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Home > Archive: September, 2018

Archive for September, 2018

Payday & Budgets

September 28th, 2018 at 03:02 pm

2nd paycheck from husband's new job. I've been sticking with YNAB and it is nice to see GREEN categories for all our bills because I have put back the money.

I worked extra on web design this month and I should have about $450 to throw at the credit cards. That is nice, hopefully I can keep it up and pay them down quickly.

Husband did a little bit of balking last night at our new budget. He seemed to have thought that the $400 additional money he will be getting a month would just be "extra" and he was miffed when he only ended up with $70 for spending money this week... (He thought he would get to blow that first $400 extra) I had to sit him down and go through the budget with him explaining that in the past we didn't budget for things like car insurance so we would just scramble to pay that large chunk every 6 months. Now on paper we have a line item for everything and it is taken out weekly. No more living check to check.

In the past he got about $30 a week to cover any spending he did. Usually his extra spending was going over on groceries or a clothing/house shopping trip every once in a while. Right now he is getting $70 a week which he will use to buy a couple splurge items he has been wanting. In about 2 weeks $20 a week will start coming out for retirement, and then in March another $25 a week will be taken for insurance. Then he will be down to $25 a week spending. He is freaking out that his spending will be even tighter than it used it be but we also budgeted more for groceries so his personal spending should be able to be used for actual fun stuff rather than than covering discrepancies.

I asked him to just try it for a while and see how it goes. We can make adjustments if needed but I think $100 a month for fun is more than enough... He honestly doesn't buy anything for himself, it is always groceries, or getting Chinese takeout once a month or less, or getting a few needed clothes. Now that our entire budget will be less tight I think he will actually get to use his fun money for fun and he won't feel so poor. We'll see how it goes.

I get about $55 a week for "spending" which is almost always used for housing purchases, or covering discrepancies in the budget. Neither of us are big wasters or have expensive hobbies thank goodness.

For example, since husband is going to be starting night shift soon we HAD to get some blackout blinds for our bedroom. (We have no curtains or blinds anywhere in the house.) Well I found some on sale for over 50% off, after searching for a while I could not find anything else that would fit our windows that was cheaper so I went ahead and bought them. About $115, yikes. But a needed purchase, so there goes my "spending" for a couple weeks.

Once we get used to this budget we might have to chunk out our spending categories even more. Maybe add a clothing line item and a housing line item. But I didn't want to get too strict right away. We will re-evaluate at the new year.

Rounding Up

September 21st, 2018 at 03:31 pm

We got husband's first check at the new job. I am so thankful that we essentially got double paid+ since he also received a full check from his old employer and vacation hours.

This will essentially pay off all of our personal monthly credit cards, and allow us to put money back to switch from our currently bi-weekly budget to a new weekly budget since his new job gets paid weekly, and so do I.

Something I found as odd is that his new employer rounds up the hours. They don't do partial hours for regular pay and they don't pay less than .5 hours for overtime which is interesting. I've never seen a job do that before. He actually worked almost 1 hour less one day, and then worked about 15 minutes over another day. They do their overtime as anything over 8 hours in a day. So his check was surprisingly a full 40 hours of regular pay plus .5 hours of overtime. Even though he actually worked less than 40. It's a small amount of extra but we'll take it!

Tomorrow we are going out to dinner to celebrate his new job.

I sold a couple goats and have put that money back for the fence repair. The guy is hopefully finally starting this weekend. (weather permitting)

I added up my house CC payments and so far this year I have paid $3,576 in debt. That means I have $1,424 to go before the end of the year or about $475 a month. I'm not sure if that is doable or not but it will be close. I don't think this is bad at all though considering I had to spend over $2k on an unexpected fence repair.

Easy Come, Easy Go & 401K Questions

September 10th, 2018 at 08:11 pm

I received multiple checks today that I had been waiting on so I went ahead and made a trip to town to deposit and pay some bills.

I paid the mortgage, our final real estate tax installment, my estimated self employment income tax for the year, and paid the rest towards the credit cards. Whew, it is crazy when several thousand go in and out in one day. But it feels good to tick some bills off.

Husband's first day at his new job is today. He was feeling quite sad about leaving his old one all weekend. They really did love him at his old job. His coworkers got together and gave him a card and $150 as a goodbye gift, and he received a gift card for dining and some cookies and candy. His boss said if he ever wants to come back he is welcome. It is a real shame that he had to give up such a nice job due to expensive health insurance. USA healthcare stinks.

Over the weekend we went out with friends and spent some of his gift money on having fun and taking his mind off the new job.

Now for a question. I've seen it mentioned that instead of putting his old 401k in his new 401k that we should move it to an IRA. What is the benefit of this, when all three accounts are at Vanguard and in the same funds? His 401K and his IRA are both ROTH. Can we move rollover his Roth 401K to his Roth IRA without any penalties or taxes? I plan on calling Vanguard and discussing with them but I have to add myself as an agent on his account first.

Extra Check & Retirement

September 5th, 2018 at 02:42 pm

Trying to do some financial planning for husband's job transition.

It appears we will be getting about $1,500 in "extra" money since his current job pays a check behind and also he is cashing in his retirement days.

Don't know exact numbers yet but we plan on paying off both of our monthly credit cards, putting back enough to pay the house & car insurance in full, go out to a nice celebratory dinner, and the rest will probably be put towards either the fence or one of the home credit cards.

We got his 401K numbers yesterday. He currently has $18,167 in his account. We will be rolling this over to the new employer's 401K plan. Both are held at Vanguard so hopefully it will be easy.