As you may know from my earlier articles I am a college student and I was talking about the cost of books in the last post. I have since bought the last text book only to receive my car insurance bill in the mail. Which had me thinking on how I should purchase costly items in the future. Which I consider anything over $150 a costly purchase cause I am paid $500 every month.

Currently when I make a big purchase I look at all my accounts, even my business ones. Then I decide if it’s really worth the cost. Which in most cases I end up paying myself extra to cover the price. Making me wished I didn’t do that or that I would pay myself more. Each time I will get the thought of just being like everyone else and using only what I have personally, only to keep on doing this.

So where I want to be is a point where I have enough money in my (personal) account to cover the purchases I know I will be making. One purchase I know is coming up soon is Christmas gifts, even though there’s still another three months I know now I need to make these changes.

• Keep to the budget, keep to the budget, keep to the budget – I cannot express how lazy I’ve gotten on budgeting. I used to set one each month but here lately I haven’t set down and actually created one.
• Have a minimum balance of $100 in my account before I pay myself – I used to have this, until recently. Now by the time I’ve paid myself it seams like half of it is gone since I will delay filling up my tank (~$50/$60) along with funding my E. Fund and other expenses I transfer out. (sometimes $65, other times $25). Which I’m lucky if I have even $20 in my account before payday.
• Set aside money for fun/gifts – This will be new because I haven’t ever set aside money for gifts. But I have had fun money ($15/mo) but I haven’t had a set amount in months so it back fires now since I no longer track it. So when I see an object I want I just check my accounts like I said above and buy it, without thinking if I have any bills or transfers coming up.
• Increase my efforts of paying off my Student Loan – This doesn’t fit here but I can’t help but think about it when I see how much interest I have accrued in 2012 that I have yet to pay back. It’s in the $200 range right now, and the last thing I would want is for it to be capitalized.

So these are the things I need to start doing and change to better be ready for big purchases, with a few goals mixed in. I am going to start working extra on projects I subcontract on and divide the differences between the goals I have listed. I figure that having an extra $50 here or $25 there that I can throw at any of the goals will be a start.