Every year at the first of the year, I like to take some time to evaluate what happened financially the year before. I use my finance software and make a spreadsheet of how much money we spent in each category each month.
It’s quite enlightening. I was able to see that we’re much more likely to go out to eat during summer months than winter. Knowing that, I can now plan my budget accordingly. The spreadsheet also tells me the average of what we actually spent each month. It helps me to be able to validate that what I budgeted for the year was correct. It also will help me tweak for this year. If there’s any extra money to be wrung out for loans or saving, I’m gonna find it.