Where did you spend your money?

This is something that is of discussion in our household this time of year every year.  We end up in December with a lot of expenses for Christmas and Birthday parties.  We are in reflective time thinking about how we want to spend our money in the future.  We start planning goals for the next year and we wonder how did we make so much and save so little.  This year was especially hard for my extended family having helped them out impacted our savings a great deal.  Having two girls in daycare was hard on us too. Money is a source of worry for Jake and a source of guilt for me and stress between us.  We have plans to make a new budget in January which will help to account for occasional expenses and cyclical expenses, in addition to the monthly expenses hopefully that will help to ensure savings are saved.