Knyteguy's Finances: More harebrained schemes than a sitcom dad

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Knyteguy's Finances: More harebrained schemes than a sitcom dad

«‹›179 »

imabanana: May 26, 2006

Hey Knyteguy, I think you might like this site:

http://affordanything.com/

This recent post made me think of you a little:

http://affordanything.com/2016/01/26/feeling-overwhelmed-heres-why-simplifying-is-the-smarter-choice/

And her budgeting philosophy:

http://affordanything.com/2013/03/05/anti-budget-or-80-20-budge/

Basically, savings first every month (for you this is debt payment)

Then you live on what is left over.

No more worrying about what is budgeting or how to do it, just:

- Get paid
- Pay your monthly debt (put into savings once debt is gone)
- Pay fixed expenses
- Live on the rest, guilt free

Live your life without worrying about money so much. I'm not saying it's not hard, but it doesn't have to be so complex either.

(This is also good: http://affordanything.com/2015/08/29/the-12-essential-lessons-i-want-to-share-about-money-and-life/)

# ? Feb 18, 2016 09:13

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 29, 2024 16:20

foxatee: Feb 27, 2010; That foxatee is always making a Piggles out of herself.

"Back in a month?" You were back in 39 minutes!

# ? Feb 18, 2016 14:51

n8r: Jul 3, 2003; I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar

KG has tried every budgeting trick in the world and he's failed at every single one of them to varying degrees. The thing with KG that is so compelling is how close he is to 'getting it'. The last big flame out with the car / gaming PC is why most of the long time posters in this thread have encouraged/demanded therapy.

I think KG has some mental health related stuff going, that unless it's treated, he is bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over. His wife should also be participating in KG's therapy, and probably be seeing someone herself, at least because she has been complicit in supporting his actions.

The grand ideas and big posts combined with impulsive money spending looks a lot like someone with manic tendencies. Combine this with substance abuse issues and it's a perfect storm for someone blowing their budget in big, poorly thought out chunks. I say this from a person who has a lot of experience myself with all this stuff. You may not need medicine and you may not need long term therapy, but you do need someone to evaluate you. You should be looking for a psychiatrist and a psychologist at the same time as they handle two sides of the same poo poo.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 15:45

Dwight Eisenhower: Jan 24, 2006; Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Zanthia's post was inspiring for me, so I'm going to chime in with why I budget.

I started working and got a nice income right out the gate in 2003, and I didn't budget my income until 2013. During the intervening 10 years I would spend impulsively, never exceeding my income but never with a plan or purpose in mind, and definitely not with limits on categories. In that time I bought a too expensive car I vaguely needed with a 6.5% interest loan, bought lots of frivolous crap, particularly gaming pcs, bought a second car I didn't need for super cheap that I could fix up and did so, sold it, bought a third that is the best car I've ever owned, but didn't need, and generally just flailed around without any long term plan.

I bought a house with 3% down and a 6.75% loan that I'm still not at 20% LTV on. I had the engine in my too expensive car blow up and had to replace it. I started to put away a tiny bit of money into an post-tax investment account when I got a tax return. I made minimum payments on my mortgage.

In short I was treading water perfectly fine but I wasn't getting anywhere and I certainly wasn't going to be able to stop renting my labor for income in any kind of realistic time frame. In 2013 I started budgeting and I didn't even use it as a restraint at first, I just started by establishing a baseline of what I spend where and how. Looking at my behavior in the past and how it was consuming my income. Since I've started budgeting I've:

- Replaced a failed HVAC system in my house with a higher efficiency unit paid in full up front. I'm saving money every month on utility bills, and I am not paying interest on financing the HVAC system.
- Cut my spending on eating out in at least half, saving $200/month
- Made principal payments on my house every month since January 2015, most of them at least double up the principal contribution of my minimum payment, some of them quadruple it.
- Paid into my post-tax account every month and now I have a decent mid-low 5 figures balance.
- Gone from buying an internal combustion powered toy once every ~18 months to once every 5 years.
- Paid for the internal combustion powered toy up front, again not paying interest.
- Eliminated all interest to all creditors except for the mortgage on the house.
- Once I refinance my minimum payments should be about 2/3rds what they are now for the mortgage.
- At my current rate I can have the house paid off in ~7 years. Without a refinance.
- I've gotten more mature about investing, but still take risks hoping to accelerate my time to financial independence. But I could lose my entire post-tax account and still be very financially healthy overall.

The budget contextualizes all of my behavior every day into my long term plans. I want to have enough passive income that working is an option, not a requirement. I want to spend more time outdoors on adventures instead of cooped up cranking code. And I want to pursue living a lifestyle which I find more moral by producing more of my own food, water, and energy from a green home. My desires are outcomes that are realistic because I have a plan that makes them realistic, and the budget is the biggest part of that plan that makes getting to that outcome a realistic goal instead of a pie in the sky desire.

Those things won't happen because I sit around hoping they happen, they'll only happen after spending multiples of years putting in work to make them reality.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 16:18

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

bringer posted:

Did you sell your sand rail yet? I remember you saying back in September that you would sell that to pay for part of your sports car.

No. My wife and I were planning on having a Spring garage sale in the next month or two, though, where I was going to try to pawn it off.

Speaking of the car, I got the fine down to $51 with no suspension of registration. It took $10 in notary fees, and $0.60 to print the paper (since I had to get 3 pages notarized). Thanks again MRC. New batter was about $130 something, but I'll be bringing back my old one for a core refund ($18). Winter kills car batteries around here.

Old Greg posted:

I really want to say you've tried that before and it didn't work out, but maybe it was just an idea that was floated.

And I know you're frustrated, but this is the direct result of people participating in your thread for over two years. Everyone should doubt you. You've been this amped before, and I genuinely believe every other time you thought this time you had the motivation to overcome every obstacle. Then you didn't. That's reality. That's the use of this thread, because your defensiveness and having an explanation for every past mistake comes off as complete confidence in yourself. That's dangerous. Because you need a rock-solid plan with padding. Probably. I honestly don't know what would best help you, but "I got this! I only missed my last budget goal by a week so technically I hit it 92% so I got this!" seems like a path to failure.

The time you succeed won't start with a REAAAALLY good argument on here that quiets everyone's doubts. Ever. It wasn't even a year ago you lied to us for a month about a big purchase, so it's honestly bullshit if you feel distrusted about the DMV thing. We'd be loving idiots not to be wary. The thing that will restore people's faith is coming in June 1st to post the third matched budget, or May 2017 or whenever with the news that you have no debt anymore! That still means months of heckling if you spend the whole time asking us if it reeeeeeaaally counts as a busted budget if you saw a vape rig you just had to have on craigslist checking house prices.

I hope this comes off as caring and supportive. I personally think criticism is not inherently negative. I also swore, and stuff? But I like swear words because I'm young at heart. I hope this thread has a happy ending, but this really doesn't feel like a happy time for any of us.

I'm not upset about the DMV fine distrust. That's fine. It's why I posted both the paper and the chat log with my wife.

I think it's supportive. Thanks.

April posted:

How in the world are you going to manage owning a home, when a $2500 car has caused you so much grief? When you're ready to start moonlighting over a vet bill, why do you think you'll be fine with something like replacing a furnace/central air? How are you going to come up with a 20% down payment (or even 10%) when you couldn't even plan for Christmas till Thanksgiving? Seriously, and I don't know how many times people can say this to you: calm the gently caress down, make a plan, and actually loving follow it for like six whole months in a row. I don't care if you budget $800 a month for Red Lobster or whatever, but seriously, make a plan that covers actual life events (Example: isn't your son's first birthday coming up? A lot of parents consider that a big deal. Are you planning anything?).

Then again, given your track record with shiny things that you want, I expect you to go quiet for a few weeks, and come back announcing that you bought a house, and the taxes and insurance were more than you budgeted for, and you ended up having to replace a door that set you back $750 that wasn't in the budget, but never mind that guys, it's totally in the past, I've learned my lesson, can we please move on? And check out my awesome new budget, look, I only budgeted $15 towards restaurants, there's no way I'll fail, I really mean it this time.

Nah buying a house isn't something to jump into. I know that. And frankly with our debt levels, we couldn't get into a house that we wanted to right now anyway. And I don't even know how much house I do want.

SiGmA_X posted:

See my therapist weekly for at least 6mo, clear all of my debt, and then save up a down payment.

Yeah fine I've started looking again (to everyone who has been posting this). I do wish that we had a more diverse set of doctors near me though. Just even someone closer.

Horking Delight posted:

I started trying to post a detailed response with sample budget and I can't even figure out your household income. Is it still 5300 or is the 6800 from http://i.imgur.com/QqmsCke.png? Why is your "Funds for Feb" 7800?

I make $2119.xx 24 times a year. My wife makes around $750.xx, 24 times a year, plus two three paycheck months. This may change sometime since we started 401k contributions for her, but I don't know when they start. They may already be started I never see her paycheck stubs.

So, $5700 kind of conservatively? The $5,300 was with our huge HSA contributions.

Horking Delight posted:

Do I have your weird impulse issues too or no? If yes, I'd probs pad medical with more money (taken from discretionary I guess) and use that to pay for therapy, and also see if insurance would cover it or whatever and if so, by how much.

Yes.

Pay the 1k/mo at the beginning of the month, prioritized as minimum payments and then into the highest-interest debt. Anything UNDER budget at the end of the month from Fixed Expenses or Discretionary I'd put towards either paying back anything taken from the emergency fund or into whatever debt I feel like (maybe the smallest, for snowball effect), and I'd expect to be under budget every month.

So debt pay down is my fluid category, yeah? I'm OK with budgeting a higher amount, if even just some months I can try to go a little crazy and put a huge debt payment down (like we have this month).

I'd cut all large purchases and vacations (but still use PTO for "staycations" or whatever where we leave the kid with a grandparent and just hang out at home or something), pick up some cheap hobbies, maybe do some stupid gimmick stuff while experimenting like "see how far under budget we can go". I'd limit my routine-type life changes to introducing one per month to reduce stress (quitting smoking, quitting alcohol, cooking more frugally, eating out less often, new hobby, cash system for discretionary, aggressive job hunt, more freelancing, whatever) and try it for at least the full month but be free to drop it if I hate it.

Alright, good plan.

Any and all additional income would go towards debt paydown. I guess depending on how desperately I need a visual reminder of it, I could put stickers on a grid for every $1000 in principle I pay down (or 500, since a lot of that $1000 will go towards interest) or something. Or if it's for some reason impossible to motivate myself without buying toys, pay like (post-tax) 80% to debt and 20% on buying stupid things, but ONLY buying the stupid things AFTER the work has been done AND the payment has been made and cleared.

I need to think on this one.

With the debt payments, I'd pay debt down until it's zero'd out, and plan on a down payment (20% + 20k for fixing broken poo poo) on a house in 2020, when the kid's getting closer to school age. I have no idea how much housing in your area costs or what your interest rates are, so I have no idea when my debt free date would be but I'd be hoping for maybe end of 2018? Earlier if I can stay under budget and make extra income from freelancing or whatever.

Yeah definitely 20% minimum for a down payment.

[Budget]
I modified the budget slightly, since our income is better than it used to be by $400/mo. I gave a little more room on discretionary, just in case. I can do this budget starting in March. I wouldn't mind more leeway if we need it. I'll still probably try to go crazy by cutting absolutely every cost we can some months, as we have done this month. But I was reading that post imabanana posted about simplifying over optimizing, so maybe instead of optimizing every cost, I can try to simply? I don't know I haven't read the full article.

What's slush for? For potential increased expenses? I'm worried utilities could bite us in the rear end every now and then.

code:

Income: 5700
Total Expenses: 4400
Debt Payment Minimum: 1300/mo, paid at the beginning of the month

Fixed Expenses (goes out each month, not open to adjustment):
1100 Housing
300 Utilities (Electric, Water, Internet, Phone)
150 Car Insurance
540 Daycare
200 Transit
20 Home insurance
100 Business
90 Slush (to make it an even number)

Subtotal: 2500

Other Expenses (gets saved each month and paid out when needed):
150 Pets (includes vet)
100 Baby needs (I don't know what this is?)
150 Car (Maintenance/registration)
100 Medical (Is the HSA still getting money or...?)
100 Subscriptions? What?
50 Household Goods (anything you'd buy from Target that isn't a toy)
350 Groceries

Subtotal: 1000

Discretionary (toys and consumables for the household, also covers haircuts, clothing, etc):
350 His
350 Hers
200 Both

Subtotal: 900

Debt paydown assuming maximum budget outflows with the above budget:

That's with the rollover from the debt pay down left over from this month's budget, taxes @ $425 which deposited today, and one additional paycheck for my wife.

Responses to your notes:
- HSA Isn't getting money any longer. We have $361 left in the main fund, and $751 (current value) of it invested into VFINX.
- Baby needs is snacks, clothes, all of the baby specific stuff
- Subscriptions is my seedbox ($19/mo) for entertainment, Netflix, nYNAB (yearly), Dropbox premium (pictures), Prime, NFL GamePass, etc. This is a new category for me. I've cut GamePass and Prime from the budget for now though.

So 100% of extra income goes into debt, which is reliably $500/yr net before taxes, and a little more unreliably. Sounds good.

How do we handle birthdays, and Christmas?

I'm fine with staycations. We've been holding onto a movie gift card for a couple of months for such an occasion.

I need to post this. Thanks. I feel like maybe I can lose a little of the guilt of following a larger budget with this input.

I still want to reply to more people, but I can't do so at the moment. I will soon. Thanks for the big posts I've found all of them helpful and insightful so far.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 20:50

Colin Mockery: Jun 24, 2007; Rawr

With a 900/mo discretionary budget and a 350/mo grocery (groceries INCLUDING snacks/treats from costco or watevs) I don't see how you couldn't just fit it in month-of, but you could save your extra discretionary budget by spending under in previous months and saving the extra allocated for a purpose that isn't debt paydown).

The trick with a larger budget is to regularly (ALWAYS) come in under budget so you have extra breathing room.

Edit: I'm still not 100% sure you are looking at budgets in the right way. Each category is a max spend amount (and yeah "slush" is just "misc for padding if the numbers go over"). You're talking "fiddle with the budget and reduce discretionary to pay down more debt", but instead you should keep your discretionary the same and come in under budget to pay down more debt. Budget amounts are spending maximums, not spending goals or minimums.

The former fucks up your plans if you adjust the plan and then break the budget. The latter can only speed up the timeline.

Colin Mockery fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Feb 18, 2016

# ? Feb 18, 2016 21:19

Veskit: Mar 2, 2005; I love capitalism!! DM me for the best investing advice!

Knyteguy posted:

Yeah fine I've started looking again (to everyone who has been posting this). I do wish that we had a more diverse set of doctors near me though. Just even someone closer.

Doctors? What do you mean by doctors? Do you need a reference because if so you get that from your PCP right? Why are you researching doctors. Can you go over what your process is for finding the right people to see because it's worrying when you start the process by researching doctors in your area.

Veskit fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Feb 18, 2016

# ? Feb 18, 2016 21:25

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

Horking Delight posted:

With a 900/mo discretionary budget and a 350/mo grocery (groceries INCLUDING snacks/treats from costco or watevs) I don't see how you couldn't just fit it in month-of, but you could save your extra discretionary budget by spending under in previous months and saving the extra allocated for a purpose that isn't debt paydown).

The trick with a larger budget is to regularly (ALWAYS) come in under budget so you have extra breathing room.

Yeah that works for me; just wanted to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone else.

I was thinking your post was saying not to roll over leftover discretionary though. Maybe we could rollover a percentage of leftover? I was going to throw out 15-25%. I don't believe we've ever had a discretionary budget that high, so I'm not too worried about it either way.

Definitely on the coming under budget part. I was just talking to my wife about it, and I said we need to always come under if this is what we confirm.

Veskit posted:

Doctors? What do you mean by doctors? Do you need a reference because if so you get that from your PCP right? Why are you researching doctors. Can you go over what your process is for finding the right people to see because it's worrying when you start the process by researching doctors in your area.

Well like PHD psychologists. Doctors as in hold doctorates. I'm just using Anthem's website to scout out in-network psychologists in the area.

How big of a deal is gender with psychologists? I've only ever seen men, but I don't feel like there's much or any sex or relationship stuff I need to talk about, so maybe a woman would work OK. There's far more women psychologists within my immediate area.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 21:47

Veskit: Mar 2, 2005; I love capitalism!! DM me for the best investing advice!

Knyteguy posted:

Well like PHD psychologists. Doctors as in hold doctorates. I'm just using Anthem's website to scout out in-network psychologists in the area.

How big of a deal is gender with psychologists? I've only ever seen men, but I don't feel like there's much or any sex or relationship stuff I need to talk about, so maybe a woman would work OK. There's far more women psychologists within my immediate area.

As big of a deal as gender is to you. My therapist is a woman. She's also only a masters student though, but she's the best therapist for me, so I wouldn't go only and find PHD candidate psychologists.

I also recommend you find a psychiatrist first so you can get a clear diagnosis and find the right type of therapist to help you depending on if you have a mental disorder. That's where a PhD actually maters because you have to have one to practice medicine.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 22:02

BarbarianElephant: Feb 12, 2015; The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Don't buy a house, Knyteguy. You don't have the loose cash for it, and you aren't sure that you will even stay in the area.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 22:05

n8r: Jul 3, 2003; I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar

KG you've posted a number of reasonable budgets in the past, why do you think you can stick to this one?

Do you really need a seedbox for torrents? Don't you get enough content through netflix/prime? Actually nevermind, who cares...

Here is my challenge.

Make a budget, any budget, who cares if it pays down no debt and try not blowing any categories or stealing from one category to pay for another for a month. I'm pretty sure you've never done that.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 22:30

bringer: Oct 16, 2005; I'm out there Jerry and I'm LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT

Knyteguy posted:

No. My wife and I were planning on having a Spring garage sale in the next month or two, though, where I was going to try to pawn it off.

Why not use your impulsiveness to actually get rid of the sand rail / Baja Bug now instead of procrastinating again? Show us that good side you talked to your psychologist about. You've been carting this thing around for a year or more with multiple attempts to sell it, and I think you even included the sale revenue in your budgeting once or twice.

JUST SELL IT.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 22:59

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Knyteguy posted:

[Budget]
I modified the budget slightly, since our income is better than it used to be by $400/mo. I gave a little more room on discretionary, just in case. I can do this budget starting in March. I wouldn't mind more leeway if we need it. I'll still probably try to go crazy by cutting absolutely every cost we can some months, as we have done this month. But I was reading that post imabanana posted about simplifying over optimizing, so maybe instead of optimizing every cost, I can try to simply? I don't know I haven't read the full article.

Different people handle budgeting differently, so I don't think you're going to get a single answer. Personally, I need quite a bit of simplification in my budget or else it doesn't impact the majority of my spending decisions. And I think that's a key point that sometimes gets lost in the minutiae of setting and maintaining and reconciling a budget: the ultimate purpose of a budget is to manage/limit your spending. Just planning it out and tracking it doesn't really accomplish much if you don't ever modify your spending in response. It's fun and exciting to talk yourself into a really aggressive budget that will help you knock down debt really quickly, but that may actually be counterproductive, as you haven't made a plan you can actually live under for more than a short period of time.

Ultimately, I think the spending decisions we make fall into five categories:

Fixed (rent, some bills, subscriptions, etc.)
Variable necessities (groceries, utilities, gas, etc.)
Monthly discretionary (restaurants, small household stuff, treats/luxuries)
Longer-term discretionary (clothes, Christmas gifts, car repairs, travel)
Savings/Debt reduction

The last two are both savings, just earmarked differently. Most people track these things at a finer scale than this, but I'd argue it doesn't actually matter if your unexpected $300 expense was for work clothes or for car repairs: you need to have the money in hand when poo poo happens, and to do that you need to know how much you can safely spend on day to day bullshit so you have it left over to set aside every monthly. How do you decide if you can afford Starbucks or shelf paper at Target or ice cream cones for your daughter at any given moment? That's what your budget should ultimately be telling you. Either because you've allocated money in a specific category and you know you haven't yet exceeded it or because you keep an eye on the overall running total of monthly discretionary and you know where you're at in general. I'm a big fan of the latter because it actually works for me, but other people find it too amorphous. Either is fine, or something else entirely, you just need to know what works for you.

This is all just a very wordy way of saying to not just focus on the planning side, but also on the execution. Pay attention to what's going through your mind when you spend money, and try to figure out what information you need to keep in the back of your head to know when you have a few extra bucks to spend vs. needing to be conservative to compensate for other stuff that came up.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 22:59

Colin Mockery: Jun 24, 2007; Rawr

Knyteguy posted:

Yeah that works for me; just wanted to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone else.

I was thinking your post was saying not to roll over leftover discretionary though. Maybe we could rollover a percentage of leftover? I was going to throw out 15-25%. I don't believe we've ever had a discretionary budget that high, so I'm not too worried about it either way.

Definitely on the coming under budget part. I was just talking to my wife about it, and I said we need to always come under if this is what we confirm.

I'd just like to reiterate that you asked what I would do in your situation.

What I posted was a budget tailored to my spending style and my preferences, but with your income and expenses, and the only reason it's even got that many categories is because I literally copy/pasted them and shuffled them around while trying to figure out how much you actually spend. It would work for me because I know I won't end up in a situation like "I'm out of food money 3 days in because I spent it on a bunch of alcohol instead" and because I don't have a problem with impulse purchases. My actual budget is very simple because the way I look at money is very simple. Necessities get paid immediately. Wants have to fit in the budget. Very few things are necessities.

The informal budget categories I use for my own finances are "fixed expenses" (need), "cash" (want), "misc online" (want) (I actually use this to make my total budget a round number), "large purchases" (want), "other necessities/expenses" (need). I don't have any other categories. I literally cannot tell you what I spent my categories on 3 months ago, short of "cash is pretty much always food and going out", and "misc online is pretty much always Amazon junk and video games". "Other necessities/expenses" is for tracking (NO FUN STUFF, one-off bills only) and doesn't affect my spending in other categories. "Large purchases" was added when I got a raise at work. Nothing else in my budget has changed in the last five years (I'm due for a cost of living adjustment, though) and this way I don't have to track details, just "how many times I went to the ATM" and "did I buy something big this month?"

What I personally do is if I want something I can't afford in one month's "large purchases" category, I save the amount in that category until I have enough. If I don't want anything in a month/don't have anything I'm saving for, then the money "disappears" into savings and can't be spent on wants anymore.

This method works for me because I don't have a spending problem, I have very few unexpected expenses, and also because I'm super lazy and not going to loving micromanage categories.

You will almost definitely have to figure out a set of rules for yourself and "I get everything I need immediately and don't always get what I want" is 100% for sure, definitely not going to work for you because you're not good at separating out your wants from your needs, and your wants + needs (counting debt repayment) exceed your monthly income by a lot.

EDIT: ^ Giraffe's post is great. All people can do is tell you what they do, and give some suggestions for ways you can do things that might help for you/how you like to do things, but we're still at the "finding something that works for you" stage and we've been at that stage for basically two years at this point.

Colin Mockery fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Feb 18, 2016

# ? Feb 18, 2016 23:21

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

Horking Delight posted:

Edit: I'm still not 100% sure you are looking at budgets in the right way. Each category is a max spend amount (and yeah "slush" is just "misc for padding if the numbers go over"). You're talking "fiddle with the budget and reduce discretionary to pay down more debt", but instead you should keep your discretionary the same and come in under budget to pay down more debt. Budget amounts are spending maximums, not spending goals or minimums.

The former fucks up your plans if you adjust the plan and then break the budget. The latter can only speed up the timeline.

Just saw your edit.

That's what I mean. Take any remainder from discretionary to pay down more debt, not change the numbers month-by-month.

Veskit posted:

As big of a deal as gender is to you. My therapist is a woman. She's also only a masters student though, but she's the best therapist for me, so I wouldn't go only and find PHD candidate psychologists.

I also recommend you find a psychiatrist first so you can get a clear diagnosis and find the right type of therapist to help you depending on if you have a mental disorder. That's where a PhD actually maters because you have to have one to practice medicine.

Ok. I'll give it some more thought. What that means is I'll do it

n8r posted:

KG you've posted a number of reasonable budgets in the past, why do you think you can stick to this one?

Do you really need a seedbox for torrents? Don't you get enough content through netflix/prime? Actually nevermind, who cares...

Here is my challenge.

Make a budget, any budget, who cares if it pays down no debt and try not blowing any categories or stealing from one category to pay for another for a month. I'm pretty sure you've never done that.

Seedbox not really. I'd rather give up Netflix and Prime streaming than it though. Don't want to go into it too much.

I think that... that's a much larger budget than I ever would have made for myself, so to me I'm like "OK well if BFC thinks that's fine, then who am I to question?" It gives me room for varying months, I'm not looking at it as what we should spend, but instead what we can spend if we want or need to, there's less category management and as much as I like tinkering, god I'm tired of having to micromanage mine and my wife's needs. Clothes and shampoo will become a non-shared category where we can each decide what we want or need? Count me the gently caress in. It creates some independence for both of us. I'd heavily prefer to just go buy a pair of jeans without needing to check if she needs a shirt first or something. I guarantee she feels the same.

Also the debt pay down date is close enough where I don't feel like I need to think about how much we'll put towards debt for another 2 years.

Horking Delight posted:

I'd just like to reiterate that you asked what I would do in your situation.

What I posted was a budget tailored to my spending style and my preferences, but with your income and expenses, and the only reason it's even got that many categories is because I literally copy/pasted them and shuffled them around while trying to figure out how much you actually spend. It would work for me because I know I won't end up in a situation like "I'm out of food money 3 days in because I spent it on a bunch of alcohol instead" and because I don't have a problem with impulse purchases. My actual budget is very simple because the way I look at money is very simple. Necessities get paid immediately. Wants have to fit in the budget. Very few things are necessities.

The informal budget categories I use for my own finances are "fixed expenses" (need), "cash" (want), "misc online" (want) (I actually use this to make my total budget a round number), "large purchases" (want), "other necessities/expenses" (need). I don't have any other categories. I literally cannot tell you what I spent my categories on 3 months ago, short of "cash is pretty much always food and going out", and "misc online is pretty much always Amazon junk and video games". "Other necessities/expenses" is for tracking (NO FUN STUFF, one-off bills only) and doesn't affect my spending in other categories. "Large purchases" was added when I got a raise at work. Nothing else in my budget has changed in the last five years (I'm due for a cost of living adjustment, though) and this way I don't have to track details, just "how many times I went to the ATM" and "did I buy something big this month?"

What I personally do is if I want something I can't afford in one month's "large purchases" category, I save the amount in that category until I have enough. If I don't want anything in a month/don't have anything I'm saving for, then the money "disappears" into savings and can't be spent on wants anymore.

This method works for me because I don't have a spending problem, I have very few unexpected expenses, and also because I'm super lazy and not going to loving micromanage categories.

You will almost definitely have to figure out a set of rules for yourself and "I get everything I need immediately and don't always get what I want" is 100% for sure, definitely not going to work for you because you're not good at separating out your wants from your needs, and your wants + needs (counting debt repayment) exceed your monthly income by a lot.

EDIT: ^ Giraffe's post is great. All people can do is tell you what they do, and give some suggestions for ways you can do things that might help for you/how you like to do things, but we're still at the "finding something that works for you" stage and we've been at that stage for basically two years at this point.

I thought the budget you posted looked very nice for our situation. I think we'll roll with it, just want to make sure my wife likes it first. I think my wife and I can come up with the rest of the rules. Groceries will still be something to look out for.

OK so we'll move forward with the budget posted, or something very closely resembling it. I'll enroll in some therapy shortly for some better thinking habits, the debt pay down date is still August 2017 even with the new budget, and I can still try to get us out of debt by the end of the year by coming under budget, but without the pressure of expectation. Sounds good.

I still want to get to some posts previous to this. I'll likely do so after I get home (since I'm driving again, woo hoo).

edit: yeah the budget posted or something resembling it is more correct. I will look over some historical variable cost data to make sure that like, $100 for the baby is enough. We usually do $200 for that, since diapers are expensive. A rollover made it only $100 this month.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Feb 19, 2016

# ? Feb 18, 2016 23:42

100 degrees Calcium: Jan 23, 2011

Normally I'd say it doesn't make sense to just copy a budget someone else made, but you're not going to follow it either way so go crazy I guess.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 00:36

SiGmA_X: May 3, 2004; SiGmA_X

I ... Think we've covered individual and combined categories before. I definitely have. My ex and I had our own categories with $X, and we'd split it as applicable: personal care, clothing, electronics (only under me!), blow( & alcohol for her), dining, etc. But it all rolled up to one monthly amount. I wouldn't want to clear that I can buy a new suit if we had a joint $X clothing, but when I've been accruing my spending money for a few months and buy two suits or a new server, no biggy.

Find shrink and go from there good sir. It will provide an amazing improvement in quality of life and relationships.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 00:51

khysanth: Jun 10, 2009; Still love you, Homar

e- snip

khysanth fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Feb 22, 2016

# ? Feb 19, 2016 00:58

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

GlitchThief posted:

Normally I'd say it doesn't make sense to just copy a budget someone else made, but you're not going to follow it either way so go crazy I guess.

It's close but I'm not sure it's perfect without a little cost analysis, as I mentioned. Good on Horking in my opinion (and thanks). Perhaps he's just talented at seeing what a good budget is for people. I can say with certainty that just thinking about moving to it right now has decreased my stress level to something I haven't felt in a long while.

Anyway here's February's progress since we're finishing this one up and there's only 11 days left.

http://i.imgur.com/1wIr4nt.png

http://i.imgur.com/IOCwIQx.png

I don't know why it says we made $10,000. I can only assume it counts the additional debt payment we took from March (that ironically is going right back to March), and some January and December rollover or something.

Water is so variable. Average spent is $41.39, but this month it was $50.90. I don't feel like we used more water on anything. I'll check out my YNAB 4 data and see what's going on.

I'll move around money a little more for February to get the budget down to 0 without taking from the debt paydown category, and then I'll move on to the more reasonable budget.

SiGmA_X posted:

I ... Think we've covered individual and combined categories before. I definitely have. My ex and I had our own categories with $X, and we'd split it as applicable: personal care, clothing, electronics (only under me!), blow( & alcohol for her), dining, etc. But it all rolled up to one monthly amount. I wouldn't want to clear that I can buy a new suit if we had a joint $X clothing, but when I've been accruing my spending money for a few months and buy two suits or a new server, no biggy.

Find shrink and go from there good sir. It will provide an amazing improvement in quality of life and relationships.

Yes I remember the haircut category for the ex. I guess I've always been afraid to budget something above rice and beans type levels in there. Then we'll just blow the budget because I'm wearing holey jeans (as I am right this moment).

Even with this discretionary I will be trying to shop frugally. But that's just it, "trying". I can actually make a choice with a budget like this. Holy crap.

This is the pattern I think:
- Cut hard. If repeat the thread gets mad at me, I get mad at the thread.
- Fail eventually: I'm tired of holey crotch jeans. I don't want to deal with a walking or biking work commute anymore. I'm tired of my computer crashing and the absurd noise because it's old. Remedy problem.
- Screw it we failed on the above, let's spend $600 on restaurants since the damage of failing is done.
- Ignore the budget.
- Realize we're doing this for reason.
- Back to step 1.

New pattern?:
- Cut optionally.
- There's leeway nearly every month, and I won't have to wear holey jeans for a day longer than I want to.
- Back to step 1.

I've made up my mind though. We'll roll over discretionary every month. Either of us can always choose to throw that money at debt, and it can be used for emergency savings if needed. We'll roll up Christmas and birthdays into there so too much thought doesn't have to go into it. We'll leave the choice at the end of the month to roll over a portion and throw a portion at debt if we want (since it's a discretionary decision). I can buy a gaming pc or Camaro if I want, and I should actually have a budget for it. I probably wouldn't have gone so all out if I could have said: "I have $1,500, or $2000 I can do this with" or whatever.

I really like it. I do feel less stressed out about it all. Maybe I've just accepted being honest with myself a little bit?

bringer posted:

Why not use your impulsiveness to actually get rid of the sand rail / Baja Bug now instead of procrastinating again? Show us that good side you talked to your psychologist about. You've been carting this thing around for a year or more with multiple attempts to sell it, and I think you even included the sale revenue in your budgeting once or twice.

JUST SELL IT.

Fine I'll work on it tomorrow night.

khysanth posted:

e: snip

Ah, charity. I may want to add that, too, since we currently have some. But I may just consider that discretionary and then I could donate more if I wanted to.

I'll do a little more category analysis. But just a little more analysis I'm feeling good about this right now.

Giraffe posted:

Different people handle budgeting differently, so I don't think you're going to get a single answer. Personally, I need quite a bit of simplification in my budget or else it doesn't impact the majority of my spending decisions. And I think that's a key point that sometimes gets lost in the minutiae of setting and maintaining and reconciling a budget: the ultimate purpose of a budget is to manage/limit your spending. Just planning it out and tracking it doesn't really accomplish much if you don't ever modify your spending in response. It's fun and exciting to talk yourself into a really aggressive budget that will help you knock down debt really quickly, but that may actually be counterproductive, as you haven't made a plan you can actually live under for more than a short period of time.

Ultimately, I think the spending decisions we make fall into five categories:

Fixed (rent, some bills, subscriptions, etc.)
Variable necessities (groceries, utilities, gas, etc.)
Monthly discretionary (restaurants, small household stuff, treats/luxuries)
Longer-term discretionary (clothes, Christmas gifts, car repairs, travel)
Savings/Debt reduction

The last two are both savings, just earmarked differently. Most people track these things at a finer scale than this, but I'd argue it doesn't actually matter if your unexpected $300 expense was for work clothes or for car repairs: you need to have the money in hand when poo poo happens, and to do that you need to know how much you can safely spend on day to day bullshit so you have it left over to set aside every monthly. How do you decide if you can afford Starbucks or shelf paper at Target or ice cream cones for your daughter at any given moment? That's what your budget should ultimately be telling you. Either because you've allocated money in a specific category and you know you haven't yet exceeded it or because you keep an eye on the overall running total of monthly discretionary and you know where you're at in general. I'm a big fan of the latter because it actually works for me, but other people find it too amorphous. Either is fine, or something else entirely, you just need to know what works for you.

This is all just a very wordy way of saying to not just focus on the planning side, but also on the execution. Pay attention to what's going through your mind when you spend money, and try to figure out what information you need to keep in the back of your head to know when you have a few extra bucks to spend vs. needing to be conservative to compensate for other stuff that came up.

So you literally have 5 categories, and no subcategories? I think I need more detail than that, but I believe our current detail is too much, also.

BarbarianElephant posted:

Don't buy a house, Knyteguy. You don't have the loose cash for it, and you aren't sure that you will even stay in the area.

Well... not right now. I mean I'm thinking at the minimum 2 years in the future. But like yeah I was thinking at least $10,000 in a house emergency fund, separate from our core emergency fund.

I dunno I think this is something that can be decided on after we're done with the debt stuff. I'll keep it as my motivation though. If nothing else house/neighborhood hunting has been a fun cheap hobby the past week. I have no intention of buying until we're legitimately ready, and that includes choosing a permanent (5+ years) area, and an emergency fund and down payment. I don't know if that means 2 years or 10, but no harm no foul if we don't actually buy until we're ready.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Feb 22, 2016

# ? Feb 19, 2016 01:37

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

Dwight Eisenhower posted:

Zanthia's post was inspiring for me, so I'm going to chime in with why I budget.

I started working and got a nice income right out the gate in 2003, and I didn't budget my income until 2013. During the intervening 10 years I would spend impulsively, never exceeding my income but never with a plan or purpose in mind, and definitely not with limits on categories. In that time I bought a too expensive car I vaguely needed with a 6.5% interest loan, bought lots of frivolous crap, particularly gaming pcs, bought a second car I didn't need for super cheap that I could fix up and did so, sold it, bought a third that is the best car I've ever owned, but didn't need, and generally just flailed around without any long term plan.

I bought a house with 3% down and a 6.75% loan that I'm still not at 20% LTV on. I had the engine in my too expensive car blow up and had to replace it. I started to put away a tiny bit of money into an post-tax investment account when I got a tax return. I made minimum payments on my mortgage.

In short I was treading water perfectly fine but I wasn't getting anywhere and I certainly wasn't going to be able to stop renting my labor for income in any kind of realistic time frame. In 2013 I started budgeting and I didn't even use it as a restraint at first, I just started by establishing a baseline of what I spend where and how. Looking at my behavior in the past and how it was consuming my income. Since I've started budgeting I've:

- Replaced a failed HVAC system in my house with a higher efficiency unit paid in full up front. I'm saving money every month on utility bills, and I am not paying interest on financing the HVAC system.
- Cut my spending on eating out in at least half, saving $200/month
- Made principal payments on my house every month since January 2015, most of them at least double up the principal contribution of my minimum payment, some of them quadruple it.
- Paid into my post-tax account every month and now I have a decent mid-low 5 figures balance.
- Gone from buying an internal combustion powered toy once every ~18 months to once every 5 years.
- Paid for the internal combustion powered toy up front, again not paying interest.
- Eliminated all interest to all creditors except for the mortgage on the house.
- Once I refinance my minimum payments should be about 2/3rds what they are now for the mortgage.
- At my current rate I can have the house paid off in ~7 years. Without a refinance.
- I've gotten more mature about investing, but still take risks hoping to accelerate my time to financial independence. But I could lose my entire post-tax account and still be very financially healthy overall.

The budget contextualizes all of my behavior every day into my long term plans. I want to have enough passive income that working is an option, not a requirement. I want to spend more time outdoors on adventures instead of cooped up cranking code. And I want to pursue living a lifestyle which I find more moral by producing more of my own food, water, and energy from a green home. My desires are outcomes that are realistic because I have a plan that makes them realistic, and the budget is the biggest part of that plan that makes getting to that outcome a realistic goal instead of a pie in the sky desire.

Those things won't happen because I sit around hoping they happen, they'll only happen after spending multiples of years putting in work to make them reality.

Zanthia posted:

I don't know if any of this will speak to you, but I didn't always budget. I actually only started budgeting in 2013. It's the best decision I've made since getting married, and it has actually made me better at planning in general.

I don't play games with my budget or try to make the numbers look better than they are. I don't hide anything there, even when I don't like what the numbers say. My budget is for my benefit. The budget is the expected spending, and the expenses are the honest truth.

I had to adjust the budget several times during the first year, but after 3 years, everything fits. I've learned more about my spending habits from my budget than from anything else I've done. You should be learning from yours. My budget is NOT a challenge. It's not a goal. It's an accurate reflection of where I expect my money to go, based on where my money has gone before and what my priorities are.

Why I budget now:
- My parents don't have retirement accounts. I'll feel like a failure if I can't help them after they spent their best years raising me.
- I need to be able to provide for my family no matter what. Medical expenses for my family were $15.44 for all of 2015. Medical expenses for my family for 2016 SO FAR are $2k and I'm expecting to spend another $6k this year. Emergencies happen and I really like not having to worry about how I would pay for these things if I somehow lost my job or couldn't work.
- I want to track progress toward my goals. (My goals still change a lot. Way more often than my budget does.)
- I want to buy things using money I already have.
- I don't want to spend ALL of my money on things. (And I would. I would buy all of the books. I am a book hoarder.)
- I have to prevent lifestyle creep when I get raises. I completely fall into this trap when I don't track it.
- I like seeing where money actually went in past years.

Things our budget has prevented:
- Buying a new car we didn't need.
- Buying a new house we couldn't afford. (The bank said we could afford it, but the budget said otherwise. We trusted the budget.)
- Eating out for lunch every day. (We still budget 2 meals out per week.)
- Keeping our old house after we moved out of it. (I was emotionally attached but it wasn't working in the budget.)
- Using Amazon Fresh for lazy grocery deliveries.

Things our budget has enabled, stress-free:
- We wanted to move to a place with a better commute in a better neighborhood, with the new rent being $1,000/month higher.
- We fully funded IRAs every year since we started budgeting.
- We fully funded HSAs and 401ks in 2015 (based on goon suggestions).
- We replaced 3 computers.
- We saved over $60k in non-retirement money. It was earmarked for a house down payment, but now that we have it, we aren't sure we want to spend it right away.
- We paid off two college educations. That's $56,000 that we paid off within 3 years (also based on goon suggestions).
- We bought a PS4 and a WiiU for entertainment when we had to live in one room for 2 months because an injured pet required constant supervision. (He's fine now.)

I think if you spent more time listening to people's advice here (the normal sane advice, anyway), you'd be in much better shape. At least for me, it turned out that budgeting was more about the journey than the destination. It was the journey that made me better with money. You're missing all of the scenery because you're focused on chasing the horizon.

Thanks your for sharing your experiences. Can I ask something of both or either of you? Did you cut very hard to do this, or did you go with something that could be considered reasonable? Rice and beans, or cutting caramel macchiatos? Or did you just start paying attention and noticed stuff that wasn't very worthwhile? Did you cut naturally over time, or did you stay roughly where you were when you started? Was it just cutting the big decisions for the most part while sticking to your average in others? Do you always come in under budget?

n8r posted:

KG has tried every budgeting trick in the world and he's failed at every single one of them to varying degrees. The thing with KG that is so compelling is how close he is to 'getting it'. The last big flame out with the car / gaming PC is why most of the long time posters in this thread have encouraged/demanded therapy.

I think KG has some mental health related stuff going, that unless it's treated, he is bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over. His wife should also be participating in KG's therapy, and probably be seeing someone herself, at least because she has been complicit in supporting his actions.

The grand ideas and big posts combined with impulsive money spending looks a lot like someone with manic tendencies. Combine this with substance abuse issues and it's a perfect storm for someone blowing their budget in big, poorly thought out chunks. I say this from a person who has a lot of experience myself with all this stuff. You may not need medicine and you may not need long term therapy, but you do need someone to evaluate you. You should be looking for a psychiatrist and a psychologist at the same time as they handle two sides of the same poo poo.

I'm probably coming off as manic now. I dunno I don't think I have manic episodes but I'll talk to a therapist about it. I do appreciate when some of you chime in with personal experience. I don't feel so attacked when that happens.

foxatee posted:

"Back in a month?" You were back in 39 minutes!

imabanana posted:

Hey Knyteguy, I think you might like this site:

http://affordanything.com/

This recent post made me think of you a little:

http://affordanything.com/2016/01/26/feeling-overwhelmed-heres-why-simplifying-is-the-smarter-choice/

And her budgeting philosophy:

http://affordanything.com/2013/03/05/anti-budget-or-80-20-budge/

Basically, savings first every month (for you this is debt payment)

Then you live on what is left over.

No more worrying about what is budgeting or how to do it, just:

- Get paid
- Pay your monthly debt (put into savings once debt is gone)
- Pay fixed expenses
- Live on the rest, guilt free

Live your life without worrying about money so much. I'm not saying it's not hard, but it doesn't have to be so complex either.

(This is also good: http://affordanything.com/2015/08/29/the-12-essential-lessons-i-want-to-share-about-money-and-life/)

Cool cool will finish reading the articles before finalizing the budget, thanks.

Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Feb 19, 2016

# ? Feb 19, 2016 02:09

Colin Mockery: Jun 24, 2007; Rawr

Knyteguy posted:

Good on Horking in my opinion (and thanks). Perhaps he's just talented at seeing what a good budget is for people. I can say with certainty that just thinking about moving to it right now has decreased my stress level to something I haven't felt in a long while.

The only thing I did was take your categories, squish similar ones together, rearrange them a little, and then throw padding around variable expenses (and fattened discretionary a lot) and round everything to the nearest increment of 100 (or 50 if rounding to 100 looked too big). It wasn't hard and I put very little thought into it aside from "are these basically for same thing" and "does it make sense to make this number bigger". I don't even know what your needs are or how they change over a year. It's literally "your budget, but with fewer categories and bigger numbers".

People have been saying for months (years, even) that you should make a budget and stick to it, AND have been saying to stop doing a binge/starve spending method. I know I've said multiple times that it's better to have a large discretionary that you don't go over than to have a low discretionary that you always break. Budgets are about controlling your spending, so that you can make a plan around it, not about spending the bare minimum.

The only time people get super mad at you is when you disappear and come back later going "I made a huge impulse purchase that's completely hosed up my budget" (and it gets worse if you hide this). If you go over some of your posts in this thread you'll generally see a lot of yelling when you do a big thing that wipes out 1+ months worth of debt paydown (as in, you could have done a month of debt paydown, but instead you bought X), moderate yelling when you impulse buy something smaller but way out of budget, and griping/complaining any time you spend too much of your budget too early or go over a category by more than 50%.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 02:26

bringer: Oct 16, 2005; I'm out there Jerry and I'm LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT

Knyteguy posted:

Yes I remember the haircut category for the ex. I guess I've always been afraid to budget something above rice and beans type levels in there. Then we'll just blow the budget because I'm wearing holey jeans (as I am right this moment).

Even with this discretionary I will be trying to shop frugally. But that's just it, "trying". I can actually make a choice with a budget like this. Holy crap.

This is the pattern I think:
- Cut hard. If repeat the thread gets mad at me, I get mad at the thread.
- Fail eventually: I'm tired of holey crotch jeans. I don't want to deal with a walking or biking work commute anymore. I'm tired of my computer crashing and the absurd noise because it's old. Remedy problem.
- Screw it we failed on the above, let's spend $600 on restaurants since the damage of failing is done.
- Ignore the budget.
- Realize we're doing this for reason.
- Back to step 1.

New pattern?:
- Cut optionally.
- There's leeway nearly every month, and I won't have to wear holey jeans for a day longer than I want to.
- Insert some guilt free spending, no more "we need to cut!", instead it's "we may cut optionally".
- Back to step 1.

This is because you have been stating that your goals are to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Those goals are not compatible with your spending, so people tell you to cut cut cut. Remember the exercise a while back about realigning your stated goals with your actions? If your goal is to pay down your debt gradually while enjoying a certain quality of life then that's fine, that might not be what Money Mustache dude and a legion of bloggers recommend but gently caress them. You're the one who has to live your life. Being out of debt is (probably) a great feeling, but being able to leave the city every weekend for a hike in the mountains was more important to me than paying my student loans down faster so I bought a car. I don't need it to get to work but I wanted it for the opportunities it creates.

Figure out what you need to be happy then create your budget around that.

Knyteguy posted:

Fine I'll work on it tomorrow night.

Awesome, throw it up on the Vegas Craigslist too.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 02:26

n8r: Jul 3, 2003; I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar

bringer posted:

This is because you have been stating that your goals are to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Those goals are not compatible with your spending, so people tell you to cut cut cut. Remember the exercise a while back about realigning your stated goals with your actions? If your goal is to pay down your debt gradually while enjoying a certain quality of life then that's fine, that might not be what Money Mustache dude and a legion of bloggers recommend but gently caress them.

I do not agree with that sentiment. KG has tried the whole range of super hardcore cheap budgets, and budgets with lots of 'room' in them, he has not succeeded long term with any of them.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 05:11

Zanthia: Dec 2, 2014

Knyteguy posted:

Thanks your for sharing your experiences. Can I ask something of both or either of you? Did you cut very hard to do this, or did you go with something that could be considered reasonable? Rice and beans, or cutting caramel macchiatos? Or did you just start paying attention and noticed stuff that wasn't very worthwhile? Did you cut naturally over time, or did you stay roughly where you were when you started? Was it just cutting the big decisions for the most part while sticking to your average in others? Do you always come in under budget?

Since I started budgeting, I've never made hard cuts. Frankly, I don't have that kind of discipline. I started by just tracking my spending. After 3 months of tracking, I built a budget based on what I had been spending and how comfortable I felt about that spending. In the first year, I tweaked categories based on continued expense tracking. It's probably the laziest way to start a budget, but it worked for me.

I made some cuts over time naturally. Nothing drastic. I gradually became more aware of my impulse spending and set goals like "Don't buy more books." I've never tried to make cuts on basics like water usage, gas, or pet supplies. I treat those as fixed costs based on the max I've spent on them in the past. However, I know that's a luxury. If having an extra $100/month would be a big deal in the budget, then things like water and power usage matter a lot more.

I haven't always come in under budget. I've had to bump up some categories to make them more realistic, especially vet costs as my pets have gotten older. But it's rare for me to exceed my budget in any category anymore.

This is basically how I budget:

bringer posted:

Figure out what you need to be happy then create your budget around that.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 06:07

Old Fart: Jul 25, 2013

STOP EVEN THINKING ABOUT THINKING OF BUYING A HOUSE!

Put it out of your head entirely. Even flirting with maybe starting to consider thinking about it is dangerous. That's how you end up in too little and too lovely of a house far too soon in an area you don't really want for way too much money and way too high of an interest rate.

First you get the money. Then you start thinking about what you want in a house.

You're not even at the starting line of getting the money.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 08:58

Robo Boogie Bot: Sep 4, 2011

Therapy therapy therapy. Your budgeting is not going to get better until you begin to learn how to control your impulsiveness. Just pick a therapist and go.

Excuses that we dispelled months ago:

-You don't need your physical insurance card to use health services.
-You don't need to find a specialist financial counselor, those don't exist.
-Nearly anyone you meet is going to be familiar with cycles of trying to control impulsivity followed by guilt and increased reckless behavior.
-You can use your flex time or sick time to accommodate day time appointments.

Do you have a new excuse this time?

# ? Feb 19, 2016 15:31

Veskit: Mar 2, 2005; I love capitalism!! DM me for the best investing advice!

Knyteguy posted:

Ok. I'll give it some more thought. What that means is I'll do it .

What is there to think about with talking to a psychiatrist? Are you having problems finding one? What kind? Are you confused with what order, or what they do anything like that? What's going on?

# ? Feb 19, 2016 16:01

BarbarianElephant: Feb 12, 2015; The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Knyteguy posted:

If nothing else house/neighborhood hunting has been a fun cheap hobby the past week. I have no intention of buying until we're legitimately ready, and that includes choosing a permanent (5+ years) area, and an emergency fund and down payment. I don't know if that means 2 years or 10, but no harm no foul if we don't actually buy until we're ready.

You are impulsive. If you are looking, you will eventually find *the perfect house* that you can't possibly pass up, and *must* have. It's like a dog-lover going into the pet shop just to "look at the puppies" - you know that person is walking out with a puppy.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 16:15

spwrozek: Sep 4, 2006; Sail when it's windy

But a house with zero % down just so the thread explodes.

Seriously though put money into category, spend that money or less. Repeat.

Stop looking at houses.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 16:32

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

BarbarianElephant posted:

You are impulsive. If you are looking, you will eventually find *the perfect house* that you can't possibly pass up, and *must* have. It's like a dog-lover going into the pet shop just to "look at the puppies" - you know that person is walking out with a puppy.

I can't afford the house I can't possibly pass up.

spwrozek posted:

But a house with zero % down just so the thread explodes.

Seriously though put money into category, spend that money or less. Repeat.

Stop looking at houses.

Well I have the credit score for a 3.5% FHA loan now. Actually I have a 635 FICO now better than the minimum requirements of 580. Plus there are grants here in NV that will offer a $2,000 tax credit on interest paid towards a mortgage, and also pay up to like $10,000 of a down payment for home buyers making $95,000 or less (household I believe).

So let's see we have about $7000 sitting in an account. That's a $17,000 down payment, plus $20,000 from my grandma. I'll go a little conservative and set my sights on something for a million bucks, since that's actually 3.7% of the down payment (I'm a financially wise guy trust me).

So $1,000,000. $5600/mo mortgage including PMI and home insurance (see you have to plan for the escrow, don't buy too much house), but I've gotta include that tax credit. $5433.33 after that's applied. With my wife's two additional paychecks our income rises to roughly $5863 conservatively. All we need to do is cut all expenses to $400/mo (I'm again being conservative here there's like $20 in wiggle room), and we're set. Shoot wait I need to include 1% of home maintenance costs per year. Well that's an additional $833.33/mo but I'll make it work somehow. Home equity loans something something. Plus I'm sure the seller's inspector will catch all the potential problems so I'll just trust them.

Here's a home kind of close to that range. It's not quite the most house we could buy, which is disappointing.
http://reno.craigslist.org/reb/5442145942.html

It's outside of Carson City, but I can handle a 1.5 hour each way commute. The Camaro has 170,000 miles which is far below the average 15,000/yr, so obviously it can be trusted no problem. And, look it's right on the river I'll fish every day and we won't need groceries. I should become a financial planner.

OK my bad joke has run long enough.

Old Fart posted:

STOP EVEN THINKING ABOUT THINKING OF BUYING A HOUSE!

Put it out of your head entirely. Even flirting with maybe starting to consider thinking about it is dangerous. That's how you end up in too little and too lovely of a house far too soon in an area you don't really want for way too much money and way too high of an interest rate.

First you get the money. Then you start thinking about what you want in a house.

You're not even at the starting line of getting the money.

Yeah fair enough. I want something perfect for us, not something we can just call ours. If everyone thinks it's such a terrible idea I'll drop it for now.

bringer posted:

This is because you have been stating that your goals are to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Those goals are not compatible with your spending, so people tell you to cut cut cut. Remember the exercise a while back about realigning your stated goals with your actions? If your goal is to pay down your debt gradually while enjoying a certain quality of life then that's fine, that might not be what Money Mustache dude and a legion of bloggers recommend but gently caress them. You're the one who has to live your life. Being out of debt is (probably) a great feeling, but being able to leave the city every weekend for a hike in the mountains was more important to me than paying my student loans down faster so I bought a car. I don't need it to get to work but I wanted it for the opportunities it creates.

Figure out what you need to be happy then create your budget around that.

Awesome, throw it up on the Vegas Craigslist too.

Yeah I'm giving this some thought on the happiness aspect. I figure even if we budget high and comfortable, we can come in under budget for additional payments some months. I'll likely have a finished budget today. Something we can roll with for the rest of the year or more, since extra income can go into debt.

Alright I'll post it in Vegas, too. I wish I knew the market even slightly on these things, because I believe a sand blast and powder coat would be worth the cost on the frame, but I can't find any information on it. I'll just list it as is at $1000 obo and see what happens. I see people towing rails all the time so they are being bought, and most frame plans I believe need to be mandrel bent and welded by hand so they're not the easiest thing to custom build. The baja bug may be worth more than the rail, too. There's some vintage panels and stuff in there. We'll see.

Veskit posted:

What is there to think about with talking to a psychiatrist? Are you having problems finding one? What kind? Are you confused with what order, or what they do anything like that? What's going on?

What I mean is I'll do it, but I don't want to share the details with the thread. I'll hit you up specifically in PMs if I feel like I could use some additional input. Work for you?

# ? Feb 19, 2016 17:33

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Knyteguy posted:

So you literally have 5 categories, and no subcategories? I think I need more detail than that, but I believe our current detail is too much, also.

We use those five categories to track our spending from month to month. How much did we spend on the normal expected stuff vs. unexpected necessities (e.g. a car repair) vs. purely discretionary. Tracking this helps us set the single number that actually impacts most of our spending decisions, the monthly discretionary. That number we watch throughout the month and analyze in detail at the end of each month. I have an Excel spreadsheet with two tabs: a monthly list of all discretionary purchases over ~$10 and a single-line summary for the month of our income and spending in all the major categories. This way we can see trends: are we saving as much as we want? If not, why? If our monthly discretionary is out of whack, I can pop over to the list and see where it went. It distills down the key parts we care about without a lot of fussy accounting, which I hate. It wouldn't work for everyone, particularly if one person tended to overspend more frequently, but it's worked well for us.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 19:46

Knyteguy: Jul 6, 2005; YES to love
NO to shirts; Toilet Rascal

code:

Income: 5700
Total Expenses: 4700
Debt Payment Minimum: 1000/mo, paid at the beginning of the month

Additional income to debt

Fixed Expenses:
1100 Housing
540 Daycare
350 Utilities (Electric, Water, Internet, Phone)
350 Transportation (Insurance, fuel)
100 Subscriptions
20 Home insurance
40 Slush (to make it an even number)

Subtotal: 2500

Other Expenses:
200 Pets
200 Car (registration, maintenance, new purchase, whatever)
100 Medical
200 Home Goods (incl diapers, furniture, anything from Target/Home Depot except groceries or toys)
500 Grocery

Subtotal: 1200

Discretionary (toys and consumables for the household, also covers haircuts, clothing, gifts, charity, etc):
400 His
400 Hers
200 Both

Subtotal: 1000

After some thought on all of the input given, that's the budget. I'm legit not changing it again unless income changes down. If I screwed up and missed something then out of (my wife's) discretionary it comes. (just joking it can come out of mine).

My personal rules:
* These are maximum spending limits, not minimums, or goals, or challenges.
* I will not adjust the budget numbers for 3 months to see how my expectations meet with reality. I may subcategorize if the total is the same.

* Debt payments on the 1st of the month.
* Extra debt payments go to the car to start.
* Categories are to be tracked accurately.
* I will do my best to come under budget every month.
* Business ventures will come out of my discretionary, and I will pay myself back out of business income, if any.
* I may adjust the budget for quarters, weeks, or months as a multiplier if decided.

Final finito fin~ this is March's budget. This right here is what I decided will make me happy.

Now I was reading that afford anything blog posted at the top of this page, and he or she is like hey you're spending too much loving time thinking about the budget you dorkus loving stop that and refocus. Good point. So I'm going to do so. My energy will be spent better elsewhere than trying to figure out what the stupid budget should be (like sticking to it). Like this weekend I'll see what else I can sell along with the sand rail. We could use a good decluttering since my baby turned 1 today, and a lot of his infant stuff is no longer useful.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 20:40

Colin Mockery: Jun 24, 2007; Rawr

You need more medical for therapy. Cut your income by putting it into HSA (for the tax advantage, isnt it pretax money?) and use HSA for paying therapist.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:11

Veskit: Mar 2, 2005; I love capitalism!! DM me for the best investing advice!

Knyteguy posted:

What I mean is I'll do it, but I don't want to share the details with the thread. I'll hit you up specifically in PMs if I feel like I could use some additional input. Work for you?

Not sharing the details is usually how something ends up a disaster. I wouldn't be so pushy if you weren't so open about sharing the details of seeing a therapist, I'm just lost at the part where you see a psychiatrist that makes you want to close down.

I mean yeah you can PM me but again I think openness and honesty will be the path to success.

Horking Delight posted:

You need more medical for therapy. Cut your income by putting it into HSA (for the tax advantage, isnt it pretax money?) and use HSA for paying therapist.

Way more for therapy/psychiatrist. I doubt it's only going to be 25 a week and even if it was only 25 a week you still need to add more for everything else.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 21:19

Series DD Funding: Nov 25, 2014; by exmarx

The number sounds fine to me depending on his health insurance

# ? Feb 19, 2016 22:02

SiGmA_X: May 3, 2004; SiGmA_X

Post the rail with a price of 1 and an "OBO 1500" in the ad or something. Or you know, search and see what people list them for and what they sell for on eBay...

# ? Feb 20, 2016 01:29

n8r: Jul 3, 2003; I helped Lowtax become a cyborg and all I got was this lousy avatar

If you bought the right house that appraises for more than you pay for it, you could use your 'instant equity' to pay off the car. I think you should keep crunching the numbers bro! Who knew that 6 figure purchase for a person who is worse than broke can be the best financial choice you've ever made!

# ? Feb 20, 2016 03:49

Dwight Eisenhower: Jan 24, 2006; Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Knyteguy posted:

Thanks your for sharing your experiences. Can I ask something of both or either of you? Did you cut very hard to do this, or did you go with something that could be considered reasonable? Rice and beans, or cutting caramel macchiatos? Or did you just start paying attention and noticed stuff that wasn't very worthwhile? Did you cut naturally over time, or did you stay roughly where you were when you started? Was it just cutting the big decisions for the most part while sticking to your average in others? Do you always come in under budget?

For me I started one month of just tracking spending without even doing a budget. I just categorized all the spending in Sept 13 then tried to budget in October. When I had a plan that reflected my non deliberative behavior, I started looking at that plan to answer the question "do I want this to be my reality?"

Restaurant spending dropped first, and usually I'd cut spending ahead of cutting budget, leaving me with a surplus. I'd say my discretionary spending, restaurants, and fuel expenses have all gone down. I've made changes to e.g. FiOS service to free money in the budget, switched insurance carriers, and tweaked other monthly expenses.

About 50% of the time I come in with 0 overspending, the other 50 I overspend on the order of 2% of my budget, which means less to spend next month.

The biggest help has probably been that with a monthly plan in the context of long term goals, opportunistic big spending doesn't happen as much. Used to be if I had a grand or two, I'd buy a gaming PC. My newest PC died in 2009 and I haven't replaced it, instead I dual boot my work laptop to play games. I could totally afford one today, but looking at doing it against my budget means cutting into the categories that help my long term goals. My long term goals are more important than elf tits to me now.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 04:23

imabanana: May 26, 2006

Buy a duplex, rent out the other half, live for (almost) free.

Throw the money you save at debt.

Later, move out, rent both halves.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 05:18

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 29, 2024 16:20

Colin Mockery: Jun 24, 2007; Rawr

Dwight Eisenhower posted:

I could totally afford one today, but looking at doing it against my budget means cutting into the categories that help my long term goals. My long term goals are more important than elf tits to me now.

This is where I one day hope you will be at, Knyte.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 06:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Knyteguy's Finances: More harebrained schemes than a sitcom dad

«‹›179 »