the budget from hell: death to convenience

I am 25 years old. Apparently I was supposed to graduate into the arena of an adult a few years back. I would imagine that you never quite feel like a "grown-up" until you have one of your own nuclear families (Dad, mom, 3 kids, the cat, the dog, and the white picket fence). However...even though I don't really see myself as old as I saw my dad when he was this age, I am stepping deeper today into the land of maturity. I settled it today. I am going on a budget.

Now before you think of me as some ignorant kid who has never had the motor skills necessary to plan and form a monthly spending limit, let me make it clear that I've been down this road many times. I know what it is like to have to watch your friends at work eat beautiful Chinese take-out, as you try and rock a Tyson T.V. dinner whispering to yourself "this is delicious, this is delicious." I know what it is like having to say no to going to see a movie on opening night opting to see it at the dollar theatre two months later instead. I know what the simple budget entails, and for reasons unknown I treated them all like dieting. They worked for about a month, but I then fell into the same bad spending habits.

This budget is going to be a lot more intense though. I am locking away my debit card and spending only cash now. This is going to pose a problem for my convenience. No longer am I going to be able to eat out every night. Once my cash is gone for that week, my cash is gone. I will continue to update how this is working and effecting my financial life through this blog.

I am nervous about this. It's going to suck. I'm sure it's going to suck. But my plan is save a ton of money to one day do the things I dream of doing. In the words of Dave Ramsey: "I've got to live like no one else, so I can one day live like no one else."