Budget Changes & a Miss Money Bags Cash Wallet Review

Realistically, a budget is a flexible, ever-changing beast. Much like a toddler :) Now that I'm working from home and not in your typical 8-5 job, our budget has evolved too.

If I'm being honest, when I was working outside the home, I had a tendency to "treat" myself to a breakfast sandwich (because it was $1.65 for a bacon, egg and cheese on a biscuit) or to a cup of soup during lunch because I deserved it. Having an in-house cafeteria at work was kind of my kryptonite.

Now that I'm home, our budget has shifted. We no longer have the daycare expense (hello - second mortgage) but I don't have my weekly income either. My in-house cafeteria is MY KITCHEN. Meaning if I want something, I'm the one buying the food and cooking it. Trust me, breakfast sandwiches are less alluring when you have to make them yourself.

Because I don't have regular workplace chatter about upcoming trips or weekend plans, I'm hearing less about the cool things other people are doing. Honestly, that's a pro and con to being a home. I miss the slightly inane workplace aisle chatter. I'm less connected to all the cool things going on outside of my inner circle. I'm missing out on things but much of the time I don't even know it.

And because I'm subsisting on a steady stream of tee shirts and target shorts, my fashion IQ has also decreased. I've tried to implement a fall capsule wardrobe but I really am not digging it. Said fall capsule wardrobe is squashing my inner creative shopping fun. That's a post for another day. But online shopping is always tempting as well as building up my graphic tee collection. Because I can legitimately wear cute graphic tees everyday and no one thinks it's inappropriate for a work from home mom.

But our household food consumption is up overall because I've become consciously aware of the fact that if I don't buy fruit and vegetables, Lucan won't be eating any. Yesterday I also bought him animal crackers because he "really, really needed them." Yet once we got home, the box went unopened in our overflowing pantry.

K-cup budget is up too. I need coffee. And creamer. I could tell you I miss work coffee but that's a big fat lie.

Weirdly, hand soap expense is up too. What is it about preschoolers and their incessant need for at least 3 pumps of soap? And like I've previously mentioned I've become a paper product nazi. Lu is only allowed one napkin per day, maybe two if we're having soup. I make him put his tissue in his pocket if I feel like there's room for more snot in it.

We eat a chick-fil-a a lot more. Mostly because they have a play area and I have lots of coupons. But overall I eat out less per week because eating out means that I'm taking Lucan out to eat too #nothankyou

And there's less Target wandering too because between dropping Lu off for preschool and trying eke out a morning nap, there's just no time for that.

Our healthcare expenses have evolved too now that Lance is carrying all of us on his plan. Yikes, insurance is not cheap. We're also trying to plan for taxes better too since I'm considered an independent contractor and don't have taxes being pulled out ahead of time. Lance is happy that the Traverse has gotten to stay parked in our garage too as he's been driving the LHS back and forth to work. That car never dies.

This month has been an expense doozie: we had to pay to have our furnace/air conditioner serviced (because overly hot Kara is a crabby Kara and as I've reminded Lance "happy wife, happy life") and now we need to replace a car tire (not my fault, first time ever!) Last month I convinced Lance to spring for an expensive tri-membership (Blank Park Zoo, Science Center, Living History Farms) so that was an expense too. Life is just full of expenses.

We are still doing a cash budget because it's good accountability. I'm loving the handmade, colorful cash envelope wallet from Becky at Miss Money Bags.

Love the bright happy colors which makes parting with my money so much easier (lie).

The large wooden button is really nice too. It's kind of a statement piece. 

And while it might be hard to see from my photos, the fabrics have gold threads interspersed through them. Super pretty.

Best of all it's functional and so much more practical then using ACTUAL paper envelopes. That just begs for me to lose them. It would be really hard to lose this handy cash wallet. Becky thought of everything here - there's slots for credit cards/business cards/ IDs as well as a zippered pouch for change. It's a one-stop cash wallet shop!

Sturdy and colorful. Each "envelope" has a spot to label which category you are spending out of. I highly suggest that if you are looking for a different way to store your hard-earned cash, you check out Becky's Miss Money Bags etsy store. So great! You can also connect with Becky on Instagram too!

I received my cash envelope in exchange for my review. Opinions are all my own. 

mo money, mo problems. Part 2 of our debt story

Last time I told you how we had a small mountain of debt accumulated. I tell you this to be encouraged that it CAN be done. I used to read stories on Dave Ramsey’s website about how all of these people paid off their small-ish mountain of debt. Those people annoyed me because their debt was NOTHING in comparison to ours. We did it in three years. Here’s how:

1. We started a cash budget. And started tracking where our money went. You know how you get your tax returns and it tells you how much money you’ve made that year and you wonder where it all went (mine was in my closet). Yeah, start figuring out where that money goes.
2. Canceled direct tv. It broke my heart. I’ve read where people cut the cord and it was fine and they didn’t miss it one bit. I’m not one of those people. I miss it. We both miss it.
3. Got rid of our landline.
4. We tried to sell the Traverse. We really did. But the moment you drive a car off the lot, it instantly depreciates. So we kept it. And dealt with it.
5. We cut out vacations. Not that we ever went on a lot of trips beforehand, but we really don't go places unless they have been saved for.
6. I started working at a place that did tuition reimbursement. Got good grades so I could get reimbursed.
7. Stopped the home improvements bus. Yes, I still have the same original ugly hunter green countertops that we’ve had since we moved in almost nine years ago. On the flip side, they’re really good at hiding dirt!
8. Limited how often we eat out. This is hard for us. We both love eating out, but truthfully, after having Lucan we had less of a desire to eat out. No one ever thought “let’s go to a nice restaurant and see if our toddler can behave” was a good plan. I remember one harrowing meal at Granite City and thinking in my mind, “this is SO NOT WORTH IT.”
9. Meal planning, which goes hand in hand with #8. We both make bad food choices when we have no game plan and are hungry to boot. And by bad food choices, I mean, takeout from Hy-Vee Chinese.
10. Did not get smart phones until the fall of 2014. Wow. But oh how I love my iphone now. It makes me so very happy.
11. I stayed out of the mall. I realized that I have less discontent when I have no idea what I’m missing out on.
12. Started unsubscribing to some of the former shopping blogs I used to live for.
13. Also unsubscribed from store emails. No, I don’t need to know that Loft and Gap are having a 40% off sale again.
14. I don’t buy Lucan a lot of presents. For example up until this year, he didn’t get all of those small one-off holidays presents, like Easter, Valentine’s, Halloween, etc. This was the first time I got him more than a single Christmas present. I leave it to family and they are more than generous. If you come and visit our house, you’ll see that no one is lacking in toys. I’ve tried hiding Lu’s Christmas or birthday presents and then bringing them back out at a later date, but I need a better hiding spot. I continually catch Lucan downstairs standing in front of the shelves with all the toys on it and hear him asking “you can get just one thing down for me, right?”
15. I think I’ve only bought Lucan one thing at Gap Kids. Ever. I’m sure this will probably change with little Miss, but for now, all of our kids’ clothes come from generous gifts, sales, consignment, garage sales, hand me downs and FB swap sites. Guess what – they don’t care. Side note: we do buy most of Lu’s shoes new now that he’s so active. But he only gets like two pairs a year. He’s a boy; he doesn’t know he needs more.
16. We did in-home daycare as a cost savings thing. Granted, it was a complete mess of a nightmare, but it did save us some money. Headaches? Yes. Insensible rage? Yes. Fear of getting fired due to the number of missed days because your provider is flaky? Yes. If you can find a good in-home, go for it. It works for several of our friends, so it could work for you too!
17. We garden. Or try to garden. We mostly do it because we love the fresh produce and not as this huge cost savings endeavor. Last summer I tried to use up all of our tomatoes and Lucan got really tired of finding tomatoes in everything or having five tomato based meals a week.
18. We do canning. I really can’t tell you if we’re saving money by canning. I can certainly tell you that it’s hard to can with two adults who work full-time and have a very active child. Every year I tell myself that something's gotta give when we're up till midnight multiple nights canning. Obviously that something is my sanity.
19. I have a group of church friends who are really gracious about organizing meals for new babies. It’s really wonderful and I have felt the blessings of those ladies. But sometimes I just can’t manage a whole meal so I make a loaf of homemade bread. People like homemade bread. I have to repeat to myself that I’m not a bad person for bringing a person a loaf of homemade bread.
20. Harnessing the power of social media. I’ve seasonally borrowed items for my kiddos that I knew we would only need for a little while. Several friends let me have mint out of their garden when I asked on Facebook.
21. For a while I made homemade laundry detergent. I didn’t like it so I stopped. But you might like it!
22. I cut the boys’ hair. And I hate it.
23. We only make coffee at the house on the weekends. Otherwise we suffer through work coffee.
24. Use the library! Our library has an awesome selection of magazines and online magazines (check out zinio). I also reserve new releases on books and movies. Now if I could just stay on top of getting things back on time.
25. Become a DIYer. Lance gets the credit for this one – he (and our families) painted the exterior of our house, fixed our water heater, garbage disposal, sink (multiple times), rewired lamps, fixed our dishwasher, rewired the stand-alone freezer, installed our hardwood floors, changes the oil on all of our cars, ignores the check engine lights (seriously, ours have been on for years), fixes things like water heaters, spark plugs, broken tire rods and axels, fixed bed frames, grills. Lance is my DIY hero.

So I don’t think any of my tips are earth shattering. The main things we’ve done: start a budget, stick to it. Learn how to do some small things yourself. If credit cards are hard for you, tuck them away. If shopping is a weakness, know your triggers and eliminate them (store sale emails, shopping blogs, malls). If you were an alcoholic, you wouldn’t hang out in a bar, right? 

Aside from the budget, I don’t think any one thing is going to make you a millionaire. But a combination of all these little things will add up and result in money saved. We both started bringing in higher paychecks and that was probably the tipping point in being able to pay off large chunks of debt. As Becky Bloomwood would say “I’m more of a make more money than a spend less type of person” (Confessions of a Shopaholic anyone?)

You can do this. Believe me when I say, been there, spent that, saved and lived to tell the tale.    

And completely unrelated, a video of me making Lucan cry by threatening to ship him off in a box. I thought he would think it was funny. I was wrong. 

mo money, mo problems (Part 1 of our Debt Story)

We paid off the last of our student loans on Friday, March 13, a day that will forever go down in infamy (ha, not really. We’re not Pearl Harbor here). 

Let’s backtrack a few paces and discuss our debt.

• We bought a new (new to us) Traverse two months after Lucan was born. While I’m super thankful that we have the Traverse and one vehicle that is bigger, it was still an expense.
• I attended two private schools for my undergrad and graduate studies and did a study abroad semester in the most expensive city in the world (London, coming in at #1 according to a recent Daily Telegraph story).
• We bought a house on our first anniversary. I was working in non-profit and am actually shocked by how little I was making at that time. At the same time, I had no idea how little that amount actually was and thought I was rich! Foolish 23 year-old. 
• Approximately nine months into our marriage Lance underwent a fairly substantial jaw surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Cue: out of network hospital bill. While we were able to pay off his bill without too many tears, it was certainly pricey and an unplanned expense.
• We were using our credit cards to pay for everything. We always paid off our bill at the end of each month, but I can recognize that we typically spent more than we should have by using our credit cards to make our purchases. (Side: we still use our credit cards and we have a Target debit card that we get 5% off with. But I will say, from a cash budget perspective it certainly complicates things. Lance is constantly having to ask me if I’ve moved money and I never can remember. He's typically annoyed with me)
• Between the two of us, we’ve had three bouts of unemployment and have lived to tell the tale. And to pay off debt during that time! 

I hope that paints a pretty good picture of our finances. It’s not a pretty one, but I’m guessing it’s one that many of you can identify with. Student loans, credit cards, new cars and a baby! We are the "typical” Americans!

Stay tuned for more about our debt saga. It's a doozie. 

 

And just for giggles, a photo of the first time I met Lance. We were 15!

True Confessions: a month of budget fails.

I know that I have a tendency to be equally encouraged by people’s budget fails as their good deals. That’s the nice person I am :)

 

But realistically, sometimes it’s a good reminder to see other people’s humanity and erring ways. Most months we do pretty well when it comes to our budget. There’s usually not a ton left at the end, but I view it like tax returns: as long as I’m not in the red, close is pretty good because it means that we accurately predicted exactly where we should be. 

July, on the other hand, was a majorly red month. I knew that July would be a more expensive month because I needed to buy a couple of wedding and shower gifts, but I didn’t plan for anything else out of the ordinary. Normally we get by just fine on those types of assumptions. What we didn’t plan for was the Grand Am to die in the middle of a busy intersection over the 4^th of July. So we certainly didn’t plan for almost $340 in repair work or another $260 in replacing the back tires for the same car. Normally all of those things would come out of some sort of emergency savings account. We do have a small amount set aside for car repairs, but it’s something piddly like $150. In light of the fact that out of the three cars we own, there is a total of 32 years and 467,200 miles between them, we should probably have a more robust savings account for that area. (Lance, math genius he is, calculated that our cars have been around the globe a little less than 19 times at 24,902 miles each trip).

And while I knew that we were going to have to shell out money to replace my dead Nikon D200, I hadn’t settled on a model or a final amount. I bit the bullet and bought a new Nikon D3200 for $475 off of Amazon because I knew that I’d want to take lots of pictures at the State Fair in August (which incidentally Lance left my camera at home thus negating one of the main reasons for the camera purchase). 

In regards to the gifts that I really didn’t think to factor into the budget, I talked with another friend who was attending the same wedding and split some of the wedding gift costs. I tried to make smart decisions about the shower gift basket I put together (wedding night themed: utilizing a basket and champagne flutes I already had; going to Trader Joes for the gourmet foodstuffs; not getting food items that would have to be refrigerated, etc.) As a result those gifts didn’t really cost me as much as I had originally thought they might. 

On the flip side, July is actually an example of God’s provision. Lance’s employee referral bonus was finally added onto his paycheck (just two months late) and we received an FSA reimbursement check for dependent care. Not to mention that Lance has been receiving his sales bonus checks which we’ve been using to make additional loan payments but this month used to help with unplanned expenses. 

So there's our budget fails for July. Feel encouraged :) 

Be Money Smart.

I have people in my life who are younger than I am and are just embarking on “adulthood.” I hear more and more foolish things come out of their mouths that remind me so much of myself at that age. And most of it has to do with money. There are so many conversations where people are not managing their money wisely and are making some very bad decisions because of it. I just want to jump in and yell “stop! This is what you are doing wrong and this is how you should fix it!” but that kind of unsolicited advice is not always welcome or appreciated. :) Besides they already think I'm "old" which I am totally NOT.

“We’re wasting so much money on renting a place. For the money we spend on rent, we should buy a house.” My response: have you really calculated what home ownership costs? Not only is there the base price of buying your house, but there are property taxes, home insurance, mortgage insurance, house repairs and just maintenance things like lawn mowers. How much of a down payment do you have saved? Did you also factor in heat, gas, water and electricity? Not free. My guess is you probably want furniture too, so there’s another cost. And I can tell you that I have more friends that I can count on one hand that have had sewer and septic tank problems. There’s a good way to see $15,000 go down the drain (literally!). Lance and I are some of the foolish ones who bought a house the first year into marriage. Looking back, it was not our best decision. We were smart (mostly Lance) and purchased a house within a decent price range that hasn’t robbed us blind. We’ve also been lucky that we haven’t had to replace appliances. Knock on wood because that’s an expense too. But what I’m trying to say is this: you should have ZERO debt before you take on the major debt of home ownership. You should have a full emergency fund. You should have saved up a decent down payment. If you can’t afford a decent down payment, that’s a sign that you can’t afford home ownership.  

”I’m not contributing up to my employer’s match on my 401K.” Dumb, dumb, dumb. It’s free money. Free. As in it didn’t cost you anything to obtain it. No brainer. Start contributing the bare minimum to get your employer match.

“I just picked the most expensive health insurance because it seemed like the best.” Argh people! Health insurance is not cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination. Depending on your situation, a high deductible health plan or an HMO plan are really good choices and can save you so much money over the course of one year. The only thing I ask is this: if you are given a choice, weigh your options. Calculate what comes out of your paycheck each pay period. See if your regular doctors are still covered. Determine if you have any major upcoming medical expenses for the year. 

“I just want to go on a trip somewhere.” Yeah, we all do. After spending a really long, cold winter in Iowa, we all want to go somewhere tropical for a week. I get it, I do. It’s been four years since we’ve taken a “real” vacation – meaning somewhere not within driving distance of our house. But right now it’s not in our budget plan. Our budget plan meaning: paying off Kara’s school loans now before we get locked into any other financial burdens. It’s so much easier for us to buckle down and get things paid off now, before it has any further ramifications on our family – like not being able to enroll Lucan in activities because we don’t have the extra cash. Trust me, I feel like I deserve a vacation too. I can’t wait until we’re able to take Lucan to Disney World for weeks upon weeks and make those memories as a family. So in hopes of making those memories, I’ll table my personal vacation dreams temporarily. 

“I just have a few credit cards. There’s no interest on them right now, so it’s like free money.” Omigosh, this statement just makes me want to shake you hard. Really, really hard. Even if you pay them off every month, there is always that lag time in between where you’ve bought the item and they have yet to bill you. Interest rates are astronomical. And most people find they exhibit less self-control when they aren’t handing over the physical money right then and there. What happens if you suddenly lose your income and can’t make the payment? You’re still stuck with owing the credit card company money. Bad, bad, bad. 

Okay, I’m done harping on you. I’ve made most of the mistakes I’ve talked about, so I can’t be too condescending. I still make plenty of money mistakes on my own. I still like shopping. I have a tendency to be able to justify everything (Lance keeps me honest and accountable. He’s so mature like that.) I can never remember when I get paid (is in the first and third Friday every month? Or do I get paid the 15^th and the 30^th?) and it’s ridiculous. All I know is that we’ve made plenty of money mistakes with our money and it would be irresponsible to not try and keep people from repeating them. Learn from me! I’m trying to teach you how to fish!