Budget? What?

A Penny Saved!

I know what it is to not have two nickels to rub together.  For a while, I had a difficult time making ends meet.  I had to literally count pennies to make a buck.  Some people throw pennies away, but one hundred pennies equals one dollar.  Add one hundred and fifty more pennies to make transit fare.  I had the pennies, they were everywhere: coat pockets, candy dishes, a piggy bank, purses, the dresser, the floor.  I scooped them up.  Tracked where they went and eliminated the wasteful and unnecessary spending; I discovered that I ate a lot of my money.

I got back on track and had accumulated a nice savings.  Well, savings meant spending and I enjoyed every bit of it.  Then I discovered that my savings stopped growing.  Whoa! It’s time to reevaluate, recalculate, and reverse the financial downward spiral.  But it is not so easy this time around.  I haven’t forgotten my pennies, but something is amiss.  I need another perspective.

Enter the TOTAL SPENDING FAST & SPENDING DIET SAVINGS.  I read this amazing blog by Anna Newell Jones who shares how she eliminated her debt.  I have listed my debts before, but her calendar gives me such inspiration that I feel confident with kicking the excessiveness to the curb.  And there is some obvious excess that needs to stop (BONUS!).  Budget is a new word to my vocabulary.  At least here, at this site, budgeting is made interesting and doable.