Random Thoughts

-Since I started using Twitter, it's been hard finding motivation to blog.
-I really want to buy a house now, but prices are still pretty high. I hope that C and I buy a place where we can cover the mortgage with only 1 of our incomes.
-Mortgage prices still seem to be very low. I used Zillow to get some mortgage quotes, and I can get around 4.5% (with some partial points, but we plan to keep whatever place we buy for a long time).
-New job is going well. I got my first paycheck last week. There is something to be said for getting paychecks, rather than direct deposit. I think that was the largest check in my name that I've ever received.
-I've held checks for $1+ million in relation to past jobs.
-Somehow I decided that I really like Pottery Barn. Not good for the wallet. Luckily I haven't completely lost my frugality and I'm searching craigslist for cheaper Pottery Barn stuff.
-I also bought a Pottery Barn gift card for about 75% of the value. I used it to purchase an floor model rug.
-I've been preparing a networth statement less and less frequently. The tanking of the markets gave me a good excuse to not prep one for a long long. I finally did one in mid-July and another one yesterday. In about 2 weeks, our retirement accounts went up 5% with no contribution from us. Go market!
-After preparing these recent net worth views, we realized that we are close to a pretty major milestone (cash savings of X amount, with X being a nice round number). If we save really aggressively, we could get to it, but I don't think we have the inclination to save that hard anymore.
-I believe in a 10% tithe, but I have been undertithing for the past 2 years or so. I didn't change my tithe to keep up with my income. Now an I over-tithing (only a little over) to make up for it.

January Spending Review

I am pretty proud to say that my husband and I did a pretty decent job of tracking our expenses for the month of January! I have always been a fan of automated savings, and just spending everything that was left so I didn't really have a good idea of where our money was going. We decided to track all expenses except those expenses that are fully reimbursed by our employers. For example, for any business trips we took, we didn't count the cost of hotel, rental car, airfare, etc. I did count the cost of meals since both my husband and I get per diem when we travel. Per diem is a meal allowance that we got for each day, no matter what we spend. So if I spend $100 on food, some of that is coming out of my own pocket, whereas if I only spend $10 on food, I get to add some extra savings to our monthly inflows.

So here is the breakdown.
Total expenditures: $4,965.48*
Rent: $1,600.00
Tithe: $1050.00
Eating Out $707.92
Gifts $307.70
Groceries $285.45
Misc. $279.68
Monthly Bills $195.87
Travel $165.21
Entertainment $88.00

Since I didn't have any preconceived notions about where our money was going, I was happy that C and I were able to have at least a 1 month record showing the granularities of our expenses. I knew we spent a lot of money on eating out, but I didn't realize it's about 2.5 times as much as we spend on groceries! A lot of this is due to travel schedules. I found it interesting that C and I only had 4 meals out together and only 2 meals out together with just us. Included in those 2 meals we had with others also includes us treating others due to special occasions. I have tried to emphasize that I want our meals out with just us to be special affairs that we really enjoy, rather than an act of convenience. We eat out by ourselves as an act of convenience too much as it is!

Our monthly bills are also missing our monthly electricity bill. We got one at the end of December and another one at the beginning of February. I'm not sure why that happened, but I decided not to include it in our monthly review since we didn't have to pay it out in January.

I thought that our spending on gifts might be abnormally high, but I figure in other months there are other one off items that would offset a lower amount spent on gifts. The travel budget was spent on a weekend trip where some of the expenses were paid in December, so this cost here is less than the cost of the trip, but accurate of what we spent in January.

I know that we forgot a couple of expenses here and there, but this is a good snapshot of what our monthly expenses are. I'm pretty comfortable with this. The main thing I would want to change is to decrease the amount we spend on eating out and increase the amount we spend on groceries!

* Note this does not include automatic payroll deductions like taxes, 401K savings, health care, long term disability insurance, flexible spending accounts nor other savings

Our Attempt at Tracking Expenses

You hear over and over again in the pfblog sphere and in financial planning articles that you need to track your expenses to get a handle on where your money is going. C and I tried doing this in August, but it was a dismal failure.

This January we decided to try again. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I try to update every night, or at least every other day. It lists name, item, cost, payment method, and a description of the item.

For example, an item like rent is categorized as being spent by the both of us. One area we're having trouble for is accounting for expenses that are reimbursed by our employers. I've been on the road the past few weeks, so I've been accumulating taxi, hotel, car rental, and air travel costs. What we've done so far is not tracked those items since they're fully reimbursed by my employer. But I do track my meal expenses despite my meal allowance since I get to keep whatever I don't spend.

We're halfway through the month and I'm proud to say that we've been able to remember to record everything thus far (at least that's what C has told me). Hopefully we won't be tripped up this weekend since we will be out of town.

It was a pretty hard road to get C to agree to track our expenses. I first brought it up soon after we were married and he was vehemently against it. Throughout our marriage I've slowly influenced him to be more conscious about our spending and to be more willing to do things that he once couldn't believe people would do.

When we were engaged, I showed C an article about Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog and he couldn't believe why someone would want to write a blog about their finances. Actually when I showed him that article, I had already started this blog, but I went on a hiatus after our wedding since I wanted to ensure that he was in agreement with it. He was, it just took some slow steps to work up the courage to tell him about it.

I guess the moral of this story is that you can influence your partner to your way of thinking, but don't try to do everything all at once.