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I feel like an idiot...
Now that we're both gainfully employed and bring in
about 3x that, I'm shocked and horrified at how bad I've been managing
my finances. It's like, for some stupid reason, I thought we had more money than we actually do.
I'm currently staring at a spreadsheet that is saying otherwise.
So, I'm in the process of getting our finances back on track. We have a healthy savings fund set aside in a savings fund that was supposed to be for our trip next summer, but I think that we're going to have to use some of that towards the new car. =S And this got me thinking... if you don't mind me asking, what % of your monthly income do you:
a) put towards savings?
b) toward debt repayment (student loans, credit card bills, etc)?
There's no way we can cover all of Phil's student loans in a year... or two or even three and hope to save up for a house/apartment (preferably a house) at the same time. And, we want to start TTCing next summer, so we're definitely going to need to get out of our current place (1 bdrm) before any children come bouncing into the picture.
I just don't know what to do or how to allot our cash... and I need to know, because if I don't, I'll end up blowing it all on jcrew stuff. Which is what I've been doing thus far. =S
Re: I feel like an idiot...
heheh, this made me laugh. And I guess... at least you know what it goes to. DH always asks me where my fun money goes... ummmmm coffee and ?? I don't even really buy much for Jack so it's not that. Random stuff... books, craft supplies... who knows.
The other comment I had - your question made me scared. I really have no idea what the percentages might be. eek. I'm probably a financial mess. All I know is I make enough money to pay our bills (plus contribute to my retirement through work). DH makes enough to pay for some new bills (gym membership and life insurance) and whatever is left over we save (to IRA, some sort of high yield/don't touch it soon account, and reg. savings - reg. savings being a loose term for a a revolving in and out account for extras I guess, since it doesn't really grow that well, haha).
Sooooo... I can see what you mean, and bet I could get there pretty easily.
I should also say I am not a total mess because a while ago DH made a spreadsheet and we listed ALL bills and income (a little tricky for him since he is self employed his income varies) and came up with an equation that works for us. We know the minimum we need to make per month to allow us to not dip into savings and at that point set up a fun money as a line item so we know any "extra" income after we pay everything should go to savings. But that amount is not really enough for me to go shopping for more than a single item on sale or something. At that point I have to dip into the savings - which sucks but has reigned me in a lot so it is better for us in the long term.
We are paying my student loans in a 10 year term (he doesn't have any) and don't really worry about paying them off any earlier, so to me I can't really see the the point in determining what percentage of our overall income *should* go to that (or any) single line item. I guess if we started making lots more we might consider reevaluating debt repayment terms...
I wonder if we'd be better off with combined finances - we haven't done that yet. =S I hadn't realized how laisez-faire I'd become! I don't even know what our bottom line number is! I know we make enough to cover it, but to cover it and do everything that we want to do (and have a two year house + kid plan)... yikes.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
kinda scary, but i have no idea about the percentages either...we're lucky in that we don't have any debt, aside from (a LOT of) house debt, and we live off MH's income, to ensure we could become a single-income household in the future if we wanted to. we're able to save some of his income plus all of mine right now. if we did go single income some day, we'd have to tighten things down a bit, since i don't think we're saving enough of his income to get ahead - but like i said, we don't really know! we need to take another look at our spending...
that said, neither of us buy much for ourselves - we rarely buy clothes or shoes - maybe 3 "big" shopping expeditures a year, about $500 total, for the two of us (is that a lot? I don't even know). most of our expenditures come from traveling - lots of weekend trips, 1-2 long weekends, plus 1 week-long vacation per year. our food bills are really low, and we eat out about once a week - usually nothing too expensive.
you might want to look at something like mint.com and start categorizing your spending for a few months just to see where everything is going - then figure out where you could cut back? i put everything on credit, b/c i can never remember where my cash goes. having the paper trail helps me a lot. once you've categorized everything, you could consider moving to an all cash system (i think lori might use this?) where you set aside a budget for each category at the beginning of the month - when it's gone, it's gone. for us, it's not feasible to use cash for everything, but i'm thinking we might want to try this for a few things, like food/groceries and fun money. i think it would really help us *see* where the money goes.
good luck!