My husband and I both came into our relationship "pretty good" with money. Neither of us had major issues or flaws, or debt. We also didn't have major money skills or savings! My first step toward better finances as a single gal was to cease all credit card use. I cannot tell you how incredibly important this was for us! Making the choice to not use credit cards on my own saved a lot of argument in our future, I'm sure.
The next step for us as a couple was to create a budget. We did well not spending more than was in our accounts, but actually putting our money into categories was a new thing for both of us. It still is, but we are slowly getting better at it!
When you do not have a budget, it is easy to blow through your money. For some, this will mean living paycheck to paycheck. Some will have just enough, but never extra. For others it will mean being "in the red" all the time, and accumulating debt.
The first thing you will have to do to create a budget will be to track all of your expenses and your income, which we will talk a little more about next week. Everything going in, and everything going out will have to be on paper.
The most basic rule of budgeting is to assign all of your money a category. Hopefully your income is more than your output. (We'll talk about what to do if it's not a little later on!) Rather than just spend through the amount of money in your bank account every week, divide your money up into categories like bills, out to eat money, gas money, entertainment, etc.
Instead of running out of gas money because of spending too much on entertainment, you simply run out of entertainment money, and still have your assigned amount for gas.
This is budgeting in it's most basic form, but we'll keep exploring and building on these concepts! If you haven't already, I would encourage you to check out Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover!
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