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[quote=Anonymous]A lot of little things!
Can I say one abstract thing?  Thinking of budget categories in the bigger picture. Perhaps looking at the monthly X budget or the annual Y budget and seeing it differently than weekly/monthly. When you think of X budget (say groceries) as a larger whole, you realize all the little mistakes you make.

For example, eating out. Seeing what we spent over 4 months, I realized we could have gone out to a fancy child-free restaurant every week, and paid for a short babysitter.  Instead we were racking up $10 at ice cream shop, $20 at chick fil a, $25 at takeout, etc etc. Seeing the big picture shows me it's possible to live better. If I wanted to spend the same (I don't, I want to spend less), we could be trying out that hard-to reach restaurant once a month. Therefore, I choose to just eat at home more, but know it's possible to make a dream come true if we feel like it.

Similarly on eating out, lately, we start out the month with $0 in Restaurants budget and a bigger amount in Groceries. If we eat out, it comes out of groceries (we then track it in restaurants). This is just a trick we play to tell ourselves, eating out comes out of 'eating.' It is ALL the same--feeding ourselves--but we can do it more efficiently if we keep that money in Groceries. A choice to eat out is just limiting our ability to stock up/make awesome homemade meals.[/quote]

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