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Mastering A Skill - Budgeting

Before my wife and I sat down and created our household budget, we like most people had many heated discussions about money. It was one thing that seemed to have been causing a major rift in our relationship. Like most people we hated living from paycheck to paycheck, making a hard crunch to pay bills and buy groceries. With both of us working and our income not being below average we could not understand why we were in such financial strain.

I like so many people did not know or understand how a budget worked and how it would ultimately affect our lives for the better. I feel most people would benefit from mastering budgeting. By setting yourself up reasonable spending limit and sticking to it you would find yourself more financially secure. Creating a budget forces you to become better organized with your spending habits in turn it helps you to avoid late payment charges and it will help improve your credit score.

Then came the day that we sat down and wrote out our first budget, at first I was uneasy about the whole idea of a budget and didn't understand how it would help us. After an hour of figuring out where our money was going I was surprised to find out how much we were spending in things that we really didn't need.   Sure $5.00 each a couple of times a week for Starbucks didn't seem like a big deal until we found that we were spending around $150.00 a month on it coming to a grand total of $1,800 a year. I'm sure like me, most people don't see how much it adds up to.

Furthermore, by analyzing what you spend on carrying that balance on your credit card you'll see one huge way of saving money. Did you know that if you have a credit card that has a balance of $5,000.00 with an 19% APR you are looking at spending over $19,000.00 by just paying the minimum payment? By simply knowing how to budget in more money in the short term to pay down this debt you could save yourself thousands of dollars in just interest and finance charges!

So far I have...