Hey all, I've been on this sub for a little over a year now and really seriously watching my finances for about the same amount of time. In this time period, I've crushed 10k of CC debt, kept my student loan amounts about the same (currently in classes, so paying down as I'm taking classes so my total loan amount increases only ever so slightly) and saved around 3k as an e-fund. What I'm about to say is a no-brainer for a lot of you probably, but it was a huge realization for me over the past week so I thought I'd share.
I've been using mint, and I finally turned on the budget rollover feature last month (any amount spent over the budget, or not spent and under the budget rolls over to the next month). Of course I did this on a month that I went on vacation for a weekend, but still.
My alcohol monthly budget is $40. I spent $190 last month on alcohol. It will now take me almost 5 months of not buying ANY alcohol to bring that back down to my normal budget. (as a 25 year old, having a couple drinks on the weekend is kind of a normal part of my social life so it's hard to completely cut back on this however!) This wasn't the only example of me overspending, but the easiest one to look at.
Thankfully, there were a couple of areas last month where I underspent, so I'll be able to bring my budget back to balance sooner... but it's something to think about. I'm just now starting to really understand just how much of an effect that overspending on a budget, even if it doesn't "seem like much" at the time, can have a trickle effect down the path and able to stop it before I go too far (something I didn't do a couple years ago, resulting in that 10k cc debt).
TL;DR - stick to those budgets as much as possible, people. The smallest things can begin to spiral out of control if you're not careful.
Submitted October 03, 2018 at 01:35PM by PFThrowaway777922 https://ift.tt/2xXjKMt
