Well, I’m back from vacation.

Trips always do interesting things with my budget. I seem to be completely incapable of anticipating how much they’ll end up costing in the end.

Sometimes I over-budget and then feel great about spending less than I thought; often I spend more than I’d hoped.

Never am I right on.

Fortunately, budgeting isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being persistent.

Like lots of other things, budgeting gets better (and easier) the more you do it. But that doesn’t mean you’re immune from “Wacky Months.”

And when you have a Wacky Month, with trips or unexpected costs (or just flat out bad planning), you don’t need to stress too much because next month you’ll start a new budget and try again.

You’ll do better next month, and even better the month after that.

Photo by: theenglishguy

Sometimes the hardest part of active budgeting is simply remembering to update your budget.

Simple, quick, easy things like keeping your budget current are either easy to forget, or constantly shuffled into the back of our minds.

One solution is to take advantage of the ten thousand passwords you have to keep track of these days:

The next time you’re prompted to update one of your passwords, change it into something that will remind you to stay on top of your budget.

That way, everytime you log in, you’ll have to type out your own reminder.

If you try it, let me know how it works out for you!

Photo by: enea

(Yes, I was trying to think of a super cheesy post title.)

Over the weekend my wife and I discussed making good choices with some teenagers. I posed the question “How does being ‘good’ affect those around you?”

It was a broad question and I wasn’t getting much response. In these situations I sometimes explore the flip side of a subject to see if it’s a little more obvious.

• What if I spent less time helping around the house and replaced that time playing video games?
• What if I picked up a filthy vocabulary? Would that affect my wife and kids?
• What if I started using our credit card to spend money we really didn’t have?
• What if I spent our paychecks on wants, and ran out of money for the mortgage that month?

It’s easy to take for granted the small simple work we each put in every day for those we love because they’re not as obvious sometimes.

They may be every-day things we do, but they’re still good choices, and the people we care about depend on us to keep doing them.

Think of the quiet “good” you do every day and take a moment to appreciate how it affects your friends and family.