having a moment

CuriousKiddosMama · August 2014

Do you live in a HCOL area, or eat mostly organic? Pasta is an insanely cheap meal so I don't know how you could be spending $400 on that area. Does that include eating out or paper and personal products? That maybe one area of your budget where you are overspending and could trim a bit. For the 3 of us I never spend over $300, but we are in a LCOL area.

brij2006 · August 2014

You could always post your budget and have us see where some cuts can be made. You talked about the agility training with your dog. That's one area that could be cut and put toward debt to make it go faster. There are definitely things you don't think add up, but once you do the math they do and can make more of a difference than you think.

Xstatic3333 · August 2014

vikingsfan711 said:
Do you live in a HCOL area, or eat mostly organic? Pasta is an insanely cheap meal so I don't know how you could be spending $400 on that area. Does that include eating out or paper and personal products? That maybe one area of your budget where you are overspending and could trim a bit. For the 3 of us I never spend over $300, but we are in a LCOL area.

We eat mostly organic, mostly vegetarian for $300 a month in MCOL RI. It's definitely doable to get that down. We do lots of pasta, stir fries, burrito nights, and pizza. The biggest key is to NEVER buy out of season fruits and veggies. That may be a place you could find some more money.

ETA I know you have a big dog-that could be the difference if the $400 includes dog food

lifeonthehill · August 2014

Gdaisy09 said:

It's 3 years and 3 months to pay off the SLs if we stop saving for just the remodel, we still owe a good amount on our car (really low interest rate so I didn't have it in the SL snowball...but we would end-up snowballing it in) so if I add that it's 3 years 7 months to debt free.

it'll take 4 months after that to save the money for the remodel.

I'm not sure I can convince H (or myself) to delay TTC for 3-4 years.

I wouldn't be able to do 4 years. We pushed it back two and it is already killing me.

I vote you post your budget here and see what happens.

Also being debt free would be nice but isn't a TTC requirement. If you can get a good chunk of it out of the way to free up more money and can still afford a baby and the rest of your budget I say go for it.

formerlyGDaisy09 · August 2014

We do live in a relatively HCOL area, H and I are both athletes and eat alot. I can probably get that down to $350/month, but even while we were saving for our DP and paying off credit cards and I all but made H eat rice and beans (he complains about the pasta too) the lowest I could ever get it to was $350/month, and most the months we suceeded we months where we spent a weekend or two at my parents (november/december) I do consider myself to be a pretty smart shopper, I shop in season, or buy frozen, we hardly buy anything packaged, but when we do I buy generic, we buy cheaper cuts of meat when we do eat meat. dog food, cat food, and cat litter are often lumped in with the groceries, sometimes they go into the household goods budget.

Yes the agility classes for the dog are something we've discussed cutting back on, the dog really loves it, and it gives her something to do on off-days from running so she doesn't drive us crazy (she's a 15 month old dalmatian...she really needs the physical and mental stimulation...like yesterday we just did a walk and she drove me crazy all night!) they do pro-rate sessions if we can't make it to all the classes, so maybe we start going every-other week, but the classes aren't cheap.

here is the current budget we're thinking of working with: things we've already discussed dropping/asking for lower rates on agility and trash pick-up

INCOME

H Job1 2165

H Job2 1241

Me Job1 2860

Me Job2 163

Expenses

Student Loans	861.41
Mortgage	1563
Verizon	121.42
Comcast	73.95
Cassela-trash	35.79
NetFlix	7.99
electric	90
water	37
propane	150
homeowners insurance	82.2
Monthly Estimated taxes	154.17
Subaru	346.57
Car insurance	135
Gas	150
Car slush fund	75
Grocery	400
household	150
Care Credit	150
Entertainment	100
Agility	125
shopping	100

Total 4908.50

hoffse · August 2014

So you're coming out $1500+ per month ahead.

I'm just going to say it: I wouldn't cut anything with that sort of wiggle room. I really wouldn't. Maybe you re-evaluate how much you send to savings vs. how much you send to debt repayment so your H can stop working two jobs sooner, but you guys aren't being terribly extravagant here.

Then again, I'm not a DR follower. I think he's got plenty of useful advice for people who are drowning in debt, but that's not you guys.

Could you cut in a few places? Yes. Do you need to? I wouldn't.

vlagrl29 · August 2014

I wouldn't wait to be debt free to have kids. There is no way we could have done that. It was very important for us.

formerlyGDaisy09 · August 2014

Thanks, I think we need some sort of hybrid plan that balances paying off the loans with our other savings goals. I think if we can get the higher interest rate loans paid off before TTC that would be a nice compromise (by higher interest i mean 4-7%) that'll give us a smaller monthly obligation for paying down debts and if we finish the basement project we can drop PMI and add that to the snowball.

I have built an excel calculator to play with the numbers to try to optimize what's going to savings and debts. I'm thinking right now that if 50-60% of our excess each month goes to debt the other 40-50% can get divided among our savings goals.

brij2006 · August 2014

Here's just a few things I would tweak, but I'm a DR follower, tight-ass. lol.

Cut out the agility training and buy some dog puzzles and/or agility items to do at home. (we have a Collie who needs more stimulation than just running or a walk too).

Focus first on the Care Credit and get that paid off, then snowball that onto the next debt.

Minimize your groceries and household goods items. Or combine them together at a lower amount. $550 total for those items seems high.

I completely agree that it isn't a necessity to be debt free before TTC. Kids can only be as expensive as you make them be. However, there is nothing better than having more wiggle room in your budget once you get pregnant. The debt may not seem like a whole lot, and may feel like it's "good debt" and debt that everyone has. But between the student loans, car, and care credit there is $1,357.98 being tied up in your monthly expenses just for debt. Imagine how much relief you would feel if you no longer had that much money tied up in payments. You would meet your savings goals in half the time, and would be able to do your remodeling projects in cash that much sooner. That would also take care of no longer needing your H's 2nd job for income, and you would get your happily married lives back.

Xstatic3333 · August 2014

Gdaisy09 said:
Thanks, I think we need some sort of hybrid plan that balances paying off the loans with our other savings goals. I think if we can get the higher interest rate loans paid off before TTC that would be a nice compromise (by higher interest i mean 4-7%) that'll give us a smaller monthly obligation for paying down debts and if we finish the basement project we can drop PMI and add that to the snowball.

I have built an excel calculator to play with the numbers to try to optimize what's going to savings and debts. I'm thinking right now that if 50-60% of our excess each month goes to debt the other 40-50% can get divided among our savings goals.

I've sort of been evolving on this right now too. I'll never go full DR or anything, but I did realize that by working on too many goals at once, I was getting nowhere fast. When I did out our TTC budget, I realized we need to have the cars paid off first. We also want to take another international trip-I know not everyone would share that priority but it's important to us (well, me). Instead of saving for everything all at once, I decided to focus on the cars first. With not-quite-gazelle intensity (white tailed deer intensity?) putting all extra money to the cars but keeping wants that are important to us, we'll have those gone within a year and then could save for the trip in two months, versus the ten-ish it would take now.

It's worth it to us to not do the full-DR "no life" (his words) plan for our last two years pre-TTC. We're cutting back, but H is keeping his rock gym and I'm keeping my fitness stuff (running is not as cheap as I'd hoped). For others getting out of debt quickly is a priority, and I definitely don't think that's wrong. We're all moving in the right direction

formerlyGDaisy09 · August 2014

brij2006 said:

Here's just a few things I would tweak, but I'm a DR follower, tight-ass. lol.

Cut out the agility training and buy some dog puzzles and/or agility items to do at home. (we have a Collie who needs more stimulation than just running or a walk too).
Focus first on the Care Credit and get that paid off, then snowball that onto the next debt.
Minimize your groceries and household goods items. Or combine them together at a lower amount. $550 total for those items seems high.

I completely agree that it isn't a necessity to be debt free before TTC. Kids can only be as expensive as you make them be. However, there is nothing better than having more wiggle room in your budget once you get pregnant. The debt may not seem like a whole lot, and may feel like it's "good debt" and debt that everyone has. But between the student loans, car, and care credit there is $1,357.98 being tied up in your monthly expenses just for debt. Imagine how much relief you would feel if you no longer had that much money tied up in payments. You would meet your savings goals in half the time, and would be able to do your remodeling projects in cash that much sooner. That would also take care of no longer needing your H's 2nd job for income, and you would get your happily married lives back.

Thanks, taking 50% of our "excess" and sending it to our student loans gets 4 loans paid off by February (frees up almost $200 in what we owe monthly), and the dog can stay in agility, I may be too busy this fall to spend 2 1/2 hours once a week taking her there, so when we don't do agility I'm planning to divert that money to debt, but in the winter it is so nice to have an indoor agility class to go to and get dog nice and tired without freezing. We do have dog puzzles, they work for about 10 minutes (we have this one and this one if you have other recommendations I'd love to hear them). we dont' have enough space to set-up any agility equipment at home.

Part of the household goods cost is high because we're working out food allergies with the dog and the vet has my formerly tubby cats on a "catkins diet" of grain-free wellness food (neither is cheap...it costs us about $85 a month to feed the animals, ~$60 for a 28lb bag of dog food and ~$25 for the cat food, add cat litter in and about $100 of our monthly costs go to the animals...so our people budget is more like $450/month)

The care credit is 0% interest so long as we pay-off each charge within 6 months, that's our vet budget...if we paid that off we'd still have a line-item for $150 for vet expenses. What's on that card is the dog's spay surgery, wellness/vaccine updates for all 3 animals, flea, tick, heartworm for all 3 animals, and a chest x-ray for my apparently asthmatic cat, along with any drugs the animals are on the $150 gets all those items paid and avoids interest). Between the 3 of them something tends to crop-up every few months so it's much easier to just plan that we're somehow going to spend $150 at the vet, having the care credit means we can plan on $150 rather than being surprised with a $300-400 bill every now and then (the cat's chest x-ray and asthma work-up was $180...add to that that the dog was due for annual vaccines and a wellness check the same month and we would have dropped $300 at the vet. We will have our balance on care credit paid off in 4 months...so if we can aviod expensive vet visits that debt does go away soon...but that line item in the budget stays.

formerlyGDaisy09 · August 2014

Just out of interest (admitted excel nerd here) I played with the calculator a little more. with our current budget and plan of diverting 50% of excess to debt, if we were to stop our snowball in just over a year, we'll have reduced our monthly debt burden by $400 a month (7 SLs paid off...we have a total of 10 between us).

We will also have the money to finish the basement. (the last two loans we're focusing on have really high balances but low interest rates, so the basement money would not pay them off sooner, in one year we'll owe about $26K on those loans, the basement should cost less than $7000). With the basement done we'll reappraise and hopefully get rid of PMI ($143 off our mortgage). so at that point we've reduced our debt burden by $543/month.

if we take the excess that was going to debts and reallocate it towards a daycare line-item that almost exactly covers the cost of daycare. and if we continue to take the $400 that used to be loan payments and snowball it into the remaining loans we can pay those off and the car and be 100% 4.5 years (from today, not a year from now). assuming H's car can lasts another 4-5 years (FX) but we're planning to get him a pre-owned sedan when needed so even if we finance a portion of it we're probably talking about a payments in the $100 range rather than the $300 range my outback is in.

that leaves the $143 from PMI and $125 from agility to cover additional baby costs when we have a LO (H has no interest in running around an agility course, so we'll definitely be taking a break when there is a LO...but dog will no longer be a crazy adolescent so hopefully walks and trips to the dog park will be enough!)

all this based on our current salaries...so as my boss continues to work on getting me a raise (thank you large academic center for all the road blocks and hoops, when our grant has more than enough money allocated to my salary to double my salary and still cover overhead) we can use that money to help H cut back to 1 job.

I'm feeling fairly good about this plan.

Xstatic3333 · August 2014

That's an awesome plan! Yay for Excel-nerdom.

brij2006 · August 2014

Sounds like a good plan. Definitely toss it by your H and see his thoughts on what the options are.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with being an Excel nerd. ;-)

hoffse · August 2014

I like it too.

I think finishing the basement is really important, especially since you've mentioned it's a place where your mom could stay when you have kids. If it helps your house appraise so you can drop PMI, even better - It actually makes the basement cost less than $7,000 because of the PMI you are saving.

I've honestly come to the point where I figure that if $X makes me want to stay in the house we're in another 5 years, that's money well spent. We decided to go with real hardwoods yesterday instead of something pre-finished that wouldn't match exactly. It was $1,000 more to have the real stuff put in, and it will make us love that space WAY more. It's not the cheapest option, but it was worth it to us.

formerlyGDaisy09 · August 2014

hoffse said:

I like it too.

I think finishing the basement is really important, especially since you've mentioned it's a place where your mom could stay when you have kids. If it helps your house appraise so you can drop PMI, even better - It actually makes the basement cost less than $7,000 because of the PMI you are saving.

I've honestly come to the point where I figure that if $X makes me want to stay in the house we're in another 5 years, that's money well spent. We decided to go with real hardwoods yesterday instead of something pre-finished that wouldn't match exactly. It was $1,000 more to have the real stuff put in, and it will make us love that space WAY more. It's not the cheapest option, but it was worth it to us.

agreed, if we don't do the basement we'll probably be looking at moving in a year or two, I can't stand the thought of having a LO and having no place for my parents to stay if they want to visit. I suppose they could have our bed and we could sleep on the couch..but that would still probably cause us to look to move sooner.

the basement also gets my H off my back about having my quilting stuff set-up in the living room, since as part of that project we're planning to finish a simple bonus room. as my friend the contractor keeps reminding us, basement rooms are pretty cheap once you get the project going, as long as you aren't putting a bathroom in.

our hope is to have our first LO off to kindergarten or pre-K before we think about #2, so that would give us a solid 7 more years in the house before we might begin to feel crowded again, baring any career moves that might move us out of the area.

goldiemu · August 2014

Sometimes I think people get overwhelmed by all the tasks that have to do with mm. It is nice that you are able to take that on for him. You may consider swapping some task you do for this new task you are taking on so you keep things more balanced.

I have learned in 13 years of marriage that balance and sharing if very important so resentments don't build-up. I know it is hard to imagine feeling resentful ever in the beginning and it doesn't have to happen if you work hard to be considerate and swap tasks.

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