A Budget?

I will be the first person to tell you that I have had an unhealthy relationship with money.  I'm quite honest about it, I think.  I had to be bailed out of debt by my parents more than once in my early 20s (thank you!!), and I never really invested the time or the energy to develop the knowledge or the skills to manage my money well.  Plus, I'm often lazy and self-indulgent.

This past weekend I was in my first coach training through iPEC.  One of the things we talked about was something called a Limiting Belief.  These are beliefs that, well, limit you.  :)  Really!  One of the limiting beliefs that I identified for myself is I can't manage my money.  I've been limited by this belief for quite some time now.  And the funny thing is that when I spoke it out loud to the girl who was peer coaching me, it sounded absurd.  Of course I can!  Who says that I can't? (Me!)  Once I realized the absurdity of the statement, it started to open up a possibility for me to look at that area of my life.

Later on in the weekend, we learned a goal setting method and practiced it on each other in peer-coaching sessions.  I chose to work on the goal of having and following a budget that works for our lives.  One of the things this goal setting method does is to break down large goals into manageable, bite-size pieces.  I came up with a first step of pulling together six months worth of financial information...checking account and credit card statements.  That's it.  That's the first step.  As an overachieving perfectionist, I had to remind myself that the point of this method is to create a pattern of success, thus the manageable, bite-size pieces.  So I chose that simple first step, and set up accountability with my coach to have that step done by 5:00pm today.

On Monday I went to my bank's website and downloaded six months worth of my checking account statements, and I went to my credit card's website and downloaded six months worth of my visa statements.  Earlier today I realized that I had forgotten about my American Express card, so I downloaded those, too.  I e-mailed my coach and let her know that I had done what I said I would do, and I set a new goal with her of taking one month of expenses (from May 2011) and breaking my spending down into categories in a spreadsheet which I will create.  I gave myself two weeks to do this task, since I want my goal to be reasonable and achievable.  If I finish sooner, awesome!

I don't necessarily have a solid plan in place yet for this whole budgeting thing.  However, the fact that I'm willing to talk about it and am taking action on it is HUGE for me!  I'm very excited to see how it all plays out, and to see what I create for myself!

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