It's Just...

Two dangerous little words. "It's just..." can lead you to buy many things. So can the words "it's only". You have to pay attention to your language when you go out shopping. These words will quickly help you use up or go over on your budget. When I hear these words I like to repeat them back to the person, even if I'm the one who said them, reminding them that these are dangerous words. They had no intention of buying the additional item, they saw it and wanted it then and there. Now I must admit, there are times when it is good to buy items that you didn't plan on buying, for example, you might find a great deal on some fruit or juice, but you always need to ask yourself if your budget can handle the added expense, if so, by all means get the good thing that you would have wanted if it weren't for the excessive normal cost of it. In particular we like to get blueberries, blackberries and strawberries, normally they cost so much that we never plan on buying them and they are a treat when we find a deal on them. These end up being good extras for us, but we still need to be careful what extras we add into our shopping trip.

In order for us to not spend too much on things we make a list. Often the only list we need is a grocery list, however we find that we do better by making other lists, particularly when we plan to buy multiple items. For me, I get so distracted that I forget what I was after and see something else I want instead, then when I get home I remember what I forgot and have to go back, wasting time, money and gas. By making a list and trying your best to stick to it you keep yourself in check and your budget healthy. This means that instead of looking at your budget every month and saying, "Man, I really overspent," you get to look at it and say, "Alright! We actually made it a month on our budget." You'd be surprised how hard it is to keep to a budget, even more so when you get a tight one with very little wiggle room. This is the type of budget we have and it's sad how often I have to look to see where I can squeeze some funds to pay for what we needed to get, and most of the time it is needs, not careless spending on our desires.

So I am not proclaiming that I do any of this perfectly, but I do keep it all in mind when I go shopping. With just one child my budget can quickly go from on-track to way off, it's as simple as the words, "We need more diapers." We do our best to compensate for it, adjust a few shopping trips to a couple of the stores in order to come in pretty close to what we anticipate, but there are times where it just goes horribly wrong and we end up paying for our mistakes. However, our budget for most of the time works very well for us. The areas that I have to watch out for the type of language I mentioned is in my own personal monthly spending, it isn't much and if I use this language it will be gone before I get what I actually wanted that month. Often times food, quick, fast food meals, are the biggest waste of money for me. I don't always enjoy the food I ate and it wasn't very good for me anyway, had I taken the time to make it myself I would have been better off. The other thing I have to keep in mind when I'm watching my language is my long term goals, it is easy to bring a short term goal up to the top because you have money to do it now and that "it's just" makes it easy to finish that minor goal and neglect your major goal. Hopefully this all made sense to you and will help you as well. I recommend you pay very close attention to what you say or how you think about items, it could very well be your language usage leads you to saving more money and accomplishing more goals in the long run.