Adjusting the Budget and Planning Ahead

We are entering the season where each month’s events come up and we haven’t saved for them or don’t have a special name for them in the budget: school registration, anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays. This year, we sat down and hashed out a plan. 

First, we refigured the budget and realized we had more money to give a “name” to than we thought. This month we are going to add another line item in our budget called August-December. We will auto transfer money into this budget each month and use that money to pay for the events that take place during this time, however, it will be less than we have spent in the past. We love giving our kids fun gifts for Christmas, but it can get out of hand especially with teenagers. I read about this great idea called “Christmas in July.” Basically, it’s what we are doing, but you would set up a budget and savings goal in July for Christmas spending and then whatever you have saved up is what you would spend and no more. We felt that by setting budgets in Summit’s Climbr for these events, it would help us not overspend which we would normally do. Going through Project Money has helped us reset our mindset and plan ahead versus paying behind.