In an effort to chip away a little more drastically at my debt, I’ve implemented Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s Money Jar system. If you’ve ever seen her show, Till Debt do us Part, then you’re quite familiar with the money jars. If not, here’s a quick primer:

1. Keep track of your expenses for a few months.
2. Use Gail’s Interactive Budget Worksheet to figure out what your expenses are and should be.
3. Write down the weekly and monthly totals the Worksheet gives you.
4. Keep track of e-v-e-r-y single expense e-v-e-r-y day, and balance it against the Worksheet amounts.

That’s the basic gist of the plan. On the show, Gail puts the weekly budget amount into Money Jars that the couples then use for their expenses. You don’t have to actually use the cash, you can swipe your purchases, but the biggest thing is that you have to keep track of what you spend. Otherwise there’s no point.

Since I’m obviously not making any headway (or at least not much) in the right direction, I decided it was time to take some drastic action. I’ve come up with my numbers, and am now keeping track. I’m only on Week 2, and so far, I’m not doing so good. That was to be expected though, because I am used to a bi-weekly budget, not a weekly one. I would take out X amount of money each pay, and once it was gone, it was gone. If I blew it all the day after payday, so be it. But in this case I’ve got set amounts to spend each week in several categories, so I’m trying to get into the swing of things. I’m well within my monthly amounts, but the point is to try and stick to the weekly amounts first, THEN the monthly ones. So I’m taking baby steps here, but I think it’ll work out in the end.

Related Content

Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback