Money Talk

[186momx]

A place to talk money...

[waverly]

Ha ha. I know I am taking over the Twerk thread.

[welly01]

Oh, I want to talk money! Lol.

I'm going over our finances with a fine-toothed comb right now in preparation for our 2018 Budget. We half-heartedly started Dave Ramsey last year and the last debt we have left is my student loan. Today, I'm working on getting my student loans refinanced for a lower rate. I hope it's the right choice. Based on our budget, I *think* we could have it paid off in a year if we stay focused. That is HUGE motivation to get my spending under control.

[2chatter]

The big challenge here is we spend SO MUCH on food. DD’s food is expensive and we spend about $50/week on fruit. I don’t know how to get it under control. We (obviously) don’t order pizza with DD, so I thought that would help but no. Healthy food is expensive. Ugh.

DH promised to stop the Starbucks when we bought BOTH skids cars - but no. So every day that’s something like $8.

[welly01]

2chatter, those little expenses are the worst! When I did our budget last year, I found out we were spending over $1k a month in groceries and eating out. Crazy!

[rere]

We die by a thousand cuts. When Dh has several days off, he blows through money so fast. But it's not like it's extravagant things. A few dollars at the hardware store and grocery and convenient stores, etc. Then it's all gone. He can spend more on one errand to Walmart than imaginable.

We also put extra above our regular retirement, but if you read articles, we aren't doing enough. Our financial advisor says we will be a little short, but he wants us to have enough for 100 yrs old with $300,000 left. We have 529s, but if I listen to projected cost, we will only have tuition for 1.

[sweetptater]

I use Personal Capital to track and categorize all of our spending (we put everything on credit cards) and I STILL can't figure out where all of our money goes. I also can't get DH on board to budget, so that's not helping either.

[twinmomma]

We've laid out a pretty extensive spreadsheet and budget plan at this point. But we have zero wiggle room each month. So unexpected expenses end up coming out of our "fun money" account. Which isn't really very fun, it's more like "Oh shit, everything we didn't think of in the spreadsheet" like doctor copays, the new car battery I now have to buy, and anything else that's not a regular monthly expense and pops up. It's brutal.

We thought my bonus this year would help us create a savings account again, but now it's sounding like that will just get funneled straight into taxes because our old CPA sucked and messed up what we should be claiming. The new roof we likely need? Ya, that'll be a loan from the bank. No way do we have money for that too.

My biggest money frustration is that we make good salaries and have a VERY modest house for our area. But we can barely keep our heads above water. Our student loans and child care costs have just eaten us alive.

[rere]

Just today, since I was off I did the grocery shopping. Usually Dh does it since he has days off during the week when it's not nuts. I spent $140 for an entire week worth of meals and even picked up a cute little Jean jacket for Dd. Dh never comes in under $180. I do the list, but he always ads. Maybe I should take it back over? Because I have so much time on my hands-sarcasm. Money vs sanity.

[traveltheworld]

2chatter , keeping healthy is super expensive!! We spend an ungodly amount of money every week on produce. My kids love fruit. Recently I've implemented a "half the fruit we buy must be in-season fruit" rule to try and reduce the fruit costs. I also never trust DH to go grocery shopping because he always ends up buying random things we don't need.

I track all of our expenses, but have really fallen off the wagon in terms of keeping costs down.  I feel like I'm committing one of the big money/budget sins - increasing our expenses as I increase income; so even though I got a pretty decent pay increase with my new job, we haven't been able to increase our savings rate.

[186momx]

I just got done with my health insurance meeting. DD and I know have a family plan meaning she is on an HSA plan. The only non-HSA plan was $300 a month for a kid who didn't go to the doctor once so far this year so that didn't make sense. $475 a month for insurance that covers well visits but anything else we have to meet the crazy deductible first.

My downfall lately has been that the stores have had some really awesome deals on meat so I've stocked up but it has greatly increased my grocery bills. My freezer is full so hopefully I can just eat from the freezer and only need to buy the expensive fruit, veggies, and yogurt/milk/cheese from the store. No, way I let DH do full on grocery shopping. Even when I send him for one or two items he tends to call as he can't find things.

[2chatter]

We are closer to 2K/month for food. It’s out of hand. But eating out is things like Subway or Salata - not high dollar and fresh - so it’s hard to cut back. I feel like if our fast food was Wendy’s and Chik Fil A it would be easier to stop because it’s unhealthy, too.

The kids are foodie wierdos too - they order Pellegrino and things like that add up too.

I’m so frustrated by it.

Do you guys count cleaning supplies in groceries? I count whatever I buy at Target/grocery store - like face lotion and paper towels - as “groceries”.

[186momx]

2chatter, my dad doesn't. Those items along with TP goes into a personal care or household goods category. I tend to lump them together (Costco & Wal-Mart) but then I do 90% of my grocery shopping at a grocery only store.

[greenmonkey1]

I need to put a budget on paper (it's mostly in my head) so that I can track expenses better. Can anyone recommend a good spreadsheet or template? I know a lot of Internet based programs are popular (i.e. mint), but I'd rather not connect my accounts to anything. Call me technophobic.

I'd like to buy a bigger house sometime in the next 5-years or so and really want to get the budget more concrete. We live in a fairly MCOL city, but the side of town we're on is more expensive due to fewer quality school districts. The kicker is that many of the houses with the size we need/want have a lot of upgraded materials so they are even more expensive.

[katrine05]

I need to actually write down a budget. We should have way more money leftover than we end up with, and that's mostly on me since I take care of all the variable expenses and I've definitely been shopping too much. Need to work on cutting down on the amount we spend on groceries.

[covergirl82]

2chatter, I do count household supplies and personal care products in our grocery budget, since we buy most of those items at the super-center grocery store we go to.

I think one of our issues is on daily splurges too. DH tends to eat out for lunch more. I've been trying to keep it to one latte a week and one lunch out a week, because those help me keep my sanity. This week I bought lunch at work 3 days because DH was gone and it helped me with "one less thing" to do.

DH drives me nuts because he won't find out how his bonus is calculated following his promotion. I would like to get a rough estimate of how much the net bonus will be so I can start making plans on what to pay off. If the net will be around $20,000, I'd like to pay that toward my car loan, because then we can get it paid off by the end of 2018. And that is the next-highest payment after our mortgage. But if it was around $20,000, we could also pay off two smaller loans and then put some money in savings, but then if DH's bonus isn't as good in 2019, we may not be able to pay my car off. If his bonus is smaller in 2019, we'd be able to pay off the two smaller loans no problem. So anyways, I'm leaning toward using his 2018 bonus toward my car.

[welly01]

2chatter, I count the cleaning/household supplies in groceries. I usually buy them with the groceries. I also do Amazon Subscribe and Save but that's also a mixture of household and food items.

[welly01]

greenmonkey1, I've created a pretty basic spreadsheet to track expenses. In the rows, I just list our expense categories (groceries, mortgage, electric, etc) and in the columns I do it by month. The current version of my spreadsheet I add in our income and roll forward the prior month ending balance. So that way I can track the bank balance as well. I usually update it weekly as charges hit the account. I also add columns for future months so I can see our budget. I take the average of variable expenses like electric and groceries and use it as the budget for future months. Well, I thought it was a basic spreadsheet but that makes it sound pretty complicated. I would just start with what makes sense to you and continue tweaking it as you decide what other information you want to have.

[covergirl82]

Speaking of small costs adding up, I need to remind DH to plan ahead when it comes to needing cash. He seems to think it's no problem to get money from the ATM at the bowling alley, when he could just as easily leave a few minutes early and stop at our credit union on the way. It's a $3 service fee at the bowling alley, and he seems to get cash out while he's there at least once a month.

Just now I logged in to our credit union account and noticed that he took out $200 at an ATM in Las Vegas last night (he's there for a work conference), and the service charge was $7. He's got some explaining to do when he gets home... (I'm sure it was just used on gambling, but I am not supportive of spending (throwing away) $200 on gambling.)

[welly01]

Ugh. Just found out DH has been having taxes withheld at a married +1 rate. The last 2 years we've been within a $100 +/- during tax time. This year we stopped our 401k contributions to pay off debt and we both got raises. I think we're definitely going to owe taxes next year.

[waverly]

Ugh taxes @welly.

We bought more life insurance and set up our emergency fund today. We don't have much in the emergency fund but at least it is set up with everyone knowing the purpose for the money etc.