I am sitting down to do our budget for March. To be honest, we’ve been “coasting along” for the past two months, making a few “I want that” purchases. My wife and I talked about it last night, and we are both ready to “ramp it back up” and redo our budget. Here’s the process we go through for creating our budget.

I enjoy the “math side” of the budget. I crunch the numbers, input them into our budget software, and print out a copy for my wife.

Once my wife gets a copy of the budget, she’s free to make ANY CHANGES that she wants to make. My wife has been so super-cool throughout this whole process. There are times when she is aware of expenses that I forget, and vice versa. We make a pretty awesome team.

This “system” really works for us and our personalities. Every couple will have to figure out the best system for their personalities. We have friends who both sit down at the computer and create the budget together. My wife would be bored to tears working with all of the numbers and the computer stuff. So, I do that part of the budget and she reviews the printout. After she finishes making changes, I create a “corrected” budget, and that is our plan for the month.

Here’s how we avoid arguing about money:

–We create a budget and agree to work within the guidelines of that budget.

–We sit down once or twice a week and talk about any adjustments that need to be made to the budget.

–If we plan to spend more than X-amount of money (outside of what we have budgeted) we sit down and talk about it.

–We trust each other.

–If we have extra income (from eBay or one of my sites) all of it goes towards our current savings goals.

–We have learned to be content with the blessings that we already have.

–We create a REALISTIC budget. If a bill averages $100 per month, we don’t budget $75 and “hope” that we’ll be right. No, we budget $110 and rejoice if the bill comes in at $90!

–We stretch to reach our goals, but we do not “over-stretch”.

–We don’t really have to think about money. Now that we are out of debt and have our emergency fund fully funded, we are free to relax, live on a budget, and think about the “truly” important things.