Week in Review

At the beginning of this week I made a resolution to get my home life better under control.  I shouldn't say "home" life, I guess.  That implies an issue in my family.  "House life" would be a better term.  Someone once said that your home reflects yourself.  The meaning being that if your house is in shambles, your life probably is too.  That's certainly true for me.  I realized I owe it to my family, and myself, to get my shit straight.  I had a grand plan to work on scheduling and time management this week, but that didn't exactly work out.  Here are some things I've learned this week, and how they apply to budgeting:

1.  Start where you can.  Unfortunately for us perfectionists, life is never going to be perfect.  You will never be in the perfect place to do ANYTHING.  You think, "in order to start a budget, I need to have X amount of money."  Not true.  In order to start budgeting, you need to have exactly what you have.  I remember the first time I was introduced to budgeting.  I was working a job making $7.25 an hour.  I scoffed at the person who could have been my savior, because I felt like I didn't even have enough money to budget!  Now I kick myself because had I listened to her then I could have saved myself a lot of heartache later.  But we live and learn.  We start where we can.

2.  You won't do it right the first time you try.  Yep, it's true.  Again, Perfectionist Number One here.  I have given up on pretty much everything I've ever tried to do.  Well, I've stuck with a few things, but they're always the things that were waaaaaay too easy for me.  Like, I spent five and a half years at a job because they never asked more of me than: 1. Put dirty laundry in washer, 2. Put washed laundry in dryer, 3. Fold laundry from dryer.  I could do that from day one and never had to question myself.  For me, keeping my house and life organized are really, really hard.  It's much easier to let messes pile up and freak out about it than it is to try to learn the new skills it takes to manage my life effectively.   Budgeting your money can be really, really hard.  I'm trying to learn how to do it with one income, and guess what, I'm failing sometimes.  Sometimes I have to juggle money between accounts just so the checking account doesn't bounce.  Sometimes I just have to take it out of the meager savings account for that reason, then it never gets put back.  It's frustrating, and it's tempting to throw that budget in the trash and just rely on blind hope that money will miraculously be in the account when it's supposed to be (never worked before, but ya never know).  But I try, try again.  At the end of the month I look at where I went wrong, why I ran out of money, and I learn from my mistakes.  Well, at least I know what my mistakes are.  Sometimes I make them again.  But one of these days I'll get it right.  (*note: this weekend is the end of the month, so I'll be reviewing and letting you know how February worked out for me.)

3.  Do the best you can.  In my week of prioritizing and cleaning, I have learned to accept the best from myself, and know that that's not always the best in the world.  A sad fact of life is that I am not Martha Stewart, no matter how much I would love to be.  I will never have a house worthy of a magazine cover.  I have kids who leave toys EVERYWHERE, and pets that leave hair in even more places than that!  This week I focused on one room a day to clean.  Tuesday I cleaned my bedroom.  It was the biggest mess in the world.  Seriously.  Awful.  It took me half the day.  I absolutely overexerted myself.  But it's clean!  But then I spent the rest of the week totally burnt out.  So clearly I did something wrong.  But here's the thing, I didn't give up!  That's a first for me.  I haven't wanted to clean much since then, but I did the best I could.  Sure, I used the Swiffer and ReadyMop on the bathroom floors instead of the real broom and mop.  But at least I did something.  I did the best I could.  Same thing goes for budgeting money.  Sometimes we do great, other times not so great.  Sometimes we make purchases that we then think "OK, I probably could have lived without that," and we feel guilty about it.  Don't feel guilty anymore!  Accept it for what it is and move on.  If that wasn't a wise purchase, don't give up on the whole thing, just don't make that purchase again.  Just do the best you can.  With practice and perseverance, your best will get better and pretty soon you'll have a balanced budget!