If you do spend more money on the wife, you will get more of the last usually. Decent plan I guess.
Home Budgeting
- Thread starter helechopper
- Start date
If you do spend more money on the wife, you will get more of the last usually. Decent plan I guess.
When my wife was holed up in the house with our infant, our budget was awesome. Amazing what taking Target our of the equation can do.
And what's even more amazing is that people can survive without it.
All of these apps wouldn't be so necessary if we could control our wives to spend less money.
We've found that the online shopping does help to avoid the extras. Don't have the impulse buys as you walk through the aisles.
Online shopping can be just as impulsive and dangerous imo.
It's really easy to find all the cool stuff out there and push a few buttons to obtain them.
Especially this time of year for outdoor gear and such on backcountry.com. I mean, a down 15 degree sleeping bag is hard to find for 40% off, but $150 is still $150, haha.
(I only bought one two years ago and I've used it lots.
)
I'm told that having kids get out of daycare doesn't gain a guy as much money as you'd think. But I just got our end of year daycare statement, and you could buy a very nice car or take a helluva European vacation and still have a lot left over.
This is my method, but usually by about August I realize my bank account is overdrawn and I have to pay extra fees and tap the emergency fund. Still beats budgeting though.
We're still in that bucket for a while but man, when we are beyond daycare we are going to be LOADED.
I've used Mint for about 8 years at this point and really like it. I got to nitty gritty spreadsheet level for stuff like wedding expenses and building a home but outside of that, I feel Mint does a good job.
My question is if you feel good where you are with stuff....what do you do next besides let it languish in a savings account? Like, what should you do after your own retirement and kid's 529. Did a CD but that's such little return. Guess we could just keep putting it into retirement but my work 401k has some ****** options.
My question is if you feel good where you are with stuff....what do you do next besides let it languish in a savings account? Like, what should you do after your own retirement and kid's 529. Did a CD but that's such little return. Guess we could just keep putting it into retirement but my work 401k has some ****** options.
Budgeter and "New" Budgeters:
What items and categories were you amazed that you were over spending at?
Too many HyVee Trips?, Too many salon trips, too may Starbucks trips, too much eating out? Too much for Cable/movie/streaming apps?, too much Car maintance?, Too many Target Runs? etc.
What you got?......
What items and categories were you amazed that you were over spending at?
Too many HyVee Trips?, Too many salon trips, too may Starbucks trips, too much eating out? Too much for Cable/movie/streaming apps?, too much Car maintance?, Too many Target Runs? etc.
What you got?......
I have to agree with this, especially since I share a bank account with my wife. As much as I have tried to the "no budgeting, live happy" approach, my wife has a tendency to blow through money. She spent thousands on my last birthday.
I use Mint because it's the easiest to use and makes that spreadsheet for you. I can easily whip out the app and show her how much we can afford to spend on things and how much everything costs. My wife struggles with math and she would get lost looking at a spreadsheet. The graphs and pictures make it MUCH easier to understand.
Our budgeting at this point is very squishy money in/money out/trend tracking, but neither of us have the bolded problem. I have a hard time imagining my reaction if my wife got me a couple grand worth of gifts for my birthday.
So, I tried Mint out of all the options listed in this thread. It was intuitive and easy to use, until I discovered a fatal flaw...It wasn't able to pick up all of the transactions from my banking account, mainly my mortgage (kinda of a huge deal) and daughters tuition.
There may be other things it missed too, but that's the point, I don't want to spend time going line item by line item to see what was missed by Mint. So I canceled it.
I'm now thinking of using 'You Need A Budget'. Does anyone here have any opinion on using it?
There may be other things it missed too, but that's the point, I don't want to spend time going line item by line item to see what was missed by Mint. So I canceled it.
I'm now thinking of using 'You Need A Budget'. Does anyone here have any opinion on using it?
Don't forget about using an IRA, Roth or traditional, if you've maxed out company contribution to your 401k.
There are non-traditional investments you can get into like properties. If you don't want to own or mess with the properties you can be a hard money lender. You'd have to work with people you can trust but you can make a pretty good return on that. Trust me, there are people out there looking for hard money loans too.
A place like Lending Club is a place people can look at for this type of alternative investments.
Mine is definitely HyVee. Although, I'm starting to realize that cooking is my #1 hobby. I'm starting to look at the grocery bills a bit differently since I've realized that.
Ditto... All bills paid, no outstanding debts, retirement accounts fully funded, taxable savings being put away - so for me it's just an interesting thing about where our money is spent.
That said we DO track (not budget) all our expenses (credit cards too) on Bank of America website. For the fellow fatties on here, it's humbling to see how many times the pizza guys came to my house over a year...
