House Hunting Time Again

As of February we took our home off the market. We'd been trying to sell it for over a year. We had many lookers but no takers. I think it was due to the fact that someone was building newer houses around us that weren't quite as big but were the same price and they were new. Why buy old when you can get new for the same price? And they are nice houses so I don't blame them. And we were probably asking a little too much (which we would have lowered if anyone had bothered to make an offer).

This week I heard from my step dad that he wants to help us out. Quick summary: We live in a small town outside of a city. We want to move to the city. This would allow our kids to stay with my grandparents which would eleminate after school day care costs (which are significant). We'd also save a ton of money in gas since we wouldn't be driving back and forth to town all the time.

My step dad's plan is to pay our rent in a small rent house for up to 15 months while we try to sell our house. We lower the price considerably to get a buyer and then my step dad ponies up a large sum of cash to help with the down payment on a new bigger house in the city. New as in new to us, not neccessarily a new house. This would be pretty awesome. BTW, he's doing this because my grandparents helped him and my mom out in the same way at one point. Good karma and all that.

So right now my wife and I are mulling over the pros and cons. We actually have a huge list of pros and we are struggling to come up with very many cons. The worst that could happen is that we would have to move back into our current house and my stepdad would be out of some cash that he used for paying the rent. Anyways, it's a lot to think about but so far it's looking like we'll do it. We'd need to move on it within the next month or 2 which feels really quick which is why I'm weighing it so heavily.

Also I want a Prius :)

Unexpectedly Expensive

I was looking forward to a nice increase in available money this August when my twin daughters started Kindergarten. No more day care costs...hooray! All we'd have to pay for is after school care for a couple of hours. Should be fairly cheap compared to an all day daycare that provides hot meals, right? Right?

Nope. While it is cheaper - it's about 61% of what we were paying for full day care - we were having half of the cost of the full day daycare provided by my parents. It was a great help to us. But once they start school that money stops so when it's all said and done we will be paying $1000 more a year than we were before. Ouch! Of course that adds up to only $20 more a week than what we are paying now but, still, that's a thousand bucks a year. I just wince at the interest that I won't be making somewhere on that money.

Guess it's time to really tighten down the budget and grin and bear it. Goodbye fast food, I hardly knew ye.

The Money Funnel

I'm trying to believe what Richard Bach says in Smart Couples Finish Rich. Mainly that you always make enough money, it's how you spend it that screws you up. So even though I feel like we don't make enough money, I'm trying to believe otherwise.

So to that end I'm really trying to clamp down where our money is going. I've already got a great spreadsheet that tracks our debt payoff plan. So far I've been able to mark out 3 or 4 columns that have been paid off. That's a really great feeling. The problem is that the columns that are left are our biggest debts. That's OK, we're working it down.

The other tab in the spreadsheet shows our monthly expenditures. There are columns for childcare, phone bills, electric bills, eating out, etc. I have a grand total for each month and then all months are averaged for a specific bill. Then those averages are added together. Then I add this to the amount we are paying to pay off debt. When this is subtracted from how much we make in a month it should show how much we could put aside for savings. It ain't much. Guess we need to cut back how much we spend in certain categories (mainly eating out I think).

Bright Idea

I had this bright idea (hooray for bad puns!) to replace all the incandescent light bulbs in my house with fluorescent bulbs. It would save a decent amount of money per year on electricity (I've seen numbers of upwards of $100) but I didn't realize one important fact. Fluorescent light bulbs are really really expensive!! Compared to a regular old light bulb, fluorescent light bulbs can be upwards of 3 to 4 times more expensive. Ouch!

I decided to go for it anyways but only buy a few bulbs at a time (a couple or 3 a week). I have 42 bulbs to replace in my house so it's going to take a few months. Hopefully in the long run it will be worth it since they use less electricity, are generally brighter (sometimes unbelievably brighter which is cool), don't give give off but about 1/10th of the heat that a regular bulb gives off so they are safer, and have about 1000 times the life expectancy of a regular bulb which will equate to buying way less light bulbs over the lifetime of our house.

I've also done a review of all the bills I receive and made sure that I'm only getting what I need and only paying for what I need. By doing this I was able to reduce our monthly phone bill by about $15 a month and reduce our car insurance by about 20$ a month. I recommend it even if you think you have what you need.

Juggling...always juggling

I juggled some bills around (ok, I moved my phone bill from paying on Friday to paying next Monday). Guess we aren't doing as bad as I had feared. Looks like the checking account won't go below 300 or so and then my wife gets paid on Friday.

Unfortunately, they don't do direct deposit and so it probably won't officially go in until Monday night. Anyways, when all is said and done I just hope that this month is better than last month.

According to Quicken there were 3 days last month where we had a negative balance. We didn't - it's just the way that Quicken counts Automated Bill Pay entries. My bank doesn't pay them till night of the day I assign them to which is basically the next morning whereas Quicken counts them for that exact day. I want to be able to look back on April and see nothing but positive balances. Here's hoping.

Reading material

I went to the bookstore today at lunch to look in their personal finance section for a couple of books. I wanted "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" and "The Four Pillars of Investing" among some others. Of course, living in a small city with only one bookstore has it's disadvantages and I came face to face with them today. None of the books were there.
No problem, I thought. I'll just look for the next fiction book I wanted to read ("broken angels" by Richard K. Morgan). Nope, didn't have that either. Ugh, sometimes it sucks living in a small city.
I know they have one of those books at the library so it's not that bad, I might be able to get it there. And then, of course, there's always Amazon.com.
The good news about none of the books being there was that I didn't spend any money. I went out looking to buy at least one book and some floormats for my car. I came back with nothing but I still had money in my checking account. Actually, now that I think about it I'm glad I wasn't able to find anything. I need to get my spending in check like I said yesterday.

Filing System Complete

I do have some good news. I finished our filing system!! I used a modified version of the system that David Bach recommends in Smart Couples Finish Rich. It's nice having one place (that's not on the computer) to look at anything that has to do with our financial alterations.

My wife had a question just a few minutes ago and I was able to open a file draw and find what I needed immediately. Very nice.

BTW, I do recommend David Bach's Smart Couples Finish Rich. The opening is a little hokey and kind of preachy but after Chapter 2 he gets into some real meat and potatoes stuff that has come in real handy. He does a real down-to-earth explanation of certain things that have just flown over my head before.

Another quick recommendation (boy, these blog things sure are addictive): Personal Finance for Dummies. This books is really awesome. They talk about taxes, debt, insurance, retirement - basically if it has to do with your financial health it's in there. Great reference for those of just starting to get things under control.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid Money

Like I said in my original post, I have a problem with money - as in I spend too much of it. I wouldn't be in the debt situation I'm in if I didn't spend money we didn't have.
I thought we were starting to do better this month (light at the end of the tunnel and all that) and now it looks like I've spent too much money this weekend. Just on simple things like flourescent lightbulbs (to save money on the electric bill...ironic isn't it?), groceries, and some other miscellaneous items that could have waited. But it was enough to where now I'll have to be very careful for the next week so we don't go negative on our checking account.

Argh! I hate money!

Guess it's time to take all the credit cards out of my wallet except for my debit card?

My goal for the next two weeks is to not spend money on things that aren't mandatory (bills and groceries would be mandatory, anything else would be discretionary). I realize that should be my goal all the time but baby steps, people, baby steps.

It's a start..

So here is my attempt to blog. I wanna talk about money and finances and how I don't know enough about either. Hopefully through posting here I can learn more as I spout off about whatever financial topics comes to my attention.

A little background:
I'm currently employed as is my wife. Going by the other financial blogs I've read I don't make nearly as much money as most of the people posting. That's fine, maybe I'll have a different perspective on things than what people are used to seeing. I have a 401(k) but my wife has nothing (that's soon to change). I've recently started an account on ING Direct which I'm very happy with. Basically since I graduated from college I have paid almost no attention to the future as far as finances go. Bad move which I'm trying to rectify. I'm 29 now so I think I still have time to get everything moving in the right direction.

Currently we are living paycheck to paycheck (which sucks). Over the last few weeks I've started getting things under control financially and we are already starting to get out from under some debt and the checking account is staying positive. Like I said, I'm in a different boat than a lot of the people posting.

My main goal over the next year or so will be to get rid of the crushing debt we have right now. We are somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 in the hole due to credit cards and a loan. Good times, good times. More later...