So get this - DW needs to tell her jobs now what hours she wants over the summer. Summers are usually hard because teaching hours are limited, but like I said before, we depend on her income to help make ends meet, so we want her to work as many hours as she can get.
Thing is, the kids get out of school in late May and go back in mid-August. So what are we supposed to do with them during the summer while DW's out working? DK1 is going to sleepaway camp in for three weeks in July, and the other two have two weeks of Jewish Federation day camp and DK2 has an additional 2 weeks of specialty camps, and let's say I'll take a week off sometime during that time, so... that leaves about, oh, 9 weeks to fill for each of them.
Of course, the Y has a camp, which is about $100 per kid per week. If DW works as much as she could realistically work - just for kicks, let's say 40 hours - she'd be pulling in enough to pay for the camps and have a little left over for regular budget items. If she doesn't work full time - a more realistic possibility, given past experience - then she would barely, or possibly not even, be paying for the camps, with none left over for that all important ends-meeting. Of course, if she doesn't work, we don't have the camp expense, but ends don't meet either. Quandary, no?
So... what would you do?
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
I'm sick of debt
I'm writing today from a place of frustration. I have been pursuing what I think of as a fairly simple and frugal lifestyle for quite a number of years now. I can remember discovering the Tightwad Gazette while I still lived in New York, which is over 15 years ago. I don't buy expensive clothes or a lot of video games or fancy electronic equipment. We have two cars: a 12 year old beater and a 6 year old slightly-less-beater. We very rarely eat out. We don't go to movies very much or other entertainment unless someone gives us tickets. I don't really even give that much to charity, in the great scheme of things. I have thought and written about frugality and sustainability extensively and have tried to apply most of the low-hanging fruit principles of the frugal lifestyle to my own life.
Yet we continue to have a hard time staying within our monthly budget, and we continue to struggle to pay down a substantial amount of credit card debt. I don't understand it, and I'm feeling really frustrated about it.
The thing is, while DW's paychecks have been a little inconsistent lately, she's earning a good deal more now than she was last year at this time, meaning things should be getting easier. I put a few numbers into a simple budget spreadsheet last night, and it looks to me like, counting just our fixed expenses and including debt service, we should be running a surplus of a couple hundred dollars every month. But we're not - we consistently have to take money from our emergency fund to make the monthly nut. The conclusion I reach is there are substantial random (unbudgeted) expenses that are hurting us. And I'm not even really sure what they are.
The reason I stopped working on this blog was because I felt that I didn't have anything to teach anyone because I wasn't getting anywhere. I picked it up again because just letting things go on this way is not going to solve my problem. DW and I have to raise the level of seriousness with which we think about and address this problem.
The first step has to be figuring out where the money's going, and getting to the point where we're living within our monthly means. This means squeezing our monthly expenses, such as canceling cable and changing auto insurers, but is also means figuring out where we're spending this mysterious money that isn't in the monthly plan.
The second thing (well, a related thing) would be to build our emergency fund back up to about $2,000, so that extraordinary expenses - such as auto repairs - don't have to go on the plastic.
And the third thing is paying down this damned credit card debt. I went back and looked a previous posting I made about the debt snowflake, which is where you pay the minimums on all your debts except one, and you put all extra available funds into the highest priority debt. At that time (October 2008) our two cards had about $7,000 each on them, and I predicted that if I followed the snowflake program the debt on the highest interest rate card (mine) would be retired by ... June 2010. Well, I'm here to tell ya, it ain't gonna be. As of March 1, my card at about $5,700, and DW's is up to almost 9. So we've essentially gotten nowhere in a year and a half. And it's because we keep putting non-fixed but reasonably expectable expenses - kids' clothing and shoes, car repairs - on the card. And I of course debted the equipment for the TV transition.
I redid the snowflake the other day, and it's basically the same story as it was the last time: if we do it as prescribed, and maybe throw in another month's payment with our tax refund, my card will be retired in a year, and DW's a year after that. That of course depends on not using them anymore.
To recap, here are the steps:
1 - get our monthly expenses under DW's and my combined income, including debt service and the snowflake payments, and including reasonably expectable ongoing expenses that we've been putting on the cards. This will have to be a combination of squeezing fixed expenses and figuring out and eliminating all the pissy little expenses that don't present themselves so easily.
2 - build the emergency fund back up to $2,000 so there's a some leeway for larger extraordinary expenses such as car repairs.
3 - Discontinuing use of the credit cards and paying them down with the debt snowflake method.
The thing is, when I look at what's supposed to happen after the two cards and DW's car are paid off, there's actually quite a bit of money there, even with ongoing payments on my student loan debt stretching off to the horizon. We make a decent, middle-class salary, certainly enough that we should be able to save a little money and even buy stuff with cash once in a while. Right now, that has to be the goal - and we need to get serious about meeting it.
Yet we continue to have a hard time staying within our monthly budget, and we continue to struggle to pay down a substantial amount of credit card debt. I don't understand it, and I'm feeling really frustrated about it.
The thing is, while DW's paychecks have been a little inconsistent lately, she's earning a good deal more now than she was last year at this time, meaning things should be getting easier. I put a few numbers into a simple budget spreadsheet last night, and it looks to me like, counting just our fixed expenses and including debt service, we should be running a surplus of a couple hundred dollars every month. But we're not - we consistently have to take money from our emergency fund to make the monthly nut. The conclusion I reach is there are substantial random (unbudgeted) expenses that are hurting us. And I'm not even really sure what they are.
The reason I stopped working on this blog was because I felt that I didn't have anything to teach anyone because I wasn't getting anywhere. I picked it up again because just letting things go on this way is not going to solve my problem. DW and I have to raise the level of seriousness with which we think about and address this problem.
The first step has to be figuring out where the money's going, and getting to the point where we're living within our monthly means. This means squeezing our monthly expenses, such as canceling cable and changing auto insurers, but is also means figuring out where we're spending this mysterious money that isn't in the monthly plan.
The second thing (well, a related thing) would be to build our emergency fund back up to about $2,000, so that extraordinary expenses - such as auto repairs - don't have to go on the plastic.
And the third thing is paying down this damned credit card debt. I went back and looked a previous posting I made about the debt snowflake, which is where you pay the minimums on all your debts except one, and you put all extra available funds into the highest priority debt. At that time (October 2008) our two cards had about $7,000 each on them, and I predicted that if I followed the snowflake program the debt on the highest interest rate card (mine) would be retired by ... June 2010. Well, I'm here to tell ya, it ain't gonna be. As of March 1, my card at about $5,700, and DW's is up to almost 9. So we've essentially gotten nowhere in a year and a half. And it's because we keep putting non-fixed but reasonably expectable expenses - kids' clothing and shoes, car repairs - on the card. And I of course debted the equipment for the TV transition.
I redid the snowflake the other day, and it's basically the same story as it was the last time: if we do it as prescribed, and maybe throw in another month's payment with our tax refund, my card will be retired in a year, and DW's a year after that. That of course depends on not using them anymore.
To recap, here are the steps:
1 - get our monthly expenses under DW's and my combined income, including debt service and the snowflake payments, and including reasonably expectable ongoing expenses that we've been putting on the cards. This will have to be a combination of squeezing fixed expenses and figuring out and eliminating all the pissy little expenses that don't present themselves so easily.
2 - build the emergency fund back up to $2,000 so there's a some leeway for larger extraordinary expenses such as car repairs.
3 - Discontinuing use of the credit cards and paying them down with the debt snowflake method.
The thing is, when I look at what's supposed to happen after the two cards and DW's car are paid off, there's actually quite a bit of money there, even with ongoing payments on my student loan debt stretching off to the horizon. We make a decent, middle-class salary, certainly enough that we should be able to save a little money and even buy stuff with cash once in a while. Right now, that has to be the goal - and we need to get serious about meeting it.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The End of Newspapers
Well, we finally canceled home delivery of the Sunday New York Times. I couldn't even do it myself, had to have DW make the call. I feel like I lost a loved one. Savings: $32/month. Of course, I'll probably buy it from the newstand periodically, so I'm going to have to set a limit on that, lest I lose the financial benefit. So, say, twice a month? In which case the actual savings would be about $20/month.
I also went from seven days to Friday-Saturday-Sunday on the Wichita Eagle. The paper early in the week is a real embarrassment, readable in about 45 seconds, and even later in the week it's no great shakes. It wasn't bad when we got here but they laid a lot of the interesting writers off, stopped Doonesbury and it's really gone downhill. Friday is worth reading because of the arts section and well, Sunday is Sunday. It only saves about a buck and a half per week but I really felt like I was getting angry when I saw it, so it's better to do without.
I also went from seven days to Friday-Saturday-Sunday on the Wichita Eagle. The paper early in the week is a real embarrassment, readable in about 45 seconds, and even later in the week it's no great shakes. It wasn't bad when we got here but they laid a lot of the interesting writers off, stopped Doonesbury and it's really gone downhill. Friday is worth reading because of the arts section and well, Sunday is Sunday. It only saves about a buck and a half per week but I really felt like I was getting angry when I saw it, so it's better to do without.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Moms doing without plus update
Here's an article from today's Times saying the moms are foregoing spending on themselves to make sure that their little darlings get all the goodies they "need" this Christmas.
And an update: A little while ago I mentioned that we had been told that DK1 needs about $3600 in orthodonture (and that's only "Stage 1"!). Being good middle-class parents, we want to do it - we feel like we have to do it - but the payment plan that the orthodontist offers has to be paid off in 18 months. That's $200 a month, and there just ain't no way we can swing that right now. There was another, "third party" plan which involves getting a loan and spreading the payments over a longer period of time, but they took a look at our credit report and that was the end of that.
The kids have also been asking for a dog - I'm not against it in principle but I just will not take on the expense right now when we're barely (and I mean barely) making ends meet.
It's about time in our lives when the answer to every need has to stop being, take on more debt. We can't do that anyway, the decision is no longer ours. So both of these will either have to wait a year or so until some of our debt is paid down or else, ahem, we're going to have to see some increase on the income side, ahem, coming from the distaff side, if you get my drift.
And an update: A little while ago I mentioned that we had been told that DK1 needs about $3600 in orthodonture (and that's only "Stage 1"!). Being good middle-class parents, we want to do it - we feel like we have to do it - but the payment plan that the orthodontist offers has to be paid off in 18 months. That's $200 a month, and there just ain't no way we can swing that right now. There was another, "third party" plan which involves getting a loan and spreading the payments over a longer period of time, but they took a look at our credit report and that was the end of that.
The kids have also been asking for a dog - I'm not against it in principle but I just will not take on the expense right now when we're barely (and I mean barely) making ends meet.
It's about time in our lives when the answer to every need has to stop being, take on more debt. We can't do that anyway, the decision is no longer ours. So both of these will either have to wait a year or so until some of our debt is paid down or else, ahem, we're going to have to see some increase on the income side, ahem, coming from the distaff side, if you get my drift.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Saving money on the gym
This is one that DW gets all the credit for. The answer is: join the Y.
DW is a big gym rat - she's up at 5AM every day to go do her workout thing. When she was pregnant she worked out up until the day before the kids were born, and got back to it as soon as the docs allowed her to. It's really an important part - maybe the only part - of her "self care" regimen. And I have to admit, admiringly, that all that hard work pays off, if you know what I mean. Woof!
Anyway, when we moved to Illinois and I finally had a salary after 5 years in school I gave her the option to join any gym she wanted. You know nowadays they have gyms with all sorts of fancy amenities and what have you, massage-istes and the like, and she did join one for a while, but then being the frugal sort and not really having that much interest in the amenities she ended up quitting the fancy gym and joining the Y.
The Y costs all of about $60 a month, you can take all sorts of classes (the kids all take classes there: karate, gymstastics, and dance), it's got plenty of machines so no waiting, and it's clean. You could spend three times as much somewhere else for the same basic thing. Also there's reciprocity, and there's Ys everywhere, so you always have access to the gym wherever you are without having to have guest passes or anything.
And before you ask: not joining any gym isn't really an option, because they have weights and other machines there that we could never have at home, and also because even Kansas has seasons so you need to be prepared for inclemency.
So there you go. It's good for you too. The only drawback is that I have to explain to my son what the "C" stands for, and why it's okay for us to go there anyway.
DW is a big gym rat - she's up at 5AM every day to go do her workout thing. When she was pregnant she worked out up until the day before the kids were born, and got back to it as soon as the docs allowed her to. It's really an important part - maybe the only part - of her "self care" regimen. And I have to admit, admiringly, that all that hard work pays off, if you know what I mean. Woof!
Anyway, when we moved to Illinois and I finally had a salary after 5 years in school I gave her the option to join any gym she wanted. You know nowadays they have gyms with all sorts of fancy amenities and what have you, massage-istes and the like, and she did join one for a while, but then being the frugal sort and not really having that much interest in the amenities she ended up quitting the fancy gym and joining the Y.
The Y costs all of about $60 a month, you can take all sorts of classes (the kids all take classes there: karate, gymstastics, and dance), it's got plenty of machines so no waiting, and it's clean. You could spend three times as much somewhere else for the same basic thing. Also there's reciprocity, and there's Ys everywhere, so you always have access to the gym wherever you are without having to have guest passes or anything.
And before you ask: not joining any gym isn't really an option, because they have weights and other machines there that we could never have at home, and also because even Kansas has seasons so you need to be prepared for inclemency.
So there you go. It's good for you too. The only drawback is that I have to explain to my son what the "C" stands for, and why it's okay for us to go there anyway.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Debt snowflake
There's a concept in the on-line frugality community of the "debt snowflake." I think it was developed by Dave Ramsey, but I found out about it through Get Rich Slowly, which is about my favorite of the many frugality sites on the net these days. As explained here, the idea is that you set a certain amount to apply to your debts every month above the minimum payments , and all of that extra money gets put into one priority debt: it could be highest interest debt, or the one with the lowest balance, which seems counterintuitive but the idea is that success at eliminating "low-hanging fruit" will be a positive reinforcement toward continuing to pursue future goals.
Then, whenever you come into some money - whether it be a repaid $5 loan from a person at work or a tax rebate check, a high holiday pulpit, whatever - you apply it to the priority debt. That's the snowflake, which builds, presumably, into a snowball. This gets the priority debt down faster, and then once you have paid off that debt you take all the money you've been paying toward that debt and apply it to the next priority debt, and so on.
It sounds pretty smart to me, so I've been trying to adopt it for the past several months. I also found, probably through GRS though I don't really remember now, software for an Excel spread sheet that helps make this a visible, workable plan. You load in all your debt numbers, interest rates, and the amount you pay each month, and prioritize which debt to attack first, and it figures out how long it will take you, and how much money you will be able to apply to other debts once the priority debts are resolved. There's a place for you to enter in any additional money that you can snowflake, and it automatically readusts the calculations to take that additional money into account.
So I have 4 major, priority debts: two credit cards of about $7,000 balance each, one at 19.9% interest and one at 13%; a car payment of $340 over 72 months, which we're a little more than 24 months into; and about $7K to one of my brothers-in-law, which was mostly to buy our way out of the house in IL. (I also have my student loan debt, which is $400 / month but which I'm leaving off here for right now because the interest rates are low and the other debts are higher priority.) Given that there isn't any one particular debt that has a significantly lower balance than the others, I'm prioritizing the 19.9% credit card. So I pay $400 monthly to that, $200 to the other card, the $340 for the car, and $100 to the brother in law.
According to the calculations, if I don't incur any additional debt, the first card will be paid off in June of 2010, and the second one, taking into account the additional $400 per month that I will then be able to add to the payments, will be paid off in January of 2011. Then we apply the two additional amounts to the car payment, etc. etc. If nothing else changes, these 4 debts (again, leaving aside the student loan) will be resolved in November of 2011.
Which doesn't really seem that far away, when you think about it. The problem, of course, is that many things will happen between now and then to complicate these calculations. We have the looming orthodonture issue that I wrote about earlier; we want to send DK1 to Jewish summer camp next year; and we have a bat mitzvah on the horizon for August of 2011, right in the middle of all of this. (Stay tuned for a large expansion of the "frugal bar mitzvah" tag starting in about a year or so!) We also haven't been saving for retirement or for college for over a year now, since we got to Wichita.
I suppose the unexpected could happen in a positive way as well, such as DW getting gainful employment which would allow us to raise the numbers, or at least not add to them because of tight circumstances. Right now we have about $2500 in our savings account, which means we wouldn't have to go to the credit cards if we had an unbudgeted expense, such as needing to do a repair on the car, for instance.
So it is what it is, it seems like a good tool, and I think in this case it's useful to have things written down. It makes the thing less liable to vagaries of my mood or the balance in the checkbook. I'll let you know down the road how it's working out.
Oh, and one other thing: every once in a while I find myself moaning because things are tight at the end of the month and it seems that we're not being frugal enough. But one thing I've realized through paying closer attention is that I am paying about 25% of my monthly net income in debt service, so it's no surprise that things can get tight. That's no reason to let up, and I still think there are more economies to be found, but I also think relief will have to come on the income side, if you get my meaning.
Then, whenever you come into some money - whether it be a repaid $5 loan from a person at work or a tax rebate check, a high holiday pulpit, whatever - you apply it to the priority debt. That's the snowflake, which builds, presumably, into a snowball. This gets the priority debt down faster, and then once you have paid off that debt you take all the money you've been paying toward that debt and apply it to the next priority debt, and so on.
It sounds pretty smart to me, so I've been trying to adopt it for the past several months. I also found, probably through GRS though I don't really remember now, software for an Excel spread sheet that helps make this a visible, workable plan. You load in all your debt numbers, interest rates, and the amount you pay each month, and prioritize which debt to attack first, and it figures out how long it will take you, and how much money you will be able to apply to other debts once the priority debts are resolved. There's a place for you to enter in any additional money that you can snowflake, and it automatically readusts the calculations to take that additional money into account.
So I have 4 major, priority debts: two credit cards of about $7,000 balance each, one at 19.9% interest and one at 13%; a car payment of $340 over 72 months, which we're a little more than 24 months into; and about $7K to one of my brothers-in-law, which was mostly to buy our way out of the house in IL. (I also have my student loan debt, which is $400 / month but which I'm leaving off here for right now because the interest rates are low and the other debts are higher priority.) Given that there isn't any one particular debt that has a significantly lower balance than the others, I'm prioritizing the 19.9% credit card. So I pay $400 monthly to that, $200 to the other card, the $340 for the car, and $100 to the brother in law.
According to the calculations, if I don't incur any additional debt, the first card will be paid off in June of 2010, and the second one, taking into account the additional $400 per month that I will then be able to add to the payments, will be paid off in January of 2011. Then we apply the two additional amounts to the car payment, etc. etc. If nothing else changes, these 4 debts (again, leaving aside the student loan) will be resolved in November of 2011.
Which doesn't really seem that far away, when you think about it. The problem, of course, is that many things will happen between now and then to complicate these calculations. We have the looming orthodonture issue that I wrote about earlier; we want to send DK1 to Jewish summer camp next year; and we have a bat mitzvah on the horizon for August of 2011, right in the middle of all of this. (Stay tuned for a large expansion of the "frugal bar mitzvah" tag starting in about a year or so!) We also haven't been saving for retirement or for college for over a year now, since we got to Wichita.
I suppose the unexpected could happen in a positive way as well, such as DW getting gainful employment which would allow us to raise the numbers, or at least not add to them because of tight circumstances. Right now we have about $2500 in our savings account, which means we wouldn't have to go to the credit cards if we had an unbudgeted expense, such as needing to do a repair on the car, for instance.
So it is what it is, it seems like a good tool, and I think in this case it's useful to have things written down. It makes the thing less liable to vagaries of my mood or the balance in the checkbook. I'll let you know down the road how it's working out.
Oh, and one other thing: every once in a while I find myself moaning because things are tight at the end of the month and it seems that we're not being frugal enough. But one thing I've realized through paying closer attention is that I am paying about 25% of my monthly net income in debt service, so it's no surprise that things can get tight. That's no reason to let up, and I still think there are more economies to be found, but I also think relief will have to come on the income side, if you get my meaning.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
A bit of a windfall
I led high holy day services for a small congregation in KC. It was fine: they were nice, and I gave them two of my best (and in IL, most controversial) sermons and no-one ran out of the room screaming. Those of you who are hoping that a reasonably good experience will whet my appetite for pulpit work again (DW), don't hold your breath.
Be that as it may, I was paid $3,000 for the work. That's a nice little windfall in a difficult financial time. Here's where I expect the money to go:
$400 to my Visa, in addition to the regular monthly $400 payment I make out of my salary.
$200 to DW's Visa, also in addition to the regular payment.
$300 to pay off my Federation pledge for the year.
$200 for my tax accountant, which is overdue.
$500 (a guesstimate) for routine service on my car, which is also overdue.
I'm probably going to spend $200 or so on some clothes from Land's End, a couple of pairs of winter khakis and a couple of sweaters. Land's End is good value for money, I find.
$100-ish for a rack for my bike, so I can carry my laptop to work without killing myself.
And $800 to savings to make up for the steady attrition in that account over the past several months.
If there's any left over, I may buy a new watch - I'm wearing a $15 job from Target since my nicer one crapped out, but it's not nice enough for someone in a job like mine. We also have a bat mitzvah out of town in November, any additional leftover will go to keeping the expenses of that off the Visa bill.
And thus it goes, like unto a wisp.
Be that as it may, I was paid $3,000 for the work. That's a nice little windfall in a difficult financial time. Here's where I expect the money to go:
$400 to my Visa, in addition to the regular monthly $400 payment I make out of my salary.
$200 to DW's Visa, also in addition to the regular payment.
$300 to pay off my Federation pledge for the year.
$200 for my tax accountant, which is overdue.
$500 (a guesstimate) for routine service on my car, which is also overdue.
I'm probably going to spend $200 or so on some clothes from Land's End, a couple of pairs of winter khakis and a couple of sweaters. Land's End is good value for money, I find.
$100-ish for a rack for my bike, so I can carry my laptop to work without killing myself.
And $800 to savings to make up for the steady attrition in that account over the past several months.
If there's any left over, I may buy a new watch - I'm wearing a $15 job from Target since my nicer one crapped out, but it's not nice enough for someone in a job like mine. We also have a bat mitzvah out of town in November, any additional leftover will go to keeping the expenses of that off the Visa bill.
And thus it goes, like unto a wisp.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Oy vey - orthodonture
DW took the the 2 girls (ages 10 and 8) to a long-dreaded visit to the orthodontist yesterday and the news was rather what we feared - they both need extensive work, to the tune of about 7 grand.
Wow.
In case I haven't been clear, I don't have $7,000. We are just barely making ends meet. In fact, we're really not - I just put $300 from savings into checking so we could pay our rent this month. I suppose the orthodontist will have a handy dandy payment plan that I could pay off in, oh, 70 months or so, but I just took on $5,000 in additional debt to buy our way out of our second mortgage and I'm hesitant, to say the least, to take on another 7K! I'm supposed to be paying down our debt, and here I am, prospectively adding greatly to it.
On the other hand, of course, I'm a middle class Jewish father and I want my children to have what they need. (Should I put "need" in quotation marks there?)
It's times like these that cause unrest.
Wow.
In case I haven't been clear, I don't have $7,000. We are just barely making ends meet. In fact, we're really not - I just put $300 from savings into checking so we could pay our rent this month. I suppose the orthodontist will have a handy dandy payment plan that I could pay off in, oh, 70 months or so, but I just took on $5,000 in additional debt to buy our way out of our second mortgage and I'm hesitant, to say the least, to take on another 7K! I'm supposed to be paying down our debt, and here I am, prospectively adding greatly to it.
On the other hand, of course, I'm a middle class Jewish father and I want my children to have what they need. (Should I put "need" in quotation marks there?)
It's times like these that cause unrest.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Budget woes
A continuing sore subject is DW's and my inability to stick to the budget. I've written before about our challenges in feeding our family of 5 for anything resembling (at least to my mind) a reasonable amount. (I set $450 as a goal but we have a hard time getting through a month spending less than $900, which to me seems crazy.) DW also has a tendency to say, well, we need this and this and that, and run to the store and get it, despite where we are in the month or the budget or whatever. (Although she won't do it if I jump up and down and say we really don't have any money.) The latest one was we got her Visa bill today, we're supposedly trying not to use them but every month on her card there's a $100 or $150 charge from Target for school supplies or clothes for the kids or whatever. We've really been making an effort to pay the cards down but of course we can't do it if I make a $200 payment and she spends $150 on school clothes! Her answer is, well, the kids needed clothes, what was I supposed to do? Well, that's fine, but the money you're using is not real money, and it's interfering with our ability to dig ourselves out of our hole.
Much as I would love to rake her over the coals on this, I really can't because a) she reads the blog and b) I have my own things I spend money on, like the farmer's market and the free range meat guy and building up the liquor cabinet. I have virtually given up spending money in bookstores, not completely but mostly, and I pay cash when I do go. But I am far from a saint on this. Jako got $120 out of me yesterday, it'll last 2 months but still.
I think what we may have to try is to stop using, not only the credit cards, but even the debit cards. I read somewhere on one of the frugal sites that if you carry around the cash with you you're more likely to stick to the budget. So maybe we'll have to try that.
Much as I would love to rake her over the coals on this, I really can't because a) she reads the blog and b) I have my own things I spend money on, like the farmer's market and the free range meat guy and building up the liquor cabinet. I have virtually given up spending money in bookstores, not completely but mostly, and I pay cash when I do go. But I am far from a saint on this. Jako got $120 out of me yesterday, it'll last 2 months but still.
I think what we may have to try is to stop using, not only the credit cards, but even the debit cards. I read somewhere on one of the frugal sites that if you carry around the cash with you you're more likely to stick to the budget. So maybe we'll have to try that.
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