the way we did. We may have sacrificed a little budgetary discipline to have it happen, but it was well worth it. We had such a great time! And we hope to repeat it again and again – with or without budgeting for such visits properly – as long as we keep our expenses within our overall spending limits (in the long run).