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I got to spend this past weekend in San Francisco, and had an amazing time. What an incredible city. From Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, Napa and Sonoma, Alcatraz and all the piers, my group and I did it up big. We ate out at nice restaurants, bought souvenirs and saw all the sights. We took the red-eye back to Atlanta on Monday and after taking an extended nap (I somehow made it to work that day); I sat down to make sense of my spending.

Wow, no budget could have prepared me for the expenses I had. My wife was able to join me and as we’ve combined our finances, everything was twice the cost. My head started spinning and my eyes couldn’t make sense of it all. $60 for Alcatraz…$20 for a taxi, $27 on dinner before wifey joined me, $9 for coffee in the a.m. (So much for my $3 latte concept). Dang, thank goodness we had such a good time out there. As I started to make sense of it all, I told myself that it would be ok. I’d brown bag it and not eat out for the next two weeks. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, follow these steps to help you get thru it:

1) Take a quick breather. I went to work for most of Monday and took a nap before even thinking about my budget.
2) Put a temporary freeze on your spending for the day. Pack your lunch and eat in that first night after the storm. It’ll help you calm down a bit and you’ll feel better by not having spent money that first day back.
3) Gather up those receipts. Open your bank account info and your credit card statement. Start to organize them all in chronological order as you make sense of where your money went. Try your best to include all your expenses, avoiding recording an expense or two is a bad habit and can lead you down a dangerous road of not staying on top of your finances.
4) However you keep track via your budget, record those expenses. For me, I type them all into an excel spreadsheet. Manually putting in my expenses one by one is quite painful at times and ensures that I spend my money wisely. Maybe you do it all online. Reviewing your totals for the weekend to know where you stand is crucial.
5) Make a plan going forward. All in all, how bad did your weekend end up being? How will it affect your budget for the rest of the month? Anything that you’ll need to cut out or minimize? By getting in this right frame of mind, you’ll be able to overcome whatever financial hole you momentarily dug yourself into.

We all have weekends like my past weekend, and they aren’t even necessarily a bad thing. We all spend our money one way or another. As long as we stick within our budgets at month’s end, we’ll end up ok. We only have one life on this earth, definitely spend your money, and just spend it wisely!

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