Learning to Budget
Budget. It's a dirty word for a lot of us and it's taken me some time to figure out why. We're all told we should do it. All the financial advisers on TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines tell us that we NEED to budget. To not follow a budget is to commit financial suicide. And they're right, yet so many of us, yours truly included, have failed to do so. It's taken some soul searching, but I think I may have figured out why I, at least, have failed to budget for my entire life. Much of it has to do with my misconceptions about what budgeting is and what it means. This is what I believed about budgeting three months ago. A budget means penny pinching . My dad has been a churchworker most of my life and my mom stayed at home. I loved growing up with my mom at home. It was a gift and now that I am a parent with adult responsibilities I understand how much of a personal and financial sacrifice that was. But that also meant that we didn't have much money growin...