Zero Balance Budget

Found on https://fpucentral.daveramsey.com

Yes!  We did it!  N and I made it through our first month through Financial Peace University, complete with building a $1000 emergency fund and a successful zero-balanced budget!  We have been working with a budget for a few years now, but we were always running into one trouble or another and it just never seemed to work as smoothly as it did this month.  The difference?  We finally budgeted working from paycheck to paycheck instead of just a month at a time.  What a world of difference this made for us!  And now it seems so obvious.  Why would we ever have budgeted for a straight month at a time when our pay periods are never on the 1st and 15th, but always every other Friday--which can fall anytime during the month?  Duh, no wonder it wasn't working!  And plus, now we are already saving for our domestic travels (we have five weddings this year already planned) and even have started to save for an international trip to Austria and Italy.  It feels great to see both of those funds building, 1) so we don't have to break the budget when plane tickets go on sale, and 2) we can a nice trip to Europe to look forward to in three years.  Yes, it's three years away, but we know it is going to happen if we keep saving like this, and that is an incredible feeling.  We are in charge of our money!  

I can't wait to take out our envelope money for the next two weeks... more on that later!