Merry Christmas

I blew my budget.  Will start again next week. 

Woohoo! I'm Charge!!.. Holy bejeebees I'm in charge...

Chris announced "That he was now ready to discuss the budget."  My audience had been convened.  A few deep breaths and a promise to myself not be accusatory or defensive I head to the specified meeting place; the living room couch; with all my freshly printed spreadsheets.  I taped them to our wall and with his undivided attention I began my well thought out and carefully planned presentation.

I blurted out "You don't make enough money!" 

Okay..  Plan B.

I backtracked.. "we spent $1,100 plus change over what we made in the last 6 months."  He response "Yeah that explains why the mortgage wasn't paid." 

This was going well.

I decided to get to the point.  Men like that.  I handed him the totals on all the different expenses and too make a long story short, I spent too much eating out and he spent too much on alcohol and cigarettes.  I told him that I have created a budget that will limit our food budget to $100 a week, dining out to $25 a week and he gets $40 for cigs and $35 for cocktails.  He tells me is going to quit both and save us money.  I roll my eyes and and politely reply "Ok. BUT just in case you don't here is what you have.  You go over you're DUN!"

I went onto explain how I figured all the bills and the daily living stuff.  This entire process, that I worked on for days and worried about how to share and get cooperation, was over in 10 minutes!   Chris says "Great!  You are in charge of the money from this point forward."

Oh crap.. what have I done? 


Next post..  I didn't budget for that!

Wow! How much did we spend at McDonald's?

After a full day of data entry of 6 months worth of expenses I was able to sum up what we spent.  O. M. G.  I needed a drink.. too bad I can't afford one!

To sum it up for you we spent $36,005.38 and our deposits equaled $34,883.46.  We spent $1,121.92 more than we make...  we did not save a dime.  

After a few hours of letting the numbers sink in and really getting a grip on where we over spent  I began to  see how we can improve, save and pay down debt. I am feeling more positive.  The hard part is admitting you have a problem, right? 

Now it was time to discuss with the family...  I tried a couple times but my husband kept avoiding me.  I don't  think this is something he wanted to hear anymore than me.  Especially since he will have to come face to face with his part in this mess.  I just know he likes to put the blame on me and my spending but the proof is in the numbers (numbers written in red to be exact) and he has some mirror gazing to do himself!

It's time for a "Coming to Jesus" meeting. 

Tomorrow...  I'm in charge?!  Say what?

Templates, Spreadsheets, Excel OH MY!

Microsoft Excel.. Spreadsheets.  Scratch that.  FREE spreadsheets.  Believe it or not the spreadsheets were easy to find.  There are a ton of shareware Excel templates out there to download.  My favorite was found at

Microsoft Blank Budget Templates

I choose the weekly version because we are paid weekly but they have bi-weekly, monthly, annual, etc.  Look over them and see which template works the best for you.  Once you have decided and downloaded into your Excel program then it's time to figure out how to personalize it to your situation.  I added rows and renamed them to suit my family.

Now I had my statements and I had my spreadsheet but now what?  I had no clue how to work with Excel.  So I did what I knew how to do at first... I added dates and then changed the name of rows.  

To refer back to yesterday's post about going backwards I started with June 2010 because then I could sum up different categories and get a true read of what we have been spending and where we spent it.  So I began the process of logging in information.  I named the categories such as Groceries and Pets, Health/Hygiene, Eating Out, etc.  Then I sub-categorized.  Under Groceries I sub-categorized by the different stores I shop.  Under Dining Out I sub-categorized using rows titled Fast-Food, Dine-In, Chinese Take-Out, Deli, Coffee, 

etc.  Yours might not have as many categories because eating out is my weakness.  

I had spent a lot of time on the Category/Sub-category step.  But it really helped me feel confident about using Excel.

Once I was happy that all my expense categories were covered I began the process of logging in each tranaction using my bank statements using The 1st day of June and going to the following payday which happens to be on Tuesdays.  I needed to add more categories and sub-category expense rows as I ran across expenses I forgot about.  Another thing that I found helpful was I put the MUST PAYS or the revolving bills such as mortgage, power, water, gas, loans, insurance, etc. listed first and highlighted a color.  

Two days later I was ready to begin SUMing up rows and columns!  Thank goodness for Google because a quick search on "How to add a row in MS Excel" rendered me excellent click-by-click instructions.  Take my word for it.. soon I was clicking and dragging and summing up not only columns and rows, but numbers from different rows and columns and even different sheets to boot!  I haven't been that proud of myself since I tackled an apple pie from scratch!

This post is getting too long. I will save you the details of how I did the spreadsheet.  One day if anyone actually reads this and wants the info I can add it.  Just comment or email me and I will help if I can.  But the point of this post is to let you know that you can create a spreadsheet even without a working knowledge of Excel or any math skills!  The hard part is convincing your family to live on a budget and then to actually do it.  

Next post ..  WOW...  we spent how much at McDonald"s?

It's Day 1 and I'm excited How come my family isn't?

It has been building for awhile now, years at least.  We have lean times and our family has always gotten by.  Every time I freak out and complain but I have never really changed the way we live.  So this time is different. I swear.

Let me introduce myself.  I am Kristin.  I am 45 years young with a husband who loves me (I love him too) and two wonderful tween girls who truly are awesome!  We own a nice home in the burbs of Austin, Texas. We have a pool in our backyard, a cat in our bay window, a SUV and a small truck to drive the Texas highways.  We are living the dream, right?

Not so fast.  My husband is 100% commission and our bank account has been more like a roller coaster ride then a steady as you go carousel.  When we're up... we are riding high, fixing things like water damaged walls, and broken HVAC systems.  When we're down.. we're borrowing our kid's birthday cash to buy milk and bread.  Sound familiar? 

So I freaked out one last time (I hope it's the last time.)  Turns out my husband let the mortgage slide for a month or two.  Yeah..  that OMF'nG moment you just had, quadruple that!  He said we have been spending more than we have incoming for a long time now and it caught up.  Well duh? 

My solution.. My husband needs to get a better job!  He's been offered management before so it's time to take that route.  Easy, right?  Wrong.

He doesn't want management because it's hours are too long and too much pressure/responsibility.  My response.. "Pressure and Big Bucks go together like peanut butter and jelly.  Like Tom and Jerry.  Like...  oh you get the picture.  He doesn't agree.  According to him the hours are so long that he would never be home.  Okay... so the couch and the remote might get a little lonely but so what?  HA!!  I wish I said that but instead I said something to the effect of "Well think about it..."

When I met my husband 16 years ago he said he didn't keep a check register because ...  get this...  

wait for it.....

........

............

"He keeps it all in his head!"   YES!  Ladies and gentlemen I thought he was a genius!  And cute too. 

16 years, a mortgage, car payments, and two kids later.. not so cute.  If you are thinking right about now "Why didn't you do it.?."  I would say excellent question but I will have to get back with you after some serious soul searching.

Next idea.. I need a job!  Yeah. I don't work outside the home but believe me I definitely work inside the home and in the yard and up at the school, etc.  I work.  I just don't get paid cold, hard cash.

Last time our finances looked bad for us I took a seasonal job at Target (working the night shift to avoid babysitting costs because I thought babysitters actually made more then I did.. but I digress.) to get us through the holidays.   Needless to say it sucked.  My back hurt.  My feet hurt.  I saw my kids for like two hours before I went to sleep at 5pm but I wasn't really there.  I made dinners and slept.  FUN!  All that for a whopping $9 an hour!  

So this downturn is going to be different!  I will get a desk job!  I redid my resume a hundred ways.  Combed the papers and online listings.  As of today I have sent out 20 or more resumes and got ZIP - ZERO - NADA responses from a single employer!  Am I too old?  Are my skills that out of date?  Is $10 to $12 and hour too much to ask for?

Apparently so.  

Okay.. no job on the horizon and Chris (my happy in sales husband) doesn't want to do the management track thing.  What is a girl to do?

I know!!!  I have to change my family from the inside out.  Haven't we all heard a million times that if what you are doing doesn't give you the results you want then you must change what you are doing!  

DRUM ROLL PLEASE.....

 We will live and spend within our means!!!!!!!!!!!! 

How does one do that?  After an extensive 5 minutes of searching terms like 'creating a budget' I realized I had to actually know what we spent before we can change anything.  What a concept!

I printed off a year's worth of bank statements.  Got out my highlighters, pencils and paper and began to chart.  It took 2 days to get through 6 months and decided that was plenty of bad spending habits to see where we went wrong.  

Tomorrow...  Free Budget Spreadsheets and Learning Excel