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Doing Better

I mentioned in a previous post that I haven't been showing much self discipline financially so far this year. Thankfully, for now, I'm having a spell of doing better. Sitting down and seeing exactly where I am helped get me back on track. Hopefully, I'll continue to do better.

First off, I'm going scale back the anniversary party I was going to hold for my folks to just a big family dinner. I was going to do games with door prizes, but now, I've decided to just make lasagna using my mom's best recipe. It will still be costly, because it will be dinner for at least 20 people, but it will still be easier on my pocketbook.

The next thing I hope to do is to figure my checkbook* daily. I have a tendency to try to keep track of it mentally, then when I start to fear that I might've left something out of my mental total, I'll charge necessities, like gas or diapers. So far, for the last week, I've done better with my checkbook. And knowing exactly where I stand helps me to tell myself no when the urge to splurge hits.

On The Business Front

I haven't yet done my business plan for my crafts business, but I figure that if I want to be serious about it, I have to buckle down and do it. Getting a start on it is on my to-do list for today during the three hours I'll have at home to myself while my toddler is in daycare. Hopefully, it's not as difficult to do as I've built it up in my head to be.

*Ideally, I'd like to pay entirely by cash, as recommended by Dave Ramsey in his book "The Total Money Makeover." And I think I might've even done a post on my last attempt to do cash only. It sounds practical enough, and doing so would eliminate the need to balance my checkbook daily, but during past attempts to implement the envelop method, I've found I have a tendency to spend cash if I have it on me.
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