Woohoo! My bonus being added to my debt money was a very nice addition. I am debating how much to make dh pitch in on stuff. I may just let him splurge for a little bit since he paid off his 20k. He's earned it. Sides, he is picking up the tax bill this year so that is a big one off my list. I think I will just make him pay for any travelling we want to do.

Oh, here is the latest version of my budget if anyone is interested.

Savings $25
Roth IRA $150
Water and Sewer $45 (actual range is $35-45)
Cellular phone for 2 $84
CC1 $100 (balance 3403)
Electricity $100 (actual range $80-100)
Cable internet $62
CC2 $150 (balance 6326)
CC3 $800 (balance 7053)
Groceries $250
Allowance $150
Netflix $10
Student Loan $194
Bus Pass $60 (my work pays for one of them)

CC4 has been paid off. Normally I would snowball but in this case, my big monster has the worst apr by far at 10.99%.

Now I just have to pretend that I am a patient person.

So my dh got his promotion he was hoping for along with a pay raise and chances for bonuses. So a couple of changes to his budget.

A bonuses will go to the downpayment fund

$1000 per month to the downpayment fund

$250 to his allowance and any expenses that crop up (so the majority of this to the downpayment fund as well).

All in all, this will definitely make our goal of getting a house next February more achievable.

As of this past Friday my husband is debt free. So that would be the first half of the debt eliminated (yes, you read that correctly, half). Starting this month, he will begin to fill up the house downpayment fund and next month he will start receiving an allowance to do with as he wants!

This is actually a month ahead of schedule thanks to overtime.

So now all that is left is mine, no pressure there...

I have yet again upped my monthly retirement contribution by $50. Its my reward for getting my expenses under control and a way of making sure I don't spend that money frivously. After all, I spend what I have so if its not in my pocket, I can't spend it.

I was debating whether to put it towards debt or retirement but the problem there lies in the fact that I tried that last year and made no progress on my debt. So I figured this way I would know I made progress of some sort. Though I must admit, the little debt ticker is useful in that I can see when I have stalled or failed completely.

I have also received a $10 Panera Gift Card from Mypoints.com. I am very happy about that. I have a feeling that any eating out we do this month will occur in the last week. My business trip cured me of wanting to eat out,lol.

So I finally updated my ticker. The problem being that for some reason I ended up spending money on one of my credit cards so I wasn't actually making progress. Now I am going to have to look at the last two months and figure out what I messed up in my budget so it doesn't happen again.

Oh now I see it, out to eat and helping my friend out longer than I thought I would have to. Well, the out to eat is to expected, we just switched from $250 per month to $100 per month and I never do well during the initial transition and the other is over. So my budget should be fine now.

On a positive note, this month I have done extremely well and next month is when all of my husband's cards and one of mine get paid off. I am definitely going to enjoy that.

So for those of you curious, here is what my new budget is going to look like:

Savings $25
IRA $100 (still debating taking this to $200 prior to paying off next cc)
Utility $50
Phone $84
CC#2 $700 (CC#1 will be gone in one week)
Electric $90
Cable $62
CC#3 $150
CC#4 $200
Groceries $250
Entertainment/Travel $100
Lunch/spend money $100
DVD rental $10
Student Loan $194
Bus Pass $54 (or whatever the price rises to since it should be going up in Jan)

Husband's will be:
Rent $700
Eating Out $100
Down payment savings $800 + bonuses and extra pay periods

Hmmm...not pretty. I just added up all of my expenses and I am not impressed.

So for 2007, on my end of things I have only been paying $140 per month on credit cards which covers only interests...So yea, I am not digging deeper, but I am not making progress either and now I can see why. No wonder people resort to cutting the cards up.

*Sigh* Two steps forward, one step back. At least my dh will be debt free as of January.

The good news is that eating out is no longer my budget killer...the bad news is that my toys now are the budget killer.

The good news in that is that I no longer have any toys I want..the bad news is that I am sure something else will come along to destroy my next budget. Grrr.

Okay, enough self-pity. This is what I will do. As of Jan, I will make sure the budget will have room for entertainment, clothing and "miscellaneous" expenses by using this year's expenses as an example. I have seen where I can downsize and will accordingly do so.

Boy, I should start paying attention to things that promise me money. I just received $2.00 today in my paypal account from Esearch.com. It was only when they mentioned for what survey that I remembered it. Well that's nice at least. Not that I know what I am going to do with $2.00 in my paypal account, lol. I will probably wait till I get another payment and then cash it into my account.

So I noticed with one of my one survey companies, surveyspot that their question section kept mentioning my account but I didn't have access to a member's area. So, looked a little farther down this time and realized that they did have a link to a member's area and that you had to request them to cut you a check (this little thing only took me two months to figure out *sigh*.)

So now I have a $37 check for my first round of surveys coming to me. I figure I will use survey money to supplement my out to eat budget since I really love eating out but its way too expensive.

So I have been waiting to find out the size of my raise and my boss gave it to me today. It will mean almost $200 extra per month (take home) which is nice. That will help me eliminate some of my debts a little quicker and then go straight to the downpayment for a house.

I may have to use some of that though to replace my mp3 player that I broke. Something about bouncing off a marble floor while shutting down is just not healthy for it (I have only dropped this one 3 or 4 times *sigh*). Have I mentioned I am clutzy? I will have to price shop for a little while to see what I can find. They are definitely worth it despite the fact that I kill them within a year from the constant dropping on concrete.

I have decided that having two weekend plans and suddenly having a social life all in the same month is very painful for my budget.

Its been at least a year since I needed money transferred to my account so that I wasn't skating towards the edge of overdrafting but today I had to transfer money from my savings account to my checking to make myself comfortable. I don't consider $2 sufficient funds in case something unaccounted for is cashed against my account. Yuck.

Mind you I have a couple hundred sitting in my account but there is a potential 2-day gap between when most of that goes to bills and I get paid again. I suppose I could have let up on my debt payments since they are fairly aggressive but I honestly prefer transferring $25 from my saving account (which pays almost no interest and exists solely for months like this) than slow down the debt repayment. Still feel like an idiot though...

Well, got to say. I thought the cost would be worse but we definitely need to behave for the rest of the month.

We did the Royal Gorge Railroad gourmet lunch and it was fantastic. Definitely an awesome experience. Then we went to Garden of the Gods on our way back to Denver (free entry so this didn't cost anything).

We ate out supper at a fairly reasonably priced place and then went and played pool at a pool hall until the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday we went to a friend's house and saw her babies and her for a little bit.

Total damage as of this weekend was under $200 with rental car and gas for driving all over. So overall, not too bad for what we did.

The real trick will be behaving for the next 2 1/2 weeks which is what we need to do in order not to go over our budget.

Next weekend we are definitely staying home except for the couple hours where dh is going to work overtime. I need time to cook, lol.

So my dh's promotion is slowly being figured out. Its currently looking like no increase in base pay but there will be a bonus come December. The other processors figure that he is guaranteed at least 1500 and maybe even as high as 3000. Either way, we are going to use whatever he gets to eliminate one of my credit cards so I can begin saving my share of the house down payment (all his credit cards will be gone by then)and to pay any tax that is due this year.

I won't know about my raise until I get my paycheck on the 31st of this month. Our office administrator is out on maternity leave so its the paycheck that will tell me instead of her. :P

Will be nice when this all comes through so that we can actually plan around it.

So because this month has had a lot of expenses in it, I am going to have $65 to last me the rest of the month. Fortunately that only has to buy groceries and any out to eat lunches (aka there will be no more of those this month).

Main reason I am this poor is because I am trying to double pay some of my bills that keep moving too close to being on the wrong paycheck. I have a community utility bill that must be mailed in that went from the 9th to the 6th and now to the 3rd and I would prefer to have it post on the last paycheck of the month rather than the first of the month.

The other reason I am this poor is because we have two big spending weekends this month and while I saved for them, my friend decided to add on the additional expense of a fancy restaurant on top of everything I am already doing (her birthday party).

The good news is the pantry is stocked, we can afford to experiment with different dishes because we have plenty of ingredients and there is nothing to spend money on beyond this weekend.

The bad news is that I am worried that two and a half weeks of not eating out will kill me. :P Especially since next month I want to switch to only spending $100 instead of $250 of my dh's money on out to eat.

Going out to eat is sort of an addiction for me. I need to break that habit. I have gotten better (we used to use $400 of my dh's money for out to eat) but I really need to still cut back. Especially since that doesn't count the $100 I spend on out to eat food...

*Takes a deep breath and begins to chant under her breath, I think I can, I think I can...*

I have been so good with my budget lately that I finally feel comfortable switching my monthly contribution to my IRA from $50 to $100. I had only had the IRA going for 2 months now but the $50 was my way of leveraging in.

I am one of those weird people that have to gradually take money away from myself. Its why I would never consider having a joint account with my dh, I spend what I have and that would be asking too much of me. Forced savings, as a result, work really well for me.

The $100 monthly IRA contribution is my reward for doing well. I like to watch the money go up. I had a 401(k) at my college job and I literally watched it go down for the next two years. I learned my lesson from that, conservative just means you can never make up what you lose. :P

This new one is in T. Rowe Price's Retirement 2050 Fund and once I have a couple k in there, I will probably add an international index fund to add a little more diversity. All in all very happy with this one and its historical profile. Its also nice that the $10 per year fee goes away after you reach $4k which should be sometime next year...

Okay, here is the current view of my financial life.

My Income: $2000

My Budget:

Savings: $25
IRA: $50
Common Utilities: $40
Cell Phones (for 2): $84
Electricity: $110
Cable Internet: $62
Student Loan: $194
Netflix: $10
Bus Pass: $54
Groceries: $200
Extras: $200
Card 1: $500 (was 6.99 then they realized they weren't making any money so now 15.69, yuck. on ~$1500)
Card 2: $200 (11.24 on ~8500)
Card 3: $150 (11.28 on half/ 5.99 on other half ~6000)
Card 4: $100 (8.99 on ~2500)

So obviously, things changed on me. Since my 15.69 card will be paid off in December, I am not going to bother trying to replace them. They just changed the apr this month which is why Card 3 has 2 rates, instead of one. Also, 4k of this is from moving the friend out. I realized awhile back that my first budget wasn't agressive enough to deal with things that might crop up so, believe it or not, we have paid a lot of debt off even on my side of the equation.

His income: $1800

His Budget:

Rent: $700
Out to Eat: $250
Rest to credit cards. His last one is gone in December.

Come January his budget becomes, $700 to rent, $350 for miscellaneous expenses, and $800 to saving for house.

Mine switches in April, with the elimination of Card 1 and Card 4. That $600 will go to saving for a house.

I have done the calculations quite a bit and no matter which way you split it, if I want to get into a home next fall, my last two credit cards need to be paid off far less agressively. We have this lease through Feb 09 and we are going to be moving into a house of our own. Thanks to the recent fall out of the housing market, our range of $65-$100k buys a decent house close to downtown.

I know it costs interest on the credit cards to do it this way, but I am sick and tired of dealing with new landlords every 6 months to a year. Especially since each one gets progressively worse...

Oh, and what you aren't seeing in my dh's column is that he now has a 401(k) which is why his pay hasn't changed.

What is also not showing is my raise in late October and the fact that my husband has just been promoted. My raise will go straight to card 2 and 3 and his, well, we aren't sure what his will be so we will adjust when we have it. It will probably go straight to the housing fund.

Obviously, something needed to be done. My dh's credit cards had the worst apr's so they had to go first.

My Income: $1800

My Budget:

Cell Phone (for 2): $80
Electricity: $80
Cable Internet/TV: $120
Student Loan: $205
Bus Pass: $54
Groceries & Extras: $600
Card 1: $300
Card 2: $150
Card 3: $400
Card 4: $0 (not due until a year later)

His Income: $1800

His Budget:

Rent and Common Utilities: $750
Out to Eat and Shopping Trips: $400
The rest to his 3 credit cards in order of apr.

As you can see, this is a cut but not a drastic one. It hurt at the time though. We had gotten used to doing what we wanted when we wanted.

However, this looks nothing like our current budget...

Okay folks, here are my scary numbers. This was what I started with without realizing it had gotten this far out of hand.

Take home income for me: $1800

Bills for me:

Cell Phone(for 2): $82
Electricity: $80
Cable Internet/TV: $120
Groceries and Extras: $800
Student Loan: $205
Bus Pass: $54
Card 1: $200 (11.24apr on ~$9000)
Card 2: $150 (6.99apr fixed on ~$3000)
Card 3: $300 (11.28 apr on ~$6000)
Card 4: $0 (0%apr/0 payment until due, ~$2400)

As you can probably guess from payment size to balance size, I wasn't paying the minimum, I was paying more. Honestly, I have never just paid the minimum and would have sought debt counseling if I was.

Here is where the upset came in.

Takehome income for him: $1800

Bills:

Rent and common utilities: $750
Out to eat: $400-600
Shopping trips: $200-300
Card 1: min (12.9apr on ~$3000)
Card 2: min (11.99 apr on ~$4200)
Card 3: min (8.99 apr on ~$900)

I hadn't realized my dh had credit cards or was paying just the min. on them. Ouch. Needless to say, when I sat down to discuss finance with him and found these, I was a little shocked. I had thought I was taking what debt was needed and that then we would together pay it off after moving and everything. (By and by, I had been sitting him down so that we could do a budget to pay off the credit cards, I just hadn't realized how much we needed to pay off.)

This lead us to do our first budget...