Archive for ‘finances’

May 26th, 2010

Budgeting for June

by Becca

I don’t usually get into finances on this blog, but since one of my goals on my 101 things list is to go a month without unnecessary spending, I’m going to blog about it for June, the month we plan to not spend extra money.

Really, it’s because we are being forced to cut back this month. We could use money from savings to keep our current spending habits, but I wanted to save that money for another month when we truly need to use it for something.

So here goes: We lost a week of pay, meaning our combined income for the month of June is around $1500. We’re cutting the following down or out for this month: Becca’s spending money(Gray’s goes towards his iPhone so we can’t really cut it), date money is being cut down, and Comcast extra money has been cut out (We are currently on a special for six months, but I over-budget already for what we will pay when that is gone, so instead of $124, I’m just budgeting the $85 we’ll actually spend). We will have some extra income this month, which is what is keeping me from cutting out the date night, turning off Netflix, or taking away from gas money, etc. I am not turning off Netflix because we use it so much that I feel we get far more out of it than we pay in.

I hope that all made sense.

All extra money for the month is going to be set aside for either savings or vacation, seeing as we have two vacations in two weeks at the end of June and beginning of July to save up for. I’d like to see our savings back at $1000 and I think we can definitely do that if we pinch pennies this month.

Our extra income is in the form of dog sitting for about ten days, so we should actually save some electricity and water because we won’t be at our apartment the entire time, yay! We will be going on vacation to Gatlinburg with the family at the end of the month so that should save a little bit of money as well.

I am also trying to buy groceries based upon what I already have in my pantry. I have two boxes of spaghetti noodles, four boxes of mashed potatoes, and at least three of rice, not to mention hamburger helper. I think we have enough meat to not buy any for at least a week and maybe I’ll get creative and do some veggie meals.

I get extremely nerdy moving money around, I must admit.

Which brings me to my final note: I use Pear Budget to keep our finances in order and I highly recommend it. The first month is a free trial and then it is three dollars after that, but it does so much. I’ve tried using mint.com and not only did I dislike that it kept my bank information, the format just doesn’t work for me. Pear Budget is like the Dave Ramsey envelope system, except it’s all online. I hated budgets before I started using this last January and over a year later we have no credit card debt and have some savings, amazing!

Here is a screenshot, just to give you an idea. Yes, that is a portion of our real budget.

So a recap on our goals for June:

  • Spend as little “extra” money as possible
  • Put leftover money in savings/vacation fund at end.
  • Not resort to use savings to pay for anything.

Hopefully this all leads to a good month in July because someone has a birthday *coughmecough* and usually is forced to spend her birthday money on bills. Hopefully, that won’t have to happen this year because of planning on my part. :)

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September 4th, 2009

The First week of school

by Becca

Oh my goodness, where do I start?

I’ll start off with school. We’re both back in school and my life is gone. Seriously, it just left and said, “See you for Christmas.”

Anyway, my schedule is pretty packed. I leave for worked around 5:45 a.m. and come back home about 4-5 p.m. everyday. I pretty much don’t want to be social because I need some Becca time these days.

I’m working 18 hours a week and taking 12 hours. Gray is working 20 hours and taking 12 hours as well. However, he only had four classes and I have six. My classes: Intro to Accounting, Pilates, Microbiology, Micro Lab, Into to Women’s Studies, and Professionalism in Nursing. I like my classes so far, but I will be doing a lot of studying, esp. in Micro.

This past week has been quite straining. On Monday the lab closed because the cleaning people had put something in the carpet that was making everyone sick. I was constantly coughing and sneezing. An industrial hygienist came to look and gave us a really weird explanation about it coming from the elevators. It did not. On Tuesday we closed down so that new carpet could be put down in the main lab. This made everything MUCH BETTER. ON Wednesday they finished the offices. Yesterday it was all nice and smelly good. Seriously.

Other than all of that, I’ve had to deal with some pretty horrible people. We’re supposed to enforce student ID swiping to get into the lab. We do this because student fees pay for our lab to run and so only students should be let in. We don’t have access to look up information, so if an ID doesn’t work, we can’t prove they go here. It’s very frustrating to deny someone and have them get upset about something I don’t control. You wouldn’t try to go to a concert without a ticket and expect them to just let you through the gate.

Anyway, for the second time in the past eight months I had someone ask to “See my  manager.” I laughed inside when they were told THE SAME THING I TOLD THEM.

The joys of working in a job immersed in customer service.

So, I know I didn’t post about my weight loss this week. I gained about two pounds, but I just started a weight training challenge, the EA Sports Active 30 day challenge to be exact. It involves a LOT of muscle training so weight gain is inevitable. I am also in a Pilates class so hopefully I will become fit and fierce this semester. I like having a class like pilates because I know fit working out in my schedule on a weekly basis, it’s great!

Let’s see, others news… we got rid of the gigantic TV we got off of freecycle and bought a brand new HD TV from Sams. We also re-arranged the living room and it actually looks nice! We will be adding a small bookshelf to keep school books on, but other than that, our living room looks much less cluttered, yay! The new TV has been great and a nice treat to begin the school year. We also got new health insurance for Gray and myself. I was 0n BCBST and Gray had none, so now we’re both on the school’s plan. Their plan is SO much cheaper. 

It’s been neat to go through and mark off bills as well, we were able to pay off a credit card completely so now we’re working on paying off the other one. I’m not completely against credit cards, but I do think you shouldn’t use them unless you can pay them off immediately. This means, using one to pay for gas and going home and paying it off. Otherwise you can wind up in trouble. We’re also building up a savings account because the main reason we used credit cards in the past was because the car broke down or something similiar and we had no savings or extra money. It’s a nasty blackhole to spiral into and I’m glad we’re that much closer to being out!

I’ll post pictures of the new living room arrangement as soon as I can remember. Right now this semester is already kicking my butt so I have a lot to adjust before I can go crazy.

The good news about this week was I saved almost $400 on school books by renting from chegg.com. I even found a promo code where I got free shipping! It’s even cheaper than buying books used, so I’m pretty happy and so is Gray.

This entry is scattered because I really didn’t want to write up different ones to tell you everything, like how we went to a bajillion stores before we bought the TV. sigh.

CategoryEA Sports Active Challenge, apartment, college, finances, life, weight-loss, work | Comment2 Comments »

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February 6th, 2009

Organization

by Becca

I’m a planner, always have been. I started using a planner my junior year of high school so that I would be ready for college. I love organization in almost any situation. I’m totally a J in the Myer’s Brigg test.

Gray is also a J, but in a totally different way than I am. For one, his computer is pretty much the only way he is organized. I’m the one who keeps the house organized and clean. He doesn’t really care to budget, although he knows it is important. I, on the other hand, don’t organize my computer, although I need to. I get so busy that I don’t think about keeping something like that organized. It’s hard enough to make sure I stay on top of school and cooking, let alone a computer’s desktop screen being clean.

One way I’ve been organizing our kitchen is with a dry erase board. I write up the meals we have planned and cross them off as we eat them. This works really well for us because I make a lot of food for most meals and we have leftovers. 

 

See my awesome menu?!

See my awesome menu?!

I’ve also been staying on top of using coupons, including new blogs that will let me know about coupons I can use. This is a great way to save money on groceries, and I highly recommend it!

With the economy in bad shape, it’s time for everyone to buckle down and save what they can, when they can.

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January 31st, 2009

Random Assortment

by Becca

It was a long week of school. I was thinking one of those days about why I wanted to come back to school. Seriously, working full-time is SO MUCH BETTER. However, I want to work full-time in something I love and will be happy at.

We got paid yesterday but I am the genius who forgot to setup my direct deposit. So I went over to Cope to see if I could pick up my check.

“We don’t do that anymore.”

sigh

I was told that is had to sign up for direct deposit. Now, I was planning to do this anyway, but being told to do something makes me not want to do it at all. I’m a stubborn woman.

I did it anyway. When I picked Gray up we headed over to HR on campus. The building we’ve been in a few times, mainly because I had to change my last name with them a month ago. Gray likes to press all the buttons in the elevator to make me mad, it works.

Did I mention that Thursday night I had my first “test?” Yeah, my treat for making it through was going to be a Sonic Valentine’s day treat and Grey’s Anatomy. Sonic didn’t have the treat and may not have it this year. Bummer. Oh and Grey’s was a repeat. Another bummer. I think we watched a movie and I don’t remember which one it was. We watched “Fireproof” this week and I cried. Gray got in “Memento” which I pretty much forced him to watch, but he really enjoyed it. I knew he would.

School and work are going alright. I do like the job and my coworkers so far. It’s nice to make more money than I used to on campus, but not as much as the real world.

We’re waiting on my W-2 to come in so we can file our taxes. I started using Pear Budget in January for our budget and I love it. I can’t wait to use it in the future for seeing what we spend on certain items. Before we were just using an excel file, which worked but didn’t let us know specific categories, just general ones. We had to change the budget around this month and I finally grasped the concept of moving money around to compensate. Yeah, I know.

Oh, we’re thinking about moving in April. We love our apartment complex, but the one Trina lives in has a little more space for less money. They offer a student discount and pay your water bill. We would essentially be saving, on average, around $50 a month! I’m all about that. However, we’re not entirely sure about it. We have to wait to make sure an opening will be there and everything. Who knows, we might stay where we are for one extra month and then move. I’m not sure if we can do that, but who knows. It would be easier to move at the end of May than in April.

So that is the random assortment of stuff going on in our lives right now. We’re looking forward to the Super bowl tomorrow, go Steelers!

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November 11th, 2008

The Keys to a Great Marriage

by Becca

Disclaimer: We’re not at all stating that we know everything about marriage in this post. We’re still learning. :)

Is it just me or is November going by rather fast? I’ve been keeping myself busy and before I know it, Christmas will be here! As I posted yesterday, Gray and I have now been married for 6 months. We bought a bible recently that has built in devotionals for married couples. It takes whatever chapter you’re reading and applies it to marriage. We read our first one last night and discussed different things about marriage.

I feel like we’ve come so far in those six months. It’s hard to believe that in another six months we’ll have been married a year. In today’s times, people don’t last this long! Sad, but true. I thought I’d share some things we do that have helped us grow together the past few months.

First off, we don’t have television. We have a TV because I owned one before we were married and we have a VCR and DVD player. However, we do not pay for cable, satellite, or have an antenna. I think that for the first year of marriage, this is of particular importance. We’ve spent a lot more time together than we would have otherwise. We do have the internet and I watch all my TV shows on there, but I do that when Gray’s at work so it doesn’t interfere with our time together. The only thing we have that sucks away our time together is the internet/computers. We’re both big gamers and usually we compromise by him playing a game while I do internet stuff. This month has been a challenge because I’m doing NaNoWriMo but Gray has been very supportive. He even asks regularly how the novel is going that day.

Another thing we do is eat together at the dinner table. I’ve found in the past that if we eat together while watching tv or a movie, we don’t get to talk and so the dinner table is where we relax and have fun with each other after a hard day. We’ve both agreed that when we have kids, we want to eat dinner as a family at the table so it is important for us to start now.

While Gray is at school and work, I’m at home during the day. I do most of the chores and work as well. After we eat dinner (or before on certain days) we go for a walk or to the park. We both love the outdoors, even if we are computer geeks and want to get in shape. It’s a work in progress.

Grocery shopping is another chore that I enjoy doing with Gray. We help hold each other accountable to our grocery list and he totally helps with figuring out the best deals… and pushing the cart. As far as our budget goes, we have an excel file setup with our basic utilities and bills and put in an average amount. When we pay for one of those bills, we put the amount we payed in the next column. This way we know when we’ve payed bills and also how much we have left to use in another category if needed. The file is saved in a place we can both access anytime we want to. We both enjoy budgeting this way because we see what money we have and what we’re paying out. We’re on a very basic budget so it helps to have everything precise.

These are just some of the ways we’ve kept our marriage sane and a partnership. We strive to follow the Lord so we both attend church when we’re able to. We also participate in a community group from church of other married couples. A good foundation is what keeps a marriage going strong in hard times. Although we’ve only been married six months, we’re definitely learning to face hard times together.

When we went through pre-marital counseling, we learned to base our foundation on God’s word and we learned about money from Dave Ramsey. I realize not everyone is a fan of his plan, but it’s really worked for us. Right now we’re trying to build our first emergency fund and tackle debt.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Hopefully sometime in the future we can do a giveaway of Dave Ramsey’s book. So stay tuned!

Categoryfinances, life, marriage, nablopomo | Comment4 Comments »

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