Wealthy Wednesdays: You Have Grains of Sand in the Bank

“Give every dollar a job.” One of YNAB’s pillars of budgeting.

Long ago, I wrote about the YNAB software program here. YNAB stands for…You Need a Budget. Please don’t run off…hear me out. I hate budgets like the rest of the universe, but, if you don’t know where every buck is going, you might as well just deposit a bucket of sand in your bank account, because that’s what it acts like. Grains of sand. Poof! Then you look one day and there’s NOTHING left! Then you wonder where did that $1,000 bucks just go that I had in my checking account last week?  Yeah, been there, done that.

If you don’t give every one of your bucks a job, it sneaks out and disappears. 

I just received a large check from a project I completed. I want that money to COUNT for something! Not just disappear like grains of sand through my hands! So, today, I sat down, went through my budget (I use these sheets — scroll down on linked page to find “Allocated Cash Flow and Spending Plan” sheets — and still do, month after month, year after year–yup, still do this by hand even though I used to use YNAB, I found I felt like I had better control with actual pen and paper–just my own style, you should use your own style of budgeting or keeping track of things and YNAB is wonderful, too). My husband and I are assigning each and every buck a job so I know where it’ll go.

Sounds corny?

Sounds elementary? 

So…why do YOU wonder where all of YOUR money goes every month….?

~Marilyn, TFF