Do you have a zero dollar based budget?

This is something we have been trying to accomplish since January. January we failed miserably, this month we are doing better, next month I believe will be even better. Why is this? I wish I could say it was because we are running a very well oiled machine of a budget, ha, far from it. It is mainly due to the tax refunds as of late that have relieved some of the financial stress. We were running a short fall of about $550 a month for everything we were trying to plan for. Furniture, Vacation, Entertainment, Dining Out, Christmas Gifts, Blow money, Car Repair, etc… Unfortunately some of those extra items needed to be put off until they could be affordable and work with the budget. The tax refunds we received this month have helped out tremendously. We eliminated 3 cards and dropped those payments which have saved us $257 a month. That in combination with not lump sum saving for everything under the sun brought our short fall down to $273.

This is where it truly gets hard. We don’t have enough for a debt snowball towards our plasectomy and do not have enough to cover all our bases as we would like. All the plan is right now is to get our budget to zero dollars. Essentially what needs to go are the wanted extras; no new furniture, minimal vacations, no saving for Christmas currently and make the needed reductions in the other categories until it can be budgeted and still make progress towards our debt.

What are we going to do?

  • Eliminate the savings of $50 a month for furniture, in the red $223.
  • Christmas gifts were going to be purchased with cash of $1,200 saved throughout the year. Right now, this doesn’t fit in the budget, another $100 saved. In the red $123.
  • Reduce Entertainment to $50 from $100. In the red $73.
  • Eliminate the restaurant budget, another $50 saved. In the red $23.

I haven’t quite figured out where the remaining $23 shortfall is going come from. I do know we need more income in order to make this budget work harder for our money.