Wacked Out Budget

The hardest part about being a twentysomething, or at least in my opinion the hardest part of being a twentysomething is budgeting. Or in our case, the lack there of. I thought we had somewhat of a budget down until I printed out our bank statements and went through each page to find out exactly why we were so poor 7 days into the month.


Fast food restaurants and coffee joints kill our bank account. In the last 10 days we've spent $174 at various ff places. Most people don't even spend that on food in one month, let alone 10 days. And I wish I could tell you we were fine dining but unfortunately dunkin donuts and starbucks and the eateries at our respective work places have pretty much monopolized our stomachs.

We are constantly struggling to maintain our twentysomething lifestyle while still putting a little money in savings each month. And I do mean little. More importantly, the boy and I have very different views on how much should (or shouldn't) be saved each month. He holds true to the belief that we're young and crazy and our bank account should reflect that. Being more of a pessimist, I'm worried about some sort of disaster rendering us homeless and hungry.

Needless to say our finances are a hot mess. We're searching for a middle ground, a young and adequately prepared center. So in a desperate attempt to compromise on our spending habits (I'm as guilty as he is), we're going to resort to good 'ole fashioned cash for food and bar purposes. That way when it's gone, it's gone. We'll have tangible evidence that we're staying in our budget, rather than guesstimating after each debit card usage.

We've also switched to a bank that will offer a little more than .89 cents interest each month on our savings account, will reward us for using our debit card (we're still going to use our card for gas, groceries, that kind of stuff), and will refund us for any atm that charges a fee. We're getting things together, slowly but surely. Budgeting for two is a helluva lot harder than budgeting for one. That is fo' sho.