How to develop your PLAN

Ouch.

Gotta love these kinda days . . .

$90 is about 12% of the overall expenses for the week (so this is significant).

It's really, really hard to track expenses for 2 adults-- especially if you're into it and she's not so much.

Try not to get frustrated or angry-- that's super counterproductive.

You have some very savvy gals on this forum-- why not ask them for advice?

(I always say the wrong thing-- it's not just Venus/Mars-- more like being in different galaxies).

My wife and I are both doing this as a team, but the words I choose to talk about this kinda stuff are just not good girl words.

I continue to work on this, as its essential to a successful partnership (and, I hate saying things that make her feel crummy or guilty).

Let us know if you have any breakthroughs on this!

-Russ H.

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"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

I know exactly what you mean, and I for myself don´t have a clue what to do about it other than rough guessing.

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AlwaysCurious

So much of this exercise - to include the spending portion - is about self awareness and making the choice to live intentionally..... to intentionally make choices about our lives and lifestyles.

By taking a holistic view - it is sometimes a lot easier to bring our spending to a happier place.

Care about the earth?

Often, the things we spend a lot of money on are the things that are harmful to the earth: fuel, home energy bills, grocery bills.

Like to ride your bike? Ride it to work.
Like to eat high quality food? Have a garden. Bake your own bread. Buy locally. You are cutting down on the waste (all that plastic... not only the bags but also the food containers) and the energy used to bring the food to your table.
etc.

Care about quality time with your family?

Cancel cable. Play games or read a book outloud in your new-found time.
Cancel your gym membership and go on family hikes, bike rides, play basketball together, ski, ice skate.

8 more days till out end of month. We get paid on the 20th each month so it is really easy to track expenses. We use debit card for everything. Rarely do we have cash on us.

In 3 months we have gone from a zero balance budget to positive 800.00 as it sits now if we don't spend over our budget the next 8 days. Refi on cc debt and tracking our expenses have changed our spending habits alot.

rcardin-

Way cool.

Let us know how things total up.

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

I did find $25.00 of the $90 so it's down to $65.00 unaccounted for. As far as getting my wife on board, it's a conversation I'd rather not have as I'd be about as delicate as a hungry polar bear in a grocery store. Generally I just roll my eyes at her.

To go on with the last couple of days of the month:

Tuesday Feb 12
Cleaning Lady 60.00

Wednesday Feb 13
0.00

Oh, and I messed up the Gas one - it was actually our electric bill; the Gas bill come out on monday for $103.69. For some reason, that didn't show up when I did my consolidation for last week. We also took out our allowance for the week of $50.00 each, I only dipped into mine today for lunch - fist time in ages I've done that.

Next post will summarize the month

Here’s the breakdown for the month in order of most costly to least costly – I accounted for the computer and trailer separately only because they are not normal monthly expenses. Had I started this process one week later than I did, the computer and the trailer wouldn’t have shown up at all and I want to see what my normal spending habits look like.

House expenses incl. discretion (cleaning) = 1,843.80 (22% / 35.8%)
Groceries = 890.66 (10.6% / 17.3%)
Daycare = 720.00 (8.6% / 14%)
Hobby = 516.75 (kinda saw that one coming) (6.1% / 10%)
Meals out = 271.60 (3.2% / 5.3%)
Other Misc = 269.73 (3.2% / 5.2%)
Auto Expenses = 264.37 (3.2% / 5.1%)
Withdrawals – unaccountable or possibly double counted = 185.00 (2.2% / 3.6%)
Commute expenses = 43.40 (0.5% / .1%)
Entertainment = 1,039.34 (trailer $1K) (12.4% / 0.8% - no trailer)
Computer = 2,321.88 (27.8% / 0.6% - no computer)

TOTAL = $8,366.53
Total without Computer and Trailer = $5,156.30

Okay – ya got me. Holy crap!... And without the computer and trailer… holy crap!

Cool.

Not sure if you've had a chance to read Sonya's thread, "On the Matter of Money and Marriage."

It's good.

Might give you a few ideas.

Or, you could post a few questions or try a few "how would this sound" roll plays.

Lots of great female perspective on these forums.

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

I figure - it's worth somewhere between $65.00 and $185.00 to keep the peace!!

Trust me, it's worth a lot more than that!!!

-Russ H.

__________________
"Control everything. Own nothing." -John D. Rockefeller

"Don't confuse motion with action" -Ernest Hemingway

I hear ya. In truth, we did have the conversation in the first week. I even bought her a pad of paper and a pen (nothing says I love you like a pad of paper and a pen!).

She saw right through my offer of neverending love, and wouldn't even think to attempt to track her expenses. It could have gotten heated, but I took my loss gracefully and was allowed to continue having sex with her.

you may or may not have thought about this...

almost every place has credit card capability right. why not open her up an account where she can put her play money in and only use the card. then its automatically accounted for all you need is the statement...

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"Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction" Sucess is a do-it-yourself project!

Generally, we allowance ourselves $50.00 per week each. It's guilt free money that we can spend on whatever we like - or not - and no one gets in trouble (I think it's great for a marriage). If we don't spend it, we save it up for something that we really want later on - some of the withdrawal money in our above budget went into a pot that hasn't been spent yet.

We did this really well last year and mostly stayed on budget - there were very few surprises. Since Michelle went back to work, we haven't been purchasing cost conscientiously and have been enjoying the extra income. The timing for this exercise was great to get a look at what we have been doing since September.

I do like the credit card idea, but quite frankly... I'm just as bad as her. The next step is to use what I've learned and compare it to the "stuff" I have in the house. How do we minimize and yet prioritize our spending. We have lots of questions to ask ourselves:

For example:
$1800 per month cost on the house representing about 35% of our monthly expenses. What are we really getting for this expense?. What can we do to reduce this by $1,000 (consider selling and renting, or selling and buying a smaller house that has a lower carrying cost - or do we keep the status quo)

what about groceries - $891? What are we purchasing that's making this so high. I know it's a lot of diapers and my nicoderm patches are in there too. Maybe we could grow more in the garden this summer and do some canning. Maybe we could switch to cloth diapers.

Does the hobby cost too much - $517? Or should we ration out our expenses on the hobby. The expense for this month were primarily the start-up expenses, and will not reoccur as high as this going forward. Does the hobby fit with our family values - my personal values? and how important is it really?

Meals out was a surprise - I know we ate out more this month than normal, or am I deluding myself? I just went to subway for lunch today - haven't done that in a while during the work-week, but it was convenient and probably wont happen for several more months.

Even though my wife isn't the best participant in the documentation, I guarantee you she will review this with me and we will make decisions together based on the findings.

Anyways, I'm ranting.

Thanks again for the suggestion Carrie, and thanks again to Russ for taking the time to run the exercise. The next part - the dreaded part - inventory our "Stuff". Somebody kick me in the ass to get me to get this done this weekend please!

heres a swift kick comming at ya!lol

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"Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction" Sucess is a do-it-yourself project!

What kind of hobby are playing with Poudda? As far as the inventory goes it took me two weeks just to go through the garage and organize it much less inventory it.

Model Trains HO. scale.

Fortunately, I don't have a garage. Do have two sheds though - one has a lawnmower, two elecrical extension chords, a rake two tarps a snow shovel and a broom. The other shed has some lawn furniture and some gardening equipment. The basement storage area is what's going to kill me. ie, we have a ton of camping gear in the storage area and kids toys and our files.

How detalied does the inventory have to be? as detailed as # of dishes - 17 forks, 9 knives and 7 bowls? or as groups of items - cutlery and dishes?

I have a box ful of N guage? (the little bitty ones ) in the attic. probably from the late 60's to early 70's. We call that kind of stuff college fund for our daughter. It just sits in the attic collecting dust and hopefully appreciation.

I've got hockey cards and unopened nascar hotwheels from 2000 - 2002

My dh has tons and tons of antique ho trains he inherited from his grandfather. we just had them appraised recently. they arent worth hardly anything. they all work and have boxes too...

also my dh bought "investments" lol. he has about 50 collectable nascar cars and lots of nascar collectable clocks.

let just say that none of them are worth anything more then what he paid for them if he can even sell them for what he bought them for.

after he married me he stopped buying his "investments" lol.

(he bought them to lower his taxes lol. problem was he never spent more then the standard deduction so all he did was WASTE money lol.)

we also have 2 pushbutton antique handguns and a ww2 japanese sniper rifle with paperwork(allowing dh gf to bring it into the country) that his grandfather brought home from the war also worth hardly anything.

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"Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction" Sucess is a do-it-yourself project!

HOCKEY??? A man after my own heart...although I already have one of those, too (a man, husband, etc)

Hey, the wife not tracking her expenses thing?
My husband and I have two completely separate but joint checking accounts. I know what bills I have to pay and he knows what he has to pay. Beyond that, we spend our money wherever we want to.

Typically, I spend on all the practical things or things that end up a benefit to the houshold. He spends on "fun" stuff. Although, I am SURE that he would say his purchases are for the same purposes as mine. And, sometimes they are.

Have your wife get involved with the finances. Do them together! At least at first. Suzy Orman has some great books on how to set up tracking finances as a couple.

Has she played Cashflow? That might help her to want to get more involved with financially educating herself. Even if she is knowledgable with finances, there is always more to learn.

Good Luck.