I just finished tallying our budget totals for the month of October, and I am very happy to tell you that we came under budget by over $300.   That’s not including all of my salary, which automatically goes in to savings.  All things told, we had nearly $4,000 that could be devoted to investments and savings.  Yay!

After last month, I did some adjusting and economized in certain areas.  We felt that if we were disciplined with our spending, we should be able to manage it without too much difficulty.  Since we were both committed, it wasn’t that hard.

I will say that living on one salary when we have two isn’t always fun.  Sometimes, I wish that I could go out and buy whatever I want.  It’s tempting to think of what I earn as “my” money and not “our” money.  I know that some couples manage their finances that way, and that it works for them – the guy spends what he earns, the girl spends what she earns, and they split the cost of shared bills.  If it works for you, then stick with it.  I think that in our case, we discussed it maybe once before we were married, and we were both like, “Yeah, of course we’re going to share our money.  Why wouldn’t we?”.  We’ve pooled our earnings from that point on, and always thought of it as “ours”.

I’ve come to find that I enjoy finance.  I love knowing where our money is going and how we’re spending it.  I love knowing exactly how much money we have at any given time, and how much we can afford to put into the stock market or investment funds.  For the majority of our marriage, Chris handled all of the investing while I managed the day-to-day bills.  This got to be a problem when Chris would try to take money to devote towards investing, while I was trying to make sure we had enough for living expenses.  Doing this budget allows me to tell Chris exactly how much we can put into various funds, which helps me feel more involved and clears up any doubt about how much money is available for certain things.

This is my last budget update post.  Reporting to all of you helped me stay accountable, but I feel that we’ve gotten to the point where we wanted to be – more cognizant and informed about our spending.

And now, I’m going to to get ready for work.  While all of you are starting your pre-Halloween celebrations, I’ll be in the ER, patching people up and hopefully making them feel better.  Have a great weekend, and have a great Halloween!