budget

Track Your Spending, Cut Your Costs

by Christina Brown February 8, 2012

It seems like such a simple thing:  Track what you spend your money on, and then you’ll figure out how to set a budget. But if you don’t have a good system for tracking your expenses, it will be hard for you to come up with meaningful data from which you can make better decisions [...]

March Budget Review: The Diet Budget

by Christina Brown April 1, 2010

Well, after much thought, I finally took up Weight Watchers again – this time the online version. While the new lifestyle is working well for me (I’ve lost 5 pounds!), I’m still figuring out how to eat well without breaking the bank.  My grocery spending was a little out of whack in March, as I [...]

January Budget Review: New Attitude

by Christina Brown February 3, 2010

I love the start of a new year.   I love the feeling of optimism and the ideas of fresh starts. And my budget sure liked the new year, too! I started the month off with a new resolve to spend less money eating out.  Thanks to the Eat from the Pantry Challenge, I not only [...]

November Budget Review: Dealing with Budget Creep

by Christina Brown December 5, 2009

I started the month of November with the goal of revisting the ol’ budget.  We’d gottten a bit off track with our budget, and my husband and I wanted to address the issue. The last time we took a good hard look at our budget was two years ago.  Oh sure, we were tracking our [...]

September Budget Review: Pantry Success

by Christina Brown October 4, 2009

September was a pretty good month for our budget. We did splurge, a little on a new refrigerator, but all in all, nearly every one of our categories was either right on track or under budget.   The only category that took a jump was gas, and that’s because I’m running our boys to preschool [...]

August Budget Review: Back on Track

by Christina Brown September 11, 2009

When I finally sat down to look at how spending went in August, I had a feeling things would look good. I’m glad that the actual numbers didn’t disappoint me! I tried a lot harder in August to reign in my crazy spending spree that really messed up my July. We spent significantly less than [...]

July Budget Review: Yikes!

by Christina Brown August 7, 2009

Giving myself permission to shop in June was the start of a slippery slope of spending that carried all the way through July. We paid cash for everything we splurged on in July – a new bed for our son, a set of four new tires, a new phone, new shoes, and (my most difficult [...]

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