I have a budgeting confession to make, I haven’t touched my family’s budget in over a month. *Gasp*
I know, I know - I am setting the foundation for a cavalcade of kaka if I let things continue down this path, but I have a really good excuse why. It looks just like this:
I have lost the cap to my ever so precious magical stick of information storage. I’m not sure what happened to it, but I’m certain a leprechaun stole it from me … on purpose … because I like to wear orange on St. Patrick’s day. Needless to say I don’t spend very many home hours working on my budget and logging our expenses. What I’ve learned from this little experience is that I only budget at work, ever.
It seems that tracking the minutia of our earning and spending is a welcomed break from the monotony of my job. I might even be able to say that it brightens my day. It is kind of funny actually, if I think about it - what most people despise to do (i.e. budget their money) is actually something I do not to be bored at work.
One of the things that I am most surprised about though is that I still remembered to pay my bills on time without the daily red reminder of that blessed box found to the right of my expense tracker. Late fees on bills can be rather costly. I am very glad good ol’ grey matter got good and accustomed to paying people at certain times of the month or else I’d be doubly disappointed about not keeping tabs on my cash.
As to the question of whether or not we actually kept our spending in budget, I have no idea what the case may be. My hunch is that we are over, but not because of wild spending. I think that our moving expenses - i.e. paint, boxes, fast food, etc. - may have taken us beyond the bounds of our spending plan. Only time will tell and already I am loathing having to backtrack our books. Oh well, c’est la vie.
Photo by : Ambuj Saxena
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Posted in Budgets ~ 4 Comments
I have not posted anything here in a very long time, practically a month now. Many things have been going on in the Lucre household, and only a few of them have been money related. I don’t know where exactly to start, so here it is in no particular order:
The gender of our baby is a male. Of course I am now dreading that fact that auto insurance for the little man is going to be practically astronomical by the time he can drive at 18. Boys are crazy drivers and are like a gazillion times more likely to get into an accident than their female counterparts. I personally blame testosterone dementia, but it could simply be the King of Antarctica is out to get boys in general as they pose the only major threat to his world domination.
I am now the owner of a commuter bike. I got the bike last week on Wednesday, rode it for 7 miles on Wednesday and Thursday only to pop a tire Thursday near the end of my ride. I still haven’t gotten it fixed but am planning on doing so soon. Once I can ride 10 miles in an hour everyday I will start home from work until I can get some 20 mile rides in. That way I won’t have to pay a bus far and pocket the difference between bike maintenance and the bus fare of $64 a month. For those interested it is a Panasonic DX-2000 for $160.
I went on a four day vacation for free. My wife and I got hosted by my in-laws at a Gatlinburg cabin rental in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was a really nice vacation and super relaxing even though I flew the red eye and left my wife with the in-laws for a couple days to head back to work in the coal mine that is my job. My job really isn’t that bad, it does, at least, pay for my existence and doesn’t give me the black lung.
I have doubled my additional income over the past month. In June I earned a whopping $8.44 from an ever increasing mixture of sites across the internet. Already this month I have more than doubled that to $17.42. If things continue this way I could end the month with $24.50 in revenue (a 190% increase). That is pretty cool if you ask me.
My family is moving out of our rented apartment into a rent free situation. With the baby coming soon and my putting down her coal shovel to raise the kids we would be running a budget deficit each month to the tune of about $200. Luckily, I have a father who is kind and is willing to put up with baby and two adults in his house. With one fell swoop my wife and I have turned our $200 deficit into a projected gain of $700 a month. We have set a year deadline to be out of the house and on to the next thing to stave off stagnation and a case of the live-with-parents-ism. I’ve had mixed feelings about the whole thing but you can’t argue with the financials.
That’s all for now. Posting will continue to be slow as I work on generating some more revenue to create $73 a day in additional income. I’ll try and post about once a week, but I’m not promising anything.
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Posted in Family Life ~ No Comments
