Battling my demons

 Every one has them. They are not the same for everyone, I would venture to say they are not the same for anyone. But they are there. Many, most??, times they are completely fabricated. Among my demons are my so-called lack of money skills. I posted about that yesterday. I was never taught how to handle money so I just don't know how. I was raised in a family that was, for all intents and purposes, poor. Money was always an issue though we always had a place to live and food on the table. My parents lived paycheck to paycheck and when it was payday good things happened. We had a really good dinner. Or we got some sort of treat like candy or something. And we were told, Dad got paid today. So in my little mind, payday became synonymous with treating yourself. That is a hard mindset to let go of. I'm not in any way blaming my parents. They were two people who never finished high school and had 7 kids and were doing the absolute best they could. My mom was amazing. My dad left a little to be desired, but he died before I really got to know him. But the things you learn as a small child, you don't even realize that you learn them and so it is extremely hard to let go of them. But now, as a grown a*s adult, I'm aware and I need to change things. 

I feel like I've pretty well gotten over the, oh, it's payday, let's splurge, mindset. But I still see money in the bank and think, sure we can afford X,Y, and Z. So I need to stop looking at the bank and focus solely on the budget. Which means I need to get more consistent at entering transactions as they happen, rather than playing catch up a week or two later. So every night I'm going to sit down and check the budget, which also means checking the bank accounts and credit cards. I need to do this until I get a complete and total handle on the spending part of the money. Hubby uses the card all the time and I don't keep track of that, so it's time to do that. Today I will sit down and make a list of the credit cards that need to be checked regularly and then I will check them every single day. When I first started using this YNAB program, that is what I did. I checked the accounts every single day because I felt like I couldn't trust the budget completely. Then I realized that I could and so checking the accounts became less and less frequent. So back to checking every day until I have a good handle on it, but I'm always going to check them on Fridays, that will become my budget/bill paying day. And February is going to be a no spend month for me.. No frivolous spending at all. 

Okay, time is up so I am out.