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!!