Has anyone done Dave Ramsey?

[traveltheworld]

waverly, in terms of bills - could you set up automatic payments? Everything we have is set up that way.

And I agree, managing finances/investments is like a small job. I use Buxfer to track expenditures, but also have my own spreadsheets with monthly balance sheet, income statement and cash flow. I structure it exactly like a small business and give DH a month-end report on how we are doing. I really like doing it - I'm such a nerd that one of my favourite times of the month is the first week when I get to update all my spreadsheets!

[2chatter]

traveltheworld - I did monthly pregnancy status reports for DH - I totally love the nerd side of your tracking! I'm bummed he isn't into running all of our numbers and churning out monthly reports. We blow WAY too much money on I don't even know what - do it would be good to hold a mirror up to our spending. I wish my bank account did more of the analysis - I know we can code payees - does anyone use their bank for this kind of data? I don't want to enter the date or export it or ... anything but a low effort solution would be awesome.

[waverly]

Oct 4, 2017 14:29:41 GMT -5 welly01 said:

waverly , I'm not familiar with Money Dance but I do like Mint. I think you have to find a system both of you like. I did Quicken for a number of years but didn't like that I had to keep upgrading. Honestly, if DH is missing bills (even a little), I would have a CTJ money meeting with him and find out why. To me that's unacceptable. You could take over and spin it as he's handled it for x number of years, now you want to handle it for x number of years. I'm a huge believer in both spouses knowing what money is going out the door, level of debt, etc. Also, I use auto-pay for anything I can. That way you're not keeping track of due dates, etc. Our bank sends a nightly email with balance and daily transactions so I know if something unusual hits. I do our monthly expenses in an excel spreadsheet so I can look back at what we've spent on gas, food, etc. DH and I both have individual accounts with play money and personal expenditures and a joint account for family expenditures. That has worked out well.

Sorry to take over your thread.  We have discussed several times which he takes as nagging, and things don't really get a lot better.  The main reason is that he is overwhelmed at work, doesn't have time, and disorganized.  I think there is a bit of not my fault going on with him.  Like how dare they charge a late fee or write a nasty note. Well they wouldn't have to if you paid on time. 

There are too many accounts, so I think we have to pair down, so that is part of my plan.  But it takes time, and I am impatient. I do see everything money wise, I just don't pay the actual bills (except childcare that I took over).  

[waverly]

Oct 4, 2017 15:22:02 GMT -5 traveltheworld said:

waverly , in terms of bills - could you set up automatic payments? Everything we have is set up that way.

And I agree, managing finances/investments is like a small job. I use Buxfer to track expenditures, but also have my own spreadsheets with monthly balance sheet, income statement and cash flow. I structure it exactly like a small business and give DH a month-end report on how we are doing. I really like doing it - I'm such a nerd that one of my favourite times of the month is the first week when I get to update all my spreadsheets!

I'll look into Buxfer.  He likes doing all the income statements and cash flow, but he budgets after the fact like this is what we spent rather than budgeting beforehand.  

[waverly]

I updated the mint to our joint e-mail address and put the bills in, so hope that helps.

[waverly]

I thought this was a timely blog post www.livingwellspendingless.com/2017/09/29/your-exclusive-guide-to-saving-more-money-this-halloween/

Disclaimer- I am in no way connected to this blog.

[k3am]

Oct 4, 2017 14:37:48 GMT -5 sandandsea said:

Oct 4, 2017 13:43:25 GMT -5 k3am said:

Eating out is one place that we could cut back but I refuse. It's $3k a year (estimated @ $50/week for work lunches, plus some wiggle room for overages) that helps keep my sanity. Lunch is often the only time I leave my desk for more than 5-10 minutes...

I agree with this, but we are fortunate to be able to afford it. If we had a lot of debt or I needed that $3k to pay for something important, I would cut it out quickly!

Yes, definitely. I don't comment much on the rest of the thread because we're at a point where we don't need to manage/budget funds very tightly. If we want something, we buy it. (But we're both inherently cheap and if one wants to buy anything over a couple hundred, it's a discussion beforehand.) If we needed to, we could definitely buckle down. 

I think it's part of what's kept us from pulling the trigger on moving out of our starter home. It's tiny footprint and "tiny" (HAH! But for our area, it's tiny) mortgage payment give us a lot of financial freedom.

[sandandsea]

Oct 4, 2017 16:27:26 GMT -5 k3am said:

I think it's part of what's kept us from pulling the trigger on moving out of our starter home. It's tiny footprint and "tiny" (HAH! But for our area, it's tiny) mortgage payment give us a lot of financial freedom.

Omg yes. I seriously could not sleep after we made the offer on our "next" house. A couple of years later it seems like no big deal. But for a while there it was terrifying!

[waverly]

k3am- can I ask you more about your method on paying your CC every Monday?

So you make a payment on the same card weekly? Or multiple cards each in a different Monday? Does the weekly payments prevent interest?

Just curious.

I am thinking of doing a hybrid- debit card in person and CC for Amazon and daycare type things. Then the only other things on CC would be H's stuff. Despite the risk and it's still insured by Visa- Dave says people that use CC spend 20% more which is what I think our problem is. Not sure if I can get H to go back to the debit card though from a cash is king cash flow POV.

[2chatter]

waverly - extreme but it worked. I asked DH to cut up his cards and request new ones but not activate them, leave them in the safe. He cut them in front of me and hasn't used them in the last 8 years. It was like a status and security thing for him. IDK if that might help.

Also, if it's prestige, some financial services firms have cash accounts with pretty awesome benes and cards. Ours is actually super status looking, if that might appeal. It's still a debit card but looks high end.

[mae0111]

waverly, we do something similar. We put everything on cards, but after doing this for years, we know what we can and can't afford to buy up front. So we budget for certain things - $X for groceries, $Y for "mad money", $Z allocated for clothes, etc. - and we have those numbers in mind when we're using cards.

We each pay our cards off when we get our paychecks - so every 2 weeks. Even though I'm home, DH, is "paying" me so that we can both keep a hand in the household finances.

We both have cash back American Express cards (5% on gas, groceries, and pharmacy; 1.5% on everything else), and we save the cash back points toward a common goal - vacation, Christmas, etc. I racked up over $900 in points, which we used for spending money on our last beach vacation - all groceries, dinners out, ice cream, activities, souvenirs. Amex also offers periodic deals through their app - spend $50 at, say Osh Kosh or Carter, and get a $5 statement credit. I've saved a bunch of money using those deals. Dh has a card that earns money toward the kids' 529 plans, and he uses that for all business expenses.

I also do little, easy things to earn a bit of extra spending money. I use ebates for everything. Just the other day, I ordered something online from Kohls, and picked it up in store. So I earned the ebates points, got the same discounts I would have in the store, and I did not shop for anything else once I got there. Saved money all over the place. I do the same thing at Target to avoid the impulse spending, and I got a RED card to get my automatic 5% off all purchases. I also use Ibotta for groceries, booze, and other stuff. I've earned about $100 since I started using it a year ago. Not much, but it's very little effort.

We've been doing the CC thing for years. When DH and I met, we both had a ton of debt. I'd paid off my student loans, but he hadn't. He bought a boat on credit, had a car payment, and had a ton of CC debt from his divorce. I had a ton of CC debt from my ex-fiance running up crazy bills. We snowballed, he sold the boat, we lived frugally, and we put every bonus we got toward debt. Within a few years, everything was paid off, and we started to build the emergency fund. Eventually, we bought our starter home, and kept saving toward an expansion. We ended up selling it, but we used the savings toward our forever home - which meant we were able to keep the payments the same even though we spent 50% more on the house. We continue to live below our means - modest vacations, etc. - but enjoy life. We are in good shape for retirement, and we've been lucky enough to be able to save a good amount toward college for the kids.

[waverly]

I don't think we have that kind of will power and like I said DH doesn't budget beforehand or even think of a budget before he does much. Some things yes he thinks of.

So it may have to be a hybrid system. But I like the idea of payments 2-4 times a month and less cards.

Yeah we've made money in CC but if we carry a balance which we usually do then that is negated by interest.

[Covergirl82]

mae0111, I use Ebates too. It's amazing. I agree it doesn't pay very much, but I've been using it 4-5 years and my lifetime cash back is $574. I do a lot of clothing shopping online because it's more convenient, so in addition to saving gas by not driving to the store (and most of the time I have a free shipping coupon code), I get money back. Win-win!

[k3am]

Oct 7, 2017 10:43:38 GMT -5 waverly said:

k3am - can I ask you more about your method on paying your CC every Monday?

So you make a payment on the same card weekly? Or multiple cards each in a different Monday? Does the weekly payments prevent interest?

Just curious.

I am thinking of doing a hybrid- debit card in person and CC for Amazon and daycare type things. Then the only other things on CC would be H's stuff. Despite the risk and it's still insured by Visa- Dave says people that use CC spend 20% more which is what I think our problem is. Not sure if I can get H to go back to the debit card though from a cash is king cash flow POV.

I pay off the balance of each credit card every week. We have.. 4 cards for some reason. So every week, those  balances get paid down to zero (if there is a balance. We have one that's rarely used, but we don't cancel so we don't take the credit hit, since it's my oldest card but has the worst rewards program). 

Since we never carry a balance, we never pay interest. 

[kimberlybb]

I haven’t done Dave Ramsey but here are a few things that have helped me stay within budget:

-Buying 95% of clothes for my kids on consignment. I know this won’t fly when the kids are older but they don’t know the difference now and it saves me a lot of $$
-I make an Amazon list for each kid in February for Christmas and birthday gifts. I slowly buy stuff off the list throughout the year to spread out holiday and birthday spending. We also do the want, wear, need and read at Christmas so that helps too
-Cutting cable
-Using Costco, Air BnB or Groupon for travel
-Only eating out 1x per week
-Meal prepping and switching the day I pick up my groceries. I’ve found I go to the store less when I pick up groceries on Fridays compared to when I used to do Mondays