New year, new budget

Matt and I just finished watching a movie called Secondhand Lions. Matt had seen it before but I had not.. I had never even heard of it. I would definitely recommend this movie! Very, very good and just what I needed tonight. Although I have to say they cast the wrong person for Haley Joel Osment's character.. he was just no good in the role or that good of an actor. But the movie was still great.. and helped me not think about the following..

Lately I have been thinking a lot about money. Today especially because it was the closing day on my credit card statement and seeing those numbers tends to make you think. Our idea of budgeting so far has just been to spend as little as possible. We eat in almost every meal, I try to find every grocery discount possible (through shopping at Aldi and also using The Grocery Game), and we basically just try not to buy stuff. I drive Matt's Jeep to work every day because my commute is 2 miles one way and his Jeep gets about 14 mpg. He drives my Civic because his commute is about 12 miles and the Civic gets 35 mpg. Those are just a few examples of how we try. I think this is a good method of going about things but I am sure we can do better. If we had a $ amount for each thing that we weren't allowed to go past each month that would actually force us to not spend money instead of just trying not to. I know a lot of families with kids on one income struggle and although we don't have kids, we are on one income which is a vast difference from some of my friends with their spouses with a double income.

So today I decided that my New Year's resolution will be a budget. Budgets have intimidated me thus far because it is a lot to figure out for each month but I think we have a pretty good grasp of how much we spend on what. I know it also means not buying some things we might want to buy which I don't like, but that's life. That will be our new challenge with the new year that is coming up very quickly. Additionally we will be applying for a mortgage and hoping to buy a house so lots of intimidating things coming up. Keep us in your prayers, it is going to be interesting!