Money Matters
AprilZ81
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Cutting Our Budget Was Hard
We are now a week removed from getting the news that my position is being eliminated effective March 15th. I sat down this weekend and took a hard look at our budget and the good news is that DH brings in enough money to meet all of our needs and a few of our wants. The bad news is that the cuts were deeper than I had anticipated. We are still saving for DH a ROTH but not me until I find another job.
- We cut some of the fluff/wiggle room in our gas envelope and our utilities envelope.
- We were overpaying our HELOC by $100/month and we cut that down to over pay by $25.
- We cut our entertainment budget in half.
- Personal fun money went from $200 each to $30 each.
- We cut our grocery budget by $50.
- Cut back our church/charity donations.
- Cut our Christmas savings by a huge amount.
- Eliminated our "general savings"
- Eliminated vacation savings.
- Eliminated our "car savings" used to fund any major repairs or save for a future down payment.
DH is going to add me to his health insurance when mine expires on 03/31/15 and we may have to tweak the budget again, but it won't be by a huge amount because we did our best to factor in that anticipated amount into our budget above.
We put this plan in place effective on Sunday, so even though I will have about half of my normal income this month (plus a 2.25 week severance) I want to put it in place now so we can practice living with a tightened budget now while we have a little wiggle room if something isn't working.
We will be putting ALL income I receive (paychecks, severance, unemployment benefits, etc) into savings until I find a new job. Then we will distribute that money into the savings goals we have had to reduce. We also anticipate a pretty decent sized tax refund which we will also put into savings until I find a job.
We are not postponing TTC, if we get pregnant we will deal with it (happily so). There are people who are in worse shape than we are that manage to have a family and with our ages it isn't worth postponing it any longer. If we get pregnant before I find a new job we have enough money in savings to cover the hospital bill (DH's bonus that we have tentatively earmarked for the bathroom remodel) and of course the money we will be putting into savings during the job hunt.
Thanks everyone for their well wishes on my last post. While this situation is not ideal by any stretch I'm so very grateful that DH and I are on the same page about our budget and even more thankful that DH makes enough money for us to survive on one income. It won't be pretty, but we are not afraid of losing the house or going hungry.
ETA: Sorry for the weird formatting. Not sure what is going on but I'm trying to fix it, I hope I don't make it worse!
Formerly AprilH81
Re: Cutting Our Budget Was Hard
Such a bummer, I know how tough it is. But it looks like you all have made some good choices on where to tighten the budget and, hopefully, you'll find another job soon and you all can go back to the normal budget. And this too shall pass. All things considered, what a blessing you all have put yourselves in a position to be able to live...albeit more frugally...on one salary. So many families would be crippled going from a 2-income to 1-income.
It looks like a solid budget and living by it before you have to is a really smart choice!
Good Luck!
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015