The point of budgeting is not to save every single penny or even to pay off debt, though those are both options. The point of budgeting is to give yourself control- control over where you spend your money.

Placing yourself on a budget does not mean that you can never buy brand name again, or even that you have to clip coupons and only shop the sales. It means that you have determined your priorities and made a conscious decision about how you spend your money.

For example, we choose to spend more money on our electric bill than we need to, because we’re part of the green energy program. We could save a few dollars a month if we needed to, but we don’t, and this a place where we believe our money is doing good.

Along the same lines, we use B99 bio-diesel in our car. That means we’ve been paying over $4/gallon for well over a year. Recently, we’ve been paying $5.25/gallon. We could save money and make our lives more convenient by being willing to use regular diesel, or even B20 or B5 bio-diesel. But we don’t.

We build this extra expense in to our budget and we cut dollars in other areas, ones that aren’t as important to us.