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Knyteguy posted:I'm willing to give it a shot at least, but I want to be sure I understand the methodology before I commit to anything.
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Sep 17, 2014 06:02
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Knyteguy posted:OK so again I get it in YNAB. But here are you recommending that I: Income goes into your checking account, whenever that happens. Do you normally put it in your savings account? All my paychecks direct-deposit to my checking account. At the beginning of your month, you pay all your bills and deposit your savings goal/mark it as paid in YNAB but don't deposit it/whatever. In YNAB, I guess, you mark your income as whatever your total income was last month (anything you make this month does not count). Your total income from last month - your bills - your savings goal = the amount you have available in your budget for THIS month, so you have none of this "my wife's making a bit more or a bit less this month so we have to adjust around it" bullshit confusing you and requiring your attention (next month is when you'd say "my wife made a little bit more or a little bit less last month, so our income for this month is higher and so is our discretionary for that reason"). Your checking account balance is not how much money you have available to spend. Your budget is.
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Sep 17, 2014 06:41
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Horking Delight posted:Your checking account balance is not how much money you have available to spend. Your budget is. This is what Knyteguy is having trouble with, and why lots of posters have advocated for different methods of 'hiding' money from himself. https://www.gecapitalbank.com/savings-products/online-savings.html?cmpid=ag-GECB-3969448 These guys would be a good way to go (lots of other options out there) to hide money from himself. I agree w/ what other folks have said with regard to the slightly higher rate that the checking account is paying. We're talking the difference of like $10-$100 a year or so at this point. Another option might be to open a brokerage account with whomever is handling his retirement. I have accounts with Fidelity that work great for this sort of thing and it's combined with my work IRA.
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Sep 17, 2014 16:09
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Ah alright I get what everyone is saying I think. We're not using YNAB anymore (spreadsheet just works better for us), but I think I can figure it out with the spreadsheet. We'll try it next month. n8r my only issue with a savings account is that since all of our savings right now is the emergency fund, we could be stuck for a few days if we need access to money. When should we start thinking about putting extra money towards debt? The baby's medical bills will be (mostly) paid for with my wife's hefty HSA contribution, and we'll have about 2 months of expenses saved by October. The car being so far underwater and us not having gap insurance is worrying. edit: n8r we don't have a retirement account  I'm interested in starting something with Vanguard but I'd guess most would say we're not ready yet.
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Sep 17, 2014 16:48
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Wait until after the baby is born. You don't know that there won't be more expenses than you're accounting for, and it'd be a lot better to have savings to cover that instead of a slightly smaller debt load. You can live with your car getting repo'd, but what if the hospital repo'd your baby!?!?!?
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Sep 17, 2014 18:45
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That doesn't seem like in the month chat to me knyteguy. Worry about that come november budget, but right now save up and get through the month.
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Sep 17, 2014 18:53
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a worthy uhh posted:Wait until after the baby is born. You don't know that there won't be more expenses than you're accounting for, and it'd be a lot better to have savings to cover that instead of a slightly smaller debt load. You can live with your car getting repo'd, but what if the hospital repo'd your baby!?!?!? This. This. THISTHISTHIS. You have NO idea how much babies cost until they arrive. None. Zero. Sure, you can plan for some things ("we'll buy a used crib for $50, done!") but you seriously don't know what you're getting into with a new baby until you're into it. Fun example - I had a fairly normal pregnancy, a daughter who was born with zero complications, spent one night in the hospital & was home with her the next day. Fast forward about 6 weeks, we find out she has pretty severe acid reflux, and has to use prescription formula to the tune of $300/month. When babies are involved, you can really only control so much of it.
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Sep 17, 2014 20:17
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April posted:This. This. THISTHISTHIS. You have NO idea how much babies cost until they arrive. None. Zero. Sure, you can plan for some things ("we'll buy a used crib for $50, done!") but you seriously don't know what you're getting into with a new baby until you're into it. Fun example - I had a fairly normal pregnancy, a daughter who was born with zero complications, spent one night in the hospital & was home with her the next day. Fast forward about 6 weeks, we find out she has pretty severe acid reflux, and has to use prescription formula to the tune of $300/month. I'd like to remind everyone that when the Zaurg thread was active and he found out his wife was pregnant, we admonished him to add a line item for baby expenses. He budgeted $100. Knyteguy, don't be a Zaurg.
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Sep 17, 2014 23:31
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Breetai posted:I'd like to remind everyone that when the Zaurg thread was active and he found out his wife was pregnant, we admonished him to add a line item for baby expenses. This post reminded me that I wanted to start reading the Zaurg thread. I started off with #2 about where I left off. I can see some similarities in our approaches (like looking far ahead, saying OK they're gonna start saving for a house when they only have $1,000 in savings, etc). Insightful. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3470495&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=31#post402311262 I also took a peak at the Cornholio thread. Holy crap that went on for 4 years. 200 pages is going to take me awhile to read through. I need to finish Tuyop's thread too. I caught the beginning and the end, but I'm ignorant to much of the in between. Anyway I don't think we need a specific line item for the baby, I like saving money in bulk and we can figure out what to do with it after. Saving small amounts didn't work very well for us I found. Looks like the name of the game for the near future is just saving.
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Sep 18, 2014 02:51
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The in-between parts are the most important parts of BFC superstar threads, because they're where the change in mindset (and the struggle to actually succeed in that, and all the little "two steps forward, one step back" incidents, and the most important advice/suggestions from other posters) happens. Unless you're reading the Zuarg thread, which is really just a "what not to do" guide, because he never changed his mindset. That's one thing you could do if you find yourself bored and craving going out and buying something for entertainment: catch up on those threads. It's free AND useful, and there's a lot of good advice (tailored to their situations, of course, but with a baby on the way, you have similarities) there too.
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Sep 18, 2014 07:33
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Breetai posted:I'd like to remind everyone that when the Zaurg thread was active and he found out his wife was pregnant, we admonished him to add a line item for baby expenses. That was glorious. I laughed myself silly when I saw that $100 in his budget. KG - I don't get the resistance to adding a baby line item. While in one sense, yes, saving is saving, you will need to budget for the baby at some point. It is stupidly easy to overspend on kids, and hospital expenses aside it's not a bad idea to start thinking about what you're going to need for the baby and getting used to how that will impact your savings. I know for me when the boys were old enough Thomas engines become my Faberge eggs (Bleeding Gums Murphy? Anyone?) - just pick up a couple at the grocery store while I was shopping. When I added it up it was an insane expense for kids who didn't care if they had a train or a cardboard box. I will keep saying this until it drills in - this is a mental game you are playing with yourself, and your success will depend on how well you convince yourself that you are succeeding. What would you rather: 1. to want to save $3000, save $3000, and then have $1000 go to baby expenses and make you feel bad that you didn't save $3000 (net -$1000), or, 2. budget $1000 for baby, save $2000, spend $900 on baby, and end up saving $2100 (net +$100) Sure, 1. and 2. work out the same, but how you feel about your goals are light years apart.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:02
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Horking Delight posted:The in-between parts are the most important parts of BFC superstar threads, because they're where the change in mindset (and the struggle to actually succeed in that, and all the little "two steps forward, one step back" incidents, and the most important advice/suggestions from other posters) happens. Yea they're just really really long . I've been knocking out a few pages a day though. Doing pretty good on the boredom thing. Haven't been wanting much lately.Aagar posted:That was glorious. I laughed myself silly when I saw that $100 in his budget. Oh jeez my nephew was hugely into Thomas. I'm not really looking forward to watching the same kid's show all the time. I'll definitely be needing a place of my own (not big on the term mancave) as soon as we can get out of this apartment lease. Animal free, kid free, wife free (love ya babe  ). Need a place to get some hobbies done.I'm ok with budgeting for the baby, but not until we can get my wife's HSA contribution to a normal level (end of the year). Our emergency fund savings has already taken a big hit since we have nearly all of my wife's paycheck going into the HSA account. Side note: Everything is looking good with the budget. Since readjusting our savings goal to match the unexpectedly lower income for this month, we appear to be on track. There's too many variables to try to figure it all out but we may even end up with $100.00 more than expected or so. As mentioned above I haven't felt the need to go buy poo poo.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:47
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Knyteguy posted:readjusting our savings goal to match the unexpectedly lower income for this month Do you see why it's important to truly get a month ahead?
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Sep 19, 2014 22:21
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Old Fart posted:What? Yes. Here's our October budget that's a month ahead.  I assume I'm going to catch some flack for this but my wife and I have talked it over pretty extensively, and we've decided it's how we want to do it. We'll be saving about $2500 after the HSA contribution. About 90% of that $1,000 in discretionary is for planned expenses, so we're not just giving ourselves that money to go blow on random crap impulsively. I expect that we'll heavily reduce the discretionary budget back to around what we've been at when we draw up November's budget.
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Sep 21, 2014 04:08
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Knyteguy posted:Yes. Here's our October budget that's a month ahead. What comprises your $900 of planned expenses for October?
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Sep 21, 2014 05:06
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Knyteguy posted:Yes. Here's our October budget that's a month ahead. You have way the gently caress too much money in discretionary spending. I feel like you're asking for a lot to pull it back to the number that you really want it to be, but given your situation it's inexcusable to have it any more than 500 bucks. Even 500 is loving way over the line and i mean like WAYH OVER the line, but 1 grand is absurd. Completely loving absurd. Absurd. loving, crazyland. Seriously a 1000 loving dollars come the gently caress on. Veskit fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 05:20
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Veskit posted:You have way the gently caress too much money in discretionary spending. I feel like you're asking for a lot to pull it back to the number that you really want it to be, but given your situation it's inexcusable to have it any more than 500 bucks. Even 500 is loving way over the line and i mean like WAYH OVER the line, but 1 grand is absurd. Completely loving absurd. It seems that all of his food expenses have been sucked into discretionary for some reason. Oh poo poo, no, all of that got kicked up into a different meta category. Yikes.
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Sep 21, 2014 05:48
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Knyteguy posted:Yes. Here's our October budget that's a month ahead. Your first month ahead has no income. It's taken from your reserves. Your SECOND month ahead comes from the income you received during your first month ahead.
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Sep 21, 2014 12:48
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Inept posted:What comprises your $900 of planned expenses for October? Taking a "babymoon" to the SF bay area and getting a purchase I've been wanting for awhile. My wife's work has total blackout vacation dates during Nov/Dec/Jan and her vacation is use it or lose it at the end of the year (over 40 hours). After reading the Zaurg thread and the emotional turmoil between him and his wife, the "babymoon" is a worthy investment in us. It's been a pretty long time since we've even had a weekend away. We're still going to try to keep our spending lower than budgeted by staying outside of the city, packing lunches, and staying with my wife's family on the last night (they live too far from SF to stay there every night). Veskit posted:You have way the gently caress too much money in discretionary spending. I feel like you're asking for a lot to pull it back to the number that you really want it to be, but given your situation it's inexcusable to have it any more than 500 bucks. Even 500 is loving way over the line and i mean like WAYH OVER the line, but 1 grand is absurd. Completely loving absurd. We're still planning to save $2,500. It's not like it will be like this every month. Plus the whole financial crash diet analogy a few have used. It's also still us saving 25% of our income (not even counting the HSA). I know it's not the most BFCesque budget we've drawn up but we're not dipping into savings or anything crazy like that. We're still quite a bit net positive. Uncle Jam posted:It seems that all of his food expenses have been sucked into discretionary for some reason. Aagar made good points about no restaurants which is why that category is $0, but we still have grocery expenses planned for yes. Our goal will be $300 not $400 in groceries, but I want to give us some room. I also drew up that MISC category to cover stuff we may go over on (bill wise) while still allowing us to meet our savings goal. Old Fart posted:Can you help me understand why there's anything under "income" and why two of those numbers are nice and round? We're just tracking our paycheck amounts with that table. My business income is always $75.00/mo. We're using August's values though (which is really the same thing as reserves unless I'm missing something).
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Sep 21, 2014 18:15
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It's going to be very tempting on a vacation to go "I am supposed to be relaxing, I really shouldn't be worrying about money. Let's just splurge on this one big [dinner/present/bottle of wine/thing], and we'll figure out how it fits in the budget later." Instead I hope you take a mindset of "It will be so much easier to stay honest with the budget when we do not have the additional stress of working, let's min-max this poo poo." I feel like it isn't useful (and maybe even unhealthy) to give you poo poo about deciding to take a vacation. However, based on the way you presented it to the thread, it really feels like you were trying to hide the information. You knew people's eyes would bug out at $1k in discretionary, but you didn't explain what it was. You still haven't mentioned the "purchase I've been wanting for a while." That makes me think it's another something that you haven't shared with the thread, and that you think people will give you poo poo for. I think that using this thread as a resource correctly means being honest with it. Even if people give you poo poo about the things you buy or plan to get. The thread is kind of like a substitute conscience/inner cheapass while you get yours to develop. It is still up to you to live your life and ultimately decide what gets priority. Trying to avoid divulging information will just make the thread go more into a tizzy once the whole story comes out. Then your feelings are hurt because you felt you made a good judgment and then you don't use the thread as much because it got hostile. Rather than start down that path, just lay everything out. I think it will help you more in the long run. I think it is a good step that this item that "I've been wanting for a while" has been budgeted for October. That means you have at least 9 days to NOT buy this item and really make sure it's important to you.
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Sep 21, 2014 18:30
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Hawkgirl posted:It's going to be very tempting on a vacation to go "I am supposed to be relaxing, I really shouldn't be worrying about money. Let's just splurge on this one big [dinner/present/bottle of wine/thing], and we'll figure out how it fits in the budget later." Instead I hope you take a mindset of "It will be so much easier to stay honest with the budget when we do not have the additional stress of working, let's min-max this poo poo."
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Sep 21, 2014 19:17
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I don't understand your budgeting process. To me, a budget isn't something that should change from month to month. My husband and I know that we are going to take vacations, so we have a vacation line in our budget. We don't use it every month, but it is there for the few times a year we want to get away. We just don't decide to take a random trip and up our discretionary spending several hundred dollars. It seems like you just adjust your numbers every month to excuse your spending instead of actually planning for the long term.
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Sep 21, 2014 19:31
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He does, just like Zaurg did.
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Sep 21, 2014 19:49
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You guys kill me. "Hey Knyteguy don't financial crash diet this poo poo. I'd rather you lose 2lbs/mo and take it steadily than try to overdo it and fail." So I'm like "OK that makes sense to me. Hell in the lose weight thread in the fitness forum they say pretty much the same thing. It takes a long time to get fat, it needs to take a long time to get back into shape." I take this advice, because well no one refuted that at all. I decide "hey we can still save 25% of our income and do a couple things we've been wanting to do since the stars aligned in our favor this month, and our bills are about $300-400 cheaper this month than they would normally be allowing us some extra freedom. We've also been saving a gently caress ton every single month since July, going so far as to cut our rent to 12.5% of our income from about 30% on top of an array of other things, so we're still way way ahead of what we used to be and making progress." This forum drives me crazy sometimes. There's absolutely no consensus on how things should be. Some people advise extreme frugality, others say do what makes you happy, and then others still say "shoot man take it slow". I generally try all of these viewpoints, and I'm kind of tired for catching flack for it. And you know what? We're somewhere in the loving middle. We use a fan to dry our clothes, but I sometimes buy dumb expensive video game stuff. And we save $4,700 one month, but then save $2,500 the next. But you know what? Our bank account is steadily going up, and our debt is going down. We're doing really loving well. Bah talk about frustrating.
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Sep 21, 2014 19:51
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YOU HAVE A CHILD ON THE WAY. QUIT SPENDING MONEY ON TOYS FOR YOURSELF. HOARD CASH FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT, LIFE-CHANGING EVENT.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:01
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Knyte why is it hard to set your discretionary spending to a reasonable amount, and then save up for something instead of budgeting the item you've been wanting to do for god knows how long hten spring it on everyone. You're not practicing budgeting, you're practicing reconciliations
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Sep 21, 2014 20:15
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Nocheez posted:YOU HAVE A CHILD ON THE WAY. QUIT SPENDING MONEY ON TOYS FOR YOURSELF. HOARD CASH FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT, LIFE-CHANGING EVENT. We are hoarding cash. We're hoarding 25% of my income next month. We're hoarding as much money as we possibly can from my wife's paycheck. But hey that's pretax so it doesn't matter right? Like what the gently caress tomorrow morning we'll have $5,800 in cash hoarded plus $1000 in delivery fees paid for, and about $1000 in the HSA, and all of our bills paid, a full tank of gas, and groceries. By the end of the month that will turn into $6,000.00 because my wife gets paid again. We're ahead of our savings goals by quite a bit. But holy gently caress we'll go back to eating only rice and beans with bullion and cans of hormel chili. Plus we could probably save around $400/mo if we get rid of everything we own and move into a motel for $400/mo. Hell even better we could live in a camping trailer my mom has behind her house for maybe $100/mo. That's sustainable. I'll reiterate that I appreciate the input and support, but Jesus you guys expect too much sometimes.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:16
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Veskit posted:Knyte why is it hard to set your discretionary spending to a reasonable amount, and then save up for something instead of budgeting the item you've been wanting to do for god knows how long hten spring it on everyone. Every time I bring this up Veskit I get the same response as when I just plan to buy it outright. I tried saving a small amount every month for things I wanted and people still ridiculed and advised against it. That's why I mentioned that it's confusing when everyone advises differently, and there isn't a real consensus on how the hell we should proceed with anything that isn't completely necessary.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:28
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It's really hard to enjoy console games with little kids around. They either want your attention or they want to play or they poop in their pants or the content of the game is incredibly inappropriate for them to see. Lots of games are too violent for babies or toddlers to see because it's loud and frightening. That basically limits your gaming time to the evening, and that's usually when you are getting chores done or sleeping. Babies and kids create a lot of chores. It's not impossible, I still did PC gaming after my first kid but I played a lot of console games before the baby and that basically dropped to zero. I think this is a purchase you will regret regardless of what BFC says.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:30
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Knyte your discretionary spending went from 350 to 450 to 1000 dollars over the course of 3 months. Thats a massive problem. You're not learning to roll over money so that you can buy bigger things, you're instead just saying I want to do this this month I waited I"M DOING IT HERE IT"S IN THE BUDGET and clapping your hands and walking away from the issue.Knyteguy posted:Every time I bring this up Veskit I get the same response as when I just plan to buy it outright. I tried saving a small amount every month for things I wanted and people still ridiculed and advised against it. That's why I mentioned that it's confusing when everyone advises differently, and there isn't a real consensus on how the hell we should proceed with anything that isn't completely necessary. For the like, 8th time kntyte. Listen, and please listen like crazy. Set a specific amount you're going to budget into your discretionary spending that is reasonable (500 or under). THEN, you don't spend your discretionary money, and when it rolls over you have more money to make big purchases like vacations and what not. It's not hard. Your discretionary spending is slowly creeping up and up and up and now it's skyrocketed because you can't learn to budget properly. Veskit fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 20:37
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Knyteguy posted:Bah talk about frustrating. Your posts are really pretty incoherent and that is part of what's leading to your frustration. How about if you give us a legitimate picture of the last nine months, by computing your debt and cash balances as of the last day of every month and make a nice little plot. That info may or may not be in the thread somewhere but I sure can't be arsed to try to dig it out. Yet, those two numbers are the bottom line of how well you're doing over time.
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Sep 21, 2014 20:40
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Knyteguy posted:This forum drives me crazy sometimes. There's absolutely no consensus on how things should be. Some people advise extreme frugality, others say do what makes you happy, and then others still say "shoot man take it slow". I generally try all of these viewpoints, and I'm kind of tired for catching flack for it. And you know what? We're somewhere in the loving middle. We use a fan to dry our clothes, but I sometimes buy dumb expensive video game stuff. And we save $4,700 one month, but then save $2,500 the next. But you know what? Our bank account is steadily going up, and our debt is going down. We're doing really loving well. Well, it is the internet. The people who give you the most poo poo are probably a wide variety of personalities from people who are legit rich as gently caress and financially independent to in the same (or worse) position as you who see you as a substitute for themselves to yell at. You don't know which one is which so you should weigh each comment with your needs and wants and make the correct call yourself. Try not to be hurt by people giving advice in an rear end in a top hat way, that is just the way of the internet and they may have good points under all the all-caps text. Try not to be hurt by the amount of conflicting advice in the thread, it's not like we have a weekly "what should we tell Knyteguy" meeting and then let you know, we are all just telling you what we think you should do. Ultimately you're the one who has to live with it, so don't follow us blindly. (Including me, for all you know I am the devil leading you down the easy path.  )That said, I don't think this sort of post is helpful at all: Nocheez posted:YOU HAVE A CHILD ON THE WAY. QUIT SPENDING MONEY ON TOYS FOR YOURSELF. HOARD CASH FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT, LIFE-CHANGING EVENT. Obviously he knows that. From where I'm sitting, it looks like spending money is how Knyteguy deals with stress. Buying something big and shiny feels good. It's his default "wanna feel good" button. When this thread devolves into flat out yelling (in text, but still, supposed to be read as yelling), it just ups the stress. It's not like he forgot he's having a kid. That is a huge amount of stress to deal with. He needs to find new ways to deal with the stress, but I don't think making the stress worse is the way to get him to do that. I think AbsenceVsThinAir is right that you will regret your PS4 purchase once baby comes, Knyteguy. My easy stress reliever is eating like poo poo, and I pretty much always regret it. You might even regret it before baby comes, if you run out of games to play and have a moment to reflect. Do lots of drumming in the next week and see how you feel in October. Maybe even try to delay buying that PS4 until riiiiight at the end of October just in case you hit a bad stretch like you did this month. Don't do the Kindle thing again, right? edit: It's been a long time since I read Cornholio's thread but I feel like the moment things started going well for him is the moment he realized BFC is not a source of sagely or even correct advice as much as it is an echo chamber that you should use to see how your actions appear to others. Don't worry so much about doing exactly what someone recommends as much as you read and understand how your behaviors look to other people. The echo chamber is currently very "This is a lot of money to spend on discretionary items, you will regret the PS4, beware or all the work you've done over the past 2 months will be for nothing." That's important to understand, that no matter how important the PS4 appears to you, the people who have no attachment to you or your life see it as an unwise purchase. That should be a hint to you to look at the underlying reasons why you want a PS4 - not "I have a lot of games I want to play" but more "I am really stressed out about the baby coming and unwinding by playing a mindless PS4 game will help me unstress." Then maybe you can think about what else helps you unstress and maybe one of those things is cheaper than a PS4. Maybe you can delay the PS4 for a few weeks or a month by doing another unstress thing. Keep trying to delay it and eventually you might think, "You know what, I think I'm doing okay without a PS4." Or maybe you'll realize that yes, your life is incomplete without that PS4. That's fine too, the PS4 will still be there in all its expensive shininess if you end up discovering that, even if you wait 6 months to buy it. Maybe it'll even be cheaper! Hawkperson fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 20:42
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I agree that my last post was harsh. Knyte seems to think he's not the same guy as the story he posted in the bad with money thread. Any cash sitting in the bank needs to be spent. He definitely is doing better, but he is far from figuring out how to actually budget. He also doesn't seem to leave any room for chance. Knyte: I really am rooting for you, but a PS4 is absolutely nothing more than a toy. It is not a necessity, it is a distraction. Start a college fund for your kid, and every time you want to buy a toy for yourself, take that money and put it away for her future instead. Surely that money is better spent on her education than for your distractions... right?
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Sep 21, 2014 21:01
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Everyone's going to have a slightly different opinion on what you should do and what a reasonable amount of discretionary spending is, so of course you're going to get different opinions from people. You shouldn't necessarily try to follow everything at once because there's always going to be contradictory advice. What works for me might not work for Nocheez, and Hawkgirl might be reading both our posts and thinking "what a weird way to do things, my way is loads more intuitive". If there's a lot of advice that contradicts each other (such as on having a flex line item, how big your discretionary budget should be, stuff about YNAB usage), you should follow the advice that you think will work best for you. If there's a big imbalance in advice (like everyone agreeing on "don't buy the PS4" or "don't buy the kindle so soon"), you should seriously look at why people are saying that and why a bunch of strangers are agreeing with each other. If you honestly think you aren't capable of spending less than a thousand dollars a month on discretionary stuff right now, then I don't think it's too bad for you to start that way and (hopefully) try to tone it down afterwards, because if you can't handle spending less, then there's nothing we can really do about it and it's better to be upfront about it than to hide that fact and do it anyways. On the other hand, I'm single with no kids and have a huge budget for discretionary spending, so my experience is pretty dissimilar to yours. HOWEVER. You don't actually need a PS4. You want a PS4, and you want it more than you want to stick to a more reasonable budget. I don't think you should buy it because I don't think you're actually going to get more enjoyment out of a PS4 than you'd get out of the equivalent amount of money spent on beer and PC games and dinners out with your wife, and I think you're really not thinking about it in those terms because the way you treat your budget makes me feel like you don't actually internalize that the 100 dollars you don't spend on eating out is 100 dollars you can spend on video games instead, etc. Like, if you really want to spend 500 extra dollars this month, wouldn't you have more fun going out and buying baby things and having extra date nights with the wife and maybe buying a few new PC games than by having a PS4? I think Hawkgirl's post is spot on.
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Sep 21, 2014 21:45
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Knyteguy posted:You guys kill me. "Hey Knyteguy don't financial crash diet this poo poo. I'd rather you lose 2lbs/mo and take it steadily than try to overdo it and fail." The issue I think a lot of people are having is that your proposed October spending is full of red flags: lots of "this is a one time thing", "we deserve to splurge on X because of Y" language and spending most of your discretionary money before the month has even started. It's your money, spend it on whatever you want, but this is exactly the sort of behavior that gets people into trouble. Personally, what I would do is this: 1. If you've decided to take a vacation, fine. Estimate how much it will cost. Normally, you'd have already saved for it, either as a specific savings goal for the past several months or out of a general "vacations/big optional expenses" portion that you've allocated from your total annual savings (as in, made a conscious decision beforehand how much you want to save each year, and how much of that you want to spend and on what). 2. Figure out what your target monthly discretionary spending is going to be from now on. $500? $1000? Whatever it is, that's your number at the start of every month. The number should be realistic, not optimistic. And again, you don't have to spend every dollar of this. If you have extra, carry it over or stick it in savings so you're more well prepared the next time some fun spending opportunity comes up. So it's OK to pad a little, if you can actually save what's left over. 3. Now, months like this where you know you want to spend something that's outside of your normal budget, you have to decide what will change to accommodate this trip. If your normal discretionary is $500, maybe this month you try to keep it at $300 and take the rest out of how much you save. Or maybe you don't change anything and take it all out of savings. Whatever it is, make a conscious choice of where the money is going to come from, don't just hide it under an inflated budget line item. (It's a small change from your proposed budget, but an important one: if discretionary is normally going to be $500 and savings is normally going to be $1650, then list the trip as a one-time line item for e.g. $500 and indicate that you're taking the cost all out of savings.) 4. Don't buy a PS4 before the last day of October. At that point, you will have your month's spending in hand and can make a decision about whether you need that more than savings / whatever unexpected poo poo came up. I know, you're thinking: "I've already decided to get it, so why not have an extra month to play with it before the baby comes?" It's because forcing yourself to be disciplined like this is a critical part of the mindset change you absolutely need if you're going to be successful at controlling your spending and not just doing a post-mortem every month. Read the first (?) zaurg thread where he "budgeted" without ever actually changing a single spending decision. Don't be zaurg.
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Sep 21, 2014 22:05
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What are you planning on doing for Christmas? You clearly aren't budgeting for it in October, so I assume it will balloon your discretionary category once again. That seems like the perfect time for the PS4.
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Sep 21, 2014 23:53
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slap me silly posted:Your posts are really pretty incoherent and that is part of what's leading to your frustration. How about if you give us a legitimate picture of the last nine months, by computing your debt and cash balances as of the last day of every month and make a nice little plot. That info may or may not be in the thread somewhere but I sure can't be arsed to try to dig it out. Yet, those two numbers are the bottom line of how well you're doing over time. If anyone finds my posts incoherent then please speak up if you want clarification. I feel like my posts are long, but I usually address details to the t every single time someone asks about them. I posted some graphs just a couple pages ago showing our progress over time: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3586966&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=26#post434482158 I don't have 9 months worth of data but that is pretty close. We're taking it from lots of categories. Restaurants was one of them, rent since we were ahead, total saved, business expenses, etc. My wife and I planned the budget meticulously, and then I gave us a nice fat MISC column to cover anything that may go over (we accounted for chance like someone was just saying we don't). Look I've been contemplating this stupid video game system for months. I contemplated it at work, at home, when I woke up in the morning. If I don't have time to play it when the baby is here, well I've had my PS3 for something like 6 years now so I'm sure the PS4 will last at least as long. I won't always have this thread to consult, and this is where we're going with it. In November (and I already mentioned this) we're going to cut out discretionary back to like $300-$500 again. If my wife's work wasn't so loving stupid with stealing employee vacation time we would put the vacation off until November or December. We can't do that so our discretionary ballooned. I don't care if anyone believes it, but this is an increase that is a one time thing.
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Sep 22, 2014 00:41
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in_cahoots posted:What are you planning on doing for Christmas? You clearly aren't budgeting for it in October, so I assume it will balloon your discretionary category once again. That seems like the perfect time for the PS4. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3586966&pagenumber=25&perpage=40#post434392557 Look at the 3rd to last paragraph, and the the resulting conversation about it. That's what I mean when I say I can't win if I want to buy literally anything that isn't a necessity. Edit: and thanks everyone else for your input. I don't have the energy right now to address every point as usual.
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Sep 22, 2014 00:44
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Knyteguy posted:If anyone finds my posts incoherent then please speak up if you want clarification. I feel like my posts are long, but I usually address details to the t every single time someone asks about them. Does anyone have a list of Knyte's other "one-time" expenses? Also, if you have to take a vacation in October, why not put the PS4 off till November? Why do two big-ticket unnecessary things in one month?
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Sep 22, 2014 00:45
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Knyteguy posted:If anyone finds my posts incoherent then please speak up if you want clarification. I feel like my posts are long, but I usually address details to the t every single time someone asks about them. Put another way, I have no interest in the details. Your money, your hobbies, your life, your details. If you are accumulating money over time and spending reasonably relative to your resources, my opinion about what you buy isn't useful. But is that the case? If I take the shape of that graph at face value, it says you had a real problem for the last half year and haven't been actually accumulating money for more than about a month. I.e., very good chance you still need some help being honest with yourself about your spending. When people sniff that, that's when they start riding you about your spending and pointing out when you prioritize the short term, like buying a PS4 instead of paying off the car faster like you said you wanted to back in May. Your priorities and choices are yours but don't kid yourself about the effect they have on your finances.
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Sep 22, 2014 01:23
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