budget

So I've decided to try an make my life easier but tackling something that has been causing me much stress lately.
My budget. (yuck)

I actually sat down and looked over everything today. It's amazing how much better I feel just planning everything out. I consolidated all of my credit card debt to one card, which I'm going to make large monthly payments on to bring down. I've also cut up that card so I can't put anything else on it. I will have it only as emergency overdraft protection on my bank account. My other card now has nothing on it, and I'm going to keep it that way, and use it only if I need it for an emergency.

I looked at all of my incoming money, and subtracted all of my monthly expenses: including a sizable payment to the credit card (which will allow me to pay it all off in 6 months or less, including interest), rent, utilities, gas, etc. With all that I figured out that I can still have approx. $100 a month to put into savings. Now my budget leaves me a little short on spending money, but I also purposely underestimated the amount I bring in for my one job... that way if I have extra, it's a nice surprise, as opposed to if I ran short one month.

Hopefully I will be able to stick with this budget, and although at first it will be a little hard... it was also make my life so much easier in the long run! And it will mean that when I graduate, the only debt I have will be student loans which I can't really do anything about right now. I'm very excited right now about my plan of action... it always feels good to have something laid out to follow.

Yippee for my budget... and yippee for money no longer controlling me!!