Budgeting:

Ok, so I have started a budget! I have been very resistant to one in the past. I could never get them to work! But Of course the first rule in getting out of debt and living within your means is you have a budget! So I wanted a way to do mine that would be easy and something I am likely to stick with. I sit at the computer several times a day for a few minutes to check on everything, so I thought something on the computer might work. I didn't like anything with categories or spread sheets, it looked to complicated. So I am just using the notebook on my computer and saving everything to my documents. So far so good!
I do my budget based on every 2 weeks that we get payed. I keep my receipts and record them every few days. I started with our Jan 4th pay period and after recording everything I had and could possibly think of I still had 74.00 unaccounted for! :( So hopefully I will be able to get past that and start being more cautious about every cent spent!
I wish I had started recording my spending before this because by the time I started recording my spending I had already started being very careful where I spent money, so its not a true depiction of how I used to spend money, BUT I saw a lot of areas I can still trim and save money!

My family of 8 ate 3 mostly healthy meals a day for a total of 281.72 now my next step is too keep food separate from everything else. This total includes non food items for the past 2 weeks. Although thanks to my wonderful mom and her care package from Christmas I didn't need many non-food items this time!