Get on Budget

Last night, while watching the BCS Championship game, I was playing around with the spreadsheet that I use to track our checking account. Yes, I actually keep track of that stuff manually, even in this age of online banking. Can you say detail oriented? After taking a quick over view of last year’s total expenditures, all I can say is, “Holy crap, where did all that money go?” Yes, we went on a nice vacation and we don’t eat ramen noodles for dinner every night, but good grief! I guess it all just adds up: digital cable (not even HD AND we don’t have a DVR either) and internet, one smart phone, one reasonable car payment, and…



Could we do without cable? Sure, we would continue to live without it (and Karen suggests getting rid of it occasionally), but I like watching some TV at night. Is that so wrong? I have certain shows that I like, some I even consider “educational” (anything on discovery or history channel counts as educational, even American Pickers and Pawn Stars) and some that are just for entertainment. I would rather not eliminate that routine, unless times get really tough and it comes down to cable versus eating the before mentioned ramen noodles every night for dinner. Then I would seriously consider it.


Yes, I didn’t “need” the iPhone that I got this year, but my old phone was falling apart and I have wanted an iPhone ever since they came out several years ago.  I will say that it is very nice to have all that power right there in your hand. I would also argue that it has already paid for itself several times over since we got it. For example, when we were out of town and we needed directions or needed to find out what restaurants were around, the answers were right there in my hand. I also use it to check gas prices to make sure that we go to the cheapest station in the area. See, it is paying for itself, even if it is two to five cents per gallon at a time.  Even better, we use it all the time to reserve redbox movies when we are out running errands or out for dinner (another expenditure!). No need to stand there and browse at the box, just swipe your card and out comes your movie. Nothing is worse than having to go to two or more box locations to find that movie that you wanted to see, reserving online takes out all the guess work.
 Looking back at the “hope and possibility” (tacky political reference) that I remember having when I graduated from college over 12 years ago, I don’t think that I imagined that my mid-thirties (soon to be late thirties, gulp) would be like this. Sure, I knew that I probably wasn’t going to be a BMW driving high roller bringing in a big salary, but I did imagine that things would be easier by now. Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like we are broke or anything like that. If you look at it that way, we are doing OK compared to what others are going through right now.  But I think it could be even better.


So, where am I going with this? Who knows, sometimes I just start typing stuff like this and then I later decide if I am going to post it on the blog or just delete it after venting. I never imagined that writing could be a way of stress relief, but in some ways I think it is. It may not make for the most enjoyable blog posts to read, but oh well.  Short of thinking up the next great idea (post it notes, super glue, facebook, etc), we're going to have to work with what we've got.


The fact is, we both like to travel and, in my opinion, one trip per year just isn’t enough. There are so many places that I want to visit and I’m not getting any younger. In order to do more travelling, there has to be money (and time) do it. I can’t do anything about the tiny bit of vacation time that I get each year, but we can do something about the money.


I don’t think that I’ve ever tried to stick to a budget before, I always just estimate it in my head and hope that I come out on the positive side at the end of the month. There was a time, before marriage, that I lived beyond my means and didn’t always come out on the positive side at the end of the month. However, I have learned from that mistake and won’t be doing that again. I’m seriously considering the idea of trying to hold us to a budget and see how it goes. Do any of you try to stick to a monthly budget?


I have been following a few blogs online and a couple of them are what I refer to as “money blogs.” Several of them are focused on retiring as early as possible and they cut out a lot of stuff in order to meet that goal. One of them, specifically, made what I consider a big salary at his (and his wife's) job, so it was probably pretty easy to squirrel away half or more of their income and still live comfortably. I fully plan on working another 25-30 years (as bad as it sounds), so I guess we need to find an appropriate balance between cutting for the future and enjoying ourselves now. What fun is having a bunch of dough in your 60’s-70’s if you tortured yourself  getting to that point?


Some of the money bloggers say that you should only have one car in a household… We have 3 when you count the convertible toy and I don’t see us getting rid of it or one of our “daily drivers.” Teacher and 8-5 employee schedules don’t exactly mesh together well for car sharing.  I’ve considered returning to riding my bicycle to work (I did it in when we lived in GA), but there isn’t a shower at the office where I work. I might give it a try and do the “baby wipe” clean up when I get to work, but I’m not sure how well that will really work. The other issue with that plan is that I can’t get myself to try riding in sub-freezing weather. Getting soft in my old age, I guess.  That eliminates 4+ months out of the year.


We already do a lot of the other things that the money blogs recommend to cut costs: I already bring my lunch to work most days and typically try to fix our cars myself instead of taking them to the shop. We don’t rush into big purchases and try to drive the wheels off our cars. Of course, we did buy a new car in 2007, which is frowned upon.  However, since we are going to keep it for many years, I'm not sure that is such a bad thing.  Yes, a slightly used vehicle would save some money, but after working at a dealership, I am not sure I will ever fully trust a preowned car again. 

We’ll see if this budget idea goes anywhere or not.  Consider this a warning:  Don't blame me if you get bored this weekend and decide to run some quick numbers on what you spent last year. You might be very surprised with what you see.