Musings From A Budget Minded CHO

So I fell off the personal finance bandwagon for a bit. I've since caught up with my Quicken entries and have also established some goals for the year. I'm trying to not be too ambitious so I don't set myself up for failure.

I am still struggling with a budget. For now, I am budgeting mandatory expenses and what is left over is for discretionary spending. Not the greatest system but I cannot budget for every single line item because inevitably some unplanned, unexpected expense comes up and then I have to juggle budgeted money from one category to another. I find that having "left over" money, after mandatory expenses, is easier to manage as long as I update Quicken as we spend money and monitor my "left over" balance. I don't know how great this system will work since I just implemented it this month so we shall see.

I've automated most of my bills so that all I need to do is schedule the payments in online bill pay at my bank's website. When I open Quicken my scheduled transactions greet me and I enter those that have been paid, online or via snail mail. It's a rather simple process once I got it set-up in Quicken. I started a new Quicken file this year and so I had to start from scratch. That wasn't fun but I'm glad I did it as I think things will be cleaner now.

I have been searching for ways to cut expenses and just this evening saved $86 on our 6-month car insurance premiums. I'm excited about that and will transfer that savings to our emergency fund.

Tomorrow I hope to FINALLY sign my husband up for his 403(b) plan at work. I'm also anticipating a cost of living increase that his employer has given annually; hopefully this year that will continue. If it does, I plan on saving the difference to our emergency fund. I believe the percentage increase is either 3% or 5%, can't remember at the moment.

I have lots swirling in my mind right now and blogging about it helps clear my mind. More to come later.

Ordered my daughter's soccer uniform and backpack to the tune of $110! ICK. Who knew that competitive soccer uniforms were so much more expensive than house uniforms.

Haven't found out yet what the fees will exactly be but I have an idea.

I also need to write checks this week for hot lunch at school.

It's only the third day of the month and already it is turning out to be an expensive one.

Well let’s see, this past weekend was extremely productive. We cleaned out my daughter’s closet and removed a bookcase that was in there and a shelf that was intended for my desk but somehow landed in her closet when we moved in, rearranged my son’s room, cleaned out the garage, took a carload of stuff to Goodwill, and washed and vacuumed my car.

I received two gift cards to Trader Joe’s. Someone gave them to my mom and she doesn’t shop there so she gave them to me.

I opened an ING account for my daughter last Thursday and have been waiting for the small deposits they make to the linked account to post. I haven’t opened my son’s account yet since he doesn’t have the $250 opening balance required to get the $25 credit. I am debating on just crediting his allowance to bring him to $250 so he can get the $25. I also am going to have my daughter “refer” him so that she gets $10 and then my son can “refer” us so that he gets $10.

August was an interesting month budget-wise. We are getting used to having spending money as opposed to using our credit card. I don’t think my husband has used his allowance yet. I have $30 left - we each started with $50. My plan is to replenish the money every time my husband gets paid which will be this Friday, but depending on how much we have left, I may revise the allowance number down. Our dining out category is over budget but is still less than other months so that is a good sign. I am cooking more at home - baby steps. I do need to work on not going to the grocery store more than two times per week. The “little” shopping trips mid-week are what’s causing me to go over my grocery budget.

I do need to come up with a few hundred dollars to register my daughter for competitive soccer. This will impact our budget as I had not planned for this. I also need to do my September budget in Quicken; most of it is done, just need to input income and double-check the other entries. Our income will be less than normal since DH is now signed up for his 403b plan. I can check that off as completed. I completed all my August goals!

I sent my resume for a job last week. I hope they call - I need a new job badly. My current job just doesn’t challenge me or keep me busy anymore. I am quite literally bored most of the time.

I’m adding some goals for September to the sidebar. As I think of more I will update.

I made our first extra principal payment yesterday on our car loan. Felt good to do it and I’ll be glad to pay it off one year early.

Hit a snafu of sorts today. My daughter has been invited to play on a competitive soccer team. She currently plays house but subbed on 2 different competitive teams recently due to a shortage of players. One of the teams has asked her to join them. Problem is we would have to come up with $370 in order to register her. We are saving for competitive fees for next year and I am not sure where this $370 will come from. I will need to look at our budget tonight. I’m not sure why the fees are so low because if we had registered her earlier this year the fees would have been double.

I am over my grocery budget for the month but that is partly due to groceries I bought at Costco. Other than that, things are going well.

I finally called my cable/internet company and asked what they could do to keep me as their customer. The customer service rep punched a bunch of keys on her keyboard and was able to save me $42/month for the next year. Thats 1/3 of what I was paying before. Not bad for 10 minutes on the phone. The rates are only good for one year so next August I will have to switch providers or call back and get another special.

I can check off that goal as completed. Woo hoo!

I am making progress on my August goals. I’ve been procrastinating about calling to find out about switching cable and internet. I received a promotional flyer in the mail yesterday and figured now was as good a time as any to make the call. It is so confusing trying to figure out what is the best plan for your needs. Ultimately I decided to not go with AT&T and will call my current provider and let them know about all the offers I am receiving to switch and ask what they can do to retain me as their customer. I know they have “customer retention” departments so hopefully they can give me a good deal.

I made 3 deposits to my emergency fund yesterday. One was a refund from an overpayment to a credit card, another was money my girlfriend owed me for baseball tickets I purchased for her and the other was a check but I can’t remember for what. All in all, I deposited about $60.

I also decided to withdraw cash for my husband and me to use as our spending money. I ran a Quicken report and found that my husband has spent $36 since the beginning of August on lunches, coffee, etc. Each of us gets $50. I was thinking $50 per pay period but based on his spending, $50 might be enough for the entire month. We will see how that goes since this is the first time we have ever had an “allowance”.

I am leaning towards opening ING accounts for the kids simply because of the interest. I need to get their cash and deposit to my checking so I can link it to their ING accounts.

My goal is to have all of my goals completed by this weekend so I don't have to carry them over to September.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my husband’s paycheck last Friday and it was more than double the normal amount! I asked my husband about it and it turns out that he was paid for his PTO (paid time off). Once their PTO reaches a certain level, his employer pays it out to bring it back down to a certain hours level. Well this money couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. While I would have liked to save all of it, I used some of it to get caught up with our overspending from last month. We charge almost everything on our MasterCard and ALWAYS pay it off every month, sometimes to the detriment of not saving for other things. Well now that we have this money, I can use some of it to pay our MasterCard bill and then what is left at the end of the month will get transferred to savings. I have already saved our normal amounts, but this transfer will be over and above what we normally save.

I have resumed making internal transfers in Quicken every time we charge something on the credit card. I transfer money from our checking account to a dummy credit card payment account so that when the bill comes due I know that I have the money available to pay the card off and not have to sacrifice our savings transfers. Doin this also allows me to see how much cash we have so that we are spending within our means and not over it.

Some of the checks I wrote last week for school related expenses were sent back home as there was a miscommunication and we really didn’t have to pay them. I will need to pay the expenses eventually but for the time being not now.

Our dinner last Friday was picked up by my mom (yay!) but we did get a pizza Saturday night and got Mexican last night to the tune of about $21. We ran a 5k yesterday and then went to the Giants baseball game and everyone was tired by the time we got home. I didn’t do so hot last week with cooking and am over budget in our dining out category but the good news is that we have spent MUCH less on dinners out than we spent in prior months. I look at that as progress.

Dinners are planned this week and I have already shopped for them. I am under budget for groceries this month but coming close to meeting the number. I am really going to try to not exceed it this month.

Well it’s been a crazy week of sorts. The kids went back to school on Wednesday and today was their first full day. Its hard to get back into my school routine of waking up earlier, prepping lunches the night before, making sure uniforms are washed yadda yadda.

Financially, the fun begins. I’ve already written 4 checks for school related things and I know that I will be writing more in the weeks to come.

I’m a little annoyed with myself for not doing better with cooking at home this week. We went out on Tuesday. I figured that would be our dinner out for the week instead of tomorrow night. Well, we had to be at school last night at 6:00 and I just didn’t feel like making what I had planned so we went to Panda Express. Tonight we are going out again because my niece is leaving for college tomorrow and this is her good-bye dinner. Let this be a lesson to me to not cave in during the week because there are always unexpected dinner events that arise. I’m hoping my mom will pick up the tab for tonight’s dinner

I have next week’s meals planned and will grocery shop tomorrow instead of Sunday as on Sunday I am running in a 5k. Not prepared for it but going to run it anyway. I get to run across home plate at AT&T Park though so that will be fun.

I haven’t made much progress with my goals this week. Been avoiding calling around for new cable and internet service because I just dread having to talk to customer service reps and then making arrangements to have the switch made that might require me to be home while a technician does the installation. Still have next week to do that, or maybe tomorrow.

I’ve been trying real hard to not spend money on non-necessities but apparently my husband didn’t get the memo. It’s partly my fault because I wasn’t real clear about the plan. He is the main breadwinner so I feel a little weird telling him to not spend the money HE earns. He generally is good about money but he has a habit of late of going out to lunch instead of coming home or bringing it to work. Anyways, he went to Subway this weekend and got sandwiches for himself and the kids. I haven’t entered the receipt in Quicken yet but it was probably around $15. I later told him that I was trying to not spend money on things we don’t need or else we won’t have enough to pay down our car loan. He got the message as he made his lunch on Sunday.

One of my goals, although it isn’t posted in the sidebar, is to make and eat more meals at home and I’ve been doing well on this so far. As I’ve mentioned before, dining out is by far our biggest budget buster. I’ve resolved to plan meals ahead of time and grocery shop on the weekends. I have this weeks meals planned and went grocery shopping yesterday. I even bought and prepped some of the goodies that Subway puts on their sandwiches so that my husband can make them at home. I’ve prepped as much as I could last night so meal preparation during the week will be more streamlined. I spent $52 at the grocery store and another $80 at Costco but that was to stock up on some groceries and household things.

I decided to revise my allowance plan for my son. Going to give him $1 for every year of age he is and pay that weekly. The catch is he will have to save half of his allowance. I think he will be pleased with that as he will come out $4 ahead of what I told him I would previously pay him. I figure that is a fair and equitable way to pay him as my daughter is asking to get paid an allowance too. This way they each will get a “raise” every year.

We pay our credit card bill in full each month. Since we overspent last month and since I have recently paid for those charges, I am finding myself short this month for my savings. Even if I save for just the bare minimum (i.e. half the mortgage, property taxes, emergency fund and half the car payment) I am left with about $110 in our checking. I will need gas this week and a tank costs me in the range of $75-$80! DH does get paid Friday so I may hang on to the money in our checking until Thursday and then transfer to savings. DH’s paycheck is direct deposited so by midnight it will hit our account. Hopefully then I can also pay the $200 extra on our car payment. I expect to see better results next month as a result of our reduced spending.

I am getting a $21 refund from an overpayment on my Macy’s account. I also have another $20 check refund coming to me for a birthday gift I received by didn’t want. I plan on putting that towards our extra car payment or into our emergency fund. I’ll probably wait and see how things fare next month.

This saving money thing is almost becomming a game for me and I am liking it!

I spent a few hours last night trying to reconcile a savings report to my savings account. Sometimes I HATE Quicken. The report said I had saved more money than I actually have in my savings account. I finally figured it out but what a waste of time. I'm seriously considering moving that money to ING so I can have an account for each savings category.

I did call my stockbroker yesterday where my IRA is held and inquired about converting my traditional IRA to a ROTH IRA. Turns out I would owe tons of money in taxes so needless to say, I won't be converting. I can mark that goal as completed.

I also am in the process of signing up my husband for his 401k, or rather a 403b. We have the paperwork, need to get it notarized (another unanticipated expense) and send it off. His net pay will be reduced by several hundred dollars so I will need to make adjustments to our budget.

I looked online at for deals to bundle my phone/cable/internet services but geez, they are so confusing. No wonder why I've been procrastinating about changing carriers.

Heard on the radio today that consumer prices are up 5.6% over the past year. Ya think? Everything is getting more expensive and wages are not keeping up. I’ve been looking for a new job for about the past year with no success. That means that we are now looking for ways to cut expenses on things that continue to cost more all the while making wages that are not keeping pace with inflation.

On a different note, I did manage to save a bit of money on uniform shorts for my daughter. My girlfriend asked me if I wanted some of her daughter’s shorts that no longer fit and I said “heck ya”. So no need to make a trip to Kohls.

I did have to spend some money yesterday. It was my mom’s birthday and she is THE hardest person to shop for. She has everything and never seems to use/wear what we give her, so I got her a CD from Best Buy. I also re-gifted a Starbucks gift card that was given to my husband. He doesn’t care for Starbucks and my mom loves it, so it was a win-win situation all around. The bummer part was that we went to dinner and our bill with tax and tip was somewhere in the $40 range and for pizza nonetheless. A large combo pizza was almost $26!!! It was my mom’s birthday so what could I do. I guess that will have to count for our dining out meal of the week. While we were at Best Buy getting the CD for my mom, the kids wanted some candy and I told them “no”. Its purchases like that the snow ball and at the end of the month you find that you spent a bunch of money on little purchases here and there. I was proud of myself.

I was working in Quicken last night reviewing my August budget and not liking it one bit, the format that is. I don’t like the fact that it isn’t forward looking (doesn’t count income until you actually realize it) and I can’t figure out how to stop double counting in some categories. For instance, we save every pay period for summer camps/childcare. The savings gets categorized in Quicken as “summer camps”. I was charged on my Mastercard for the camps. I transferred the money out of savings and into checking (categorizing it as “summer camps”) so I could pay my Mastercard. Now my August budget shows a positive balance in the summer camps category when it really is a wash. So even though I am tracking every single outflow I don’t really have much faith in the budget report that Quicken is giving me. I think maybe I need to create a dummy category for when I transfer savings to checking so I don’t put it in the same category that I took it out of??? I need to clear my head and think about that.

I tried working in an Excel spreadsheet that I previously created but I was too overwhelmed and couldn’t even think about what I was doing. The thing I don’t like about using an Excel spreadsheet is that I have to enter things twice, once in Quicken and then again in Excel. This is supposed to be as simple an effort as possible. Double entries are not simple.

So what else? My son is starting fall baseball and will likely need new cleats; hopefully we can find a used pair at a local sports store. I’m having to juggle finances right now because we overspent last month and now I’m short for my savings transfer as well as our extra car payments. Need to wait until I get paid tomorrow to pay my mortgage and then I can make the transfer to savings. Once we get through this next billing cycle for our Mastercard things should be good as we are cutting back on spending.

So I've been really trying not to spend money, except for essentials. Since I am the Chief of Finances in this household, I talked to my husband last week about paying our car off 1 year early and he agreed that it should be doable by reducing our spending. He ate lunch at home Monday and today and I've cooked dinner both nights. Going out to dinner is by far our biggest non-essential expense. But, I've been to the store 3 times in the past 2 days. Went to Costco last night for some groceries, Trader Joes for some more groceries and then today I went back to Trader Joes to exchange something (bought the wrong kind of pine nuts) and then again tonight for milk. Mind you, I bought food that we needed, but just spending the money is bugging me. I guess I need to plan better. One thing I am trying to do is NOT shop with the kids because I always end up buying them something (soda, candy, cereal etc.) and leaving them home with my husband saves me money!

So my son (12 years old) wants an Xbox. He already has a Wii that was given to him by my inlaws. I told him I was not buying him an Xbox so we agreed that he would have to save his money to buy it. He has a few chores he does around the house but I've never paid him for them. We've now agreed that if he does his chores everyday, he will get a monthly allowance totalling $20 per month. So essentially I guess I am buying the Xbox, but I figure this is a good way to teach him how the adults have to do things, i.e. go to work, get paid and save for the things they need or want, versus instant gratification.

I created an Excel spreasheet so he can log when he does his chores and what he can do to earn "bonus points". Not sure how much I will pay him for these bonus points however. I also created an account for him in Quicken, showing his opening balance (the cash he already had) and eventually his deposits.

I plan on taking him to the bank so he can open a savings account. I'm going to link it to my checking account so that I can pay him his allowance by transferring it to his account from mine, since I never carry cash.

So, for those of you that give your kids allowances, how much do you give them?

I waver between paying him an allowance and feeling like I shouldn't pay him for doing things that are already expected of him. I figure as he get older and is wanting more expensive things, now would be a good time to start him on an allowance so he can learn about the value of the dollar. Should have done this a long time ago.

After many unsuccessful attempts at trying to find a budget format (Quicken and Excel) that worked for me, I've resorted to just using Quicken's budget. I don't like it really but at least I don't have to make double entries. I enter things once and I can see where and how my money was spent.

I have many budget categories. I like detail and figure if I am going to have a budget I may as well see exactly where my money is going. But where do you put things like home maintenance? Would that be a HOME expense with my mortgage and property taxes or just a regular HOUSEHOLD expense? Trivial I know, but not knowing how to classify certain expenses has in part been why I haven't been successful with budgets in the past.

Another thing I am doing that probably isn't the proper way to budget is I only budget for necessary expenses. What's left is in a pot for non-necessities. I am careful to not splurge on things simply because there is "money in the pot"; I enjoy finding bargins and don't overspend on things I know I can get cheaper.

Zero-based budgeting never worked for me simply because there was always something that I hadn't anticipated that would mess things up. So for now I am going to use my "money in the pot" method and see how it works.

I'd love to hear how you are budgeting.

Alright, so I've been away for over a year. Last time I posted I was having trouble creating a budget that worked for me so I gave up and just kept track of spending and balances using Quicken. Fast forward a year later and I am still plugging away at Quicken but now things have changed.

A little background information. I am married and have two school aged kids in private school My son is two years away from private high school and tuition is not cheap. I have worked part time since my son was in 2nd grade and my daughter in preschool. It was always my plan to work full time when my son was in 7th grade (starting in a few weeks) to prepare for high school tuition.

Well I have actually been looking for a job for about two years but really seriously for the past year. Had a couple of possibilities recently but ultimately they went with someone else, and needless to say, I am getting discouraged and a bit of a complex that maybe something is wrong with ME.

Well today I ran the numbers on estimated tuition for high school and middle school for the fall of 2010 when my son starts high school and my daughter will be in 5th grade. As it turns out, I may not need to work full time. YIPPEE! If we can get our car paid off one year early (in 2010) we can apply what we were paying towards the car loan to tuition and we will only need to come up with an additional ~$200. That is totally doable. We need to cut back on other expenses in order for this to work and I already have a plan for that:

I recently switched auto insurance carriers and that saved me $484/year!

Going to switch internet and cable providers to take advantage of reduced monthly expenses.

Determine how much extra to pay towards car payment to get it paid of by June 2010.

Find other ways to reduce expenses.

Develop a budget and adhere to it.

Still look for another job (been wanting one for a long time) but still a part time one and one that pays more than what I am earning now (not going to be easy).

I think part of my problem in the past with budgeting was that even though I wanted to have a budget I didn't really need one per se. We didn't/don't have CC debt and money wasn't an issue. We had enough to cover expenses and saved a little (but not enough). Now that I have a clear goal in the near future, I think sticking to the budget will be easier.

I need to not make it such a complicated thing and it definitely has to be in Quicken. I don't want to have to make double entries.

More to come...

Today my husband gets paid so it is the start of a new spending plan. Since the last spreadsheet didn't work out, I'm trying 2 new things: another spreadsheet and Quicken.

I think I may have figured out a way to roll unused budget amts over to the next month by creating a YTD budget report instead of a monthly budget report.

We shall see. Since DH's cholesterol and BP were a bit high, we will be curbing our dining out spending which will have a nice effect on our finances.

Well I managed to go over budget last week in several cateogries and as a result I can't balance my spreadsheet.

I was accumulating balances for monthly/periodic expenses. Since I went over budget in some categories, I dipped into this 'savings' and now I can't tie the totals back to my checking account. I've spent far to much time on this so I think I may just have to start over. Frustrating as I had worked so hard on saving towards these expenses and now since I dipped into this money I don't have a true pitcure of what I have saved for each line item. My spreadsheet tells me I have $X but my checking tells my I have $Y.

Let this be a lesson to me to either stop being so anal and trying to budget every $1 or I need to find yet another budgeting spreadhseet.

So the shoes I wrote about wanting in an earlier entry are now mine

They were on sale and I had a 20% off coupon. I had enough money in my personal spending account to buy them and so I did. It feels good knowing that I was patient enough to wait for the right time.

I am also helping our spending plan along by mostly eating out of the freezer this week. I spent ~$60 on groceries but that was mostly to replenish snacks, milk, OJ, and some low calorie snacks for me as well as a bulk package of ground beef.

Gas is expensive again so I'm having to readjust my budgeted amounts. We are saving every pay period for all kinds of expenses so that when we actually need to pay for them the money is there.

I fell off the budget wagon a bit. Not too bad but we went to dinner a few times too many last week. We charge everything to a mileage credit card. Since I've started using it I have been making weekly payments. Paying for these dinners will come from DH's paycheck when he gets paid tomorrow. I wish I had the money for something else but too late now.

Otherwise, things are going well. We actually have cash in the bank, albeit, it is earmarked for other things but our balance has not hovered near zero since I started using our new budgeting spreadsheet and really making an effort to not spend any money.

I'm liking this and really enjoying the fact that finances are not stressful anymore. I am planning ahead for expenses and thinking before buying. It really makes me appreciate the things I buy, especially when they are for me personally.

I was having serious reservations this past weekend about the practicalness (is that a word?) of my spending plan. Perhaps I was just bored silly and wanting to shop and spend some money. I didn't though but had some serious reservations about whether or not I was being too anal with the plan. I have pretty much every dollar spent on paper with some left over in the 'slush fund'.

Right now I am feeling like I want to buy something for myself but don't have enough of a balance in my account to do so. I already had to re-allocate some budgeted amts to allow for some unexpected expenses that came up. Being disciplined with my spending plan is really hard.

DH and I went cell phone shopping this past weekend. Much to my dismay there are no more free cell phones with a contract extension. I could get new phones if I went to another provider and signed up with them. Problem is, our monthly plan is so old and so cheap it isn't even offered anymore and no other carrier can compete. So I'm stuck with Cingular and will have to buy a phone.

I ate lunch at home prior to going cell phone shopping. DH got hungry and went and got a soda and snack. Fine. He has a little bit of money in his personal spending account, but if he keeps getting these little snacks here and there he will have no money to spend on other things, like stuff for our Cabo trip in June.

I hate to tell him he doesn't have any money left in "his account" when he is the primary breadwinner in our family.

We have the cash, it's just allocated to other accounts. I think this Friday I am going to withdraw cash for him and tell him to make it last until next payday.

Oh, and he spent the $21 dollars we won on lottery scratchers on more lotto tickets. UGH!!!

I did manage to save ~$200/annually by switching home and auto insurance carriers. Not only that, but I can pay my premiums with my MasterCard and accumulate miles.

So glad I did it as it helps monthly cashflow just a bit.

After reading some personal finance blogs this week I came across one where the user had ALL financial info in Quicken, not just checking and savings info.

Since I use Quicken, I decided to do the same.

I entered my IRA, DH's IRA and my 401k. I also entered our car loan, DH's truck (no loan on it), and our mortgage.

I have about $7,200 in cash sitting in my IRA that I need to invest in something. Not sure what at this point so I have some homework to do. We also need to sign DH up for his 401k at work. We have the paperwork, we've just never got around to actually completing it.

I'm glad I did this. It didn't take long and having everything listed together in one place will keep me on top of things.

One of my goals this week was to get some insurance quotes for homeowners and auto. I currently have Allstate, been with them forever, but in CA Allstate has filed for a significant rate increase while all the other major insurers have filed for significant rate decreases.

My homeowners renews 3/1. I got notice of the new premium today... its 5% higher than last year and I have never filed a claim.

I called two different ins cos. today and got one quote back. Wouldn't you know it, it's more than my exisitng. But their quote doesn't include the auto rate decrease effective in March nor the h/o rate decrease effective in April, so the agent will call me back with hopefully better numbers next month.

I have multi-policy, good driver, distinguished driver and renewal discounts with Allstate. I hope that the other ins cos. can beat my existing premiums even with all my discounts.

Farmers Ins. is still working on my quote. I'm more hopeful with them as they are the ones with the largest rate decreases.

Hopefully I can find lower premiums as I'm trying to find ways to cut our expenses.

I went to Mervyn's to pay a bill off today. While standing in line to pay, next to the shoe dept no less, I looked around from my vantage point and saw some shoes I wouldn't mind owning.

I slowly made my way through the line to the cashier and paid off a $70 bill.

I couldn't leave without looking (dangerous I know) but I did look and I DID NOT buy, even though I saw 2 pairs of shoes and some things for our upcoming vacation to Cabo San Lucas.

I think I need to rework my spending plan to allow for some purchases before our trip in June.

and applied and got a mileage CC today. I asked how many times I could make pymts online and was told as many as I wanted. I confirmed that I wanted to make weekly pymts and was told that was acceptable.

So, I hope to start racking up the miles to use for a future vacation. Hopefully taking the kids to Hawaii in a few years.

I'm a little nervous about charging everything to it but fully intend to pay off balances weekly. I cannot handle the stress of CC debt.

My plan is that everytime I use the card I will enter the transaction in Quicken and my spending plan spreadsheet. Doing it this way will reduce my available cash for the week, thereby keeping me in check from overspending.

I know it's only February, but I'm starting to think ahead to June when DH will get one of two 'extra' paychecks this year.

Our spending plan is based on 24 paychecks per year however DH receives 26 paychecks.

So what to do with this extra paycheck in June...

pay down the credit line
pay off the Visa
put it in our emerg fund
use part of it for Christmas gifts instead of saving every pay period towards them
vacation (instead of saving incrementally as above)

I want to do the best thing financially for us.

Paying off debt is of course important.

Freeing up some cash every pay period (by stopping the incremental holiday/vacation/or other incremental savings) would also relieve some of the financial pinch we feel after bills have been paid.

Well sort of a windfall.

I don't buy lottery tickets but have received them as gifts. After accumulating some winners for a while, we redeemed them today and brought home $21. DH wants to use it for the big powerball type lottery that the state of CA participates in, but I think we will just keep the money for our leisure, kinda like some funny money, and use for diet cokes, snacks, etc when we are out and about. Shh, don't tell DH that

I was reading a column from the Wall Street Journal that our local paper publishes regarding finding little ways to save money.

The author talked about how everytime he wrote a check, he rounded up the amount to the nearest dollar and entered that number into his check register. I understand the concept but doesn't that make reconciling nearly impossible? He has a nice cushion in his account as he has been doing it for awhile, but the thought of reconciling that gives me a headache.

He also mentioned something that I do, on the occasion that we use our CC instead of debit card. He said every time you charge on your CC to move the money out of checking so that you have the cash available to pay the bill in full.

It's nice to have some of your own practices validated by someone else.

I'm not feeling like it.

I've created a new spending plan, talked about it with DH, and so far we are adhering to it, but why does it feel like I have a ball and chain attached to me?

Our combined income is ~$100K but why, when my daughter asks if we can get donuts for breakfast tomorrow, do I worry about where in my budget I will put that expense... is it a dining out expense or a grocery expense?

It shouldn't even matter but it does to me.

Since I have started using this new spending plan spreadsheet I feel like I am a prisoner of our money. Maybe it's the newness of this spending plan as all others never seemed to work, in whatever form they took. This one is keeping us pretty honest but I guess I have to wait until the balances in my personal spending account builds up to a level where I can actually buy something for myself without feeling guilty.

We live a middle class lifestyle. We are not heavily in credit card debt ($600 CC bal) but we do have a mortgage, $3,000 balance on our equity credit line, car payment and tuition to pay for.

I intend to pay off the credit line and CC this June with DH's extra paycheck.

I save every pay period for Christmas/birthday gifts, sports registration fees, property taxes, car repair fund, vacation and more.

I feel like we are doing the right things, making better decisions about how we spend our money but it seems we can never break free of the ball and chain.