Well
finally my wife and I are consumer debt free.
In order to do so, we did cash in some of our investments, but we wanted
to make sure debt was gone before trying for baby, as we wanted to get our
spending under control before Maternity leave, as we didn’t’ want to accrue any
debt while on reduced income for Maternity leave.
We
are pretty good at penny pinching, but pretty bad at large unnecessary
purchases. Prime example, we bought a
hot tub at a sex show. Not the usual
purchase. Recently we had been
discussing getting a tablet. While at
Chapters a couple weekends ago, we came across a deal for a Kobo tablet that
came with a mini B&W one that only reads books. It was a good deal and we almost jumped at
purchasing it on the spot. But as we
were discussing, I brought up the “Is this one of the drop $200+ without
thinking about it moments?” We left the
store and discussed it throughout the day, as to why we “need” a tablet. We decided it is a want and didn’t go back to
purchase. This is a good step in
spending trends. We will need to be very
aware of bad spending, as baby items can run a lot of money if not kept in
check.
As
far as spending, and tracking it, I have been the spreadsheet queen for a few
years now. It started with my ex husband
not understanding that life costs money.
He would say “you’re making all this money, where is it going, and why
can’t I buy (miscellaneous item/alcohol/pot)?”
I couldn’t tell him where it was going specifically; I just knew we didn’t
have any money. So I started a
spreadsheet to see where our money is going.
That turned into a compulsion.
However it has been a very good tool in the past. Even after showing my ex where the money was
going he still didn’t get it, but at least stopped throwing that in my face. Now I use it to regulate cashflow and know if
we are managing well, as well as seeing how purchases now will affect us down the
road. The one thing it doesn’t do well
is track the budget vrs spending. In the
end it did say how much we spend in categories, but that was after the fact, as
I updated the spreadsheet. Over the
years it has become a fairly complex spreadsheet with tabs for each bank/credit
account, subtotaling the month and this and that, but it acts more of a
reactive tool or a planning tool than a current monitoring tool.
We
have recently found Mint.com. It looks
like it will be the missing link we needed to track our budget on a day to day
basis, and it is free and works on smart phones too. This will allow us to know where we are as we
go shopping for groceries and what not.
Yay
for being debt free and staying there.
Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how many people are in (bad) debt (i.e. not mortgage debt). It can be a hard hole to dig yourself out of. Sounds like you and your wife are on the right track!
Next major goal is to save up for when we enter the Mini-Van Moms era. Our cars are paid off, one needs some work to get through the next few years with baby, and one is a good commuter car. But once we get our second we are planning on getting a different vehicle. But that is a ways down the road. But we hope to do it without a car loan.
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