The end of a chapter

Well here it is another semester has ended.  It has been a long summer of homework and studies.  But it is nice to be able to have come this far and expanded my knowledge even more.  I was in a money management class and also a statistics class.  It has been mind boggling but I SURVIVED.

I'm thankful for my money management class and the things it taught me this semester.  While none of it was new information, it is always good for a review.  It helps also helps us set goals to be better.  This semester I downloaded an app for my phone to track my expenses.  This is easy to use and has been very helpful.  It is great to see where all the money goes.  I even gone to the lengths of budgeting my small amount that I get every two weeks for groceries.  This has been helpful because then I have been able to see the averages that I am spending at each location.  This has helped me to be more aware and I'm hoping that this will be help me to be better.  I have to be better.  Last month we went way over budget and then had to break into our savings account.  This seems to happen too frequently.  There is this great urgency within me to stop erratic behavior.  I have to stop the "free" spending.  I'm not saying that I'm awful but enough that it causes us to really crunch the numbers.  We have to do something different as a family so that we can be putting money aside each month instead of losing our savings trying to catch up each month.  Our prophets have told us to have a financial reserve.  It is kind of a suffocating feeling when we don't have a reserve.