Caoineag's Personal Finance Blog

My friend managed to get a contract job for about 2 weeks. This means $600 less dollars I need to give her. WooHoo! She has also been doing a good job of staying within budget which is better than I did with my first budget. We will probably do a quick talk about next month's budget this weekend since I should deposit the money into her account then anyways.

She has the budget printed out and on her frig so she won't go over so she is definitely committing to this whole budgeting thing. Its still difficult for her to imagine a budget that actually covers everything but time will help with that (her previous concept of a budget had no place for groceries, gas or personal expenditures, not very useful).

Now I just have to wait impatiently until next month for my next debt payoffs. I hate waiting...

Figure I would put this here to avoid taking up a lot of space in the SA blog comments. That and I believe this is a little subjective.

I need a budget because it shows me how I am spending my money. It gives me a way of measuring whether or not I am meeting my goals and allows me to see if there is something that I need to change.

Money doesn't just buy things, it allows you to buy experiences as well. I realized at a very young age that most people like to accumulate things while I like to accumulate experiences. I like to travel, to read, to hike, to bike, to listen to music, to play video games, to eat and to watch movies.

Some of these things are more tangible than others but these are the things I truly value. Almost all of these valued experiences require material stuff so by no means am I claiming to be non-materialistic. In fact, these enjoyable activities can result in the accumulation of too much stuff if I am not careful so I work hard to keep the clutter down.

My point with all of this, is that I want my budget to reflect what I enjoy. I don't want to waste a lot of money on clothing, jewelry, transportation, housing, decorations or knickknacks. I don't care about these things, they are fairly irrelevant to my happiness and can get in the way of something I do care about.

As much as I enjoy eating out, at one point it was eating up too much of my money and not allowing me to spend on my other hobbies. I also let clothing get out of hand because I don't enjoy shopping so instead of hunting sales I would buy what I needed when I needed it. I couldn't see that until I had a budget. That doesn't mean I need to be a slave to it, but I do need to be able to occasionally look at my numbers and make sure I am still doing what I want to be doing.

My favorite poster as a child said "If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else." A budget is my way of knowing where I am going.

Okay, I will take a stab. I have tried to live my life having the goal of no regrets but I have made my share of mistakes.

1. I regret taking chemistry my first semester of college. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have lost my scholarship and that would have saved me 20k in student loans.

2. I regret not discussing money issues with husband before marrying. If I had, I would have discovered that my husband didn't really know anything about personal finances and we could have saved ourselves at least 10k of credit card debt, if not more.

3. I regret that we expanded to fill our income and then some when we moved out here. Its as if I forgot everything I already knew about money simply because I suddenly had more of it.

4. I regret that I didn't restart my retirement savings until last year. Poor financial decisions on my part resulted in my retirement savings starting over at age 26 when originally I had started at age 23.

5. I regret that I have a spender mentality. I am not sure why I have a spender mentality but its definitely been something I have had to work around.

6. I regret not trying to talk my friend out of buying a car at a dealership on her own. I have paid dearly (enough to buy a decent car outright) for her mistake because I wasn't actually willing to let her lose her apartment and wreck her credit further. While she still probably would have bought a car, I might have convinced her to pay attention to the total cost instead of focusing solely on the monthly payment.

7. I regret that I didn't realize immediately that my husband was incapable of telling me no. Simply being aware of this fact would have made me examine his side of the finances more closely. Now I know to interrogate my husband if I want to do something beyond what is budgeted.

8. I regret never having a written down budget until this past year. I always tried to keep monthly bills low but never had an overall plan.

9. In relation to number 8, I regret never having saved up for my really big ticket items. Its only been in the past year that I have actually saved in advance instead of taking a couple of months to pay off the financing. While I never paid a lot in interest, it was still a very bad habit to get into and lead to higher debt in the long run.

10. I regret that I let my obsession with food consume so much of our disposable income. I don't even want to consider how much money we have spent on food over the past 7 years together. I will never stop being obsessed with food but I can restrict it to a reasonable portion of our income.

I have a credit card that tracks my credit score and the latest was 729, woohoo! Unfortunately and fortunately, that will probably be the last update until I go to buy a house because you have to have activity on the card for it to track the score. And since I just paid it off completely, no more activity.

My stimulus check is no longer going to go to debt. The $1200 check from the gov will go towards my friend's living expenses to keep her afloat through the upcoming month since she still hasn't found work. The good news on that front is that she has an interview on Monday for a full time job in her field. Its less money than she would like but she can't afford to be picky with her lack of experience.

Hopefully we will know more in about two weeks.

First the good news, as of 5/16, I will be down to only 2 credit cards with balances (1 of the 2 is 0% apr).

Now the bad news. My friend that had been doing well finding temp work hit a dry spell and needed money so as to not crash and burn. It was only $800 but that is money that was originally scheduled for debt repayments so my payoff this month will be lower.

I am getting her more comfortable with the idea of budgeting and I am helping her track it more frequently. I think once we get her used to the idea of an allowance, she will not do the starvation/binge cycle that she always does.

Its still slow progress getting her used to it since her parents taught her nothing about finance and she never took any classes on it either (in fact, her parents are the worst examples ever so don't want her to emulate them).

However, she is starting to be a bit more savvy and the constant exposure to our budget is helping her grow more comfortable with finance. She is beginning to really want to develop an emergency fund so she isn't in constant panic mode and she is willing to work to get herself to that point.

Her big holdup at the moment is steady employment. Mind you, if she had ever built an emergency fund I wouldn't have to bail her out but baby steps, at least she is going to try living on a reasonable budget. I have even gotten her to agree that she isn't allowed to spend more than $20 on a person till she has an emergency fund set up (yes this is an issue).

I am still on schedule to payoff in August but a couple more setbacks like that could start to impact the payoff date. Hopefully she gets a contract or a full time gig soon. She has definitely been applying for stuff.

If you knew me, then you would realize how unbelievable this is. I actually went this entire week without buying myself an out to eat lunch. Everything was leftovers (even if it was leftovers from eating out at night which was bought and paid for using husband's b-day money).

I wasn't even doing it on purpose until Thursday when I realized it and then decided I would not eat out that day.

I don't even think I can remember the last time that has happened. It been at least a couple of months.

I acquired my debt for one item at a time. I always knew the full amount I was paying for that item and made the choice that it was worth it.

What I don't understand even 6 months later was how my friend who bought a car justified to herself accumulating a 10k (actually 14k once interest is added in) car loan when 3 months earlier she made that kind of money in a year...

Yes she had a new job at that time that paid better and was up to 30k per year (she lost the job within 3 months) but she had just moved cross country, no ef but she was comfortable buying this car.

Do people really only see the monthly payments? She told herself she could afford $200 per month without calculating the cost of gas and insurance. She realizes she went overboard now but I still don't see how you could just go and buy a car (she only spent a few hours shopping before she closed on it)without thinking about the fact that she could have bought one for 1/3 of the price.

Maybe I don't get it because I don't feel the need to own a car? I mean this loan has a strong chance of outliving her car.

I just don't get it.

By and by, so far she has managed to make ends meet doing temp work so she is doing okay. I need to help build a new budget and actually figure how much she needs to save for her goals which I will probably help her with this weekend. (Hence the reason I was thinking about it.)

My dear husband has joined the forum instead of just lurking and is going by the name of Cylenchar now.

I have to laugh because one of the things we have in common is dragging the same user name around to various forums.

So don't be surprised if our stories sound remarkably similar, we have been together for 7 years now, lol.

Hmmm..no wonder we have been able to be over budget without needing extra money. A quick glance at my dh's salary resulted in my realizing I had his salary too low. We went from being in the red theoretically to being in the black by $400 per month. Minor detail...

No this won't require me to take on more debt or slow down payment. It just means that next month I need to be on the skimpy side with the budget.

So the rest of this month and next month we will eat out of our pantry (we need to do this anyway).

No more toys in May (given what we have gotten, that shouldn't be a problem, lol).

Reduce the amount of eating out over the next two and a half weeks.

No more bad luck (losing bus pass, forgetting lunch at home on the counter, etc). Yeah I know, I can't completely control this one but I will do a lot better if I don't have anything else go wrong this month.

Frankly, I am not in a bad place, I just spent a little more than I should have (husband is not guilty, he only spent his allowance). Given my past splurges, this one was relatively teeny so I am headed in the right direction.

I have to admit, I think its a little weird seeing financial blogs on Saving Advice. I understand that a lot of people come here seeking advice but the majority of people want to learn how to fix things themselves, aka they are DIYers. They don't want to read a blog that sounds like a sales pitch.

As to linking to other sites, why? Why not just maintain that other site? I guess the saturation must be bringing in more business but the natural skeptic in me harummphs every time I see a new one pop up.

I visit plenty of personal finance blogs outside of saving advice but they are the ones just like the ones here, personal attempts to take control of one's own finances.

I am not suggesting they need to be banned or anything, I just don't see the point. Aren't they sort of preaching to the choir here?

Nothing too much happening so far this month. I did get a Nintendo DS to occupy me on my bus rides home from work so my allowance for the month has been spent but I am happy with the purchase.

I had been debating one for about 4 months but I kept remembering my old fashioned green screen gameboy from way back when and how I couldn't stand that bad of a screen anymore with my eyesight. Walmart of course had one demonstrating and I realized that handhelds have come a very long way since my gameboy. My husband is so impressed with it that he is considering getting one of his own.

Our anniversay is coming up at the end of this month/beginning of next month and I got my husband a kumquat tree and lemon tree. He is excited and this weekend we should go get large pots to stick them in when they arrive. He hasn't told me my gift yet because he likes to surprise (and I suspect he doesn't yet know himself).

Normally we aren't big special occasion celebraters but this will be the first time we could take time off for it so we are excited about a 4 day weekend.

We even have money set aside for the weekend since our savings is currently used for vacations, clothing and house downpayment. So no budget blowing.

So we have saltwater tanks which runs the electricity up. We got fed up with our 125 gallon tank having sump issues and set up only our 55 gallon in its stead (no sump, so no more frustration for the moment).

My electricity bill is down to $70 and some change! Very happy, especially since gas doubled in price (literally) so both utility bills had added about $50 above normal in a very short time. My DH has been turning off phantom charge items too so he will be pleased when I tell him how far the bill has dropped.

Another $1000 payment has been made and I have a $1700 one scheduled two weeks from now. This will leave only $500 on this particular card so it will be paid off in the beginning of May.

We have decided to up our out to eat budget to $200 from $100. While the $100 let us get caught up last year, its no longer necessary and we really enjoy eating a variety of food (we tend to do vietnamese cuisine at the moment, something I definitely do not know how to cook at home). We also have room in our budget to do it without reducing anything else thanks to bonuses.

Oh and the highlight of this month is I will cross the 10k threshold.

Once I am finished with the debt, I think I will switch to doing the net worth thing. I will be in the negative for a little bit but as of this February it will be positive (and then it will go negative again because we will have bought a house, lol). It should be an interesting year with househunting and so on.

So since my DH has received an increase in base pay and a larger than anticipated bonus, we get to make an extra payment of $500. This means that we will be paying $3000 on credit cards this month! :O

That is almost 1.5 times my income. Oh and I am moving the payoff date from September to August since we only need a half payment in August to finish off the credit cards. I swear I already tried to do this once, must have gotten distracted. Now a really neat trick is if we could finish everything in July! But don't count on it, lol.

We have also decided that no matter what, we are not resigning another lease at our current place. We could live in a shack and still be better off than our current place. So we will try to find a house before February. Our price range is up to $75k (because we are cheap not because we couldn't officially afford more and we want to be able to put 10% down, have closing costs and still have a couple thousand in the bank for repairs, currently shooting for 18k+.)

Obviously this won't be a perfect house from the get go but if we don't have to boil water to have hot water for a couple of months, if we don't have a broken thermostat for 3 months and if we don't have the smell of paint thinner permeating the air from the apartment next door being remodeled it will be better than where we currently are.

$1700 payments make rather large dents in credit card debt.

Every two months until the payoff date, I should be getting rid of a card. Course what really matters is that the debt is gone not how many cards it is on.

Its nice knowing by this fall, the cards will all be gone and we can begin the down payment fund.

I haven't added a single thing to the debt since December which is nice because every time before I would take one step back for every two steps forward. I think this means that I have finally figured out a budget that works for us. Very useful.

Hope everyone has a good Monday!

because I was too dreadfully ill to do so. 5 days of only cereal does wonders for the grocery and out to eat budgets even when you do have to buy medication.

Oh, fyi Wal-tussin (Walgreen brand) tastes a lot better than Robotussin and its much cheaper.

Hurray, time to start the pay off again. I am starting with $406 which isn't a lot but my big payoffs come at the end of the month.

Me, impatient, never!

Here's my little rant for the day.

Don't live solely for tomorrow! It may never come!

Maybe my background colors my view on this but having watched my mother die at the age of 36 and having had my father go through 2 back surgeries before the age of 40, I have to say, not everyone is going to make it to retirement healthy and hale.

I am all for preparing to live forever, just remember to enjoy life a little along the way. Too many posts lately have suggested having absolutely no fun and I don't understand the scrouge complex.

I get that a lot of people want everything now, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have anything now. Balance people, balance. If spending too much is a problem, then so is refusing to do anything because it might cost money.

Frugal is being aware of how you spend your money but you become cheap when your "frugality" begins to make people miserable (including yourself).

*steps off soapbox*

I apologize, I have just encountered too many posts lately that seemed hyper critical of enjoying life's journey a little. Lord knows I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to judging what I deem to be overindulgence (I am working on overcoming this hypocritical stance) but I can't see judging someone for wanting a little pleasure in the day to day living. So long as they are moving in the right direction, they should be able to enjoy themselves.

My DH got a rather large increase to his base pay yet again thanks to the company restructuring the bonuses. It means the high won't be quite as high but he is guaranteed more. It doesn't change our budget because we already were guestimating a certain amount for bonuses but its nice to have a bit more certainty.

We went out to eat to celebrate and spent $17 total. It was really just an excuse to eat out but that is a small enough splurge to not be an issue. Especially since that is all we are spending.

This month I will have fun updating the ticker, we will be paying in full a $2100 credit card. Now I just have to wait for March, grrr...

is about to save me a lot of money. My DH and I have recently turned into major tea drinkers and the lack of bulk tea in our area is breaking the bank. What I have been paying for 3 ounces will pay for a pound of tea.

Needless to say, this should help my grocery bill immensely.

While on the website, I also noticed they have 1/4 lbs of spices for cheaper than I can buy them in bulk locally so next time I need spices I will be keeping this in mind. Obviously this won't help most people but when you cook almost everything from scratch, you tend to burn through the spices.

I discussed with DH our finances last night. Found out that we have exceeded his allowance for out to eat food, yet again. He decided that the easiest way to avoid that is he will actually start pulling the cash out at the beginning of the month and when we run out, we run out.
He will do the same with his allowance or fun money too.

Me, I just need to stop spending. Since we seem to need something from the grocery store every week, I will translate my grocery money into a weekly limit instead of a bi-weekly limit. $60 per trip should get that expense back down to size. Also, only one grocery store per weekend. The double trips are really killing the budget.

No more eating out at work, that isn't where I want to spend my money so its time to crack down(AGAIN, and I was doing so well before January).

Fortunately, despite our setbacks, we are still on time to our payoff date. We just need to be very careful and make sure we pay attention to what we are doing.

Just plugging along. I did a 0% balance transfer to avoid paying the rate hike that Bank of America is doing. This brings my interest down below 7% for total credit card debt. I wasn't going to do this because I have been paying the card quickly but I can't beat 0% and it will allow me to pay them a little bit quicker.

I think I might make March an eat up what we have month since we have been over the top the past two months. Part of the issue here is trying to eat healthy by eating more fruits, vegetables and fish. The other part is feeding the friend who is struggling at the moment, especially since she has no idea how to cook and thinks TV dinners are good meals.

I didn't spend anything this weekend (noteworthy only because weekends are when I usually go grocery shopping now). DH bought us one meal at Brother's BBQ (very yummy)and the rest of the weekend we stayed home and relaxed.

Finally perfected a crusty artisan bread thanks to Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois' book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Love the fact that it takes almost no time.

Of course this means we will be spending lots more on balsamic vineagar and olive oil but there are meals that are far worse for us then bread and this dip.

Still contemplating how to adjust my clothing budget so I don't run out of clothes. Think I might have a plan so I will give that a shot and see how it works.

So I ended up tweaking my allowance. As much as I want to be debt free, having a too aggressive payoff that doesn't allow for clothing, vacations or any splurge money qualifies as needing adjustment.

Its only $50 but it will give me some breathing room for both things I need and things I want.

I am getting this money by dropping my 2 credit cards that I am not currently doing massive payments on to their min. payments.

Part of the reason I need to do this is that I have other expenses that have climbed on me.

New Budget
Water and Sewer $40
Savings $25
IRA $150
Cell Phones for 2 $84
CC1 $68
Electricity $110
Cable Internet $62
CC2 $126
CC3 $1700 + any monthly bonus from DH (est ~$500)
Groceries $250 (if this goes over, it comes from my allowance)
My Allowance $160
Netflix $15
Student Loan $194
Bus Pass $60
His Allowance $250 (vacation money needs to come from this as well)
Rent $750
Eating Out $100

One thing you will notice is that this is a budget that includes money from both DH and I. We are working together to get rid of my credit cards so that we can be debt free by September.

So I have an allowance now. Its not a big one, but its an allowance that is guilt free.

I just found out that Masterpiece Theatre has released some new Jane Austin redos on DVD and fanatic that I am I really really want them.

Only problem, is that I was already planning on buying 2 very nice pair of boots for work, one black and one brown to replace the 2 pair that are almost completely worn through. I have good reason to believe that these nice boots are almost sold out and need to be bought quickly if I really want them.

So do you know what will happen? I will buy the movies and just not get the boots. This is how I ended up with such a limited wardrobe in the first place. There is always something that I want more than clothes.

At least I only buy movies that I know I will watch obsessively, the rest I see through netflix.

I suppose I could afford 1 pair of boots and all the DVD's but then I would be broke.

Nope, my footwear will simply have to limp along and make it through the end of the season. I knew I should have had them resoled before I wore through the main part of the heel...

Vet finally called me after I left her a message asking what the status of the results were. The results came back negative for any problems. She did back off of claiming that my dog was dying and didn't ask for us to come back until 6 months down the road.

When I asked her if dehydration could affect the results since my dog hates water, she admitted that it could have been responsible for the high values. She didn't really explain why no one had asked me about that when they got the high results.

I am currently looking at a vet that does housecalls (our dog was literally shaking the last couple of times we took him to the vet so housecalls seem less tramatic). I have had a vet that did housecalls before back in Michigan and she was great so I am a bit biased in their favor. They tend to actually listen to you and learn about the animal.

My pug has cost a lot of money this month. Took him in for his shots and annual checkup. He kidney values were a little high (1/10 % off from normal) so they did a urine and blood work up. The urine was fine but the kidney value was still above normal so now we are waiting on the results of yet another urine test. (Can you see the dollar amounts climbing?)

After all this, we will need to come back in 3-6 months for yet another blood workup. If that one is still at that level they might accept that it is normal for him or they may want to go out another 3-6 months to make sure its normal.

In other words, all this may be for nothing. In fact, given that the urine test was fine and my pug likes to take 6 mile walks and then bounces around the house after said walks, kidney failure or even pre kidney failure is highly unlikely.

But this didn't stop our vet from talking like kidney failure was a foregone conclusion...As if panicking us for no good reason isn't bad enough, I saw on the receipt of our latest visit that they claimed we were overdue for 3 shots!!!

Ask them to check since we were just in for shots, the receptionist has to go to the paper file to realize, oh yes, you did just get those. At the time of the shot visit(previous week's appointment), I had to remind the lady with our paper file that yes, we had just gotten the bordetello shot and were not overdue...

The combination of not being able to keep track of the shots our dog needs and doesn't need and panicking us on something that may turn out to be nothing is not making us very happy with our vet.

I know when the vet calls today with the results of the urine test (which according to her is most likely going to be negative for urinary infection), she is going to try and get us back in 3 months from now and its not going to happen. 6 months I can see but not 3 months. If we saw changes in anything, we would bring him in sooner but nothing has changed.

Even though their prices seem to be on par and they are really conveniently located, we may need to find a vet with a better bedside manner who we don't have to constantly second guess (just ask me about the time they wanted me to pay them to pull baby teeth rather than wait for them to fall out).

This was provoked by BA's blog

My dh and I recently started making our own pasta from scratch and we have discovered that half whole wheat and half unbleached flour make the best pasta.

Its flavorful while still having a nice texture.

The best part of making our own pasta is that we can jazz it up since plain old pasta is boring. That and now we can't run out when we want to make something.

Now if I could just convince DH that we use a lot of flour. We keep running out because cooking from scratch goes through a lot of it and he looks at a half full container and can't imagine us using it up (two recipes later we are completely out...)

So I will be getting this card. It's 1% back on everything which means its going to become my bill card. It also has more cash back based on merchants. Once the rewards reach $50, they mail you a check automatically.

Its better in every way than my other cash reward card so I can get rid of that once all my credit cards are paid off.

I am pleased because I have been currently using one of my unrewarding credit cards as a test run for bill paying and it has worked but I don't get anything back.

I do think I won't fully switch to a credit card bill paying method until all the old credit card debt is gone but for now it works well to balance out the grocery and household need items.It also ensures less hassle if someone gets ahold of my credit card number.