Derek at Life and My Finances wrote an awesome post called “How to Get Out of Debt Fast” 5 amazing ideas for concurring your debt.
Fight!
Why do I feel I have been fighting everyone to keep my money this week?
On Monday I called a store to see if they would take back the couch slipcovers that won’t stay in place and snag on everything. No good, I’m stuck with a faulty product we paid $120 for!
On Wednesday I called our cell phone company about $10 in data charges we have been charged ($2-$4 a month). They couldn’t tell me how to block it on only my phone (my daughter keeps pushing the bright blue button on my phone). They returned $8, but if it happens again they won’t return any money. If it happens again we are getting a data block, being able to send picture messages isn’t worth $24-$48 a year.
Then, on Friday, we received a letter from our insurance letting us know that our payment will go up $49 a month. That’s $600 a year we don’t have room in our budget for. So I’m checking other insurance companies or raising our deductible if possible.
Happy New Year!!
So I’m a little late in wishing you all a Happy New Year.
I took a long break from blogging, but as a stay at home mommy I need some adult conversation. Even if it’s just reading lots and lots of comments from you all 😀
We started of the year with a good payday: $3,000 Company and $550 Rental income
| Category | Leftover | Deposit | Total |
| Income | $ – | $ 3,550.00 | $ 3,550.00 |
| Taxes | $ 10,116.93 | $ 750.00 | $ 10,866.93 |
| Company | $ – | $ 300.00 | $ 300.00 |
| Church | $ – | $ 365.00 | $ 365.00 |
| Mortgage | $ – | $ 747.50 | $ 747.50 |
| Insurance | $ – | $ 293.00 | $ 293.00 |
| Utilities | $ – | $ 142.00 | $ 142.00 |
| Gasoline | $ – | $ 70.00 | $ 70.00 |
| Groceries | $ – | $ 75.81 | $ 75.81 |
| Medical | $ – | $ – | $ – |
| Repairs | $ – | $ – | $ – |
| Gifts | $ – | $ – | $ – |
| Other | $ – | $ – | $ – |
| Savings | $ 1,928.13 | $ – | $ 1,928.13 |
I ran out of money to deposit at Groceries because we had $626.52 left on our credit card from last month that I wanted to pay off. We only had $170.33 in checking that I could use so I added $456.19 from this payday to cover the difference.
I am working on getting our taxes ready. Hopefully we won’t be fined for not paying quarterly taxes, since we have all the money saved up to pay them right away. And hopefully we won’t have to send off all of the $10,117 we saved for 2011 taxes. Anybody have any advice about getting ready to for taxes when you own a small business?
Weekly Spending Aug 29-Sept 4
Aug 29th NO SPEND DAY!!
Aug 30th +$4484.92 Company Income -$2.12 Gift -$17.05 Garbage Can
Aug 31st -$29.39 Groceries
Sept 1st NO SPEND DAY!!
Sept 2nd +$550.00 Rental
Sept 3rd +$13.25 Sold Stuff, +22.50 Money for Gas, +$11.00 Haircuts, -$5.45 Groceries
Sept 4th -$710.95 Church
I bought a box of ABC cards for Baby #1 but found that they were just like cards we already had, so I am going to give them to my nephew for his birthday.
Last year our garbage can lid broke, so my mom bought me a new kitchen garbage for Christmas. However I have never liked how the lid went in the garbage. I have been leaving the lid off but Rob told me I couldn’t do that anymore. I couldn’t just buy a lid so I bought a whole new garbage for our kitchen. I love it because you push the button and the lid pops up.
Nobody answered my question last week — Should I put 10% or 80% of our extra income in savings?
Payday Sept 1
| Category | Leftover | Deposit | Total |
| Income | $ – | $ 4,588.64 | $ 4,588.64 |
| Church | $ 245.28 | $ 465.67 | $ 710.95 |
| Taxes | $ 5,248.72 | $ 1,121.23 | $ 6,369.95 |
| Home | $ – | $ 252.50 | $ 252.50 |
| Insurance | $ – | $ 293.02 | $ 293.02 |
| Utilities | $ 48.55 | $ 142.50 | $ 191.05 |
| Gasoline | $ 59.21 | $ 110.79 | $ 170.00 |
| Groceries | $ (199.82) | $ 294.65 | $ 94.83 |
| Company | $ (141.97) | $ 339.57 | $ 197.60 |
| Medical | $ 66.02 | $ 50.00 | $ 116.02 |
| Repairs | $ 14.23 | $ 150.00 | $ 164.23 |
| Gifts | $ 46.27 | $ 84.00 | $ 130.27 |
| Other | $ (154.72) | $ 207.49 | $ 52.77 |
| Savings | $ 2,206.82 | $ 540.23 | $ 2,747.05 |
I told you this would be an awesome payday and it was — $4588 deposited in the bank!!!
Our income was $4484.92 Company + $27 Haircuts + $64.75 Sold Stuff 🙂 Plus $21.97 in rebates
I decided to make up for last months lack of money and fully funded all the categories that got missed last month. And I still have $536.98 left for future low-income paydays.
I added 80% of our extra income (haircuts and sold stuff) and 10% from piano sale to our Other category. Do you think I should add 10% or 80% of our extra income to savings? I like the idea of growing our savings, but it is nice to have some more spending money… seriously $50 a month for a family of 4 is tight! What do you think I should do?
iPad2 Please!
I am always trying to win Rob an iPad2 – so if you know of any giveaways let me know
Life and My Finances is doing a giveaway right now!
Designing a Budget
Personal finance is, you know, personal so why use a budget that has categories you don’t need. For example nobody in our family is in school so we don’t need to budget education expenses. We do have a company to grow so I track out business expenses as part of our personal budget. If I used someone elses budget sheet I would have to leave Education blank and write Company expenses at the bottom of every monthly budget form.
If you need some ideas for designing a budget check out Cristian PF’s 10 Free Household Budget Spreadsheets. I really like the Household Budget Template. You can change the category names and it still works. You record your expenses like a check register, then it adds the totals for each category. Super easy!
Even if you find none of the budget spreadsheets are right for you, you can great ideas for how you want your budget to look. I made my own budget sheet and after a few months of tweaking it is the perfect budget for me.
Where did you find your budget sheet? Or did you design your own too? What do you like/dislike about your budget sheet?
Weekly Spending – Aug 22-28
I realized that I transferred $14.46 from our Other category to our Company category so I took that off of last weeks Spending post. It was driving me crazy not to know what that money went to, we don’t use cash so I kept checking for it to come through our accounts online. I was looking at our budget and saw $14.46 added to our Company category — oh! I’ll have to remeber to write a T next to transfers so I don’t count them against me.
Aug 22nd -$17.12 Groceries
Aug 23rd -$10.89 Fast Food, -$8.62 Company Tool
Aug 24th -$125.41 Cell Phones, -$56.67 Groceries
Aug 25th NO SPEND DAY !!!
Aug 26th +$15 Haircuts, +$34.75 Sold Stuff, -$1000.00 Mortgage, -$17.85 Company Tool
Aug 27th +$12 Haircut, +$20 Sold Stuff, -$3.61 Ice Cream
Aug 28th NO SPEND DAY !!!
Total: $81.75 Income – $1240.17 Expenses = -$1158.42
Wow! I spent $88 on food this week 😦 I had a very busy Tuesday and didn’t feel like cooking so I asked Rob to take B1G1 coupons to Arctic Circle and get us dinner. I told him that I thought it would be around $10 for the list I made, but if it was under he could get another hamburger. It came to $10.89 so he ate half of Baby #1’s hamburger.
How did you do this week?
Good Fortune
Back in December we went to a Chinese restaurant with Rob’s parents and my fortune cookie said this:
“A big fortune will descend upon you this year.”
I sure hope so 🙂
Debt Free and Broke 