budgeting

So, Norm and I are big Dave Ramsey fans. We actually did a lot of what he teaches even before we'd ever heard of him, but we had kind of fallen off the budgeting bandwagon for a while. When I started listening to him in the car whenever I had errands to run in the afternoons, we became inspired to begin budgeting again. The kids have really been very cooperative about the whole thing by not whining and asking for things that we tell them aren't in the budget. It helps that at this point we have some room for fun things in the budget, but, still, they've been great about it.

Today, I took them shopping to get some things for each other for Christmas. I started out with Avonlea. She and I had talked about how much she could spend (which wasn't much) and agreed that I would pay half and she would pay half out of her spending money. The first three gifts were easy and under budget so that she actually had a little extra for the other two if she wanted, but not very much. Those two were harder, and we walked around the store for a while looking at things. Over and over she would look at something and see the price and say, "That doesn't fit my budget." I loved it! I kept feeling tempted to tell her she could spend a little more, but I didn't do it because I think that the lesson in not spending more than you have is more valuable than any of the presents she could have bought. Later, I headed out with both Felicity and Elisabeth. Both of them bought all their presents with their own money this time, and they both decided how much to spend before we entered the store and stuck to it. Christmases past have usually involved spending Mom and Dad's money for presents for each other with only a loose price limit, so this was just so great to see. And I even think that the recipients will all like their gifts.

In other great news for today, I cleaned my room! I usually like to keep it clean (just because it's one of the few rooms that doesn't get messed up again in five minutes), but it had gotten pretty cluttered. It's hard to retreat for a few minutes of rest at any point in the day if my room is at all messy. So, today I took a break from the Christmas preparations and renewed my retreat. I didn't relax at all today, but I feel so much more relaxed just because there is one clean room in the house!