Locking the budget back down

I don’t know if irony is the right word. Perhaps it’s some kind of strange financial sadism. But for whatever reason, we backslid on spending after I was laid off.

At the beginning of last year, when we finally recognized that credit card debt and other consumer spending was eating away at any chance we ever had to build wealth, the first thing I did was put us on a “cash box budget.”

I segmented the family expenditures and applied a finite monthly amount to them, ensuring that the total equaled an amount that when combined with my debt attack, would not leave us negative at the end of the month.

It worked fantastically for the three or so months that we used it. In fact, what we thought might feel stifling, turned out to be liberating. There is a large peace of mind factor that goes with knowing what you have to spend. Then the job bomb, and like I said for whatever reason, we threw the cash budget out the window.

So here we are, almost a year later, and in spite of some major set backs, we’ve done a great job of paying down our consumer debt.

With that said, I’m getting the cash box ready again. This time the balances are adjusted to be a bit more realistic and if I’ve done the math correctly, we still will be able to continue with our aggressive debt attack while hopefully building a decent buffer in our operational (i.e., checking and savings) accounts.

I’m already planning for post consumer debt life; where we start routing money in to investments and not debts!