Weekend Project

Pulling all of your money out of your account (except what you need to cover your bills) can do amazing things for avoiding over draft fees. :) I'm not sure what it is lately, but it seems like we're being charged different amounts when we go to places, like instead of it being the 25.80 that we were told, when the charge hits our account, it's for 32 or something like that. Or we were double charged, like our cards were swiped twice for the same transaction. Get enough of those, and then you get over draft fees...which have never made any sense to me. You're going to charge me $25-50 for not having money in my account. Think about that. There's no money there, so why are you taking more money that is not there? And for stuff that isn't even our fault!

We found too, that the double charges and over charges were always coming from the same place, and trust me, it's just easier to let it go than to fight this place. So in order to stop this from happening, my husband and I decided that we're going to take the harder road and pay cash for everything except our bills and important things that having a paper trail would be helpful for (like sending an important piece of mail certified with delivery confirmation; receipt plus bank statement showing it was paid for equals 'CYA' method).

I'd heard about this budgeting system where you use a bunch of envelopes for your different spending categories, so we tried that too. We found that we were always out of money at the end of the pay period when according to our budget we shouldn't have been, and when we reviewed our bank statement, we couldn't find out why, other than going to McDonald's a few too many times.

Instead of carrying around a bunch of envelopes, which frankly, just made me feel like the idiot that doesn't know what a wallet is for, I decided that I was going to make my own wallet. It's not the best wallet in the world, and there are certainly changes that I would make to it if I were to make it again but I love having all the little zipper pockets. We don't use them all for budget categories, but I have the feeling they will get used the more I use the wallet. Right now, my husband gets the gas money because he's the primary driver, and I get the food money, and the rest of the money goes in the "other" category. "Other" is pretty much code for the kid's need new shoes, my only pair of jeans died and I need another pair, Mom found a great deal on a used twin bed frame and mattress, Mom and Bug need more fabric to raise their Sewing level to 150, and so on. I have a feeling one of those unused pockets is going to be delegated to a "craft" budget.

It took me all day Sunday to make this. There was a lot of measuring and cutting, but aside from the 'outside' fabric, I'm pretty pleased to say that everything came from items that I already had in my stash, and I love how "put together" the whole thing looks. It may not have been the best style choice to use the blue thread for the detail stitching, but I'm happy with it. That's the same thread that I'm going to be using on my first dress...whenever I can get around to stop procrastinating on the Meringue skirt muslin.