I will talk about this more in an upcoming podcast in a few weeks. But I wanted to also talk about in my blog.

5 weeks ago my wife and I had realized that we went to walmart way too much. We had taken a look at our past months bank statement and realized that we had gotten off of our budget big time. During the prior month we had gone to Walmart 15 times. How in the world it happened is beyond me.

I also think that there is some sort of law that you cant go to Walmart without buying a bunch of crap that you don’t need. That seems to be what happened to us. We spend a few hundred dollars over our budget. So as of August 19th we decided to see how things would go if we never went to Walmart for the remainder of August and all of September. So far it has actually been really easy. Even though the grocery stores that we shop at now tend to be a little higher in prices than Walmart we are still saving money because we are not tempted to buy a bunch of unneeded crap.

If you have problems with overspending when you go to Walmart or Target or any other store then I suggest that you try cutting it out for a month and see how things go. My guess is that it will go better for you.

Using envelopes to keep track of your spending each month is a great way to not overspend. The concept is simple just keep your money in envelopes for things like groceries, gas, clothes etc.

I'm going to use food as an example. Lets use a family of 4 spending $600 a month on food. What you do at the beginning of the month is take $600 out of your checking account and put that money into the envelope. That money is to be used for food only. And once that money is gone its gone. If you spend it all in 2 weeks there is no taking more money from somewhere else to add to the food unless you go back and re-figure your budget.

If you are paid every 2 weeks you can fund your envelope twice a month. Even if you are paid every week you could do $150 a week into the envelope. Whatever is easiest for you as long as your not going over your budgeted amount.

Food is one of the hardest categories to estimate how much you spend. So the first few months I would over fund it. Keep track of all you spend and over the next few months it will start to become natural.

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