My neighbor told me I was budgeting wrong, and she was right

I used to track every penny by category but never looked at the totals. My neighbor Sue said 'you're missing the big picture if you just stare at line items.' So I changed to one simple number: my total spending each month vs my income. First month I caught that my eating out was double what I thought, even though each trip seemed small. Anyone else had someone call them out on a blind spot in their budget?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan_davis15d agoMost Upvoted

Track your weekly average instead, it smooths out those long month surprises.

charles72015d ago

Tracking your weekly average" is just adding extra math to the same numbers honestly. I'd rather just look at the monthly total and know a 5-weekend month will be a little higher, it's really not that complicated.

wader7115d ago

My neighbor told me something similar once... she said my mistake was not looking at the "average daily spend" instead of monthly totals. Thing is, your method of just watching total vs income is good, but it misses that some months have 5 weekends and some have 4. If you eat out every Saturday, a 5-Saturday month will make your total look higher even if you didn't change anything. Sue's advice about "big picture" works, but you gotta adjust for calendar quirks or you'll think you're overspending when you're not.