Coming Clean (Admitting My Mistakes) - Part III

(Continued from my last 2 posts. #1-#3 explained earlier.)

1. I Used Our Credit Card

2. I Didn't Pay Attention To Our Finances

3. I Didn't Pay As Much As Planned To Our Debts (Debt Snowball)

4. I Didn't Save As Much As Planned

We are following Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps to Financial Freedom. We are currently in Baby Step 2, Paying off our Debts. While in this step the focus is paying off debt not saving money. But we still have some savings goals. In addition to Dave's recommended $1,000 Baby Emergency Fund, we also have budgeted for saving some money for future expenses to account for my husband's irregular salary (commissions vary greatly from month to month, so we like to save some money from high commission months to cover our regular expenses for the low commission months). We also save to pay for DD1's braces and for major expenses like the new heating system we will need to purchase this summer.

Anyway, that is why we have budgeted for savings while we are focused on paying off debt.

Here is a look at how much we budgeted for each month: (keep in mind that the amounts are the totals we planned to have in the savings account at the end of each month, NOT the amount we would put into savings each month)

TOTAL SAVINGS (Budget/Actual)

Jul - $12,264/$11,264
Jun - $10,642
May - $10,642
Apr - $3,342
Mar - $3,542
Feb - $1,000
Jan - $1,000

What it comes down to is that we have $1,000 less in our savings account than we had planned. :(