Dear Budget: An Open Apology Letter to my Budget

Dear Budget,

First, I’d like to thank you for all the things you’ve helped me with financially. Thanks to you I paid off the credit card debt and the car, saved for a number of renovations on the house, have more money in the bank, and am debt free (except the mortgage). You’ve certainly been a very dependable friend, and I really appreciate that.

So I want to apologize for ignoring you for the past 2 weeks. I realize that you can’t do this without me and I shouldn’t have abandoned you like that. I want you to know I accept full responsibility for all of this.

I guess I just thought you could fix anything! I mean, it had only been 2 weeks, I didn’t really think it would be that hard to catch things up. It usually only takes me 5 to 10 minutes, but of course, that’s when I update twice a week. I didn’t realize the clean up would take me 2 hours.

Perhaps I didn’t realize that the awareness you offer is meaningless if I don’t pay attention too. Of course – I should know better than this. Our relationship is a two way street and I definitely need to do my part.

I think part of it is that I didn’t realize how transactions would accumulate over that time span, and how that would create more work for me, since I couldn’t remember what anything was for.

A $60 withdrawal on May 25th? What was that for? $49.23 at Wal-mart? Was that all for food? No wait…I was picking up cat food. No wait…that was on the 21st. Wasn’t that a Thursday? But I seem to remember picking up the cat food at Market Basket… Which purchase was for the cat food? What was the other one for? Ugh. I can’t remember. What?!?! I’m overspent on groceries? How did that happen? I thought there was plenty in that category. Oh, I thought I had money set aside for books, but I guess I didn’t. Shoot, now I’m overspent there as well. That purchase really could have waited.

Sigh. I realize now that even though I was busy during the last few weeks, it still would have been quicker to stay on top of things. It took far longer to sort this out than it would have to just find 5 minutes to update you twice a week.

I probably wouldn’t feel nearly as guilty if it wasn’t for the fact that you make it so easy to stay on top of things. If I only had taken advantage of importing transactions, or being more consistent about entering purchases into the iphone app, this never would have happened.

And finally, thanks for helping me clean this little mess up. Importing all those transactions saved me a ton of time and made things go much faster. You reconciled everything for me on the first try. Obviously, I couldn’t expect you to know how to categorize everything since I forgot what most of the purchases were for in the first place. But that’s not your fault. I need to do a better job of keeping you informed.

I appreciate your flexibility as well in letting me move some funds around to cover some things. It’s a little sad that I have less money for the vacation now, but I have no one to blame except myself. At least thanks to you, I had some funds that I could move around. What would I do without you?

I promise to do a better job from now on and I won’t abandon you like that again. Not only do you deserve better, but frankly, I just can’t afford to not do my part.

Thanks for making me aware of that. 🙂

Sincerely, your friend,

Erin