I want to share a great site with you that I've discovered, called BillsIQ. Now, if you know me at all, you'll know that I'm fanatical about my bills. I have an enormous excel spreadsheet that contains our budget information going back to 2005 and forward to 2010. I have every possible metric measured and updated the file religiously.
A visit to BillsIQ and a walk through their free quiz still managed to open my eyes however, asking questions I hadn't actually given thought to. And as well as I think I manage both my individual finances as well as our household budget, I was shocked to only score a B! Jeez! A B wasn't good enough for me back when I was in school, so it certainly isn't now. I definitely have some catching up to do to make our finances healthier...with only 3 months to go before baby!
What I liked about this web site is that after scoring the test, point by point advice is given on each question asked. The most important thing I learned is that we're not saving nearly enough money. Sure, our individual jobs help us to contribute towards retirement, and our monthly budget has us putting away money towards taxes and household projects, but we need to bulk WAY up to have an emergency fund available that wouldn't require tapping into savings meant for other occasions.
Check it out - it's a great site, easy to use, and you can spend as much or as little time there as possible. Remember - it's called BillsIQ.
Just to play Devil's Advocate: what if you forego a treat, say ice cream, because it's not in the budget due to saving for "someday" expenses that may never happen--especially when you get run over the next day. Ya never got to enjoy ice cream..."You need to save--you need to have an emergency fund!" So, we have to starve now so that someday in the future we might not starve? Not much sense to that.
ReplyDeleteThis is the husband's philosophy and one I've become resigned to in the past 13 years. We will be in debt until our grandchildren are rotting in their graves. You'd have a conniption if you saw our finances LOL.
As long as you and the husband unit are on the same page about the budget and how money will or won't be spent, you've got what matters. As my big spender points out, we don't have cars littering the yard or boats we don't use or other big ticket items.
So I still have to ask...where does it all go? With food and gas rising, there's our answer. Save? I don't think so.
An interesting point, Kelly - and I'm like you - I love playing Devil's Advocate.
ReplyDeleteI would argue, however, that people can still enjoy treats while maintaining a fairly strict budget and striving not only to be debt free but also to have healthy savings. For instance, we both give ourselves an allowance. We each put a certain percentage of our incomes into our joint account and keep the remainder in our separate accounts. Of our separate accounts, much of that money is also budgeted out to take care of individual expenses/debts that we choose not to pay from our joint account. But also from those separate accounts comes an "allowance" that we hold aside to spend on ourselves each month. For me, it's pretty small...I'm not a shopper, nor do I eat out very often. For hubby, it's a bit larger. But for any extras for our households - having my niece here in July, going out to dinner or breakfast every so often, all of the $$$$ we've spent on home improvements - that comes out of our non-work money. In other words, we each work off-duty jobs (hubby in security, me in either writing, Pampered Chef, or judging HS forensics) and that is the money we use for anything not explicitly budgeted.
We started a pretty aggressive budget nearly three years ago now - in November 2005 when we combined our households and some of our money - and it's helped us to pay for our wedding, buy a house several years earlier than originally expected, and now have our baby...and all the while, we've been chipping away at our debt, bit by bit. Unfortunately, due mostly to costly medical procedures (both of us) and school loans (me), that was pretty high. Our actual credit card debt is fairly low versus national standards...but that doesn't make me hate it any less. Our next big financial goal is private schooling, since the public schools in Texas frighten the hell out of me, so if we can keep plugging away at our debt at the same rate, we ought to be in a position to afford that when Little Miss is ready to start in a few years. And in the meantime, if we have to miss a few meals out or work an extra day or two in our off-duty worlds to be able to afford a larger purchase without putting it on credit, I think we're better in the long run.
But I'm a bit fanatical, perhaps...but then, dear readers, you probably knew that already!