Moolah, Mucho Deniro, Bucks, Cash, Wealth......

You get the idea. We are trying to redo our budget. As in create one we will follow and not feel as though we are broker than a joke. We want to start saving more for the future, give more to those who need it, and make sure we stay out of debt. I suppose those are all things that people aspire to be able to do. We have done well over the past few years keeping our debt relatively low if you don't count our car payments. Other than one credit card we have no other debt. That balance is enough to make us want to pay it off quickly, but it really isn't bad. We are just scared to be back where we were 5 years ago so any balance is stressful, especially for my hubby who is an incessant worrier. It is the sin that so easily besets him so to speak. We tithe to our church from every paycheck and we even have a sponsored child in Africa. However, we are NOT saving enough for our future or our kids' futures and we don't like that. We only have enough in savings as a cushion for small emergencies and that's it. No retirement plan, nada. We also want to be able to start giving to a local family in need and to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Really hard to come up with the extra money for that kind of stuff when you eat out constantly and buy things you don't really need. Don't get me wrong eating out occasionally and buying an extra something now and then is obviously not a big deal. However that is NOT what we do. And the fact that the credit card balance was pretty much created by purchases that we didn't really need. No reason why we couldn't have saved up for those things instead of wasting money on interest charges. Makes you appreciate things even more when you have to save for it anyway I would think. Anyway, we are reworking our budget to hopefully allow for more of what we want to do.

Goal 1) Pay off credit card balance.

Goal 2) Begin saving more money each month.

Goal 3) Start paying off one of our cars early.

Goal 4) Start giving more to those in need.

Goal 5) Save enough to begin some investing in longer term programs for our family's future.

Goal 6) To use each raise and tax refund wisely.

Okay that's it, for now. Point of this entire post is to see if any of you have any budgeting tips, programs, or things that have worked for you that you can share with me. If you do, share away. We have worked with a budget for years, but it seems we always make it so tight and difficult to follow. Most would say we have done really well, but we know we can do better. HELP!