I wasted $27 at the grocery store last week. It’s not that I bought I bunch of junk food or things we weren’t going to use. No. Instead I spent $27 on things we already had in our pantry. I did the math. If every week I accidentally bought stuff we already had, that would end up costing my family $1,404 a year. Sure, we could eventually use those extra bags of rice or jars of peanut butter. But wouldn’t that money be better put into savings? Because my life lacked organization, because I wasn’t keeping good track of what was in my pantry, I ended up wasting money.

If you followed yesterday's lesson and you sat down and wrote out every piece of debt you had, that number might be a little overwhelming.

Today we are going to talk about tracking where your everyday dollars are going and how that factors into your priorities.

Let's be 100 percent truthful here. The word budget doesn't exactly conjure up warm and sunny thoughts. It sounds boring. There, I said it. It just sounds boring. 

I think the idea of living on a restrictive budget that is going to limit fun just makes people NOT do it. But actually a budget is freeing.