I thumbed through the mail as I walked back to my old silver Mazda,with 300k miles, and a letter from IRS made my heart stop. +

Every time I file my taxes, in a little corner of my mind, I hold my breath and hope we won’t get audited. +

I ripped open the letter, whaa? I didn’t pay enough taxes this year?! To the tune of $806 dollars??+

My shoulders slumped as I threw the mail on the seat next to me. Some days, all I want to do is look for a hole to crawl into, when one large bill after another suckerpunches me right in the gut.

​After all, I used TurboTax and they claim to always be right on the calculations. For 10 years, I’ve never had a problem.+

As I climbed the three flights of stairs, sacks of groceries and a black computer bag on my arms, my tenacious, steel resolve raised its head and slapped me out of my discouragement. Oh no, it’s not over. Don’t go down without a fight, Charissa. You’re not a quitter. +

A familiar voice, the one that always pulled me up out of a negative slump and forced me to do whatever it took to scrape and claw my way to provide for my family and pay cash for my hubby’s school over the last 10 years.+

My mind raced. How can I cut expenses? What ways can I bring in more income? +

Related: Saving Money Like a Boss

First, it’s time to audit my budget and slash expenses since they’ve crept up over the last few busy months. +

When you can get your budget as low as possible for all of your regular expenses, it creates margin so you can back away from the cliff’s edge of a paycheck to paycheck cycle. +

And when you have margin, there’s peace. +

In addition, you can throw big chunks of cash towards your current money dream when you spend less than you earn.+

Now that we’re done with school for good… Praise Jesus, hallelujah! It’s time to kick our savings into high gear. 

We’d like to move into a larger place, need to replace my car, and top off our 3 month emergency fund…. Yes, I’ll take my own advice and focus on one thing at a time, even though I’d like it done yesterday.+

The IRS letter kicked me in the pants to increase my savings, both in personal and business. +

I’ve challenged myself to trim $500 a month before the end of July. Yes, there are a couple of easy places to cut, but the rest will require some creativity and work. I’m up for the challenge. +

Because that means an extra $6,000 in the next year to put towards our current money dreams. Wouldn’t that be nice? +

My plan is to repurpose the $500 I’m able to cut from my regular expenses and put it into my savings account each month. +

Has your expenses crept up like mine? Do you need to put more money into savings? +

Join me and let’s work to trim $500 a month from our expenses. I’ll share here and on social media everything that I’ll do to reach this goal. +

You can find me on Facebook here and Instagram here+

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Over the next couple of months, I’ll...+

• Audit my budget for unnecessary expenses and get rid of them. +

• Review each expense included on my budget to see if I can get a better rate. +

• Be intentional about other ways to save money. +

• Transfer any money I save into another account (not my checking) as soon as I can. +

• Dust off my savings tracker I used back in my Great Savings Experiment when I saved more than $19k in one year.  +

• Track my progress and color a picture.+

Want to join me on my #Save500Challenge? Let’s do this!+

A couple of days later, I sat down and went through my paperwork. Welp… I made a mistake. I had put down what I had paid in estimated taxes from memory, instead of the amounts I had paid and sure enough, I did owe the $806.+

But you know what? I’m grateful to have a business that thrives, even if means more money in taxes. And next year, I want to pay even more in taxes because of incredible growth in my business. Or find legit ways to lower them, haha. I’ll plan to save more so I don’t get another big tax bill. +

And now, I’m pumped to find ways to repurpose $500 each month. I love a good challenge! +

It’s time for a budget audit! +