The last 6 months of 2009 involved quite a few hefty expenditures (house, wedding, honeymoon, and holidays) and as the new year approached B and I decided to take a closer look at our expenses and develop a monthly budget to get things back on track a bit. Neither one of us are crazy spenders by any means, but we do like to eat out a bit more than we probably should and have some plans/savings goals we would like to achieve. I should note that when we got married we chose to not fully combine our finances and are still maintaining our own separate accounts in addition to a joint checking and savings. I know alot of people feel differently about this sort of thing but it made sense to us at least for the forseeable future – we can always re-evaluate at a later date! Basically the way our finances work is that anything that is truly joint such as our mortgage, groceries, various household bills (like electricity and cable), home repairs, and nights out on the town are all paid out of our joint account and everything else is kept separate like our student loans, doctor bills, and car payments. It might seem like a somewhat confusing way of doing things but personally I think it makes perfect sense. To each their own I guess!
In developing our budget for 2010 we had a few goals in mind:
1. Save money for a trip to Europe in 2011.
2. Continue being able to eat out (something we both enjoy) but try to cut back a bit.
3. Allocate money for the never-ending list of home improvement projects we’d like to tackle.
B took the reins on this little project (seeing as how he’s an accountant and all) and after reviewing our expenses from the previous year he was able to come up with something that we were both able to agree on. It will be interesting to see how things play out over the course of the next few months especially with regard to goal #2. 
Although B has taken on the responsibility of officially tracking our expenses with his fancy spreadsheets, I was a huge fan of Sara’s method over at 2000 Dollar Budget Wedding and will be carrying an index card in my purse to track more of the day-to-day type expenditures. I figured this would be an easy way for us to always know how much we have in the “bank” regardless of our physical location. We will also be utilizing our Entertainment Book as much as possible to maximize our savings. I’ll be sure to report back at the end of the month to let you know how things went!
Do you follow a budget? If so, how do you stay on track?
