January 2011 Recap...

Bare with me guys and gals. This is my first attempt at zero budgeting and I am sure I got a lot of it wrong. This is also my first time using this budget worksheet that I found online. I tweaked it a bit and it's kind of cool. If you see italics, these are the categories I have deemed "ACCRUAL" meaning that I save the money in separate ING Accounts whether I spend the money this month or not. This was suggested by Dave Ramsey for expenses that are irregular in nature but can blow your budget wide open.

A lot of money flowed through my accounts this month. I added a comment column to the right to add some additional explanation. Please let me know if you have trouble viewing the image of the spreadsheet. It's rather large and I may need to figure out another way. I am open to suggestions so just inbox me or comment. Thanks a lot.

I guess the important things to note is that I stayed within budget for the month and I paid off my Capital One Personal Credit Card. When you only get paid once a month, it is hard to budget variable expenses throughout the month so I came up with a $200/week challenge. I ration to myself every Friday, $200 to budget through the weekend and the following week. The challenge gives me something to look forward to because I really get excited when Friday comes around again. The challenge also gives me something to focus on to see if I am making any measurable progress towards spending within my means. I did pretty good with the challenge in January.

* I added in my Capital One Business Card to my credit card balance.