Caoineag's Personal Finance Blog

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.

Okay, so I know compared to some of you superstars, that's not a lot, but it is going to add up overtime.

We went out to eat last night at McDonalds and we normally spend about $12 but we had a buy one get one free for a sandwich so we did a large fry and water with them.

I did the math and was shocked to discover that combo meals aren't deals anymore. Take for example the big mac meal. On their own the big mac costs $2.89 and the med fry $1.00. Back when I worked at McDonalds, add another $0.20 to that and you got the price of a combo. Now you have to add another $1.00 for that to get a combo so the pop is no longer practically free!

Even without the coupon, it would be much cheaper for us to do 2 sandwiches and a large fry ($1.80) with waters than to do 2 combo meals.

So even though the coupon only officially saved us $3, it did save us a lot more just realizing that little fact.

Now I will have to check out Burger King's pricing since that is basically the only other fast food place we hit.

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, just grabbed breakfast and lunch from downstairs. *Sigh* I now need to do 13 more days without eating out but I only made it through 5 this time...

Its a good thing I always have reserve money for when (not if) I blow through my out to eat lunch budget.

As a result of my willpower (or lack thereof), I am going to add a couple of things to my grocery shopping list come November in an attempt to cut out the constant out to eat lunch issue. Its definitely certain items that I am getting from downstairs and I am sure I can make them cheaper and/or buy them cheaper at the grocery store.

So I just got my entertainment book. It has $20 worth of coupons for the store I shop at so I will be able to use those and some of the restaurants we go to as well. My dh was really impressed on how useful it will be.

In the first two weeks of next month, we will probably have $30 of savings right off the bat so I am feeling pretty good about the purchase.

In other news, my dh will be getting about 12 hours of overtime this weekend which should pay for boarding our puppy at the vets for our Thanksgiving trip and pay for his kennel cough vaccine (which you have to get every 6 months, yeck).

Oh, and I am on day 5 of 18 with no out to eat. Course the weekends are my greatest threat but so far so good.

So something for those learning how to cook from scratch to laugh at.

I have been teaching my husband how to cook but there are a couple of things neither of us have ever done so we have to experiment a lot to get it right.

The latest experiment was bread. It flopped bad. We weren't sure why at first, especially since we had no problem with whole wheat pitas but after a little research, I finally figured it out. When we make our pastry crust its very specific, the less you handle it the better. My husband had thought that applied to bread as well. Oops.

On a sad note, to get around our incompetence on this issue, we were attempting to use our breadmaker (never before used) to make bread while we researched what was going wrong with his attempts.

Our breadmaker unfortunately is DOA. The mixer part has croaked at some point. *Sigh* Oh well, it was a Sunbeam one so its to be expected. But at least we know now how to make bread!!

So tonight, we are so going to have fresh bread. Yum!

Anyone who has read my blog probably knows that I have an insane attachment to eating out that I have been slowly cutting down. I don't even know why I have to do it so much since I am a good cook and my food is usually better than anything I can buy at a restaurant.

So the question is, do you have a vice that is spending more of your money than you want it to? And why do you think that is?

I am not talking about the things you do for yourself that you love and could never give up. I am talking about things that are keeping you from acheiving greater financial success with no real reward.

Currently for this month I am at $180 for groceries and paper products and at $90 for out to eat lunches. The goal is $200 for groceries and $100 for out to eat lunches.

As you can see, I need to be very very good for the next two and a half weeks.

The good news is that the groceries are pretty good. The reason its so high so fast is I did some stocking up using sales.

The bad news is $10 for lunches means only 1 more meal and that is going to be an extreme test of my will power.

So new goal, no eating out for 2 1/2 weeks. We don't need to spend dh's money either so if I can do this, we will be set for the month.

Its sad that I think of this as a major test of my willpower. Most people go this long all the time...

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.

This weekend was supposed to be crazy due to multiple planned events. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for my dh and my friend, 2 of the 4 planned events were cancelled due to other people backing out at the last minute.

Of course one of these things had the potential to be a really expensive dinner but I am not sure how much we will save since our friend will probably still want to do something. We should still come out ahead though.

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...*

Okay, so I panicked for no reason. My friend has made sure everyone knows that they are going dutch and that they understand the price of the place.

Its a little weird for me to assume she would let people know these things because she didn't use to be so responsible. She has definitely gotten a better head on her shoulders since nearly going through bankruptcy.

We even set up a budget for her tonight that includes saving and retirement in it as well as mad money. She was really excited when she realized that she could get stuff and still accumulate savings and pay off debts. I gave her the excel spreadsheet so that she can play with the numbers and see what she can do with it.

Feeling a lot better now if a bit sheepish for assuming she was still my old friend who nearly ended up in bankruptcy court because of a clothing obsession. That was a mere year and a half ago.

Blah! My friend wants to go to Benihana's this weekend for her B-day. I am less than enthused as what I have heard about this place is less than complimentary and its expensive. I don't mind things being expensive if they are good as well but when I pay a fortune for nothing, I tend to feel cheated.

I am also a little concerned that she is having some college attending friends coming and I am wondering how they are going to like the price tag. All the people she has invited are new acquaintances because she just moved out here. She can't afford to pick up the entire check and I would prefer not to pick up the entire check for the party. I am really hoping that she made it clear that everyone is going dutch...

*Sigh* I feel really cheap saying all that but I have already spent alot of money on this friend (over 4k) and I really see this party going wrong. 10 people at $20+ for just the entree can add up very quickly. As it is, going dutch at this dinner will most likely mean dh and I don't get to eat out the rest of the month and still exceed where we want to be. I am already paying for a railroad luncheon trip for her and us that same weekend which is $70 per ticket...

Oh, by and by, this is the friend who almost had to file bankruptcy. Are you surprised?

Well, I went to the Pumpkin Harvest Festival and had fun. I only spent $45 of the $100 I had saved out for it so I was quite happy.

However, my friend had one of her new friends show up at it and we ended up being kidnapped for the day and half the night. Between dinner, coffee and a couple hours of pool, we went through another $30. It was fun and I had already saved out the money but it was a very long day.

That said, I now have an extra $20+ to add back into my budget to defray the expenses of next weekend's plans.

Okay, so very happy. My friend who was near bankruptcy not too long ago and who we helped to move out here so she could find a job (which she did) has requested that I teach her how to budget!

Not that I am expert or anything. After all, it wasn't the imaginary fairy who ran up my credit cards, but its nice to know that she is going to make a real effort to get things straightened out. She has been doing pretty good so far but needs to understand what this magic "budget" thing is.

I think seeing how our finances work and how that let us afford to bring her out to Denver and support the entire moving experience really made her realize that a budget helps you afford the things you really care about. I set her up initially on a "if everything goes wrong budget, this is what you need." Being able to know her basic numbers like that really helped her not to freak out when initially starting her job.

Whenever her father said it was time for a budget, he meant that the entire family needed to buy nothing to pay for his financial mistakes. Needless to say, mine was the first budget she ever glimpsed that wasn't about deprivation, its about being in control.

So this weekend sometime I am going to teach my husband and my friend the basics of budgeting and where to find additional information. The reason I am also teaching my husband is because he doesn't have any experience with a budget and all he pays is the rent. Thats a big bill but if something happened to me, he would be in a little bit of trouble trying to figure out what to do.

Oh, and I am going to attempt to set both of them on goal savings because they both like to buy things for other people and that will be the only way they won't blow everything. Its weird and I don't get it. Why do people equate giving gifts with showing affection for people? You don't have to buy someone something for them to feel loved.

So recently I decided that I am all about experimenting to see if there are additional ways to save money. I had been looking at the Entertainment Book for Denver but decided to wait until I was offered a better deal.

Well, my inbox account offered $8 to sign up for one and Entertainment Book offered a $25 restaurant.com certificate. The book with shipping is $31. I figured if there is any time to try it, now is the time.

I was a little worried the restaurant certificate wouldn't be for a decent restaurant but I did get it for one that my dh and I had been planning to try, The Fresh Fish Company.

Now I get to wait and see if the coupons are as good as they promised. So I figure that once I can actually redeem things, I will track that while subtracting any money that I have to spend to use the coupon beyond what we would have spent.

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...

So a year and a half ago, my dh's company was going to promote him to a processor position. Then the layoffs came and he survived them but was never promoted. He's been looking for jobs since but the market is flooded with all these people out of work thanks to the bubble burst in the housing market.

I suspect that they figured out that he was jobhunting and instead of laying him off at the next layoff, they decided to finally move him into the processor position. (He does have the best numbers in the company for his position.)Starting next Monday he is training his temporary replacement (who is a temp worker) and starting Wednesday he will be getting trained in his new position.

I say temporary because they are talking of having him in the new position for only 4th quarter but who knows with this wacky company, especially since everyone expects layoffs in January...

Okay, I am a dork. I really don't mind. I love everything to do with fall and this Saturday, my dh, a friend and I are all going to a pumpkin harvest festival.

Its free admission to the 12 acre park and they have rides, activities and food.

I am really looking forward to harvesting pumpkins and exploring the historic park.

On a financial note, I have saved out about $100 which should more than cover all the various expenses and then some. Now I just need to go get it out of my account so that I have it for the big day. (Cash is a rarity for me because I can spend it like no other. Hence, I only allow myself to use my debit card.) It feels good knowing that I can splurge as much as I want because this money was already saved out.

So my husband and I were discussing finances last night because I get impatient about how long it takes to pay debt off and so have to give myself pep talks. I also wanted to make sure that we were actually making progress and not back sliding at all.

So you want to hear the scary number? My husband and I in the past year have paid off more than 14k in debt. And at the start of that year we weren't being extremely frugal. Every time an unexpected (or unplanned for) expense has come up, I have just had us tighten our belts because I was afraid we wouldn't stay on track otherwise.

I really thought it would be a lot less. I mean we have taken a couple of trips, I have bought lots of electronic toys, and I can assure you our personal collection of books and cd's have grown dramatically. We are not the poster children for frugal by any stretch of the imagination.

This past year was all about gradually learning to make do with less so that we didn't feel deprived. I am actually kind of excited now to see what another year of this brings! I mean, if we could pay off that much while still learning how not to spend, I can just imagine how well we could do now.

As the title suggests, I am feeling much better about myself now.

Okay, so what am I currently doing to keep myself from spending too much? I have little goals that I am pursuing.

Goal 1: Get my groceries under $200 per month.

This was easy when our out to eat budget was ridiculous, a little bit harder now that we limit the out to eat to a couple of times per month. Despite my being lazy, I and my dh have been learning to cook from scratch. And I mean, totally from scratch.

Sadly, this is so easy now that its kind of sad that we thought it would take too much time. Currently my dh is finding a bread recipe that we like so we can stop buying bread. We work together to make sure there are leftovers and recipes waiting for us when we get home because coming up with the idea while starving is usually what results in me saying let's eat out.

Step 2 was really comparing prices. I thought I had been doing this before, but making the conscious effort to try to only buy really good deals (on sale or bulk) and really examining what a good deal is what got me from $400 a month to $250 along with the cooking from scratch.

Good example, we occasionally like snacks so I decided to get pudding cups. Normally I would grab a pack of 4 at the 10 for $10 sale and think I was getting a deal. So wrong. I went looking for the bulk 24 pack, it was $5.77. So it still beat out the sales price and in my house, we will eventually go through the 24 pack. You do this with 10 items everytime you go and pretty soon the costs drop.

Step 3 of this goal is developing a price book. For the longest time I had this running in my head and thought that was enough. It isn't. I am still working on this one but look forward to when I have it up and working.

The really big thing about this goal, is not that it saves me a tremendous amount of money but that it keeps me from spending money on other things by keeping me entertained.

Every month I get to start over on this goal, whether or not I did good the month before so I never get disheartened. For me, that is huge because we have some pretty big debt goals and they take a long time.

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...

I suppose I should start with a little background.

I went to college for five years to get my bachelor's degree, survived on a job that paid 6k and met my husband while there. Knowing that the Michigan economy wasn't exactly hopping, we decided finally on moving to Denver, Colorado. The day after we both graduated, we were in a moving van on our way.

We have been out here for nearly three years now, both have decent paying jobs and we now need to pay for all the luxuries and necessities that we have acquired between now and then. I started trying to clean the mess up about a year ago and we are currently on track with our budget (I will be posting real numbers in the next post).

Our biggest set back so far was helping a lifelong friend of mine get herself started out here. She had been jobhunting for a year in Michigan with no luck but after having her out here for a month and a half, she is now employed, has a job in the field that she got her associates for and is living on her own.

We just finished this and it set us back 4k but it was worth every penny knowing that my friend can have a job outside of retail. Don't worry, she is on her own now though I have been teaching her about budgets.

The biggest challenge in our household is that I am the spender but my husband can't say no to me. So really, this is about me learning that I don't need everything that I want.

Especially since I had been teaching my husband some very bad spending habits and he was starting to pick them up.