Ideas for budgeting in the new year: guest post from A New Beginning

by Guest on January 1, 2012

Note from Amy: I am a little bit crazy-dedicated when it comes to budgeting and saving money, so I am so thrilled that Justine is willing to be honest and show us what she is committed to saving in this coming year!

Hello Lemon and Raspberry readers!

Justine here from A New Beginning. How are you today?! It is January 1st 2012! Can you believe it?! I remember sitting at home last year reading everyones posts on January 1st 2011. I love today. Everyone is full of tons of goals, and I love nothing more than reading peoples goals and lists and plans. Seriously, its my favorite thing ever.

For Amy’s blog party I wanted to share one of my new goals!

These past 6 months for me have been filled with paying off my Credit Card debt. I had 2600$ to pay and I did it! I cut back on everything. I lived very frugally. I stopped going to the movies, stopped buying books, stopped sponsoring blogs and stopped drinking Starbucks (a lot). Of course, life does not always go perfect, especially for someone like me it says. So, naturally, I received terrible news that my old car didn’t go through my parents bankruptcy as planned and I owe $12,000 dollars or they will start garnishing my checks.

Yikes right?

So, now we are back to the drawing board with my debt.

It is hard, to budget at my age (21), because, one, I go to school full time, and I have such an urge to cut my hours and not work! I work 30 hours a week, and I want nothing less to just work for 15!

What do I do for a job you ask? I work at Pizza Hut! I manage 2 days, and I’m a delivery driver 3 days!

I have come up with a plan though and after much brainstorming.

I am going to start Envelope Budgeting!

This idea has been around for years, and there is a lot of material online to read if you want to know more about it. But after all my research I can say I am very excited to start!

Envelope budgeting starts with of course, envelopes. Each envelope has a category. For mine, I have only 3 categories. They are:

Gas: $210 a month.
Food: $200 a month.
Miscellaneous: $150 a month.

Now, you might notice that this does not include my bills. Which are my rent, phone bill, insurance, money I give to missionaries, tithe, and my gym membership. And the reason I don’t add these to my envelopes is because they already come straight from my bank, and I never have a problem paying these things, but overspending in my categories above is a big problem for me!

So, back to the $12,000 dollars, I need to pay $250 dollars a month to pay it off. So, thats why I need such a strict budget for my gas, food and miscellaneous categories.

Why does this system work? Well its the same way any budget works.

Managed money just works harder!

It is harder to spend when you are spending cash, and when you see the money leaving instead of just swiping your card through.

I do not have the kind of brain that can keep track of everything I have spent. I need to actually see it. So, thats why I am so excited about this new plan!

Every time I have extra money left over in my envelopes I will put that into a savings account!

Now, I am doing that because it was my goal before I found out about my $12,000 debt. I needed to save for my future schooling, and I still need to do that, even if its going to go way slower now then before.I hope this was something new for you, and maybe you like this idea, so…
here are two of my favorite resources on envelope budgeting: one, and two.