Sleeping, Eating And Drinking Our Budget
I wish we were doing the above things mentioned in my post title because we’re rolling in money. But, alas, that’s not the case! We’re sleeping, eating and drinking money because that’s all we talk about right now! And that’s a good thing. Ever since we started Financial Peace University 3 weeks ago (tomorrow) we’ve been talking about our budget. We’ve been tweaking it. We’ve been looking at every single detail and giving every single penny a spot to go. And it’s been hard work! Oh how I’m tired of it. We were warned that the first few weeks would be hard. I think it’s been harder for us since our finances were in such a sorry state! This is forcing both of us to sit down and take responsibility for getting control of our money and money’s future. Mike spent hours on Saturday putting everything into excel and tweaking this or that. Then, a bill for my Real Simple magazine subscription comes in (it’s getting canceled!) and everything must get tweaked again for this month. Then something else will pop up we forgot about and the tweaking will start all over again! It’s been a painstaking process but a fantastic one for Mike and me. I hate it. I’ll admit it. My monthly” blow” money has already been spent before I touched it. On what? Girl Scout cookies and the book for our current Wednesday night Bible study! Girl Scout cookies!!!! I like GS cookies but not that much. I was at a friends house a few weeks ago and noticed her adorable little girl was selling them. They were sitting on the floor taunting me. I was hungry and those Samoas were calling my name. So, I bought (with an IOU), 6 boxes. I know… I know! I didn’t have to buy that many! Well, as of last Wednesday I still IOU’d my friend! Enter my monthly personal spending cash.
I hate talking about money. I hate worrying about it. I hate excel spreadsheets!! But, after we’re done with this class and on our way to financial peace and freedom I probably won’t feel that way anymore! It’s good for both of us to be this involved in our day to day finances. Mike has never been this involved. He usually left all that stuff to me and generally kind of knew where we were at. Now he’s neck deep in our finances! Dave Ramsey said that for the first three months or so our budget won’t work right and we’ll be tweaking and fixing it until we get it down pat. Well, that’s definitely happening for us!
Oh, and on a side note, we discovered we paid $30,000+ in taxes last year! Yes, THIRTY THOUSAND! Thank you Taxachussetts! I hope the able bodied people who don’t have jobs because they refuse to look for work are enjoying OUR money while my husband works until 1 am. I’ll probably get some negative comments about this. ” You hate the poor”. “You’re selfish” or ” That’s not a very Christian attitude”. I don’t hate the poor. Mike and I have actually been quite generous in helping those in need and we’ll continue to do that. The more we get our finances in order now they more we’ll be able to give in the future. We look forward to that part! The Bible actually says that if you don’t work than you don’t eat! I’m all for helping someone in need. However, people who are poor because they are lazy don’t deserve my hard earned money. There are way too many people who take advantage of our welfare system and I begrudge every single cent that goes to them.
Anyway, I digress….
We’ve started the envelope cash system Dave Ramsey talks about and it’s really cramping our style. Which is a good thing! As I mentioned before we used to spend anywhere from $ 700-800 a month on groceries. We’ve decided on a $125 a week budget to see how well we do with it. Yesterday, we went grocery shopping for the first time since we’ve installed our cash only, $125 a week food budget. Because Mike gets paid every two weeks we took out $250 to last us for those two weeks. The plan was/is to plan all of our meals, including snacks, for the next two weeks. Then write down exactly all of the ingredients to what I’m going to need. Then each week I’m going to check what I have in my kitchen already and try to plan meals around that first before I buy anything new. Then go from there with my list. Then, I’m going to give couponing and planning my meals around what’s on sale my best effort. We decided to make a trip to Sam’s a make a big bulk buy to kick off our new grocery budget plan. We knew this first trip would be expensive but that the next few food shopping ventures I went on would cost way less because I wouldn’t need to buy as much. Well, not only did we use up our $250 of grocery money at Sam’s we also used almost all of the money from our monthly “Clothing” envelope!! We walked around Sam’s keeping a running total of our purchases on a calculator and writing certain prices down so we could compare them with our grocery store. I’ve never seen Mike so interested in “price per pound” before! I never thought I’d be one of those people with the calculator walking around the grocery store. But… there we were! It was very eye opening and I learned a lot from that one trip. And boy… was it hard to part with that money!
Once we left Sam’s we still needed to buy a few things from our grocery store. So I took the cash I had left for the grocery store from our “Clothing” envelope, my list and my calculator and went for it. I ended up not being able to buy everything on my list. After adding everything up from my cart I realized that some of the stuff we’d just have to do without this week. It was nothing major. One of the things I put back was yogurt cups for the girls. I had already grabbed a tub of plain yogurt so I figured they’ll have to do with plain yogurt mixed with something if they want yogurt the next couple of weeks. The other one was juice. We decided the girls would have to drink water once the juice we have is gone! Now, today, we’ve come to realize I forgot butter and bird food! So, out of desperation we’re taking money from our mothly “Doctor” envelope (copay money for chiropractor or unexpected doctor visit) to pay for those things. It won’t be like this every grocery trip, of course. In fact, I’m feeling pretty confident we can keep our grocery bill to $125 a week or less with coupons, meal planning , buying generic and buying at Sam’s. Sadly, I won’t be buying some of the higher end, all natural, organic etc etc foods anymore until we get well under way with this. I’ll admit…I’m a name brand snob. For some reason name brand cereal must taste better than store brand in my mind! And I know that’s not always the case. And even if it is the case we’ll just have to make do! The “sacrifice” will be worth it in the end.
Mike and I made a huge break through with our purchasing habits a couple of weeks ago. Our couch finally bit the dust and we didn’t go out and buy a new one with our credit card. Instead, we brought the love seat from the playroom into the living room and moved our recliner next to it. Then brought one of dining room set captains chairs in as extra seating. We actually like it better! I also hung some new curtains I’ve had for over 6 months up in the living room. Here’s our new living room arrangement.
This is now my quiet time corner. Below is what my old quiet time corner looks like now:
And here is a close up shot of the curtains I got on clearance at Home Depot. I think they go great with my pillows and living room decor!
I’ll be posting about how things are going with our FPU class as we get further into the study. This should be interesting….
Oh, and Crystal at Money Saving Mom has great tutorials on menu planning, couponing, shopping sales and grocery shopping on a shoe string budget.
