s/o budgets! i have questions.

[wawa]

In which I ramble quite a bit and probably overshare. *waves to internet strangers*

Contains slight @ content as it relates to $$

So...MH and I have been together about 8 years. We had a budget for the first 5 years or so we were living together and built up a ton of savings...and then we bought a house. and then we were drawing down savings with planned house-related expenditures (for those who somehow missed me AWing this all over - we did a massive reno. all new mechanicals, new roof, new bathrooms and refinished floors), and THEN I had a baby while we were still working on the house. We got in the habit of kinda running in the red for a while there. (and by running in the red I mean spending from savings, not going into debt) But the house is pretty close to done (at least done with the $$ portion of it) and it's now time to get out of that habit. So I've been thinking about our budget and tracking and so forth for the past week or so and now I've got questions.

We've got a pretty good system in place that we use to track our weekly household fun money and food budgets ($100 each), but I just sat down to run the numbers on the rest of our budget and it's tighter than I'd like.

So - first question - Mint.com. Does anybody here use it? Or something similar? Recommended? I want to a few months tracking every single penny to figure out how close we are with some of our budget estimates (things like gas money that aren't set costs, clothes and stuff for the kid, random personal crap, etc) and figure out where there are money leaks we can plug. Last time we did this was back when we were still renting and we were kinda shocked to learn that I was blowing an absurd sum of money on groceries. (expensive cheese) That's when we started tracking our weekly grocery and "household" fun money budgets. I'm kinda hoping for another easy category to axe where we're just frittering away money. I suspect instead it will show that we need to sell all our toys and have cheaper hobbies. (we bike, camp, and boat. And build stuff. Tools and bike and backpacking gear are expensive. Boat crap is fucking obscene.)

Second question - Does it lower your credit score to have a high rotating balance on your credit card? Meaning - if we were to put ALL of our bills on one of our two rewards cards for the sake of the rewards (which make a nice automatic xmas gift fund) would it ding our credit? I know credit utilization is a factor in credit scores, but I don't know how that works when you pay off your balance in full and the googles has not enlightened me. Currently we just use those cards for day to day expenses (gas, food, etc) and pay our bills directly from checking. Free money is free money though and we've got enough unused credit limit between us to pay everything on those cards monthly. Not that it would really matter much since we aren't applying for any loans any time soon. But still. I'm asking anyway.

and third - and general tips? It looks like from my analysis of the past months spending that our big items are mortgage (stuck with that one), daycare (ditto) and gas. I've been brainstorming ways to cut gas without having to change vehicles, but daycare dropoff/pickup really complicates carpooling. We could cut cable and very well may, but that's really a pretty paltry savings since we're not going to cut Internet. We've got one car payment and a small student loan that we're still paying down, both with low interest and a few more years left on them. I recently got my first smart phone, and now that I have an iphone for work I could go back to a dumb phone I suppose, so that would be another little bit shaved off. We both drive newerish vehicles (mind is a 2009, MH's is a 2012) mine is paid off. His is not quite. His uses entirely too much gas - it's a truck - but we do actually use it for truck stuff. (Towing the boat, helping my sister out on her farm, hauling random crap on a very regular basis. Please for the love of god lets not delve too deeply into this aspect of my post, k?). Our commutes are equal in distance and totally opposite in direction. Let's see...what else...our save-to-spend account is pretty well depleted thanks to the house reno and is slowly being rebuilt...at our current rate we're talking 1.5 years slowly. That is a large reason why I'm so gung ho to find some wiggle in this budget.

Uhhhh...anything else relevant? we just have the one kid. We're hoping to TTC #2 soonish? (another large reason I'm looking for budget wiggle room) Daycare costs can suck my nut. I feel house poor sometimes but we're actually well under 30%. We're in a HCOL and we've been in our house for 5 years and plan to be there another 5-10. We recently refinanced and are not under water or anything. We both work full time as engineers and make about the same amount. We've ended up owing on our taxes the last year somehow despite kid and house and all that so I'm trying to avoid that for this year and am currently withholding at the single amount. i guess the fact that we both make the same screwed us up? Withheld at the wrong bracket? I dunno. I need to actually sit down with a professional and figure that part out. When I say that our budget is tight I mean that when I add up every single regular expenditure I can think of, including a reasonable cushion on the variable ones, funds for things like car repair, boat repair, vet bills and medical copays and $250 automatically to short term savings per paycheck, I end up with a few bucks to spare at the end not allowing for stuff like vacations or any more than the absolute basic basics in terms of personal needs. (clothes, makeup, etc) (reason #3 I need some wiggle!) We're not hurting by any means, but I just feel like I want a better handle on my money and where it goes and how much I can spend and how much I should squirrel away. (there are also 401k and 529 savings happening in the background here. I pretend those money's don't exist. We don't max out either of those, but we put a reasonable amount in. We're on track for retirement. Less so for college savings, but in theory in 17 years we'll be able to cash flow a decent chunk of shorti's tuition.)

So...lay it on me? Thoughts? Feel free to just ramble about your own budget. I've been operating under the ostrich principal of financial management for the past 1.5 years or so (figuring MH would mention if we were spending too much) but it turns out I freakin' hate that sorta "yeah, we've got enough money, just don't spend too much" way of doing things (even if it works) so I'm taking over and tracking the shit out of this budget. I have several hundred dollars worth of makeup on my want list...I need a solid budget so I know how much of it I can buy.

[Velar Fricative]

First, you sound like me re: not finding a lot of wiggle room.

Have you recently shopped for car insurance rates? We just switched to a better rate. Groceries can be an easy way to cut costs, as can cooking more and eating out less (this was where we cut down a lot and it has helped). Any opportunities for you and/or you H to earn some extra money if you want to bring in more income instead of cutting back on some things?

I did switch to using my work phone as my personal phone as well but I am considering going back to paying for an extra line because I don't like being tied to my work phone all the time, so that is something to consider.

I love Mint. I do keep a general spreadsheet of expenses, savings goals, etc. but Mint is good with assessing spending and assigning spending into categories, so it's not overkill for me to use a spreadsheet plus Mint.

We use a CC to earn airline miles and it *could* hurt you if you apply for credit and you haven't paid the bill yet because your expenses-to-limit ratio would be high. We charge a ton to our card and always pay it off and it's never hurt us, but we are still wary of this when we apply for credit (not often though). Check to see if you can increase your limit.

Ummmm I think that's all I've got for now.

[secretlyevil]

We use Amex to pay for 90% of our expenses and pay it off every month. Both of our credit scores are really good. Quicken helps us track everything. The cash back we get each year in Feb is a nice bonus.

[Velar Fricative]

Oh! And DH and I make roughly the same base salary and we never owe taxes when we file. But we are also MM sinners in that we realllllly go out of our way to avoid paying after filing so we get nice refunds by withholding at the single rate and taking advantage of all pre-tax deductions (dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, mass transit deduction for me, 403b, etc.). Man I love that refund check too much to figure out how to avoid getting too big a refund or paying too big a tax bill.

[kadams767]

What is the $100 weekly household fun money currently being used for?

How much extra are you trying to "find" in your budget every month?

Also, what are your pay structures like? Are there months that have extra pay checks (if you get paid bi-weekly)?

[aurora]

Well, the obvious answer is to sell the boat. What's cable by comparison?

Seriously, though, it seems like you're in a pretty good place overall. I mean, you are saving $250/month and contributing to retirement, so it's more of a question of choosing among priorities rather than among needs. Even if you do have your 2nd child soonish, in 9+ months you'll be more than halfway toward your 1.5 years to replenish your savings. Assuming you take 3 months off, you'll likely have that almost done before you have to pay for day care for your second. It sounds to me like mostly you just need to decide if you prioritize food vs your own smart phone vs makeup vs whatever.

Tracking will absolutely help with that. The first time I did it I kept all receipts for 3 months and put them all into Excel. It turns out we spend way more on groceries than we realized, so that was eye-opening. I know a lot of people here like Mint but I'm an engineer and wanted to be able to do my own thing. .

Re. The credit card, I have been told that it's possible a high balance can hurt your credit score even if paid off monthly if the card picks a high balance day to report to the credit bureaus, which would mostly be by chance. But your report doesn't say whether it's paid in full every month, just if it's paid on time. So, if you're trying to get credit for something soon you might want to watch that.

[wawa]

Jul 21, 2014 20:04:44 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

What is the $100 weekly household fun money currently being used for?

How much extra are you trying to "find" in your budget every month?

Also, what are your pay structures like? Are there months that have extra pay checks (if you get paid bi-weekly)?

Any random shit we need, meals out, family activities, etc. Or non family activities too actually if we're doing our own thing. Like...this past weekend it was $20 for drinks out with a friend that just got a new job, $20 some backpacking stuff mh needed, $10 breakfast for mh on thr way home from backpacking, $20 ticket to an event downtown with my girlfriends, $40 for babysitter. ($10 over budget)

I got shit for the extra $10.

I honestly have no idea how much extra would make me feel good. That is something I'm still figuring out. Daycare fir a second kid will be another $200ish per week so that at a minimum. Right now we're working with $25 extra per week based on my estimates.

I get paid semi monthly. Mh gets paid biweekly.

[pamela]

1)  I use a spreadsheet instead of Mint. I have a tab with the  budget summary, one tracking savings and one for itemized spending with category list boxes that feed the budget summary. Everything we spend goes into the itemized list. I have comments field for each line that I include a general summary of what I bought to help remember what those Target trips are that add up. I adjust it as needed so that at the end of the month, what comes in equals what comes out and each category is zero. That may mean rolling some extras over to the next month, adding them to savings for that category (like gifts, clothes) or throwing the extra to the current project (savings, house, etc)

2) We use our CC's for most everything now. I have ridiculously high limits, like $25k, so the $4k we put on there in a month doesn't really make a big deal. If you want to do that and doing so puts you over 20% of your limit, make multiple payments a month so that whenever they report to the credit bureau you are always low.  If you do this, don't put a line item of "CC bill" in your budget, still divide it out by what is spent. If you do that and deduct everything you spend, you'll always have the money in the bank to have the CC auto-pay in full so never a risk of a late payment or owing interest.

3) For gas, slow down. Seriously, going 60-65 instead of 70-75 can make a big difference. Also, pre-planning your weekend driving to combine trips, especially if you have to drive a bit to get anywhere. 

4) For taxes, you are getting screwed over by the tax tables by both making the same amount. DH and I are within $1-2k of each other and we both have our W-4 set to "married, withhold at higher single rate" and an extra $100 per pay check to hopefully not get a penalty. Play with the withholding calculator on the IRS website. It's pretty detailed. 

If you are putting away for savings for things like retirement/529 +  car, boat repair, vet etc, you are doing better than most. Really look that you are being reasonable with those. Just think how much you could be blowing if you were like most people and didn't preplan for those things. 

Do you have a dependent care FSA available? 

[rosiedozie]

I'm so Type A that I use both Mint.com *and* a spreadsheet. We have several credit cards between us, so I love the fact that Mint combines those transactions for us and categorizes them for us. I also (in a sadistic kind of way) like the emails that it sends us about our progress, i.e. "STOP GOING OUT TO EAT YOU IDIOTS."

Mint is the first thing I recommend to people trying to budget. First you need to get a good hold on what you're spending today before you can decide what to cut tomorrow.

[rosiedozie]

And when you're thinking about your credit score - why are you worried about it? Unless you're immediately in the market for a new house or car, I wouldn't let that impact any of your financial decisions too much (unless you're making what would be an overall bad decision, obviously). We put everything that we can on the credit cards for the purposes of rewards.

[kadams767]

Jul 21, 2014 20:38:26 GMT -5 wawa said:

Jul 21, 2014 20:04:44 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

What is the $100 weekly household fun money currently being used for?

How much extra are you trying to "find" in your budget every month?

Also, what are your pay structures like? Are there months that have extra pay checks (if you get paid bi-weekly)?

Any random shit we need, meals out, family activities, etc. Or non family activities too actually if we're doing our own thing. Like...this past weekend it was $20 for drinks out with a friend that just got a new job, $20 some backpacking stuff mh needed, $10 breakfast for mh on thr way home from backpacking, $20 ticket to an event downtown with my girlfriends, $40 for babysitter. ($10 over budget)

I got shit for the extra $10.

I honestly have no idea how much extra would make me feel good. That is something I'm still figuring out. Daycare fir a second kid will be another $200ish per week so that at a minimum. Right now we're working with $25 extra per week based on my estimates.

I get paid semi monthly. Mh gets paid biweekly.

My first obvious answer is to budget monthly and have each month based on your husband getting only 2 pay checks, and then save the extra two checks annually. That is money that you will not miss and it's a good chunk all at once to boost your savings and bring up your monthly savings average from the $250.

Do you guys do separate fun money for each of you in addition to that $100? I don't know how helpful it would be, but when I was being stricter about budgeting, I found that it was hard for me to have really broad categories that were supposed to cover a lot of different things like what you just described. That money was always like a black hole for me and I was also always over. It worked a lot better for me to try and come up with separate line items, like one for eating out, one for hobbies, one for entertainment, etc.

[EllieArroway]

Mint is amazing. I know I tell this story every time it is brought up, but when we first started using Mint we realized that we were spending like $700 more per month on food than we thought we were. It was insane. Obviously our 'budget' was crap. It really opened our eyes to how much we were spending on the little things that we weren't really tracking. $5 or $10 here and there adds up to a lot of money at the end of the month.

[Melissa W.]

We use quicken. Love it. I had too many issues with my credit union and mint.

[pescalita]

I use Mint. It can be buggy and tough to customize, which is super frustrating, but it's the only thing that does what it does and I can't live without it.

The reason I prefer it over something like quicken or a spreadsheet is it does most of the work for me. So it categorizes most everything correctly and I have all my budgets in there, so I can just go in maybe weekly, adjust any categorizations that need tweaking, and it's 10 minutes at the end of the month to get all the totals to my google spreadsheet and tie it up. I'm an accountant so I'm busy with closing out other shit at the beginning of the month and don't have time for my own.

I kind of have a cash flow system going on. First, we use the rewards card for everything we can, including bills. Then we have several "save to spend" accounts in ING. So every month there's over $1k that gets pulled automatically for everything from expenses to gifts to house stuff, vacations, etc. Basically stuff that we spend most months, but not evenly. Then we have "budgets" for regular spending like groceries and gas and eating out. The only rule is, all this stuff has to be cash neutral at the end of the month. So if we spend $200 on car repair, it comes out of the expenses acct. If we overspend $100 on groceries and underspend $50 on gas, that balance of $50 comes from somewhere. Usually I lean towards the expenses acct when it was life happening and the fun acct when we just didn't give a fuck. I know we need to reel it in when I end up draining a random acct for unrelated spending because it's the only one that has cash. So then I pull the cash for the previous month's spending back into checking before the CC is due.

The other thing that's really helpful is we're both paid biweekly and we budget on 2 paychecks each. So we each get 2 extra paychecks a year that are pure gravy. That ends up going to big stuff.

[madisen]

If anyone is worried about the percentage being used on a credit card line and you pay your cc off in full pretty much every month, request a limit increase.

[secretlyevil]

Jul 21, 2014 19:57:45 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Oh! And DH and I make roughly the same base salary and we never owe taxes when we file. But we are also MM sinners in that we realllllly go out of our way to avoid paying after filing so we get nice refunds by withholding at the single rate and taking advantage of all pre-tax deductions (dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, mass transit deduction for me, 403b, etc.). Man I love that refund check too much to figure out how to avoid getting too big a refund or paying too big a tax bill.

Tax refunds are a mm sin? Oh man, I'm a huge sinner. I adore our refund.

[teflepi]

Jul 22, 2014 6:11:36 GMT -5 secretlyevil said:

Jul 21, 2014 19:57:45 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Oh! And DH and I make roughly the same base salary and we never owe taxes when we file. But we are also MM sinners in that we realllllly go out of our way to avoid paying after filing so we get nice refunds by withholding at the single rate and taking advantage of all pre-tax deductions (dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, mass transit deduction for me, 403b, etc.). Man I love that refund check too much to figure out how to avoid getting too big a refund or paying too big a tax bill.

Tax refunds are a mm sin? Oh man, I'm a huge sinner. I adore our refund.

interest free loan to government is the issue, I believe. But, as much as gov bugs me with their tax code, I love it too.

[Deleted]

Jul 22, 2014 6:11:36 GMT -5 secretlyevil said:

Jul 21, 2014 19:57:45 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Oh! And DH and I make roughly the same base salary and we never owe taxes when we file. But we are also MM sinners in that we realllllly go out of our way to avoid paying after filing so we get nice refunds by withholding at the single rate and taking advantage of all pre-tax deductions (dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, mass transit deduction for me, 403b, etc.). Man I love that refund check too much to figure out how to avoid getting too big a refund or paying too big a tax bill.

Tax refunds are a mm sin? Oh man, I'm a huge sinner. I adore our refund.

Yeah I think the ideal is to break even, or even to end up oweing money. (is it "oweing" or "owing." both are looking weird to me right now).  It makes sense - its better to put money aside into a savings acct that even earns 1% and pay any owed taxes from that than to get a huge refund.  Our goal is to be within a thousand either way - either get back less than a thousand or owe less than a thousand.  It's hard though, every year it seems our numbers are way off. 

[Deleted]

wawa - to answer your OP - I could have written many aspects of this. Well except for the low student loans. LOL.

we just started using mint in the past few months and I have found that it is really helpful. It's nice because it pulls everything together from all accounts. So before, H was tracking our money, and he didnt look at the totality of spending. So he would see that we spent 300 on groceries out of checking, and think we had 300 more to spend (we spend 600/month on groceries). But he would have used the AmEx the last time he went to the store and spent 150. So we really only had 150 left in the budget for groceries, but if you were just looking at the bank accounts (with monthly or semimonthly checks on the CC statement) you wouldnt realize that. But mint pulls it all together and tells us that we have spent 450 so far this month on groceries, no matter the account or credit card. so that is really helpful.

I keep tweaking it to make it more effective for me. I can see how something could work better but it's pretty good. The app is good but the website is a lot better. I need to go through and adjust all our budget categories bc I've been off in a lot of areas in my estimates.

We don't have a lot of room to cut either. The less we spend on groceries, the more we spend on eating out, for example. Gas is one of our biggest costs so I've become obsessed with our gas mileage, lol. We shop at Safeway and get gas rewards with our club card, so yesterday I got 30 cents off/gallon at Exxon or Mobil, which is nice when you're filling up a minivan.

I am trying to get into couponing as much as I can and using apps like Cartwheel for Target, but I have to be careful not to spend money that I wouldn't spend without the coupon, you know?

There is apparently a comcast package called "internet pulus" that I wanted but h had to have ESPN - but you get high speed internet, basically just the over-the-air channels (but no antenna) and then HBO. I have a friend who has this and I think she pays 60 or 65 a month.


ANYWAY - so I think Mint would be good for you because you could figure out exactly where your money is going and you can also set up savings goals and the like, which I find really helpful. Then I would look at maybe your two highest bills and see what you can do to cut them down. We were spending close to 200 between TV and internet so we went back to comcast for TV, lost the DVR, and now we're spending 100 a month for both, which is still high IMO but its a lot better than it was. So that's almost 1200 a year. I'm obsessed with keeping our BGE bill as low as possible - which is harder to do in the winter bc it is dark and cold, but much more possible in the summer. so i'm stingy with the AC, we keep lights off, I try to run major appliances (such as dishwasher, W/D0 at night as much as possible, and we try not to use the oven if we can help it and do a lot more grilling or salads etc.

I'm also just trying really hard to retrain myself regarding "wants" vs "needs." I need maternity clothes that I can to work. But on the weekends, I can make do with the same two pairs of maternity shorts, two maxi skirts and a handful of tshirts, rather than buying more weekend maternity clothes. I try to stay out of the makeup thread :-) I'm using the library a lot more for books. I don't buy a lot of clothes for DS because he doesn't care, lol. I "want" that expensive cheese from the farmers market but I don't actually need it, so I avoid that stand. H may "want" two beers with dinner if we go out but he'll have one and be fine, even if he really wanted to try that other beer they have on tap that looks really good, etc.

Anyway, I'm just rambling, but know that you are not alone and that I feel your pain :-) It's hard to cut when you aren't sure what the problem areas are. So I just mainly try to trim each category a bit.

[secretlyevil]

I would rather get a larger refund than end up owing.

[IIOY]

Jul 22, 2014 7:30:26 GMT -5 secretlyevil said:

I would rather get a larger refund than end up owing.

Nooooooo. You are loaning money interest-free to the government. When you owe, you've screwed the government out of the interest. I realize it's painful to write the check, but from an investment POV, you are better off owing.

ETA: or what the others said.

[Velar Fricative]

Oh! While it may not necessarily save money, we arranged our electric bill so that we pay the same amount each month for 12 months based on past usage. Makes it so much easier to budget for each month so we don't have to deal with such varying monthly rates based on AC usage, etc. After each 12 months is up, our bill gets reassessed for the next 12 months and most of the time, our amount owed each month has gone down a little bit.

Also, do you live somewhere where tolls are a fact of life? We get our EZ Pass account automatically replenished when we're down to a certain amount and while breezing through the EZ Pass and laughing at everyone waiting in the cash lanes is a fun hobby of ours, when all three of us are in the car we will go through one of the staffed lanes and tell them we're "carpooling" (3+ people, doesn't matter if one of them is a baby) which saves us some money.

[wawa]

Jul 21, 2014 21:07:02 GMT -5 rosiedozie said:

And when you're thinking about your credit score - why are you worried about it? Unless you're immediately in the market for a new house or car, I wouldn't let that impact any of your financial decisions too much (unless you're making what would be an overall bad decision, obviously). We put everything that we can on the credit cards for the purposes of rewards.

Mh is overly concerned with his credit score. We have no upcoming credit applications.

[rosiedozie]

Jul 22, 2014 7:42:32 GMT -5 wawa said:

Jul 21, 2014 21:07:02 GMT -5 rosiedozie said:

And when you're thinking about your credit score - why are you worried about it? Unless you're immediately in the market for a new house or car, I wouldn't let that impact any of your financial decisions too much (unless you're making what would be an overall bad decision, obviously). We put everything that we can on the credit cards for the purposes of rewards.

Mh is overly concerned with his credit score. We have no upcoming credit applications.

Just tell him that the more you use your CCs, the more likely you are to have your limit raised. Then you'll be using a smaller ratio of your credit limit which helps your score. Boom!

[secretlyevil]

Jul 22, 2014 7:34:36 GMT -5 IIOY said:

Jul 22, 2014 7:30:26 GMT -5 secretlyevil said:

I would rather get a larger refund than end up owing.

Nooooooo. You are loaning money interest-free to the government. When you owe, you've screwed the government out of the interest. I realize it's painful to write the check, but from an investment POV, you are better off owing.

ETA: or what the others said.

I know but dammit.

[cosmos]

List your budget. It's helpful to write it out and then let the vultures pick at it

[pescalita]

Jul 22, 2014 7:42:32 GMT -5 wawa said:

Jul 21, 2014 21:07:02 GMT -5 rosiedozie said:

And when you're thinking about your credit score - why are you worried about it? Unless you're immediately in the market for a new house or car, I wouldn't let that impact any of your financial decisions too much (unless you're making what would be an overall bad decision, obviously). We put everything that we can on the credit cards for the purposes of rewards.

Mh is overly concerned with his credit score. We have no upcoming credit applications.

Mine likes to compete when we have ours pulled and I'm all we've shared the same credit since we were 21. The only credit I had on my own was student loans I hadn't yet paid on. Congratulations for not screwing your credit before then? I'm more responsible for his credit score than he is, since I pay the bills.

I am ridiculously practical when it comes to money, like I can't understand people who won't use credit for the rewards and pay it off monthly because they "don't like debt", and I have no problem using auto-savings for large infrequent bills, but I cannot bring myself to hate my tax refund. Maybe I'm not all that libertarian after all.

[lys]

I suggest posting this on the MM board
Yes. do track ALL spending - Mint or other program - or even paper and pencil.
Are  you meal planning?
What do you spend on eating out?
Clothing budget? (definitely consider consignment or other resale for kids)
Are you funding retirement? (Do that before any 529 plans)
Do you have a good emergency fund in place?
I would not sell bikes or basic camping equipment - maybe downscale to a tent, however. Boat may be on the chopping block if it is costing you money to own and operate/insure/transport/store etc.
Clothing, personal care costs? Can you reduce those? (Limit your wardrobe to a few mix & match colors in classic styles - update with accessories) - but end of season sales.  STAY OUT OF THE MALLS and OFF THE INTERNET SHOPPING Cites!
Look to your internet, cellphone, cable costs -- bundle for less or get rid of the smart phone.

What are you spending on travel?  Gifts?


Yes, a high usage of allowable balances on a credit card (whether or not  you pay off in full each month) will ding your FICO score. You can avoid this by using the CC (for points etc) and then going home and paying off the purchase.  The total balance on the card will not add up over  the month - but you still get point credits for the purchases.  Pay OFF the credit cards every month and work to go to cash for your house projects.

Is your mortgage within the 25-28% of takehome pay guideline? Is it still when you add utilities and taxes?  If not - you are probably house poor.

Consider holding of on child #2 until child #1 is out of daycare?

Pre Plan all purchases - no impulse spending.

[secretlyevil]

See this is why I don't post my budget on mm. They'd go ape shit over some of our spending.

[ringstrue]

1) I use an excel spreadsheet for keeping track of everything. I have a new chart every 2 weeks since we get paid bi-weekly. Maybe this is painfully obvious to some but it wasn't for me: you can set it up so that it automatically adds up whole columns and even the totals of multiple totals of columns - its very cool to leverage to quickly see what the upshot of all your actions are.

2) It will actually be a benefit. DH and I both have excellent credit scores and we are no strangers to debt.

3) Don't nesessarily fixate on things like food and gas to keep the budget in check. The biggest budget fixes can come in the form of redoing your phone package, auto insurance, or TV/internet package situation. Maybe even addressing an electricity or heating situation.

Budget for bullshit. On any given month, we could have a few hundred $$ go to random crap for the cars, daycare, a birthday party, charity, spontaneous fun, or something breaking that needs to be fixed or replaced.

Ditto the PPs with the FSA stuff. It's very helpful.


OH - re: Tax refund. We are still currently waiting on $300 from the govt. due to some BS from back in March with my daughter's existence which I think is a cop out and they are just trying to hold onto the $$. So now I really REALLY plan to make sure we aren't so refund-oriented with our taxes each year. That's been a challenge since every year our situation changes a lot and will change again for the next 2 years by a lot, still this experience has really made me not trust my state with this sort of stuff.