Creating a Budget

Confession Time: Doug and I do not track our spending.  At all.  Well, ok maybe that's not 100% true.  From time to time, we glance at our credit card bills to make sure that this website has not put us down for a case of 30.  But since we've been married, we haven't had much concern for our personal finances.  We have lived by a philosophy of, "We make plenty of money, we tithe, we pay our bills, and whatever is left, we stick into our savings account."  Good enough, right?  Lately, we've realized maybe not...

One of our friends at church has a passion for personal finances.  He taught at our Young Adults group a few weeks ago and one of the things he stressed was how important it is to create a budget.  Later that night, Doug and I were reflecting on our backgrounds in Industrial Engineering.  For those of you non-enginerds, Industrial Engineering is improving processes in order to make them more efficient (think: assembly line).  The first step in making a process more efficient is to gather a complete understanding of the process.  This will allow you to figure out where changes can be made.  The same concept can be applied to personal finances.  Proverbs 24:3,4 says, "Through wisdom is an house built; and by understanding it is established: and by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches." 

And so, Doug and I have started a monthly budget.  At this point, we are not trying to change our spending.  We are simply spending as normal but tracking where the money goes.  Thinking about it now, we have been very foolish to have waited this long.  How will we know if we can give more?  How do we know if it is a wise time to go on a big vacation?  How will our lifestyle change when we have children?  I'm excited to see!

Hopefuly we will stop doing this with our money.