Day 31 - Free day - Money Talk

I have always struggled with keeping track of our money.  I don't balance a checkbook, I don't have spreadsheets to tell me how much money we have.  Don't get me wrong, we've never over-drafted or gone into credit card debt. Throughout our married life I always just had a "spend as little as possible" mentality.  Each semester (during medical school) we'd get a huge lump sum of money (aka student loan) into our bank account and we'd just spend as little of it as possible and hope it lasted until the next installment (thankfully it always did).  I enjoyed getting money that way (well, not the loan part obviously).  I like have a big cushion of money to draw from and having a large amount of "padding" in case of an emergency.  Don't think, however, that this meant I could go out and spend money willy-nilly.  Haha, I wish!  But Garrett was very firm in the fact that this was not our money, so we couldn't go out and spend it on wants.  It was for needs only.

However, it was really frustrating because sometimes there's a fine line between "need" and "want", and Garrett and I frequently disagreed on this line.  Did I need to buy a few baskets/bins to put loose office supplies in?  According to me, yes I did.  Garrett disagreed.  Did I need to drive 5 miles to go running at a certain location, or could I have saved the gas money and just run in our neighborhood?  Do I need to buy paper towels?  Not when a washcloth will do.  Did I need to put 2 little shelves up on Abby's wall, or could those things have just sat on the floor or gone in a drawer? (or, if Garrett got his way, we would have gotten rid of that stuff). Did I need to put cheese in this recipe, or could we have saved the $3 and just gone without? (haha okay, the cheese thing happened while we were at BYU.  And it was actually me saying we couldn't afford it.  We couldn't!)

I'm not saying all those things to complain, but to just make a point that Garrett and I had very different views of "needs" and "wants" so it was difficult a lot of times.  Of course, sometimes I still spent money on clothes, shoes, and fabric that I didn't "need", don't think I was completely deprived.  But it was still hard and we learned a lot about ourselves (and each other!).

So now, I can't even tell you how thrilling it is to be getting a paycheck every two weeks!  It's not a ton of money but it's enough, and we finally got the chance to sit down and create a monthly budget.  Garrett asked me last week if I'd ever heard of the website mint.com.  To his delight, I already had a membership, haha.  I actually joined 2 years ago but never did anything with it because it's all about money management and since we didn't really have an income, there was nothing to really manage (remember, beforehand it was just a "spend as little as possible" mentality.).  Mint is nice because you input your bank information and your credit card information, and it puts all your transactions in one nice spreadsheet (or you can see them separately if you want to).  And yes, it's a secure website so everything is safe (presumably... I mean, I've had my info in there for over 2 years now and it's been fine). Note: this is not an advertisement for Mint.com, I'm just sharing something that's been working for us!

So, last week we updated our Mint account and created a budget using their really neat graphics (bar graphs, pie charts.... it's awesome!).  Here's the breakdown of how we decided to budget our money:

Tithing: 10%

Heath Insurance: 12%

Rent: 27%

Savings: 20%

Internet/Utilities: 7.5%

Food/toiletries: 7.5%

Gas: 3% (this is not nearly enough $$ for this month, Garrett has been working 20 miles away!)

Car insurance: 3% (our premium is only due 2x per year, so this 3% added up over 6 months will equal the premium)

Potential car payment: 6.9%

Vacation/trips: 1.5% (mostly just gas money to pay for trips to temple, visit family, etc.  The amount we don't use will roll over into the next month, and I'm really hoping that by springtime we'll have enough for a trip to FL to look for housing, without having to dip into our savings for it)

Dr. appts: 1.25% (supposed to cover co-pays, etc.  Another rollover amount, so hopefully soon we'll be able to afford some trips to the dentist since we don't have dental insurance!) :)

Eating out/date night: 1.25% (aka once, MAYBE twice a month depending where we go)

Gifts: .6% (that's POINT six, don't think I'm spending as much on presents as I am on food, although I wish I could!  This is another rollover category, hopefully by Christmas we'll have a nice little amount of money to spend on gifts for people)

Clothing/Home decor: .6%.  (yes, another POINT 6!  It's not enough by any means, so this is supplemented with some of my piano lesson money)

Fast food: .3% (this doesn't seem like a legit category to me, but sometimes we need to drive through somewhere, like if we are on a trip or something.  So, I added it in the budget.)

"Extra" money not included in the budget: $2 per month :)

When we were creating our budget on the website, you don't actually put percentage amounts for each category, you put dollar amounts - I just did the percentages to give you an idea of how we've allotted everything. But I have to say, I LOVE LOVE LOVE having a line in the budget for "gifts".  And "clothing".  And "date night"!!  We never had these before for obvious reasons.  We went on real dates a couple of times, but it was only if it was our anniversary or birthday or something.  Yes, we are lame but some people couldn't justify using loan money for fun things (I love you, honey!). :)  So, having money now to buy all those "extras" feels like SUCH a luxury, even if it isn't a lot of money.  It's something!!  I do wish, however, that there was a bit more money for some fun things (like personal money for each of us), but oh well.  That's what my piano lesson money is for I guess.

Yesterday we went to the temple in D.C. and stopped for some fast food on the way home.  And, last night I got an email telling me I had gone overbudget on my fast food for the month already!  Haha whoops!!  This month has been difficult food-wise because Garrett hasn't been working much at the hospital (where he gets free food).  So, we love the website to say the least, and there are some other neat features that we haven't even really looked at yet.  

We decided to put 20% in savings because we are working on our 6-month emergency fund.  We'll also be moving next June and hopefully buying a house then, so we're saving up for all of those expenses as well.  In October and December and April, Garrett will get THREE paychecks (5 Fridays!), and since our monthly budget only uses two paychecks, we will (hopefully) be able to put three entire paychecks into savings, which will be great.  

So, that's how we're doing money-wise!  Now we're just crossing our fingers that we can actually defer the student loans throughout residency.  It used to be pretty standard, but the rules have gotten a lot stricter so it's actually quite difficult to qualify for that.  But I'm pretty sure we'll be okay.

(Why am I pretty sure?  Well, Garrett went to a financial aid seminar last spring at his school, and they were telling the students that hardly anyone can defer.  Someone asked them, "who exactly can defer?" And they were told, "Well.... say you have two kids.... and your wife stays at home.... things like that.  But really, who wants to be in that situation??")