Budgeting

I We took the leap yesterday and joined Mint.com to help with our budgeting. We're trying hard to save as much as possible, while still being able to live, for the new house. I've never been much of a saver. And by that I mean I set an alert on my account and when the balance is below the limit, I stop spending. A lot of times in college that meant Ramen noodles or PB&J for a straight 10 days. Now-a-days, when I get that alert, I email my husband and demand he not spend any more money until one of us gets paid. That system worked fine and dandy until we needed a concrete plan to save 'x' amount of money in 5 months.

In just the two days I've had a Mint account, I've learned a ton about the way we spend money. For starters, I need to start making a list when I go to Target and I need to stick to the list. I am an impulsive buyer. Things end up in my cart when I don't really need them to. Because we're not spending any money on utilities right now, I will need to adjust our budget later when we have a house again, but I'm hoping by saving a crap ton now it won't be as hard as I'm expecting.

What I really like about this, that I have lacked the discipline to do before, is to save for future events that I want to do, as opposed to what I need. I really want to visit San Diego so after we settle on the house biz, I want to be able to devote a small portion of our income to a future trip to SD. I've always wanted to check out the San Diego zoo, not too much the Giants stadium (see love, I included something for you) and....I realllllly to be apart of the game show Let's Make a Deal.

I'm looking forward to tracking more of spending habits and learning to proactively save rather than putting bits in pieces into savings here and there.

Here goes nothin'! Leaping into the world of financial responsibility.