The Shopping Nazi

Once again, how much is enough? How much square footage does a person REALLY need?  How many rooms in a house are full of “stuff?”

When I was growing up my dad would cash his pay check, bring it home and put divide it up by putting it in envelopes. Each envelope was to represent a bill that needed to be paid. This was one generation from putting money in a set of jars, with each jar committed to a bill.

On the other extreme I have talked to some people of the younger generations who keep a rough running total in their head. For some reason the vast majority of these people are overdrawn on their checking, for reasons they cannot understand.

In my junior and senior year of high school we had a special class on budgeting. It included a handwritten a ledger. We had to keep a running total of outgoing and incoming money. Today, I use a little easier method of tracking our family finances; it is called Quicken.

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