"Budget" is not a scary word

     As newlyweds, the topic of money has come up often in our conversation. We've heard it said that money and finances can cause many arguments and a lot of problems in a marriage, if not handled correctly. When we were engaged, we talked about how we handle money - I'm more of a saver, while Joe was more of a spender - and how we would handle it in our marriage. It was covered in our pre-marital counseling and it seemed easy enough. We made sure we could handle a mortgage payment before we bought the house. We made sure we could afford a second dog before bringing her home. And we made sure we could afford a car payment before we bought a new car. (We bought a 2011 Honda CR-V on Memorial Day, by the way, to take advantage of sale prices and end-of-month quotas).  We've had our arguments, but we've both been able to adjust to a saving-spending balance.
     We hadn't been using a budget and had enough to tithe, pay our bills, and save, while living comfortably. So we didn't think we needed to track our spending in a budget. But, boy, was I wrong! When I sat down to look at how much money we had spent in May alone, I was shocked with where it had disappeared to. It wasn't so much that it was frivolous big purchases as it was the random spending on fast food and restaurants when I didn't feel like cooking dinner, or late-night snacks; the actual amount we spent on getting a second dog; and other random things that weren't necessities, but "nice-to-have" things.
     I found free budget software online (Mint.com is amazing and offers an iPhone app for easier tracking!) and started entering our desired spending amounts to create a budget. June will be our trial month - can we do this and stick to our guns about cutting our spending?? We shall see!  I'm reading books on frugal living with interesting and easy ways to save and make the most of every penny.  I told Joe, "We can either learn to manage our money now in the early stage of our marriage, or fight about it for the rest of our lives and end up where we don't want to be financially." Our goal is to one day be debt-free and with God's help, and some discipline, it will happen.

**Please don't misread this and think that we need money, or are bad off financially in any way! God has blessed us and we are learning to manage our money to be able to pay off our debts and serve Him with our finances.**