Our nickname for taking control of our finances is BROKEWATCH. We describe things when we’re chatting online during the day as VBWC (”very BROKEWATCH compatible”) or deny each other purchases citing, “Sorry, not during BROKEWATCH.” I’ve been reading a finance guru because I lack even the most basic sense of household money management and we rotate referring to him as Dave Barry, Jeff Ramsey, or even Gordon Ramsey when it comes up in conversation.

I find that a little humor about it definitely helps, especially when we’re working really hard at it. For example, this weekend. We were out of town in Atlanta, our first jaunt without kids since, well, since we’ve had kids. We had free airfare from winning a raffle and a free hotel room from DH’s accumlated points since he used to be a frequent business traveler. We had relatively inexpensive tickets to see the world’s finest baseball team. We opted against a rental car for public transportation and set ourselves a strict food budget limited to our cash on hand and a starbucks gift card we got via coinstar.

And you know what? It was kind of fun. I liked the sense of challenge it gave us. We were more creative, for sure, and everything tasted that much sweeter.