Let's talk about the "B" word...

That's right... let's talk about:

Budgeting.

What were you thinking?? Not that B word... sickos...

When Mr C and I decided that I would stay home and resign completely from my job, my hours had already been dramatically reduced for several months. This meant that we had already grown accustomed basically to one income. However, the couple hundred dollars I was bringing I  each month actually made a difference. Not a huge one, but it helped.

Fast forward to today. September 2nd, 2018. A Sunday. Mr C has been at work for 4 days. This is his standard schedule assuming he doesn't get forced on. 3 days on one week, 4 days on the next (and when I say "on" I mean 24 hours a day on... 72 and 96 hour shifts). That's a long time to be away from home and from the family. Long hours, stressful calls... yet at the end of each month, we are broke. B-R-O-K-E.

Rewind to last year... We had been in a rental home for almost 3 years when they told us they wouldn't know if they would be selling until about a month before our lease was up. That's a lot of uncertainty when you're about to become a family of 4 (I was 7 months preggo at the time). Faced with the options to wait and see what they do or buy our own place, we decided to buy a home. The real estate market is definitely in a high. This is great for sellers, not so much for buyers. That meant we knew our monthly payment would probably be higher than we were comfortable with. We found a home we liked, signed/initialled approximately 75 papers and within a couple of months we were home owners. Low and behold, the payment was higher than we are comfortable with! This has lead to a lot of creative budgeting.

Bring it back to the here and now, stuff always seems to come up. Between kids and animals and home repairs and sickness and cars, money comes in and then leaves right away. Slowly but surely, we have been paying off debt and making the needed repairs around the house while also maintaining vehicles.

As a SAHM, I feel it is my job to help lower our cost of living as much as possible. That being said... I struggle with budgeting! Over the last several months, I have really been working on evaluating what I spend money on and balancing needs with wants. This month, we're going to try a cash-only system for groceries and household needs. Stay tuned for results.

What kind of budgeting tools do you and your family use? What do you find most helpful?