Ok - so does anyone else get anxious about responsible financial planning - or is it just me?
(ok - I posted this, then saw one of my IRL friends posted the same thing!!! Check out Rae)
I would love some ideas on what other single income families do. We chose for me to stay home (and that has made me so much happier, less stressed, etc) but in doing so, sacrificed the income I made that helped to pay off house and medical debt. We don't have a lot of the latter, but enough I stress over it. The house is more routine for most people so that isn't the part I obsess over.
I obsess over saving $ better, tithing or donating, buying a van when Hubby's car has until Dec to be paid off, having an emergency fund, daily budgets, and planning way better for retirement than we already are doing. Hubby is way relaxed about things, but I'm the anxious one, and I want to be educated on these things. What if anything happened to him...I need to know - so I make it my business to be empowered.
So, I would love to know what others do, example budgets that would refresh my 2009 model? I could have fresh ideas, especially with this recovering (??) economy. I wonder what else I can empower my family to do. One day I will teach again, but if we homeschool - well, I want good plans in place until I do go back to teaching as it could be a few years.
Tips? Thoughts? Or is this just too taboo to talk out loud about?
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Last September I read Dave Ramsey's total money makeover book.
ReplyDeleteSince reading this book, I have been focusing on paying our mortgage on our house and we have increased our repayments by $200 a month. We will have our loan payed off in 6 years. This is cutting nearly 15 years off our loan.
I find for us also the biggest money waister can be food. I know that when we start eating convenience foods and packaged foods that our grocery bill goes through the roof. The best way I have found for keeping our food bill down is by cooking main meals ahead and freezing them.
See if this book is in your local library or buy it. It totally changed the way I budgeted and managed our money.
I reccomend Dave Ramsey also! We just did his Financial Peace University study in our small group. I look forward to the day when the only debt we have is our house. But thanks to my husbands student loans that seems so far away!
ReplyDeleteI'll third the Dave Ramsey suggestion. DH & I listened to the CD's for Financial Peace University last year & he's got some GREAT tips. We've gotten a little off track, but are working this month to hop back on.
ReplyDeleteI'll fourth Dave Ramsey! Even doing just the baby steps can make a huge difference. http://www.daveramsey.com/new/baby-steps/
ReplyDeleteThis may not apply, but as a family who also has a sizeable chunk of medical debt... you can reduce your medical payments and they have to accept it as long as you are paying on time and never miss one. I have mine on auto pay. It extends the pay-off date but there's no interest and it puts a little slack in the monthly budget.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have any CC/store/student debt, so wise grocery spending is my goal. I still don't get the "grocery game" coupon thing though. But I try!
Yes, thankfully we don't have CC/store/student loan (and we have 2 IRA's set up for the girls for educattion, but I think we might do 529's instead) either, and I have an retirement IRA - but adding to them is hard sometimes. I could not retire now LOL!
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the Dave Ramsey tips, and Sarah - I'm with you on the coupon game. I'm trying to beat the system at Walgreens and get free stuff, but it is hard for me to shop on double coupon days. I've gotten really good at stretching out meats and other foods (it helps us eat proper portions) and so far we really have liked Angel Food ministries for their "co-op" style food sharing. The meats have been good, and when one cut could cost less, we make it up in another cut price wise...so I have cut our grocery budget almost half....that has been great. But still, it's the other ways I worry. We definitely budget (I'm in charge), and I do the banking (a lot with auto) so maybe that is why I worry more. I see more potential and pitfalls - while Matt feels we are ok...but seriously...I need a bigger emergency fund! LOL! I'm always worried about a big cross, lay off, or illness coming down the road.....
(meaning double coupon days in grocery stores...)
ReplyDeleteI'm a wee bit of a fiend when it comes to budgeting. I have an Excel spreadsheet I'd be happy to share with you that we use to plan our monthly spending. We use the Mvelopes online system to track our spending (www.mvelopes.com), and the tracking helps us when we re-evaluate our budget at the beginning of each new year, and gives us a sense of how much we can afford to save, give, etc. There are other good online tracking systems out there (I think another is called MINTS). The key for us seems to be having a plan in place and tracking our spending. It is stressful to sit down and crunch numbers (ie, how are we going to make this work???). Tracking spending can feel very tedious and I often just want to quit, but I see us making progress toward our goals, and that gives me encouragement to press on!
ReplyDeleteP.S. - I've been working on this for us lately, too, so it's been on my mind!
ReplyDelete1) Wow, you cut your grocery budget in half - that's awesome!
2) I may be telling you something you already know, but with Mvelopes (and probably other systems, too) you can set it up to automatically categorize your transactions so it's not as much work and doesn't take as much time as it would be to do it manually.
3) We use ING.com for savings. We like it b/c you can set up multiple savings accounts for various purposes and see them all on one screen. For example, we set up a separate account when we were saving for our van.
Just a couple of thoughts that came to me!
Thank you for all these ideas....I got behind in commenting back here. Keep sharing, I appreciate it so much!
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