Okay...drastic budgeting for Teal starts now.

tealowl · December 2013

I've been thinking of doing this for awhile, and although I'm not sure how much it's going to help, it's my last option. Need your thoughts.

I have got to get my debt down, and I want it done a little quicker. I'm as thrifty as I can possibly be, but money every month gets spent on needless items, and I need to stop.

I looked over all my bills (S/O and still split our bills, he just gives me half of the household bills every month, since I pay them), and after I pay all of my monthly bills, it leaves me with $636/month. For gas, groceries and strippers.

JK, I mean misc crap.

I know I don't spend that on gas/groceries alone, so if I completely cut myself off, I can put a litle bit more to debt every month, right?

So, I'm cutting up my debit card. Everything I pay is mostly automated anyway. If I need money for gas and groceries I'll just have to make a trip to the bank to get it. That would make it harder for me to pull extra money out.

If I go back to this 'old school' way, that should help? If I don't give myself access to my money electronically, it'll make it harder to spend $5 here and there without thinking?

tealowl · December 2013

It's either this, or I have to make my Mom my payee. Which would be my nightmare.

tealowl · December 2013

BrightEyes112 said:

On all those shows they always make people cut up their cards and use very carefully allocated cash for things. They put the cash in specific jars. I think it sounds like a good plan. When we use cards we dont think nearly as much about what we are spending.

That's what I've heard of too - I always fill my tank up when I get paid, and I can make it last the full 2 weeks as long as I just go to work and back and plan my errands so I'm not wasting gas. So I know how much money to pull out for that. And for groceries I can write a check for that, or bring a calculator with to keep under whatever budget I figure out for it.

And I'm gonna keep an emergency $20 in my car.

janda426 · December 2013

I don't live here, but I stalk and want to give my input anyway. We're also trying to make the new year a new start to being better savers. I have a bit of a spending problem, but as far as mortgage and bills go, we live below our means and it pretty much tricks my brain into thinking it's totally okay to spend hundreds a month on clothes, makeup and other bullshit. Anyway enough about me, this is what we're trying to do to make it better.

Our friends did the envelope system over the summer and had success, but kind of fell out of it- so were gonna give it a try. I found that if I tell myself I need to cut all spending, I'm gonna freak and backfire and wind up spending anyway. But if I give each of us an "allowance" to spend on whatever we want each month, I can plan what new bullshit item I'm gonna buy each month within my allowance and still look forward to fancy new shit without blowing all our money at once. For us, the allowance is $100 a month each. Into an envelope, never touching our debit cards for things we "want." And as you suggested, keep gas money separate.

H check is direct deposited into our account and were working on coming up with a number to transfer automatically into our savings account- so well never see it or get a chance to touch it, while our savings account goes up and up. You could possibly do that into a separate account used to pay off your debt.

The only problem we have with cutting up our debit card is we order a lot of household items on amazon that we would still need a card for, as well as our Target red card that saves us 5% and is attached to our checking account. If you can do it, definitely go for it! It'll definitely be a test of wills for us to keep ours (at least for me it will, H never spends money) but if I can't get my spending in check, that's pretty bad lol.

Good luck to ya- I know how difficult it is to keep saying "okay seriously were gonna get it together and save money" then fall right back into old habits. I follow you on Instagram so I see how thrifty you are- that's a good habit to have in this situation!!

/back to lurkdom after my novel

tealowl · December 2013

I have an Excel sheet that has all my regular bills and the dates they are auto paid out, so I know what gets paid on which check.

Then S/O give me money for the stuff we share and I have to manually take that to the bank. Problem is, I'll spend some of it before I do, so that's a lesson I need to check myself on.

Then, I get money every couple of weeks from my brother to pay the mortgage on the house he rents from me.

So all the money trickles in and I'm not keeping track of it as well.

I'm gonna ask S/O if he'll open up an account at my credit union so he can do direct deposit for the money he gives me to make it easier. And I can ask my brother to pay me one lump sum at the end of the month so I don't mess up and spend that in error.

And I'm going to a separate credit union soon to open up a savings account w/no ATM card, and just have $10-$20/paycheck go in there, it'll never get touched that way hopefully.

tealowl · December 2013

wareagle1220 said:

I think it's a good idea if your S/O opens an account at the credit union. That'll make it easier to transfer money. Or, when he cashes his check, he could get a cashier's check or something along those lines so you don't have cash.

I'll ditto what others have said. We used a modified Dave Ramsey's program to pay off all our student loans and car loans over several years... it wasn't fun, but it was definitely effective. We also give ourselves a certain amount of "fun money" for each of us to spend on whatever we want. If you did gas, groceries and a little fun money, you could roll whatever's left into your debt. That's what we did.

Specifically, we ordered our loans in order from highest interest rate to lowest, set aside a certain amount of money per month on top of our minimum payments and put that towards the highest interest rate loan. When that was paid off, we snowballed the additional funds from the paid off loan's monthly payment, plus our debt payoff amount to the next highest interest rate. We tried the cash envelopes for awhile and it worked well. I think everyone in my family has tried this at some time or another when they've had to buckle down and pay something off and it really does work.

We also have our savings set up to autodraft. That way we don't have a choice but to save a certain amount each month. I could send you a copy of the excel spreadsheet we use if you want?

That would be awesome, I would love to check out the Excel!

BlckRoses · December 2013

Something that really helped us was giving each of us an allowance. Every payday DH and I each get $50 that we can spend it on whatever we want, but when it's gone, it's gone. I'm embarrassed to say I spent almost 100% of it on Starbucks every month until we bought an espresso machine.

But tracking is key! You have to track everything, including the non-bills. You'll be surprised where the money goes. We are out of the hardcore paying off debt phase, so we use our cards, but we use Mint.com to track all of our spending, so that may be something to look into once you've paid most of the debt off. It helps you see where all your money goes. Then you can hang your head in shame at how often you go to Target, like I did.

PugMum · December 2013

There is a lot of great advice here Teal. Good luck on your financial diet!

bumpuser1282882 · December 2013

trawas01 said:

Do you have a written out budget? I keep ours on an excel spread sheet. It helps me to have a line item for everything. Bills, savings, groceries, etc. DH gets $35 a paycheck in "fun money" that goes on a separate card because he can't control the $5 here and there. This way when he runs out, its out.

I also write out our total spending before the month begins. Start with X dollars, I know we get paid on these dates, I know due dates for bills. I literally work out all of my spending this way in advance and know exactly what I have to work with as far as "extra." When the extra exceeds more then $20-30 I can allocate extra to student loans, etc. If I just leave that extra it gets eaten up by odds and ends throughout the month.

We live on pretty small budgets and do well for ourselves. We put ~10-20% of our income away in savings each month but to do so we don't eat out, we very rarely buy new clothes and we watch every penny.

This. We use an excel spreadsheet too and everything is budgeted into fixed bills (mortgage, car loan, etc) variable bills (cell phone, internet, etc), and the "extra" section. Extra includes things like groceries, "treats" (junk or booze), and fast food. I pay very close attention to the "extra" category each month and if we spend too much on one thing I tell DH "look, no more eating out this month because we've already spent x amount on that". We've already discussed that this category will need to be reeled in big time once the baby comes.
Another thing that I find really helps is meal and menu planning. I shop the flyers and create a meal plan based on sale items. Oh, and I coupon which also helps. I find if we have meals planned out for the week, in advance, we are less likely to pick up items here and there or order out.
Hope you get things worked out soon Teal!

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