One Million and Beyond

Weekly Budget – A revitalization

By Matt - Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Over the past couple years I have been trying to get myself into a weekly budget with some limited success. The primary reason for the lack of success has been motivation, lack of effort on my part and being too busy. I guess the first and third just feed into the lack of effort to some extent. Since my post on Saturday about refocusing on my finances I took a look at my spending and although I haven’t completed the exercise I have realized that I am back to my overspending ways.

My solution to budgeting has been the weekly budget – I am convinced that this is a solution that can be applied easily and is a small enough piece that can be managed without too much effort. In my efforts to finally get my finances under control I am going back to the weekly budget. This weeks budget will be a touch on the off side because some of my spending (aka bills) has been predetermined or already spent.

Here is my weekly budget for this week:

For the most part this is similar to the weekly budgets that I have kept in the past though I have added a new category for bills. I have always kept this one separate in the guise of keeping some of my finances to myself. The reality of the situation is that if you asked me I would tell you so why not place it on the blog.

I am keeping the alcohol and smokes on this as separate categories for the time being though I am hoping to cut them down and generally eliminate them. But as Leo Babauta recommends in his book Power of Less the Power of Less one goal at a time. I’ll post about this later in the week. For this week the goal is to simply create a budget and stick within it.

I have managed to keep myself in check over the past two days with my spending and keeping track of it and I intend to continue this. I will try to keep my spending updated throughout the day and hopefully at the very least daily.

If you’re curious I’ll be updating this page with my current week’s results: Weekly Budgets

Finally I would like to make a comment, I know this budget seems high for some of you but I would like you to keep a few things in mind:

1. I live in a large city so my day to day costs are more expensive than most peoples
2. I have a baby that will require unexpected spending
3. I have debts that are weighing me down so my bills will be high for a while
4. This budget represents my budget but will include household costs so some line items may seem disproportionately high
5. Finally, this budget is a work in progress

I am hoping to keep to my budget this week and improve it over the next couple weeks as well as refine what it is that I am spending my money on.

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