It’s almost fall. It’s time to take a look around your house and prepare it for winter. Let’s check. Do you have any leaks? How about your budget? Looked at that lately?
Often, our budgets have holes in them. These holes are the areas that are much larger than they could be, or areas where we consistently go overboard. In my case, it’s the extra food spending and spending for the home. Gifts are also my weakness, although I’m doing a little better in that area these days.
Over the past few days, I renovated our budget. I am trying to reduce some of the leaks so that we can meet some short-term financial goals. Namely, our fridge is very energy-inefficient and quite old, so we’d like to replace it. This will save us money on our energy bills and so the fridge will pay for itself within a year and a half. That and my computer is on its last legs. We’ve had some large unexpected expenses over the past year, and so we’re also trying to build up the emergency fund once again.
I can tell that my budget is leaky when I see a category of spending that consistently exceeds the budget and when I attempt to justify that. It’s not wild spending, either. It’s just that those tiny little expenses add up. Of course I need those new dish towels. Better get some extra shampoo, just in case we run out in the next three months. While I use all of the items that I buy and can certainly justify them as household expenses, they are not all necessary household expenses. Many of them could be deferred to a time when I could find that item at a thrift store, or perhaps I could simply use the existing items a little longer.
This fall, take a look at your budget. Is it leaky? What else could you use that money for if you were to save it?