Learning to Budget in my Thirties
Do I subscribe to all things astrology? No, I do not. Can I deny that when I read my sun and moon sign traits that they don't fit me to a T. Also, no I cannot deny it. And you might be wondering why I am bringing up my astrological sign during a discussion about budget, but it is because my sign and my spending habits actually align perfectly.
I am someone who has always thrived off of consistency, but also enjoys the finer things in life. I like to indulge, but I will never do it outside of my comfort zone because I also like to feel like I am control and nothing bad will happen.
This means that I have gotten myself into a fair amount of debt throughout my life, but nothing beyond what I thought was unreasonable and didn't allow me to still have some sense of control over my money.
My husband and I seem to have fairly stable jobs. We enjoy spending time with each other and go on vacation typically once a year. We don't seem to live pay check to pay check, but now and again we get ourselves in the hole by over spending and I will quickly try to remedy the situation over the next several months.
I'm going to give you a general breakdown of our life and lifestyle. I have my education/degrees. He is still pursuing his own and making plans for his BA. after graduating recently with his AA. We paid for his AA degree out of pocket (tuition, books, supplies etc.). We both have student loan debt. His is less than 10K and comes from his first go at college in his very early 20s. My debt is huge and expands over three degrees and around 8-9 years of schooling and is massive. We have a home (mortgage) and we bought when prices were low, so our mortgage is less than 20% of our monthly income. We have two cars, but one is paid off. The other is an SUV, which we bought new and rolled part of our other car into the loan, not a great decision, but I also don't regret it. We have a dog and a cat. Our cat has drummed up quite a bit of medical costs the last year because he is terminally ill. We go through periods where we eat at home regularly and then months where we don't even touch the kitchen for more than a snack or beverage. We seem to lack consistency in this area. We like to go out to eat, movies, play board games, video games/computer games, road trips (usually once a year), randomly shop, and spend a good amount of time with our family. We typically host family celebrations, birthdays and holidays. We also have friends over regularly to hangout. I usually go out with friends for lunch or brunch 1-3 times a month. And I do a fair amount of online shopping. My husband typically eats out for lunch and breakfast and I did on occasion as well.
It is clear to see by our lifestyle that we, in general, don't worry too much about money. We spend it and pay the minimum payments on our bills. We both have EXCELLENT credit because we have never missed a payment on anything, ever. We don't buy the most extravagant anything. I buy a lot of our clothes on sale. Neither of us buys shoes in excess. We shop smart for the most part. Our biggest expense is likely food, convenience and entertainment. I have gone through periods in our marriage where I have had pricey hobbies. For a while I spent a huge portion of our income on beauty products. We also went through periods where we bought a lot of furniture and home decor. For a while I spent a lot on clothes and building my wardrobe.
It is clear that we have had different seasons in life. Right now our life is pretty set when it comes to what we have and what we need. Our basic needs are covered. We aren't needing to make any large purchases.
What has become most clear to me recently is that we are wasteful. We throw a lot of food away because we don't end up finishing it. We go out to eat way too much and often we could make that same meal at home for both a better cost and taste. I recently switched jobs so that I could work closer to home and that has allowed me to spend less time driving and more time at home. As a result, that has given me more energy to cook dinner, pack my lunch, and make breakfast in the morning. Those have been huge shifts in how I live and spend money.
We have been talking about selling our home and buying a new home, but it is clear that the prices of homes now do not fit into our lifestyle and/or budget. How we live works because of the cost of our bills. Making a huge change and adding an additional 500-800 on our mortgage payment would throw things off.
So I decided that it was high time that I got control of our spending and started to get us out of debt. This would allow us to buy the home of our dreams.
Everyone says to make a budget and I guess I always have had somewhat of a budget, but it was just for bills. I pay everything on time or early and then the rest of the money that is left over we use for whatever. Sometimes I save some money, and other times I don't. There were months where I would allow us to just burn through extra funds. Trust me if you have extra money, you will ALWAYS find something you 'want' or 'need' to buy.
I began to look online at pintrest and find all kinds of tips and tricks. I wanted to see what others were doing and how they were tackling their problems. A lot of what people suggested were things that didn't fit into my life or lifestyle. Many of the expenses weren't things I had anyway (bank fees, gym membership, cable bill, or subscriptions). Others were saying that I should make more money and figure out ways to increase our income. It is clear that we both work full time jobs and neither of us are going to get a second job. Also, some of the ways people were suggesting to make extra income would work for me or just weren't available to me. The most helpful suggestion was to look at my lifestyle and figure out a budget and areas of excess.
First I started off by thinking about our current bills. Was there anything I could get rid of in terms of cost?
What I cut out-
I am someone who has always thrived off of consistency, but also enjoys the finer things in life. I like to indulge, but I will never do it outside of my comfort zone because I also like to feel like I am control and nothing bad will happen.
This means that I have gotten myself into a fair amount of debt throughout my life, but nothing beyond what I thought was unreasonable and didn't allow me to still have some sense of control over my money.
My husband and I seem to have fairly stable jobs. We enjoy spending time with each other and go on vacation typically once a year. We don't seem to live pay check to pay check, but now and again we get ourselves in the hole by over spending and I will quickly try to remedy the situation over the next several months.
I'm going to give you a general breakdown of our life and lifestyle. I have my education/degrees. He is still pursuing his own and making plans for his BA. after graduating recently with his AA. We paid for his AA degree out of pocket (tuition, books, supplies etc.). We both have student loan debt. His is less than 10K and comes from his first go at college in his very early 20s. My debt is huge and expands over three degrees and around 8-9 years of schooling and is massive. We have a home (mortgage) and we bought when prices were low, so our mortgage is less than 20% of our monthly income. We have two cars, but one is paid off. The other is an SUV, which we bought new and rolled part of our other car into the loan, not a great decision, but I also don't regret it. We have a dog and a cat. Our cat has drummed up quite a bit of medical costs the last year because he is terminally ill. We go through periods where we eat at home regularly and then months where we don't even touch the kitchen for more than a snack or beverage. We seem to lack consistency in this area. We like to go out to eat, movies, play board games, video games/computer games, road trips (usually once a year), randomly shop, and spend a good amount of time with our family. We typically host family celebrations, birthdays and holidays. We also have friends over regularly to hangout. I usually go out with friends for lunch or brunch 1-3 times a month. And I do a fair amount of online shopping. My husband typically eats out for lunch and breakfast and I did on occasion as well.
It is clear to see by our lifestyle that we, in general, don't worry too much about money. We spend it and pay the minimum payments on our bills. We both have EXCELLENT credit because we have never missed a payment on anything, ever. We don't buy the most extravagant anything. I buy a lot of our clothes on sale. Neither of us buys shoes in excess. We shop smart for the most part. Our biggest expense is likely food, convenience and entertainment. I have gone through periods in our marriage where I have had pricey hobbies. For a while I spent a huge portion of our income on beauty products. We also went through periods where we bought a lot of furniture and home decor. For a while I spent a lot on clothes and building my wardrobe.
It is clear that we have had different seasons in life. Right now our life is pretty set when it comes to what we have and what we need. Our basic needs are covered. We aren't needing to make any large purchases.
What has become most clear to me recently is that we are wasteful. We throw a lot of food away because we don't end up finishing it. We go out to eat way too much and often we could make that same meal at home for both a better cost and taste. I recently switched jobs so that I could work closer to home and that has allowed me to spend less time driving and more time at home. As a result, that has given me more energy to cook dinner, pack my lunch, and make breakfast in the morning. Those have been huge shifts in how I live and spend money.
We have been talking about selling our home and buying a new home, but it is clear that the prices of homes now do not fit into our lifestyle and/or budget. How we live works because of the cost of our bills. Making a huge change and adding an additional 500-800 on our mortgage payment would throw things off.
So I decided that it was high time that I got control of our spending and started to get us out of debt. This would allow us to buy the home of our dreams.
Everyone says to make a budget and I guess I always have had somewhat of a budget, but it was just for bills. I pay everything on time or early and then the rest of the money that is left over we use for whatever. Sometimes I save some money, and other times I don't. There were months where I would allow us to just burn through extra funds. Trust me if you have extra money, you will ALWAYS find something you 'want' or 'need' to buy.
I began to look online at pintrest and find all kinds of tips and tricks. I wanted to see what others were doing and how they were tackling their problems. A lot of what people suggested were things that didn't fit into my life or lifestyle. Many of the expenses weren't things I had anyway (bank fees, gym membership, cable bill, or subscriptions). Others were saying that I should make more money and figure out ways to increase our income. It is clear that we both work full time jobs and neither of us are going to get a second job. Also, some of the ways people were suggesting to make extra income would work for me or just weren't available to me. The most helpful suggestion was to look at my lifestyle and figure out a budget and areas of excess.
First I started off by thinking about our current bills. Was there anything I could get rid of in terms of cost?
What I cut out-
- Extra internet for my phone $15
- Insurance on both of our phones. We have old phones (over 2 years old each). $24
- Found cheaper car insurance. $67
- Canceled my home alarm (we NEVER used it). Hadn't turned it on in over 6 months because our cat kept setting it off. $15
- Got rid of HBO Now $17
- Paid off my credit card debt. I had about $2000 in credit card debt and had enough in my savings to pay it off. For so long I didn't want to touch that money because it was a safety net/cushion for me. But each month I was paying an extra $30-50 bucks in interest on that credit card debt for literally NO reason. And I kept putting $100-200 here and there on my credit card. And then to only have to pay it down a bit later. It was becoming a vicious cycle.
What did I keep that others might get rid of?
- Amazon prime
- Spotify (premium sub)
- Hulu (pricey-er sub)
- Netflix
- Internet (mid range package)
- Costco membership
- Keep the AC on all the time. I live in AZ so a high electric bill is part of the lifestyle.
Secondly, I bank with Bank of America and they have a feature that allows you to track and see your spending habits. Over the last several months I have looked through the trends of what we spend our money on each month. Last year we spend over $12K on restaurants/eating out. I was shocked and embarrassed. That means over $1000 a month goes to food/eating out. And that doesn't include grocery shopping! My average grocery bill is around $500. That means for two people we were spending around $1500+ on FOOD. Understanding where the money was going allowed me to think about areas we could easily improve on. I looked at all of our categories thoroughly and thought about my overall spending habits.
Frivolous expenses
- buying books (online or in person). Now I get them from the library/rent online
- name brand make up/beauty. I buy generic or drug store for the most part and only buy a couple name brand products for things I actually love
- stopped buying clothes every couple weeks (online shopping and coupons were getting to me). I had to stop looking at every email deal and just delete.
- no more window shopping or browsing at home goods, Michael's, target, ross, tj maxx, or the book stores
- less online amazon shopping (I would just browse for anything, jewelry, decor, office supplies, kitchen stuff, clothes, shoes, etc)
- stop buying new holiday decor every single holiday (give myself a small budget for new decor or find ways to refresh what I have)
- no more expensive drinks/coffee (starbucks)
- no more eating out, unless it was planned ahead of time
- less office/classroom supplies (I get carried away every year with the sales on office supplies)
- no more eating out for lunch (take my lunch)
- buy foods that are on sale (fruits, meats, etc.) and plan meals around what is on sale that week
- no more grocery shopping with out a list and meals in mind
- also I spend WAY less on gas (my drive went from 30 miles a day, to 10). To an from work. It is crazy how much less gas I am using. Also since we eat at home each night. I drive less too?
Where is the extra money going to go? Because I am now going to be having extra funds left over each month, it was clear that I have to make sure I am being smart about these extra bucks. What I would typically do when I have extra funds is put some in savings and then take us out to an EXTRA fancy restaurant to celebrate or indulge ($100 + meal for two).
Now what we are going to do is save some for my husbands college tuition. We are also going to be paying double car payments on my car and chucking an extra few hundred at his student loan debt too. Once we have those things paid off (car loan and his student loans), it will be time to tackle my student loans.
Our situation is unique to our lives. I am not going to go crazy and make us eat ramen for a year to pay off our debts. I am not going to say no to my friends when they invite me out; but I won't order three drinks though. We are still going to give generous gifts to our friends and family at holidays and birthdays. We will still enjoy entertainment now and again and have an occasional meal out. I know that we can be more extreme about making changes, but building healthy money habits is more important than anything else. If we can learn to make better choices and build better routines these practices will last us a life time. I do want to get out debt, but it isn't currently ruining my life or ability to be happy.
Every person has to make changes for themselves that will allow them to be successful and happy at the same time.
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