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Our first month of using credit cards instead of our debit cards has come to end.  I received my first credit card statement yesterday.  It was $244 over our normal monthly budget, plus we had to replace our home computer since it took its last and final grisly whimpering breath in February.  This meant I ended up pulling from savings, again, to cover our over spending.

Have I mentioned that I'm getting sick of this?!

I'm so sick of always looking in the rearview mirror when it comes to our finances.  In fact, spending on the credit card instead of the debit card seemed a bit TOO easy, right from the get go.  Sure, I get to avoid the costly mistakes I've made though overdraft charges and banking errors, but still.  Instead of having to check one place to see our bottom line, I had to check the bank balance for any cash withdrawals we'd made and then check that against the credit card balance.  It turned out to be slightly more complicated. 

This month we'll continue using the credit card again, but I'm going to check the balance more often and cut us off before it becomes problematic.  I'm also going to set up some more strict budgeting rules, namely:

1.  Grocery shopping ONCE a week ONLY.  No exceptions.  If I forget something, too bad.  We won't starve.  This means I'll be hitting up more than one store (Wal-Mart and Trader Joe's), probably on Sundays.

2.  Save my Target list for a bi-weekly trip into Portland, where I get to avoid sales tax.  I figure the fewer times I walk through those red shiny doors of temptation the better.

3.  Stop spending once I hit my budget limit. 

Number three is obviously the most important one. The crazy thing is that I checked our balance seven days before the end of the month and I knew we had only $100 left, which would've been enough to fill up each of our cars with gas ONCE.  Instead of putting my foot down and NOT buying food and making do with what we had, I went shopping not once, but around FOUR times after that, which is both ridiculous AND crazy.  How can I expect us to meet our financial goals when I knowingly overspend just because we "need" stuff.

Again, we aren't in dire straights by any means, but I really want to see our savings account go UP instead of down.  I think that why all of this is so hard for me.  It's not URGENT that I stick to a budget, it's just IMPORTANT.  There's a difference and I wish I could convince myself to bump up my alert level.  I'm hoping this month will be a new start.