Weekend Weigh-In: 12/30/07

Weigh- In: 296.6
Up almost 1 lb. :(
Again, my weight is up slightly, but that's with Christmas goodies- like Monkey Bread- and with being home (not working... Christmas Break), which always sends my eating habits to hell. It's just too easy to graze and eat crap all day. Since this is a blog/ journal about loving myself enough to take control, I want to pat myself on the back because this week, I sat down to figure out budget stuff. This is another yo-yo area of my life. It seems that it's either all or nothing with this area. Either I am hyper-vigilant and on top of it, or I don't even bother to do anything with it at all. I used to use Microsoft Money software, but that got to be a pain- one small mistake or a missed statement and I had to start all over. Then, I went through a big "nothing" phase- between our tax return and teaching summer school, we had enough money to be okay. Last fall, I decided to start tracking our finances again, but I didn't want to use "Money". So, I looked around online for free stuff (because free is good) and found an Excel-based spreadsheet program called "Pear Budget". I even started to make a price book and declared "Monday Night Money". This worked for a few months, but again, data entry got tedious and I abandoned this system. So, here I am again. I worked one day over Christmas break to come up with a new system that (I hope) will work. This system is relatively simple. Unlike other ones I've used in the past, this system is paper and pencil-based (old fashioned, I know). What I did was to create a spreadsheet for each month with a calendar on the left side and room for budget entries on the right side (Projected Income & Expenses vs. Actual Income & Expenses with a space to track the difference). Anyway, I'll try to keep posted about this too and let you know how things are going.