{ Two Forward, Three Back }

Budget woes abound!! Just when I start to feel like I'm getting it...that we're making headway, another snap backwards. We were on track in March and April and now, May has just blown us out of the water budget wise. AGHH!! This weekend I lost it, seriously had a meltdown. Had to get in the car and drive to my favorite paint your own pottery shop and eat tootsie rolls (The Paint Escape, I used to own it, but now Tina is the supplier of the junk food and sympathetic ear).

What I have surmised is that when we feel good about where we are financially we get complacent and then we stop paying attention and slip back into old spending habits. The debit and credit cards come out of storage and then there is no knowing where the balances are until I finally sit down weeks later and do the entry. We have literally set ourselves back four or five months with just few weeks of stupidity and I'm so angry about that I could just spit! It's not one thing or person, it's a way of living that needs to be altered. That "I deserve this" attitude. What we deserve is peace of mind, financial stability and we won't get that until we stop with the "I want this right now" way of thinking. It's about losing priorities and telling ourselves that the right now matters more than the long term...and it doesn't. Immediate gratification is so over rated because the day after really really sucks.

So, tonight I will dig down, figure out how to drain the pittance of savings we were building up to pay off our dalliances and we will begin again. At square one. No savings but no debt either. All plastic will go back into storage and we will be returning to cash only transactions indefinitely.