Pour Your Heart Out: Resolving the Resolutions

I'd said this before and I'll say it again.
Thank you Shell for coming up with this meme.
It's a blessing to be able to let it go and pour it out with the
safety blanket of PYHO.

Again, just a brief reminder that everyone linking is pouring their hearts out and we should all be respectful in our comments. ;)

My news years resolutions to really get myself on board with keeping a budget, being more organized and following through has had it's ups and downs. I fell off the wagon, so to speak, when it came to following my budget and cutting coupons. But this week I found the handle and got right back up there. I think it took a shell shocker to rock me to my core to open my eyes up.

I had set some goals last year to pay off our mountain of credit card debt and had been religiously trying to chunk up those cards. But it's hard to do sometimes when you're paying everyone all your extra cash flow and when something comes up what do you do? You charge it. I couldn't see where we were going wrong with our money. So I plugged all our expenses and deposits into an Excel spreadsheet and I can see in black in white where we have to improve. It was like a weight got lifted off my shoulders.

I realized that I had been spending too much on groceries, wasting money on food that we never ending up eating. I would buy too much produce or go overboard when it came to sale items and then when I needed to buy groceries for the week, we overspent. So I set a new goal to keep each dinner under a certain dollar amount.

This past week, I set up my recipes online and did better about being frugal on the recipes I picked. I wasn't paying attention to the recipes I was picking and then I had to go buy items that I didn't have on hand and would need like a teaspoon of something that I had to buy a large container of. I was so proud of myself on my grocery shopping trip. I spent exactly what I had budgeted and it feels great! I will not fall off the wagon again, not in the grocery department.
I even spent 30 minutes clipping coupons, checking my favorite coupon website and saved $42.00!!!

Not keeping with goals and letting things get out of hand really accelerates my imbalance. Lately I've been trying to control issues with my imbalance and when money is tight and the bills are paid but still hanging in the balance it escalates my temper. My next goal is to set up new goals to cut the credit card mountain. I will not let this get the best of me. I made this mess and I will get myself out of it.