Is the budget really worth it?

I put an example of my time and money budgets up in my last post. I have been using a budget for my money for a long time but the time budget is new to me. I can be a bit obsessive when I find something new to try and in this case it may have hindered my efforts. If something happened last week to throw my schedule off like waking up late, having to help a friend out, or unexpected weather I became extremely disappointed in myself and almost gave up the time budget altogether. I may have to reduce it to a "to-do list" or "daily/weekly goals" to keep my sanity and that's okay. The point of the time budget was to make sure I got things done that I wanted to while making sure that the necessary things were accomplished and I think my other options will cover that.

I may not have stuck to my schedule perfectly, but it did at least help me be a more effective grocery shopper. I bought enough (healthy) food to keep me going until my next trip to the market and ended up not wasting anything! Having a good supply of simple, fresh foods makes eating healthy and staying away from junk food much easier.

As far as my money budget for this pay period (3/9/11-3/22/11), it had good parts and bad parts. As previously mentioned, I spent a lot of money on dining out in the last two weeks and very little at the grocery store (anyone else see the correlation?) which in part had to do with a couple of friends' birthdays. I also went over budget on miscellaneous spending, gas, and cash from the ATM but I was on or under budget on entertainment, groceries and pet supplies as well as the static expenses (cable, car insurance, etc.). I'm fairly used to not sticking to my budget verbatim but it still causes a bit of stress because I REALLY want to be done with this debt.

In an effort to help eliminate my debt and get the rest of my life on track, I have been using a very helpful resource called The Yakezie Network which is a group of blogs about personal finance and lifestyle. My favorite individual blog I have found so far is the Sustainable Life Blog, probably because his goals closely match mine.

All in all, the budgets are definitely worth it. I may never stick to them exactly and they may drive me insane sometimes, but they make for good guidelines and really keep me on track.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison