I have a budgeting confession to make, I haven’t touched my family’s budget in over a month. *Gasp*
I know, I know - I am setting the foundation for a cavalcade of kaka if I let things continue down this path, but I have a really good excuse why. It looks just like this:
I have lost the cap to my ever so precious magical stick of information storage1. I’m not sure what happened to it, but I’m certain a leprechaun stole it from me … on purpose … because I like to wear orange on St. Patrick’s day. Needless to say I don’t spend very many home hours working on my budget and logging our expenses. What I’ve learned from this little experience is that I only budget at work, ever.
It seems that tracking the minutia of our earning and spending is a welcomed break from the monotony of my job. I might even be able to say that it brightens my day. It is kind of funny actually, if I think about it - what most people despise to do (i.e. budget their money) is actually something I do not to be bored at work.
One of the things that I am most surprised about though is that I still remembered to pay my bills on time without the daily red reminder of that blessed box found to the right of my expense tracker. Late fees on bills can be rather costly. I am very glad good ol’ grey matter got good and accustomed to paying people at certain times of the month or else I’d be doubly disappointed about not keeping tabs on my cash.
As to the question of whether or not we actually kept our spending in budget, I have no idea what the case may be. My hunch is that we are over, but not because of wild spending. I think that our moving expenses - i.e. paint, boxes, fast food, etc. - may have taken us beyond the bounds of our spending plan. Only time will tell and already I am loathing having to backtrack our books. Oh well, c’est la vie.
Photo by : Ambuj Saxena
- Also known as a jump drive, memory stick or flash drive [↩]
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Categories: Budgets ~ Tags: budget busters, budgeting, budgeting failure, spreadsheets ~ Trackback
July 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I got tired of losing caps on 3 flashdrives i used to carry around my excel budget sheet…so now I am using box.net…it’s free and you can get access to the files anywhere you have internet access. I also tried Google Docs, but found it to lack alot of the “bells and whistles” i love from Excel. good luck
July 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
@ sipote - I too have tried the Google Docs road and found it severely lacking. One of the main things I do with my budget sheets is have them talk to each other and I have yet to figure out how to make that work with them.
This box.net thing looks interesting, but it doesn’t look to be free anymore. It does have me thinking how I can leverage my hosting to have my own little box.net type thingy, but then I would have to always be saving the latest version of my spreadsheet to my server.
Thanks for the heads up. It’s got me thinking.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
wow! you’re right about the free thing at box.net…a 14 day trial only!…I signed up with them about a year ago and I am still allowed to upload and download a huge amount of files including pictures, pdfs, word/excel! While looking for alternatives when i discovered box.net, I also tried Yahoo’s Briefcase…not very good interface, but it works. Also, try googling “free online storage”…good luck!
July 31st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Do you mind sharing your budget excel spreadsheet? I have one I picked up from the MSN moneyboards. I like it because it is very detailed; however, I’d like to get some other different ideas and maybe yours can help me get there….feel free to email me…