Back to the budget dark ages

I am exactly one year behind in figuring out my monthly budget. I do not know what I spend my money on. I do not know how much I spend. And I'm spending too much.

It's time to face the music.

A little over a year ago, I started this blog. That was a good thing, over all. I've learned a lot and met (online) some really great people. I've accomplished a lot--figured out an appropriate asset allocation for my investments, increased my retirement contributions, worked through some tough issues with my family around money, and set up a good college savings plan.

What I have NOT been doing, though, is keeping track of my spending. That's because the little bit of spare time that I used to use meticulously keeping track of my spending and tallying it all up every month is time I no longer have, because I spend it blogging. And I am definitely one of those people who thrives under a budget and overspends shamelessly without one.

A little history of our budgets.

First budget:
Just out of grad school. Newly living with my sweetie. Start keeping track of all our spending because the way we share expenses 50-50 requires good record keeping.
Budget method: paper, pencil, and calculator.

Second budget:
Sweetie and I get more serious. Living in our second apartment. Open joint savings account and the budget becomes less about who spent what and more about controlling spending for specific savings goals.
Budget method: still paper and pencil.

Third budget:
Oh god. We're pregnant. How much do we spend now? Can we spend less? How much will our expenses increase?
Budget method: paper and pencil, and even a ruler, because I was so stressed about money that I spent a lot of time making neat columns for all the little numbers.

Fourth budget:
Baby born. We're still alive. How could we have forgotten to budget for childcare? How could he go through so many diapers? In our first house. Want more ability to look at spending trends over time and calculate averages quickly.
Budget method: Move to an Excel spreadsheet, modified from the one my sister-in-law uses.


Okay, now we're up to last fall, when I started the blog. Excel was getting to be too primitive. I wanted colors. I wanted more spending categories. I wanted pie charts. I was buying a new computer, and hey! Bonus! It came with Quicken.

That's where I completely stalled out. I know many people think Quicken is god's gift to the world. I even really like Quicken and think it would be really fun to use once I got up and running. But I have been trying for A YEAR to make myself get it all configured and learn how to use it. When I come home from a hard day of being a cynical desk jockey, I do not have the mental energy to configure Quicken. I'm sure it would take me, like, half a weekend day to do it. But I have procrastinated it so long that I would rather eat nails than configure my Quicken.

But we're overspending. We're strapped. I just moved money AGAIN from the ING account to cover bills. I know, I know, buying Xmas presents does not count as an emergency. But if I don't have enough money to buy my little son a Playmobil farm in a neat folding barn-shaped box for Xmas I will really and truly feel that life is not worth living. So I took the money from ING.

We NEED to get back on a budget. Quicken is not going to happen right now. It's just not.

So I took two steps back. We're not even going back to Excel. I bought a little hard-bound ledger from CVS. It's dark blue and says CASH on the front. I am going to get out my pencil and I am going to figure out where the %*@#&@! all our money is going. And I am going to figure out how to stop it from going there so damn quickly.

And then we will talk about freakin' Quicken.