I was listening to the radio this morning and the hosts were talking about this from a religious perspective, talking about how once you become saved and are now a “new man/woman” you don’t try to fit your old habits into the new you. We need to embrace the new and walk a new walk, a new journey, new talk, new thoughts…all the things. We need to lay down and put/keep behind us our old ways.

Now to that I will say I do agree BUT…I personally feel like yes we need to put those old ways behind us and more forward in the new but stay close enough to that old that we can reach back and pull someone else from the same “fire”. Close enough to remember where we’ve been so we can remember the lessons learned from that but don’t dwell there, don’t keep falling back into that fire.

I think this also applies to our finances. I think in order to really see a change and to see different results we have to have different actions. We can’t stay in our old spending habits, our no saving habits, etc and see our new budget succeed. I don’t care how good your budget is, if you are still applying your old habits it will never work to benefit you and to get you the end goals that you are after.

Now, just like being a Christian doesn’t mean you can never do anything fun; having a budget doesn’t mean you can never spend money or that you can never go out and have fun. It’s actually just the opposite, because you have a budget you know up front how much money you have to spend in whatever area(s) you like. If you have done the work to get a handle on your debt then you can even budget in the fun stuff. The more debt you pay off, the more savings you build, the more you are able to decide where you want your money going and if that is for “fun” then so be it!

If you would like some help getting started to create a budget or maybe learn how to pay ahead (and off) your debt-don’t forget to check out the Solutions/Resources page of the website for options to do just that. The website (and it’s features) are new so if you have trouble getting something to work please don’t hesitate to let me know by emailing budgetwithcarla@gmail.com