Payday Friday

Wahoo, it's payday Friday! Andy gets paid once a month, and I get paid on the 15th and 30th, so it's always a treat when the stars line up and the last workday of the month is a Friday and we both get paid.


We've been pretty good money managers throughout life, but we are about to get a lot better. We graduated college with zero credit card debt (notice I didn't say debt...our Sallie Mae bill is scary!) and we've always been big savers. However, as we prepare for family life with little ones (no, not yet!), we realize we need to be more proactive in our budgeting. We always made budgets, with way over-estimated expenditures for some categories and not enough for others. Clearly not the best. In the past, I would get freaked out about money, add up and categorize everything we spent in a month or two, and the proceed to shout useless things like "How can we go to the grocery store 35 times in a month?! That is more than once a day" and "I do not need to be the number one Target shopper in Indiana...we have got to stop spending so much money there!". But, when next month came, we'd do it all again. We did set a weekly Target budget and I've been good about that, but I realize that we can do better.



So, after hearing the success of several friends, we signed up for Mvelopes, a "proactive approach to spending management. It's basically the envelope budgeting system set up for a credit card and electronic bill pay society. And it is fabulous!! We've already done better about our dining out and grocery budget. And with our surprise expense of a trip to the emergency vet, we were able to identify which areas we could take money from to put in our pet envelope. There's all kinds of cool features I have yet to discover, like mobile access and net worth tracking (sounds fancy!). I really think this site will be able to help us spend less, save more, and help me be a little less neurotic about our spending. And less neuroses are better for everyone here at the Bungalow.