Frugal Mister gets down to brass tax

Yes, I know, technically it's brass tacks, but this is a financial blog. Make the leap...

The brass item we're facing now is better known as the Budget. I've religiously balanced my checkbook for years. Particularly since marrying the Missus, I've been relied on to make sure we had enough to get from the first of the month to the end. Up until this week's budget lesson, I thought that what I was doing was, in fact, budgeting. I was wrong.

Sure, I was paying the bills and providing, but only insofar as saying, "Missus, stop buying stuff 'till we get paid again." In retrospect, I never really understood a budget...at least a true budget. I was operating under the impression, mistakenly as it turns out, that once written, a budget is in stone. I don't know why I always thought that, but I did. Perhaps I just never gave it enough serious thought. As luck would have it, those days are over.

The questions posed in this week's lesson were "Have you ever lived on a budget before? What is your "gut reaction" to the word "budget"? Does it bring positive or negative images to mind? What has created those associations for you?

I think I more or less answered the first one, but, for the sake of clarity, I'll answer with "sorta". My gut reaction to "budget" is kind of a nervous anxiousness. Not anxious in a negative connotation, but like you look forward to something. Geez, what a Nerd. With regard to images, I think it's mostly positive. I think hammering out a budget and sticking to it will help our money go further and make it work for us instead of simply disappearing and leaving us wondering where in the world it went. I think my associations with the budget have more recently been adapted to a more positive spin, even pre-DR, because of the Communication and Love in our marriage. This is just another obstacle for the Missus and I to master. There is literally nothing we can't do together. Except create matter. That's just physics.