Plans!

Mike and I finally had our first official Plan Meeting on Saturday.  While I realize that this might sound, um, Nerdy, well, it is.  But I do know that official weekly meetings really helped tame our finances.  We started married life with the full intension of budgeting.  Mike's idea of budgeting was to spend as little as possible and save the rest.  This is Not good for moral.  My idea of budgeting was to spend money on what you think is important... oh wait?  There's more month left?  So while we were able to focus enough on finances to be able to pay off our debt in a year and a half, we were not "winning".  Something needed to change.

Along came the Weekly Budget Meeting.  January 2008.  We sat down and wrote our budget for the year, knowing that it probably would change.  (Our budget has 3 sections, original plan, updated plan, and actual activity).  The original plan was set in stone.  The updated plan would be updated once a month.  So, how to make our actual spending meet the "plan"?  The Weekly Budget Meeting of course! 

Every Saturday morning, we would review the month's spending to date and compare that what was planned.  Intense?  A little.  Create accountability?  Absoluetly.  I didnt want to be the one who had to say, "Sorry that we can't save for our emergency fund honey.  That perfume just smelled too good!"  And, by having planned what could be spent ahead of time, Mike didnt worry about those $90 shoes because we knew how much we would be saving.  Summary: Mike and I are nerdy enough that weekly meetings are effective for teaching discipline in a certain area.

This brings us to our lives.  Feeling out of control.  Mike and I have both been sad and frustrated by our lack of evening activities.  Why?  Because our lives were passing us by, without any concrete goals to direct our lives.  I mean, we had goals when we graduated and got married.  So many of those have either happened or changes.  What now? 

So Saturday, we took the day to be creative, fun, and brainstorm what we want to do with the rest of our lives.  Yes, we made an Excel spreadsheet to track the goals.  Yes, we are engineers.  But! we have some really fun things in our plans.  I'm so excited!  We decided that this was a "No Guilt" plan either.  If we dont perform to plan, who cares?  It's probably an agressive plan.  But at least we arent going to sit on the side lines of life wondering what we could be doing.