Ooooof

[siercia]

Sat down tonight and started working on money stuff with Wiley. If I'm serious about this grad school thing (and believe me, I am), we need to get ourselves onto a solid budget - so that we can build up a cushion now, and so we can be better able to adjust to cutting my share of the household income by half or more than that when I start.

right now I'm torn between being happy by the fact that once all the non-negotiable monthly bills are paid (mortgage, car payment, insurance, utilities and groceries) we still have a good deal of money left over, and being aghast at just how much money we are blowing through on a monthly basis without even being aware of it. It's good, because that's all (or at least 75%) negotiable, but oooh, it's going to take a lot of willpower to find the strength to start saying no to the things we're used to being able to buy and do, and that we'll still want to do very very much. (I swear to god, I did the actual math. My 2 iced coffee a day habit costs $105 a month. Holy Christ!)

Next step is to write down what we spand, on what, and how we pay for it. We'll do that for a week, start figuring out where the money's going, and try to build a budget that's based on our real-world spending habits. Gah, this is hard. I think this might actually be harder than dieting, dammit.

Comments

[scirocco.livejournal.com]

I'm working on perfecting my Home-made Ice Coffee recipe!

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

It's incredibly weird to hear you say that budgeting is more difficult than dieting (or possibly so). Budgeting was *hard* but I did it and have been living by it for quite a while. It's still just me and my salary, not two people's salaries and habits, but it was pretty hard.

But I think dieting is harder. :(

[venus-starlet.livejournal.com]

Good luck. I can totally see you in the field you're trying for, and you're obviously making steps toward that goal.

Ew! the 'b' word!

[bookwitch.livejournal.com]

I hate budgets. But we finally had to do it because we had to figure out, 'OK...we KNOW we're making enough money. Where the hell is all of it going?'
We're not making tons of money, mind you. But there should be enough left over at the end of the month. But actually sitting down and figuring it out was difficult.

(btw, speaking of cost of drinks...you wouldn't believe how much change I've saved just by taking bottled water to work!. Not to mention I've lost weight. My ob/gyn told me I'd lost about 2 lbs/month just by cutting out one softdrink a day. It doesn't sound like a lot...but at the end of a year that's 24 lbs!)