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Money. There's never enough, right?

I'll admit that we have not been very focused on saving money or paying down our debts. In fact, we really haven't been paying much attention to money at all. So, to achieve some of the items on my list, our attitude toward money has to change. I need to be more mindful of where our money is being spent.

To get started, I've been pouring over our bank statements. Let me tell you, it is not a fun task for a few reasons. One reason is that such a task is just plain boring. The other reason is that it is quite an eye-opening exercise, and its not fun to look at evidence suggesting you're irresponsible with your money and spend entirely too much money eating out. Of course, I already knew we spent too much money on eating out and other frivolous items, but only in an abstract sort of way. To actually look at the numbers is another experience entirely, and not one that I'm finding enjoyable.

It is, however, the reality check that we need to give us the motivation required to be truly mindful of our pennies. I'm using the information contained in our old bank statements to make a realistic budget. Having a strict budget is of no use if it is too unrealistic to maintain.

A big reason we should start becoming more mindful of our money over the next few months is our upcoming trips. Our joint vacation to Orlando is in December and I'll be spending a 12 days in Italy with my classmates in March. Obviously, those trips costs money and we'll want to have some spending money as well! That is a large motivator to become more disciplined, along with our desire to get more debts paid off.

I'm not sure if I want to share our budget on the blog, but I'll definitely talk about the process of creating the budget and some of the ideas we come up with to help us to stick to it.

Now I suppose it's back to pouring over those bank statements! I hope that before the weekend is out, I'll have achieved my goal of creating a realistic budget.