This is a duh post, but I thought it was important to note. And I want to include two things here:
1) Keeping a budget
2) wants vs. needs
I don't even know if I need to say anything else.
We have saved loads of money by creating a budget and keeping an intricate diary of where our money comes from and where it goes. I know that if I'm not paying attention, then I'll spend more. Not to mention that it's quite empowering to know that you have control over your finances and your life and that they are commanded at your will and you don't have to be a slave to unnecessary debt.
As far as wants vs. needs, sometimes you just have to go without things. I think this is especially true when you decide to be a stay-at-home mom. I don't think in the long run (or even the short sometimes) that this brings grief or disappointment, if anything, it teaches selflessness and self-control.
As far as kids things are concerned, go ahead and fill in blanks. This is a simply said, simply understood, a little harder to implement idea.
1) Keeping a budget
2) wants vs. needs
I don't even know if I need to say anything else.
We have saved loads of money by creating a budget and keeping an intricate diary of where our money comes from and where it goes. I know that if I'm not paying attention, then I'll spend more. Not to mention that it's quite empowering to know that you have control over your finances and your life and that they are commanded at your will and you don't have to be a slave to unnecessary debt.
As far as wants vs. needs, sometimes you just have to go without things. I think this is especially true when you decide to be a stay-at-home mom. I don't think in the long run (or even the short sometimes) that this brings grief or disappointment, if anything, it teaches selflessness and self-control.
As far as kids things are concerned, go ahead and fill in blanks. This is a simply said, simply understood, a little harder to implement idea.
I'm glad you posted that. This is something Scott and I are trying to make a priority. We are trying really hard to save money for a house, but it seems like we've just been saying that instead of doing it. This month we're starting over and actually making it a point to stick to our budgets. It's working!! It's so, so exciting and empowering to look back over our spending for the last two weeks and see how much better we're doing than we had been. We've cut our grocery/eating out budget in HALF for February so far (and we're on track to finish the month the same way!), which is a really, really big deal for us. Buying food is the second-biggest thing in our budget (after rent), so cutting that one by several hundred dollars just by paying attention and having some self-discipline has been super exciting.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that if you're not using Mint.com yet, it's worth looking in to. It's an online budgeting tool made by Intuit (the company that makes Turbo Tax), and it's free. You synch all your financial accounts with it (banks, credit cards, car loans, investments, retirement, etc.) and then it sorts all of your spending by topic and shows you where your money is going automatically. You can chart your spending by day/week/month/season, by type of thing bought, by increases or decreases in categories over time, etc. etc. It's so easy and so fast to use. There are a couple of things where it's not perfect: You have to enter check categories by hand (it can't read check payees), it doesn't categorize what you spend cash on (obviously--how would it know?), and sometimes it gets categories wrong (there's a gas station where we stop for gas sometimes that Mint thinks is a car repair shop). But it's really easy to change those over by hand.
I think my favorite thing about it is how it forces you to be honest. You can't just ignore "necessary" little purchases--it knows what you bought! I love so much that you can compare your spending over time so visually. The thing that got us on this new saving kick was a bar graph on Mint that compared our income and our spending over the last 6 months, and how we really haven't been saving money at all (at least not nearly as fast as we had kind of hoped). It also gives you advice on how you can save more money--for example, it'll put a little popup box on the homepage that says "You spent $362 on groceries in the last 30 days. Consider using a credit card that gives you reward points for grocery spending" and then it has a link to different companies with cards like that. That's actually how it's free--little targeted ads on the home screen for financial products that might help you. They're easy to ignore, but we actually used one that's really paid off: we switched our savings account from Wells Fargo (where it wasn't earning ANY interest--stupid Wells Fargo!) to a high-interest account from Ally. It was really easy, and we earned more than $60 in interest last year from it!
Anyway, sorry to gush. I really think everyone should give it a try. It's really highly-rated by financial gurus that know, and it's very secure (uses the same secure socket authentication that banks do, and it's by the same company that does a bajillion people's tax info, so they've got the know-how to do it right).
Thanks again for the budgeting reminder, Melissa!
Hey, Katie, I don't know if you'll see this, but I know you talk about budgeting sometimes. How do you guys do it?
ReplyDelete