let's talk about four specific ways that you might be ruining your budget without realizing it number one is not living in reality when you're making your food budget for the month you're like oh I bet we could only spend x amount of the grocery store you know $100 for our family of five or something and then as you go on you keep going over budget month after month over the same category and you just have to realize sometimes hey this has to be more accurate and so you may have to change your numbers which is okay but you want to look back at your own data and just figure out hey what is realistic here.