Adaptivate!
One of the most powerful tools that humans have is their ability to adapt. When your budget comes close or overflows in a month you really need to take this into account. You’ll want to check your spending in various areas and look for trends. Are the prices of groceries killing your budget this month? Did they kill it last month and the month before? Adapt! Figure out if you need to change your grocery shopping style, figure out if you need to invest more time in wise coupon clipping? Do you need to make sure that you’re always using a shopping list so you know exactly what you need? Jerry Seinfeld, in his stand up movie I’m Telling You For the Last Time talks about buying milk this way: “Some of you are going to stop on the way home and buy milk because you’re not sure if your milk at home is bad.” [that's not a literal quote, but its the concept of one of his bits].
Adapt your budget over time for two reasons: 1) To stop the bleeding when those times come and 2) To pay off debts faster or save more when those times come. When you’re bleeding in an area of your budget you’ll want to make sure that the bleeding stops so as to keep your budget healthy. You’ll need to figure out if what you just experienced in your budget was an emergency or if you have to rethink its elements. When you are starting to accumulate money in areas that don’t need to have excess money (I can’t fathom needing to accumulate more than several hundred extra dollars in the grocery category so that your holidays are extra-fooded) you may be able to graft that into your high interest savings account, or put aside that money for a vacation if you’ve been working insane hours. But whatever you do: pay attention to your budget and adapt it on a regular bases - that’s smart money management!
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