I've been doing some thinking...

Somehow, even though I am a basically a shorter version of my mother, I failed to inherit the good financial skills that she has worked so hard to teach me. My sister is a super budget-er and keeps track of everything. We on the other hand, are really bad at tracking expenses, keeping money in savings other than retirement accounts, and if I were to die tomorrow my husband would have a hard time figuring out where I keep everything and what bills would need to be paid when. But regardless of what we have been doing in the past, I am determined to make a change.
I recently delved into the world of extreme couponing and I love it. The more I read from the sites I really love, the more I am motivated to make a lasting change in how we keep track of expenses. I have been thinking about it for awhile, but now I am actually making a change. As of today, October 1, 2008, things are going to be different.
Brett makes decent money, enough that we should not be living paycheck to paycheck, but because we don't keep track of expenses the way we should, we often are left with very little and have to really think about where it all went. This needs to be different. We need to have a spending plan and stick to it. We need to have an emergency fund of 3-6 months worth of living expenses. We need to plan for trips we take, instead of just assuming we have enough money.
The one thing that we are pretty good at it staying out of debt. Our cars are paid for and we don't really do credit cards. The only thing besides our house is a small student loan. We would like this gone though. The other good thing we do is pay our half our mortgage every two weeks, making it so we actually end up paying an entire mortgage payment to principle every year. When you see the amortization schedule for our 30 year fixed rate loan, we will actually pay it off in 24 years (I think, or something close to that) and end up saving over $200,000 in interest over the life of the loan. One more thing that we have been doing is taking advantage of Target's 401K match program. I love seeing the quarterly reports that say we actually have some money saved for retirement.
I am hoping that I feel the same excitement as I watch our remaining debt fade and our emergency fund grow. I also hope to feel so much more security and freedom as we start knowing where our money is going and knowing that if Brett lost his job tomorrow we would have a cushion to on which to land.
Hopefully, these things will keep me motivated. Hopefully, by writing about it, I will feel more accountable. Hopefully, this time next year, I will be talking about how much we have saved towards a van.