Gather Little by Little

Luke 16:10 – If you cheat even a little, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities

David over at MoneyNing posted an article Say What You Do and Do What You Say. Seems David made a commitment to both stop wasting food by fixing too much at home and by bringing too much food home. David offers some good advice when he says:

When there is something we cannot seem to get ourselves to do, we should make the commitment to write it down (or tell the world like I did :)). It keeps us honest and helps us complete the task. Also, don’t forget to trust ourselves that we can do it because we certainly can!

His post made me think about the various financial thoughts I provide here on GLBL and if I am indeed doing what I say and in particular with regard to my recent series How To Get Control Of Your Finances.

I’d be a complete hypocrite if I told you I did everything by the book 100% of the time…and I guess a complete liar as well. I don’t, but I’d say 95% of the time I do 100% of the things I recommend. What the heck does that mean you ask? It basically means that I do everything I suggest, but not always.

For example, budgeting. We have a budget and we’ve had one every month since our Financial Crisis.

Now, do we always stay within our budget categories? No.

Do we always have the budget prepared for the next by the end of the current month? No, sometimes I am a few days late.

Do we always have our weekly budget meetings. No, sometimes we are just too busy or too tired and skip them.

A really good example of this happened last night. Here it is, July 10th and we haven’t reviewed our budget for the month. We’ve been meaning to do it, just too many other things going on. My wife looks at me last night and politely says “So, when are we doing our budget for this month.” Opps! So I did it early this morning when I first woke up. Is the right way to do it, no of course not. But I am not going to get all upset about it. Will I try to do it better next month? Absolutely.

What I am trying to say here is, it’s ok to not be perfect and not do everything by the “book” (ok, well not the book…but you know what I mean…hehe). It’s ok to not always do everything, and it’s ok to not do everything 100%. I think many times we are too hard on ourselves, and cause our own self stress. Heck, just the fact that my family has a budget, let alone follows it is a true miracle and blessing.

So whenever you read something from me including financial thoughts, product endorsements, book reviews, recommended web-sites, etc. You as the reader can always feel confident I do what I say. There I wrote it down.

My next step in the How To Get Control of Your Finances will be about creating a budget. That article will be posted in the next few days.