I forgot to send in a $20 rebate.

This is very unlike me. In fact, my money behavior this entire month has been something of a shift.

After feeling frustrated by the amount of time it took for me to account for our spending, Matt agreed to take it over. But due to an incredibly busy month, we’ve both just stopped paying attention.

I have a strong sense of our spending habits and figured that if we just kept behaving the way we always do with money, we’d be fine. We pay ourselves first and pay our bills second and then whatever’s left we spend, mostly on practical necessities.

I figured wrong. It’s much easier to justify a new pair of shoes or $15 worth of tickets at the fair’s Mighty Midway if you don’t have to go home and account for it on Quicken.

How do busy folks out there manage to track spending and stick with a budget? Any tricks? And how long per week do you usually spend on your money management?

I was thinking about trying a pay period living on just cash to see how it feels to spend actual cash, something I rarely do these days. Anyone live without the plastic or the checks (except for bill paying) out there? Have you always done so?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.