Where did all the time go?

I guess I didn't not do a great job of updating this blog. Like most things in life I get really charged up, but I eventually move on to the latest and greatest project. We are doing well financially though. We both received nice raises in the last year, bought a house, and paid off 80% of our consumer debt. Of course, the house we bought is a money pit. Hey, a new direction for this blog.

Weekly Update

Not much has been going on since last week. We have completely blown our going out / eating out budget. Even using a mulligan we have gone over by almost 100%. Now here is a bit of justification. We haven't spent as much money at the grocery. If you take the combine budgets for grocery and going out (plus add the mulligan), then we are still over budget with one trip to the grocery left, but not as bad. We are going to sit down next week and look at everything. I think we are under budgeting our going out fund. That definitely needs reorganizing (eating out vs. going out). Mostly, we have to do a better job. A future obstacle is football games. We have season tickets to our local university football games. So, tailgating becomes a factor as well as $6 beers. We are looking at bulk foods for tailgating and possibly sneaking in flasks for the game itself. Of course, getting completely wasted tailgating is cheaper than $6 beers, but I actually enjoy watching the games. CC is going on a well deserved trip this weekend to Chicago. She will be visiting friends that she hasn't seen since we left. This money comes from our "Short Term Savings". Even if it was overboard, it is something that is worth the expense. Fortunately, it's not.

Last weekend I did do a formal net worth analysis and completed adding everything to Microsoft Money. Not as bad as I thought, but with buying a house and a car in the next 12 months its going to take a dive. Also, adding student loans for both of our grad school. It's going to get worse before it gets better. That's depressing.

Short term sacrifices for a long term goal!!

Oops!

Well, that didn't go so well. Friday night went from an $8 bottle of wine to an $80 dinner w/ drinks. Funny how not wanting people to know that you are trying to save causes you to spend way too much money. That and a few margaritas will sway your judgement.

Long story short between Friday and Saturday we completely blew our entire month's budget for going out. So for the month we are over $109. It's the 14th. Not good. We are giving ourselves a mulligan for Friday. That leaves us about $20 over and we will take that out of next months. We are also planning to distribute the "entertaining" budget a little differently. Should going out with friends for dinner really come out of our "Eat out" budget. That's more for lunches and dinners from us, not going out to celebrate a friend's birthday. We get together with several different groups of friends at least once a month. So, we are going to spend more than are alloted budget for eat out just on those occasions. The solution maybe to take money from our "Fun Money" budget and move it over to our Eat out budget or to simple consider those night a "fun money" night.

I don't want to set us up for failure. I also feel this is the transition time and that the sacrafices are going to be tough, but we need to stick with them!!

This is really helping me work out issues.

Weekly Update

It's been a week since I posted. I am forcing myself to do it today. I figured once I got going I would benefit from doing it. The main reason is there hasn't been a whole lot of new developments. Two weeks ago we were implementing the new plan and we were getting paid. Now we have another week before we are getting paid. The next big step is to decide which online bank to use. ING / HSBC / Capital One/ Emigrant Direct. I don't know. There is a lot of conflicting info out there. They all seem similiar from the outside. Maybe .05% here or there. Trying to get a clear cut view to which is better from the inside is much tougher. Right now I am leaning towards ING Direct. We shall see in the coming weeks.

The last 8 days have really put our new budget to the test. As I last mentioned my in laws came in last weekend. It ended up only being my MIL and my new (to me) little brother. It was a nice time. My little brother is 7 so I did my best to keep him out of the small condo we live in. To ensure that we wouldn't blow our budget we decided beforehand that we would do a lot of inexpensive things. Most importantly we cooked at home two nights in a row. Nice. That was a huge money saver. We did spend some money on alcohol, but the was minimal and was less than we would have spent waiting at the bar in a restaurant.

One of the more difficult challenges that we are facing is what do we do with the money just sitting there. Granted it's got a purpose, but since we went to a single account instead of separate accounts there is a lot of money just waiting to be spent. It should be spent on gas, groceries, etc. Maybe we should have weekly goals. This week I have faultered a little. I went out with some friends on Wednesday at the last minute for drinks and dinner and spent more money than I would of liked. We are going out to a planned dinner tonight with one of CCs friends. Tomorrow we have a dinner / bowling extravaganza. I am very concerned about spending too much. I am still keeping track of where we are in the month. It's the 11th and we are about to spend the entire month's "fun money / eating out" by Sunday. Not good. The question is will we still keep to our guns and call it quits for the rest of the month. That is the way it should be.

I will not spend too much money this weekend. I will not spend too much money this weekend.

Do You Have To Take 1 Step Back ...

to go 2 steps forward? Well that is what happened to me today. As I mentioned, I am juggling our 5 bank accounts in order to begin our new budget plan. Call it a miscalculation or a just a straight slip, but I let one of our accounts get overdrawn by a whopping 67 cents. It happens to be the one that we are going to primarily use. First question one might asked is where is your overdraft protection? We have overdraft protection for both of our individual accouts, but not our joint account. Until today we have never needed it. It was actually on my to do list, we were waiting for CCs other accounts to have her new name. Excuses, excuses - just plain procrasination. So, I called 5/3rd and surprisingly got someone friendly. They will waive the overdraft fee - a whopping $33. Surprise, surprise. I didn't even have to haggle, he just said yes. This is not a normal experience that I have had with 5/3rd. I then connected my savings account to the joint account. This leaves my personal checking account uncovered. Still a problem, but I am planning to phase that account out. Another perfect example of having our money too spread out. Not effective, but we are trying to fix it.

This does make me think of how difficult it really is to change banks. I don't hate 5/3rd, but would probably be marginally happier somewhere else. With 5 accounts and several automatic withdrawls, it just doesn't seem worth it.

I did really well being alone. I spent $16 while CC was gone. That was $12 for dinner for two days and $4 video rental. Not too shabby considering I was invited out both nights. I did spend last night downloading and fighting the lastest version of Norton Internet Security. I feel like I need to go to a tech school so I will be able to use my home computer. I will have to work on it more tonight. It will be a good excuse to bail on the in laws coming in tonight.

My favorite part of this week is that it's 97 degrees outside and I have a cold somehow. Nice.

When the Cat is away ...

the mouse will stay at home and not go out for wings and beer with his friends.

My wife is leaving out of town for a few days on a business trip. The good news is that everything she does will be considered a business expense. The bad news is I am missing my partner in money savings. I have made a deal with myself to keep busy while she is gone so I don't go out with the boys. They aren't bad, but our MO is to drink, eat and stay out late. Especially since my best friend is going through a divorce. He has reverted back to our college days - going out late and, yes, spending lots of money. While I don't envy him, the reminiscing is quite nice. He owns his own business so showing up late or hungover isn't questioned. Even though he has been taunting me non stop for the last few days I have preservered and told him no. I offered for him to come over to the house to watch a game, grill some chicken and drink a beer.

Another good reason to be cheap (I mean frugal) is that my in-laws are coming into town on Friday. We tend to spend quite a bit of money when they are in town. This is mostly due to pride. I refuse to let them pay for everything. They are comfortable with money, but they are a "look what I bought you, so now do what I want you to do" kind of in-laws. The last straw was the wedding gift incident. Maybe I should thank them - it was that incident that made me become extremely focused on money management / PF.

Oh, one note to PF is that I set up our account on Microsoft Money last night. I thought I needed a finance degree to get it going. I made it, but it took longer than I expected. I couldn't get the account balances to work out. I do hope that this tool will help. I know there is a lot of functions that I am not familiar with, but I will definitely get into it.

Also, life goals are WIP. I created a "life goals" list while being delayed at BWI a couple of Fridays ago. Not just financial, but personally, socially and physically. It was pretty insightful. I know as I get older it will shift and change, but it gives me something to strive for. It gives me a purpose for things like books, vacations or leisure activities. I am looking into organizing them and putting them on a time line or priority/importance catagory. I am encouraging my wife to do the same. Eventually, we will also be able to create a common list we want to achieve as a family. Some people may argue that we should only have one, but we are firm believers in having individual lifes that we share with each other.

The Dawn of a New Era

My wife and I had our financial summitt this weekend. It went well. We think we have worked the numbers to fit the new budget. Sacrifice is tough. We will be starting on August 1st. We decided to use the calender month as our fiscal month. We will meet again at the end of the month to see how it went and what changes need to be made. Important notes:

* All surplus will be rolled into DP fund.
* All deficits will be deducted from next month's allotment.
* Allowed 1 Mulligan PP for the first 2 months.
- A Mulligan is defined as a momentary lapse of budget conscienceness. The funds will be supplemented from emergency cash. After two months, will be treated as a deficit.

Some of the most intense conversation came from the biggest change in this budget. We are converting from a 3 account system to a singular account. Previously, we both deposited a set amount into a joint account that was used to pay for bills and the remainder went into individual accounts to be used as we wanted. It worked perfectly as we first merged our finances. The big problem now is - its not working for our common goals. No savings. Now we are accountable for what we spend for individual pleasure. The funny part is neither of us really cares what the other spends, but we don't want to be seen as the majority money spender. Those greens fees cost what?!? This aspect will take the most patience and discipline. We have always been great communicators and we have agreed to talk about any ill feelings about individual expenses. One potential fix is dividing the Fun Money into 1/3s. That way we can spend our part of the fun money without feeling like we are taking away from the other. I don't really want to do it this way because I want us to be accountable for our spending and get into the mentality of OUR money.

This weekend we gave it a test run.

Friday - greens fee and 19th hole dinner and beverages. Maybe walk in the future instead of taking a cart.
Saturday - Did not eat out for lunch or dinner. We ate at one of CC's restaurants and cooked dinner at home. Brought beer and a flask for street festival. We did splurge on a intoxicated pizza at 1 am.
Sunday - Did not go out for lunch. Did not buy margaritas for poolside treat. Tap water is not as enjoyable as a lovely glass of margarita, but it was cheaper.

** Weight loss note - I began playing Sunday morning basketball with the boys. I cancelled my gym membership in a money savings attempt and I am looking for free exercise indoors during the oppressing heat. It also achieved detoxing from previous night.

All in all, I am actually excited. It is going to be a challenge to get to our goals. We are notorious big spenders especially during the upcoming holidays. So the most difficult is about to come.

Notes for the upcoming week. Look into ING account for DP savings and mail out the wedding thank you cards.