Ironically, just as we finished entering all our account information into Quicken and started feeling really proud of ourselves for having our finances so in order, we realized last night that somehow (isn’t it always a mystery?) we’ve been spending way outside our norm for this entire summer. I’m afraid we just got a little cocky this summer after we got Todd’s bonus. It just seemed like there were reams of money.
After talking through our summer, Scott and I came to the conclusion that with my vast dental bills, putting in a new fence, the mission trip to Belize and some pricey (but worth it!) summer camps for T that we hadn’t exactly wasted the money. We’d just spent it.
So, we’ll be moving on with somewhat more urgency to the next phase of Figuring Out the Finances – Figuring Out the Budget. Scottdid a great job at the beginning of the year putting together a budget we thought allowed us to save ahead for all our big expenses, donate to causes we care about, and still not worry about our day-to-day expenses. However, we haven’t done quite as good a job at reviewing that budget regularly. Our excuse has usually been that we didn’t have all our spending information in a place where we could really compare it to the budget. Thanks to part one of Figuring Out the Finances, that excuse is no more.
We’ll be pretty occupied for the next few weeks dealing with some family issues, so I expect that Figuring Out the Budget will drag on for a while. In the meantime, we’ll just hold off on any more big expenses and see how it goes.