Top 'O the Month: June

Summer is almost here, and I absolutely love how renewed everything feels. The trees have new leaves. The little green lovelies in the garden are starting to get new shoots. There are baby birds and bunnies all over the place, and the closest farm now has calves roaming in the pasture. I love the edge of summer, and it is speaking to me metaphorically as far as our budgeting is concerned. We've had some dark moments through the winter, and we will be moving toward correcting them in the near future. We aren't perfect, by far, even though I write about money and budgets and the adoration of the Dave Ramsey. We have been slipping, and although I don't count any of my explanations as really valid (everyone can rationalize a solid excuse, right?), I think they're probably at least a little true.

Be is jobless, afterall, and unable to even seek employment currently because of the ridiculous unfortunate circumstances of his at work injury. There are far more complicated details than that which I'm prevented from talking about because of attorneys and judges and the like. I wish I could lay it all out there so others, if there are any, could know they aren't alone in the nonsense complicated process that is dealing with workman's comp disputes. This job prohibition, as I've mentioned before, coupled with my already irregular income makes for a budgeting nightmare. I can write the numbers down all I want to, but they don't really matter when the money doesn't show up when it's supposed to. There are great methods for budgeting irregular income out there, but we're in survival mode rather than a place where we can sock away a ton of savings to compensate for later shortfalls. Every minute is a darn shortfall, I swear.

When your money doesn't have a plan, it wanders off. When you don't make a plan for your money because you don't know when/if it's going to show up, it also makes a run at wandering off once you get it. It's all a big gross mess, and I cannot wait until the day we can go back to real (budgeted) life instead of this wandering craziness. That said, wacky inflow/outflow is not a solid reason for not being super cautious about spending. We have not been super cautious this month, or the month before that to be honest. I feel pretty awful about it this moment, and I'm trying to embrace the 'lessons learned' philosophy and let go of the guilt I'm carrying around for not paying better attention for the both of us.

And now, the numbers ...

EFund: $924.00
(See, I told you we'd have to use it eventually.)

Dream Savings: $0
(At least I used this first ...)

Jeep: $0
PAID OFF! YAY!

GP: $3742.14

C1: $236.02
(It's going back down at least ...)

AV: $0
PAID OFF! YAY!

VSA: $112.92
(Ah, the curse of minimum payments ... back in the snowball it goes.)

*sigh*



Simply,

Em.