This month was the first time in a long time that I even remotely attempted a budget. Upon reviewing the results, it’s pretty clear that I did not successfully stick to the plan so carefully laid for myself. I’ve created budgets in the past, and now I remember why they never seem to turn into recurring habits. Staying on a budget is HARD to maintain. Monitoring your transactions and finances on nearly a daily basis (to be clear, I did NOT do this) is really hard. And harder still is imposing those limits on yourself (and being your own accountability buddy) in real-time. It’s easy to sit at your computer and work out some numbers in a spreadsheet that look achievable. It’s another effort entirely to practice them out in the world. Can I really afford going out to lunch with coworkers on a weekly basis (if not daily)? Can I really afford to keep getting my lash extensions done?
An in-depth explanation for all the reasons I went over-budget this month isn’t really necessary here. What I can say is this: I didn’t try that hard to stick to this. I really didn’t. I created The Challenge in order to restrict my clothes-related shopping habits, and it worked really well! I even sewed something! And stayed under budget! But all the rest of the categories, particularly the ones that have historically been issues for me, are still issues even after evaluating them and saying I would do better. Turns out, just saying it doesn’t make it true. Even though The Budget was on my mind regularly this month, it wasn’t really on my mind when I needed it to be (like when I was handing over my money for something I probably didn’t need). The real real truth is that I didn’t want to think about it that much. Restricting my purchases and changing my habits is hard and will continue to be hard, so pretending I’m doing fine is much easier. This has pretty much been my mindset for the last 6 months, and even though I admitted my failings and made a plan to do better, actually doing better is a step I have yet to take confidently.
In my post a few weeks ago about The Budget and The Challenge, I lay out a plan to spend only $100 (or less) on clothing each month. I gave this Challenge to myself as a way to curb my bad spending habits as well as inject some creativity into the task of keeping my wardrobe fresh. Looking at the whole picture, it seems that I was successful with my first month of The Challenge (I only spent $63!) because I had given it a lot of thought and really laid down a plan of action. I also told my plan to all of you, as well as some friends and family members, meaning I had multiple points of accountability for this particular goal. It was easy to uphold The Challenge this month and I intend to continue sticking to it for a long time. The other trouble-categories showed little to no improvement this month, and all signs point to the lack of planning I did for the rest of the spending categories I struggle with.
I will post my plans for which categories I plan on tackling this month and how I’ll (hopefully) (maybe) do it in another post. I’ve learned more about myself this month than I expected, and it actually makes me feel excited more than anything else. Even though I didn’t make my budget, I succeeded in several areas that I was struggling in previously, and I can see the light! I can see the possibility of someday hitting my budget perfectly. And then repeating that. Often.
Here’s a bonus image I found when looking pictures of neon signs. 🙂
Featured image: Max van den Oetelaar
Smells: Steve Harvey