This week, I got some time to review my monthly and annual budget and what I saw was very disheartening, I am very tight on my monthly budget. And my annual goals some how seems to be absolutely out of place, I by no means can achieve them this year. I applied all the mathematics that I could think of but all in vain.
I felt so depressed and felt why am I doing all this? I mean I spend my time on keeping an account of everything and dealing with money judiciously. I can be like rest of the people and enjoy my life smoothly without worrying too much about the future. But then, instead of worrying and thinking about others, I rather listed why I am short of my goals this year:
1) I got married recently, so used lots of my funds in process
2) I am in the process of setting up my new home, so I need at least the basic stuff for my place
3) Inflation is quite high
4) My husband has different spending habits then mine.
These points highlighted the main reason; my budget was not prepared for reason 1, 2 and 4. And this is something causing the problem. I guess, next year I’ll be able to take into consideration these things as well and set achievable goal.
This also gets me to one of the main learning: Just because I practice good Personal Finance doesn’t mean that:
1. I’ll never miss my targets.
2. I will never face hiccups in the process.
3. I will never have unpleasant experiences.
The only things that sound personal finance will help me with are:
1) I’ll be more prepared to deal with financial problems.
2) I’ll have data to look into past and see where I went wrong, so that I could learn from
3) I can better plan for my future.
So personal finance is basically not a magic pill, rather it’s an institution that equips you with necessary knowledge and tools to deal with problems and be better prepare for future.
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My dear, don't be disheartened. You're a newlywed, and yet you sound so stressed! LOL, again we travel in the same boat.
ReplyDeleteI've never really set up a budget per se, but I keep track of every penny that leaves my wallet. Not so much the housing/utilities/insurance, but the groceries, the incidentals. And I compete with myself to tighten for the next month. If you click on the "grocery challenge" link on my blog, you can see a list of many failures and few successes. Knowledge is power, right? If you know where you fall, then you know where you can compensate.
Is there any hope on compromising spending habits with your husband? That to me is disturbing, it's a pool that breeds resentment and anger.
Best of luck, my friend.
Don't know about resentment and anger, but yes little frustrated at times emily. He is not a spend thrift, his only problem is he can't keep track of money, and generally loses the leftovers. I guess, I am working on it and he will definitely improve, or probably I will learn to leave few pennies here and there. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the wishes.