Dollars and Sense

For those of you unaware, my days are spent doing accounting. I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a numbers nerd. Everyone has different talents, and math/numbers have always been one of mine. Back in 2010, my company switched our pay periods from semi-monthly to bi-weekly. As this was a change in the timing of my money coming in, this caused a change of when my money could go out. After saying we needed one for the longest time, this change made it necessary for us to suck it up and grudgingly create a budget.

I was hesitant to create a budget. One reason was I was scared to see where our money was going. That was intelligent, no? The other reason was that I truly didn’t want to be limited. Smart, right? But going from Zach and I getting paid on the same days, to having 4 different pay periods per month, a major purpose of the budget was so that I would know in what pay periods to pay our different bills.
I didn’t know where I wanted to start but once I got going, I actually LIKED the budget. Can you believe it? I had to modify it for a few months to get it where I wanted it. At the beginning of 2011, we participated in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Since we had already prepared our budget, we had that part of class easier than most. I kept hearing people say they didn’t know where to start or how to do it or keep it up.

We didn’t have a lot of debt, fortunately, but we did have some medical bills from kids, car payments and a student loan from my Master’s degree. Since this class and the use of the budget, we’ve been able to pay off a significant amount of debt. The only remaining debt we currently have is our home and Zach’s truck. I feel as though our use of a budget enabled us to make these changes and reduce this debt.

I’ve blogged about our recent stint of doing a “no spend month”. We drastically reduced our budget, and surprisingly, we haven’t found it hard to live in the confines of these lower amounts. The extra money we’ve had at the end of two months has been amazing. If you don’t budget, I would HIGHLY recommend it.

That being said, I’ve become somewhat passionate about what budgets can do for finances. The things I’ve consistently heard from people is that they don’t know where to start or they aren’t financially minded so they are unsure how to set up a budget. Well, after a lot of prayer and consideration, I’ve decided to offer services to help people with their finances. I TRULY believe that just getting started is the hardest part. I want to help people with that. With the condition of the current economy, we all need all the help we can get.

These are services I will be offering:

• Budget set-up
• Debt payoff schedules
• Budget check-ups for accountability
• Upkeep of budgets

If there are areas of your financial life in which you are struggling or just need guidance, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I would like to share what one person shared with me after their experience working with me:

"holy cow! this is AMAZING!!!!  i am SO excited! can't wait to show J******. it looks SO good, sarah!
i have to be honest and tell you that when we first started, i had no idea what to expect...but this is FAR beyond what i could have imagined. i cannot even tell you what a blessing this is (and will be!) to us. thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
all in all, i felt like it was a VERY beneficial experience. i am NOT a "numbers" person AT ALL, but you explained things in a way that i was able to understand and we will definitely utilize this budget tool in our day to day life. i can't WAIT to tell you the positive changes that come from it!  :)"

If you are interested in any of the services I can provide, please email me and I'll provide pricing information. If you think this is something you would benefit from or even if you just have questions, I would LOVE for you to be the next person I can help!