Budgets & money talk

I'm probably in the minority here, but I love budgeting and tracking our income/expenses every month. I find it fun :) With me losing my job in about 2 months, being strict with our spending is more important than ever. So I'm taking a closer look at what we have going out each month and how we can make some extra money & cut expenses while I'm on unemployment.

At the beginning of each month, I print out the previous month's bank statement (we only have 1 checking account which makes it easy; we also have an online saving's account that we make transfers to when we have extra money). I have an excel spreadsheet where I enter our income & expenses. It breaks down each category of expenses to help us pinpoint if we're spending too much in a certain area. I plug the items from our bank statement into the excel spreadsheet and keep my fingers crossed that we made more than we spent that month. lol. Honestly, we usually go over a little bit or just break even.

If you're looking for a less manual way of keeping track of your spending, I'd highly recommend mint.com! You enter in your bank info and any other loans/investments/etc you have and it calculates everything for you. I also use Mint, but I like having a paper copy of our monthly spending that I refer back to later, so I'm sticking with the excel spreadsheet for now :)

Here's how I have my spreadsheet broken down:

Income

• Includes wages from both our jobs, money from photography sessions and misc. income (like selling something on ebay/Craigslist)
• How to increase = Getting a raise is out of the question, so more photography and selling things we don't need/use anymore is the only way to up our income.

Home Expenses

• Mortgage, utilities, home improvement = typically eats up 50% of our income. Ouch!
• How to decrease = Re-financing our mortgage is not possible and we keep our thermostat low in the winter and high in the summer to reduce our heating/cooling bills. We can water our lawn less frequently in the summer and take quicker showers. We don't have a landline and our cellphone bill is about as cheap as it can get. We are pretty much as low as we're going to get in this category, unfortunately. Owning a home is expensive!

Food

• Grocery store & fast food/eating out = this category is always much higher than I'd like to admit, usually about 10%
• How to decrease = Meal planning and coupon clipping will really help us save on grocery store trips. This is something I really need to be diligent about; having more free time when I'm unemployed will also help me get organized in this area. We don't eat out all that often, but when we do, we should only go to places where we have a good coupon (we bought an 'Entertainment' coupon book that has many BOGO meals at restaurants in town).

Transportation

• Gas, car insurance, car repairs/maintenance = unless we have a major issue with one of our cars, we're usually at 6%
• How to decrease = Plan out our errand trips so we don't end up forgetting something and having to drive back across town again. Buy things online when it makes sense (we get free shipping & 5% off at Target by having their debit card). I plan on selling my car once I lose my job, so that will cut back on gas and insurance a bit (and increase our savings).

Entertainment

• Cable, netflix, internet = 2%
• How to decrease = I love Netflix, so I refuse to get rid of that :) We pay $21 a month for basic cable, but we never use it, so I'm thinking we can drop that. We may also lower our internet package (we have the fastest one available) to save a little more.

Health

• Doctor/dentist visits, prescriptions, life insurance = we rarely have any expense in this category besides life insurance, which is 1%
• How to decrease = Life insurance is a fixed expense, and the other items are so rare that this category is as low as it will get :)

Personal

• Health/beauty, clothes, haircuts, etc = some months we have nothing, some months we have several expenses; max of 2% for the most part
• How to decrease = Use as many coupons as possible, go through our closets to sell old clothes or re-discover items we forgot we had instead of buying new ones, look for hair cut specials on Facebook 

Financial obligations

• Credit cards, car payment, student loans = right around 15%
• How to decrease = We don't have any credit card debt, we just have a car payment and a student loan payment each month. This is a fixed expense, but I do pay a little more each month to get it paid off faster. We should have both wiped out in about 3 years. If push came to shove, I could drop back to the minimum payment to save a little.

Misc. Expenses

• This is the "junk drawer" of our budget. We track random purchases at Target/Walmart, pet expenses, gifts, post office fees, Oliver diapers/toys/etc, anything that we didn't know what category to use goes here. Fluctuates monthly, usually depending on how many Target trips we took that month :) = 10-15%
• How to decrease = We always use a dog food coupon for Maggie, but could do a little more research to find coupons for household stuff we buy each month. Buying diapers in bulk when we find a good sale is a good idea, especially if we can find coupons to use as well. Oliver's clothes/toys are usually bought used or given to us, so that saves a ton. Cutting down on shopping trips will prevent impulse buys and bringing home things we really don't need. I'd really like to start making more gifts, instead of just buying a gift or gift card, so that will require more planning/thought on my part.

Overall, I think we do pretty good at staying within our budget, but there is definitely room for improvement! I'm hoping all the extra time I'll have starting September will help get me organized and back to being more frugal. Being a working mom means I spend a lot more than I should on convenience items, a habit I'd like to discontinue ASAP.

While I'm thrilled I'll get to be a stay-at-home mom for a little while, I'm a bit nervous about our fiances and if we can make this work. It helps that we have about 3 months worth of an emergency fund and I'll be getting a payout for severance and un-used vacation time, so I'm thinking 6 months of staying home with Oliver is do-able. I've always been a frugal person so as long as I can rein in Derek's spending, I think we'll be ok :)

Mistaken identity - Vol. 1

I have a very unique name. I've never met another person with my name (face to face) and probably never will. I was lucky to be one of the first to jump on the gmail bandwagon and was able to register my first name as my e-mail before anyone else could.

With that said, there are still people out there with my name. Google says so at least :) And these people either don't know their e-mail address or they wish they had mine. Either way, I get some hilarious messages sent to me from people thinking I'm someone else. I also get really confidential stuff (resumes, flight schedules, school records, etc) from people that probably should double check who they're sending those things to :) Mostly, I get annoying subscription e-mails to different websites and games that I never signed up for. Or password resets to websites I've never heard of.

I've posted several on my facebook, but wanted to post the latest and greatest on my blog. I've covered up all personal info (names, phone numbers, addresses), but the messages shown are how they came to me. I'm not looking to embarrass anyone or get someone in trouble, I just think it's a good reminder to always verify who you're sending an e-mail to before hitting the send button. And it's pretty hilarious too :)

 Yes, I watched the video just to see what it was. lol

This person doesn't give up. I got a soup diet recipe and 2 e-mails asking if I was working out. I really wanted to respond and tell them they had a typo in their signature (Univeristy).

This one made me laugh! Apparently I have "no swagg". Such a shame!

 Sorry for your luck Shronda.

I've gotten a lot of photos sent to me, but these 2 have to be my all-time favorites! I always wanted another little sister. lol

These 3 e-mails (there were at least 10 more I received) are all the way from a minister in Sri Lanka. I was pretty excited to get those photos on May 29th, since all the other e-mails were long and boring. I'm guessing the website never got updated? haha

June update

I really suck at this blogging thing, my apologies! I only think about updating when I'm at work or out & about, never when I'm actually on my computer with some free time. So here's the latest:

Oliver
He's turning 13 months tomorrow and walks around by himself like a champ. He's really good about sitting down if he feels off balance, instead of falling over. He loves to eat and will try anything we put before him. We haven't found anything that he hates yet, knock on wood! He still has rice cereal everyday, but is mostly eating whatever we are and loving it. He is very independent and has no problem playing with his toys by himself for long stretches of time. He is still such a great sleeper and for that we are so grateful! He's usually down by 8pm and wakes up around 8am, unless he has to go to grandma's for the day. We are having so much fun with this little guy :)

Work

I've worked at a local bank for the past 2.5 years and will be losing my job in September. I'm really sad about leaving my co-workers since they have become like family, but I am excited to stay home with Oliver for at least a few months :) I'm also looking forward to getting back into accounting and hopefully making more money than I currently make. I see this as a positive opportunity and am hoping for the best.

Health

I'm still walking on a regular basis (usually 30-40 minutes a day) and am trying to squeeze in some exercise after I get home from work, but it's tough. By the time Oliver's in bed, it's about 8 and I just want to relax a little (aka waste time on Pinterest. haha) and go to bed. So that's definitely something I need to work on. My diet's about the same, but I've been eating more veggies & cooking at home more. I planned our meals ahead of time this week and it really made a big difference. Doing the prep work the night before meant I could just throw everything together when I got home from work and dinner would be done in 20 minutes. I also want to use my crock pot more often, I love that thing!

House

Our tentative goal is to put our house up for sale spring 2015. The housing market hasn't been kind to us and we owe much more than our house is worth right now, so we're going to spruce things up and keep our fingers crossed that we break even in 2 years. I have a huge list of little projects I want to do around the house and am eager to get started on it once my job ends in September. I have no idea what I'm doing, but plan on documenting it to provide some entertainment for my 2 blog readers (lol)

Etc.

There's not much else going on around here. We're just keeping busy with work and Oliver and photography stuff from time to time. I'm looking forward to taking more family walks and trips as the weather gets nicer. We're hoping to add another kid to our family in the very near future, but we'll see if that works out :)

I'll do my best to update a little more often, I just don't have any ideas on what to write about or much time to post. Come September, though, I won't have much of an excuse anymore :)