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One thing you should do is plan some discretionary spending for both you and your wife. Then everything that's not an already agreed-upon budget item that either of you want comes from that money. PS4 games would be a good example of that. For example, every payday we take out $50/pay in cash. She gets $20, I get $20, and our son gets $10. It's a game changer in that I really have to think long and hard about anything fun I want to buy myself because it takes me so long to accrue my money. Am I really going to get $80 worth of fun out of <electronic gismo>? Does my wife really want those shoes? (The answer is yes, money burns a hole in her pocket) This year I've been really good about saving my blow money, income from side jobs, or any other acquired money (birthdays, etc). I blew a huge chunk of it on an RC truck setup that I now pretty much regret, but it wasn't a burden to our finances because it was my money to do what I decided with it. My latest big purchase was ~$300 worth of supplies to refurnish a pool table (which I still haven't done), I'm hoping I won't regret that too.
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Nov 20, 2013 21:35
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Knyteguy posted:Rent problem: Is there CYS involvement with these children? If so, does the CYS agency have legal custody (i.e. court granted CYS agency legal custody, they placed the children where they are currently now - I'm not sure who we're talking about)? If so, these things take time. If the goal is adoption for the children and the parents aren't having any regular visits with them, typically there aren't too many issues if the court can prove the parent's aren't trying to get their kids back. It's just a long process to terminate parental rights. I work for a CYS agency but don't do casework, so I don't know all the ins and outs but I have an ok understanding of the process. Some other thoughts: Don't buy 4 hubcaps if you don't need 4, we just saved you at least $75. If you're going to sell the car, clean it up first to inspect the damage. If the hubcap isn't really that noticeable with the wheel covers all shined up then I doubt many people would honestly care. You can offer any serious buyers that complain about it that you'll replace it for $25. Very cool of your grandma to offer matching your down payment on a house, I hate to be the gloom and doom guy but it doesn't seem doable at this point. $30k to get out of debt, $20k to save for a down payment, but you're not including a stout emergency fund which should be at least a couple of thousand dollars especially since your current employment situation seems questionable. I'd give your boss the benefit of the doubt for now since it's only three people, but if this problem continues after a few good billable months something is definitely up. Good news though, a number of years ago my wife and I, newly married, dug ourselves out of the same hole as you in just under 2 years making roughly the same (or a little less) takehome than you so it's completely possible, but we were intense about us. It took us 713 days from our wedding date to pay $51,541.87 off (wife's student loans). Over that time we also bought a house and took advantage of the $8k homeowner buyers credit, so we basically broke even on that from money out of pocket. (5% down and closing costs was approximately ~$8-10k, I think which we had saved). So it is possible, but it's a big lifestyle change. You may notice I have it tracked down to the penny, well it was a HUGE milestone for both of us and something I'm very proud of. I had figure out that it somewhere between 30-35% of our takehome pay, which I think is pretty awesome. We're a bit looser with money these days but the basics have still stuck with us, we have no debt other than our house and have enough money to save, buy occasional stupid poo poo, and cashflow fixing up our house. We're also saving for retirement (maybe not quite as much as we should) and have an educational savings plan for our son. All those still come first, then what's left at the end of the month is saved for other purposes. Exactly what wintermuteCF was saying, pay your bills and debts first and what is left is somewhat up to your discretion, I cannot stress this enough. Every time I get paid I will shuffle money around into various accounts to save for future stuff, and pay bills that will come from this money. I don't care if they're not due for 1 day or 15 days, I pay it and get it out of the way. From there, I have a good estimation of "what's left" for agreed-upon discretionary spending. Seriously, this is the easiest thing to do and at least to me, gives the best picture of "what's left after things that I absolutely had to pay". Hopefully once you do this for a while you're going to get to a point where you're watching your finances like a hawk and really thinking before making every purchase. Skip buying a soda at the store, don't buy the new release movie, and see what happens. Eventually you'll look at your end of month finances and see money left over. This is extra you can put in emergency savings and throw at your debt. It becomes kind of a game.
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Nov 22, 2013 14:42
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You should count your blessings that slow motion is the current subforum whipping boy because you're asking for it, though you don't come off arrogant or anything so I think that helps your cause to. First off, the ~$1000 of money blown on stuff on a whim absolutely has to stop. Think of it this way. In that one month, you could have been 1/20th of the way to your house down payment goal. I'm not saying you can't ever buy a video game system again or rocksmith or whatever, but there is no such thing as "extra money" sitting in your bank account begging to be spent while your job is arguably unstable AND you're in a good amount of debt. You want a fun, shiny new toy? Save for it slowly. The PS4 is an excellent example, the pricing has been released for probably at least half a year. You should have been setting aside $60/mo and you could had had enough money for the system and a couple games. This has many benefits because it forces you to save money for something you want, so when you do decide to buy it, it doesn't effect your overall financial picture for that month. Also, once you've done this a while and you have a cool $600 sitting around, you might think "Hey, I don't really have enough time to get $600 out of a new game system right now anyway, I think I'll throw that money at my debt". Best case scenario right now is that you continue to get paid at your job and fumble along treading water financially. Worst case is that you need to find a new job quick, and you don't have any emergency savings to hold you over until you can find something else, racking up more debt in the process. Knyteguy posted:I figure like someone else mentioned, we can use our house savings as an emergency fund in the worst case scenario. Before we actually put money down on a house, we can meet our goals and save up another emergency/house fund. At least that's what we were thinking. This is fine, so long as you know if (by some miracle from how things look right now) you hit your $20k savings goal, that doesn't mean it's time to buy a house. It means "Well poo poo I probably should save up another $5-10k for an actual emergency fund." Seriously, home ownership is so expensive it will make your head spin, especially in your current state of mind of "I deserve to have X and Y", a house would just be another reason for you guys to overspend. Read the "Do never buy" home buying thread in here as well. quote:Well we put another $40 towards the truck which is something I guess, and insurance pulled out. We don't budget until we're pretty drat close to our paydays, so we won't have much to post budget wise until Monday when I get paid. Everything else has pretty much come out automatically and drained us. We definitely wait until the last minute to pay bills, but generally that's because of auto deduction. We both have direct deposit, which until this week has meant we know exactly when the money will be coming. You have to realize that since most of your bills are skewed towards one paycheck does not mean "pretty much all of this paycheck will be free for whatever." What YNAB is trying to get you to is having a generous buffer in your bank account to "live on last months pay". I've gotten to a point where I'm doing the same in practice about the same thing, but just because I've slowly built up a healthy buffer in our checking account. For a while $1000 was my zero balance, I treated $1300 in checking as $300. Then we got married and it was $2k, over time we've had some fatter (and leaner) months and now it's just "whatever", they last time we were below $4k in checking was the beginning of september when our mortgage came out, and we were at $3975 until the next day when our paychecks were depostied. In my opinion auto-pay bills are not good for the person starting out with their budget. I want you to have an active role planning/budgeting/paying your bills so it becomes second nature. Your auto-pay bills are the exact opposite of that, they are easy to forget and when that stuff happens you overdraw your account or simply have less money left over at the end of the month. Get a buffer, pay your bills ahead with your fat paycheck period to even things out. Get involved. quote:Also I swear State Farm is loving us. Our insurance went up $13.00 for no reason that I can figure out. We've been with them for years, and my wife for even longer. Insurance budget went up to $184.84 from $171.85 last month. It seems like we get rate increases pretty often from them, so I'll be watching this closely in the months to come Shop around, car insurance companies like to raise your premiums, I think when swapping cars is how they manage to pad that in there. One of my friends basically changes insurance every year (he buys a lot of cars), goes from state farm to progressive and back. Another money-saving thing I've been doing this year is taking all my large, non-monthly bills (life insurance, car insurance, heating oil, wood pellets) and added them up for the year, then estimated how much I needed to put aside every paycheck to cover these bills when they come up. Last month I bought $500 of wood pellets and it had no effect on my monthly financials because the money was there in another account, I bought it with my card, then transferred the money to checking to reimburse myself. It's been really helpful not having to worry that December is Xmas AND car insurance month, for instance.
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Nov 25, 2013 16:47
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Danger, danger forums poster knyteguy. I'm not trying to stop anyone doing exercise but you should probably start as cheaply as possible and go from there. Go for walks/runs, you're out the cost of a new pair of sneakers if you don't have something suitable already. MAYBE buy a used set of P90x dvds or something from craiglist. IF you keep up with it, and that's a big if considering the time of year, in a few months of regularly incorporating exercise into your daily routine I think you could think about doing a gym membership or getting a home gym. Exercise equipment has to be one of the biggest wastes of money for 90% of people who buy them. It's typically not super cheap and you have to stick it somewhere. Baby steps, dude.
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Nov 26, 2013 14:29
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Knyteguy posted:Ah we probably should have checked Amazon. It would have saved us some money plus tax. Dorcousa dot com for razors, both my wife and I use them, no complaints. We use amazon for diapers and paper towels, all our other stuff is cheaper at sam's club we've found. Pity because you get some good discounts on subscribe and save with multiple orders shipping out.
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Dec 2, 2013 02:22
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Don't get too worked up, SlowMo riled everyone up in BFC and then took his ball and went home so there is no one left to gang up on. Everyone with a thread in this subforum gets a bunch of verbal abuse at one time or another, just hold on because you'll probably be getting it for a while as you're the only one with an active thread and questionable spending decisions. I'm not going to tell you to return the PS4. I just want you to think about your purchases you've already made and use that information to drive your future purchases. I can't tell you how many times I've bought "new fun stuff" and at one time or another regretted it. Rocksmith/bass guitar would have been a prime example of something I would have wasted money on and then regretted it a month later. I have, in fact, bought a guitar and accessories before and ended up selling it at a big loss. You just need to slowly change your thinking to "what are the chances I'm going to get $X amount of use out of this?"
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Dec 3, 2013 21:59
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Knyteguy posted:[*]We're paying off my wife's (in collections) Wells Fargo credit card in 5 days. $1000.00 in debt gone. This is all good stuff, I just wanted to make sure you were going to get the above in writing. It seems different that you're actually dealing with Wells Fargo and not a collections agency, but the principals should be the same. Always get it in writing that $XXXX is going to satisfy your account balance, then keep that piece of paper forever. Collection agencies in the past have been known to do similar and then come back at you for more for the same debt since the payoff wasn't in writing. Regarding your credit score, just paying your vehicle loans will help, and if you have any remaining credit cards other than wells fargo (which sound like it's closed), keep them active and maybe use them occasionally for small purchases. The only thing to really raise your credit score without crazy gimmicks is a history of paying your bills.
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Dec 19, 2013 14:05
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Old Fart posted:It seems like your wife is all over the place, and suffers from "if only, then..." syndrome. I was married to someone who was always looking at the next thing, couldn't adapt to reality. It was exhausting. Yes. Just last week it was "well maybe she can be a realtor, listen to the best case scenario salaries that she's guaranteed to have". Now it's a dental hygenist. In the thread we've all determined that she's underpaid and should look elsewhere for work, but it seems you guys are looking for an immediate change. Has she sent resumes out? It's been like two or three weeks, chill. Send resume's out, interview around. Find a less lovely job, then see if she's more happy there. Rinse and repeat. Also, you had mentioned a while back about wanting to start a family in a couple of years. So let's say your wife gets a degree to be a dental hygenist for another $20k in student loans and gets pregnant and she wants to stay at home so that shiny new degree (that pays a lot less in your area than the brochure told you) is now useless. You guys gotta think this stuff out. "Going to school" does not directly translate to new, better job a lot of the time. Doesn't your wife have her BA and she's stuck at her lovely job? Slow and steady, dude. Slowly work on improving your situation every day, week, month, year. It doesn't have to be huge leaps of faith to turn your poo poo around.
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Jan 3, 2014 20:48
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Knyteguy posted:Holy poo poo this just furthers my resolve that we need to sell the drat car: That's 2/3 of the interest I pay on my mortgage with a balance that is $90k less. Ouch
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Jan 27, 2014 21:41
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KS posted:These are very good for $40. Just look at those 1500 reviews! The $7 paring knives from the same company aren't bad either. I would like to agree with all this. I think there may have been a thread somewhere in GWS that had kitchen stuff recommendations. Those victorinox knives were recommended by a chef's magazine or something for their price and quality. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I'd like to replace our lovely knife block set with a chef's knife or two, bread knife, and a couple of pairing knives. Throw them up on one of those magnetic racks and I just saved some counter space, too. I guess this is a little more personal preference, but I'm really trying to buy things that are quality and at the same time not buying more than I need. "Stuff" can be overwhelming, especially in the kitchen.
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Jan 30, 2014 14:41
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Knyteguy posted:Hey man gonna get this posted tonight. My wife has mostly been working nights this week so we haven't had much time to get together and do this. If you have a biglots near you, they always have cheap furniture. My sister has bought a few things from them and has had good luck.
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Jun 30, 2014 15:58
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Droo posted:Is that first price just a typo? Is it actually 750/month? I don't know this if this is true, we get $600 back on our taxes for spending over $7000. Maybe because we both work?
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Aug 14, 2014 02:15
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I'm been a spectator to this so far, here are a couple of my thoughts (as if anyone cared) 1. I'm not going to harp on you about the football thing, however it's a treat you want, and it should come from your blow money, which you should save up. How else are you ever going to learn financial discipline? You get $100 a month (BTW my wife and I allot ourselves $40/mo each and it's just fine), that means you just needed 2 months to be able to afford it. You can't go 1 full calendar month without buying something? This sums up your spending issues quite succinctly don't you think? You knew it was coming up, why didn't you save for it? 2. My wife and I ditched cable a while ago and I honestly don't miss football. Granted, I was never a super fan or anything, but I did like to watch games. It's actually fairly liberating because it's one less thing I need to keep up with and stress out over if my team isn't doing well. I miss just being connected with the world of sports in general (aka ESPN), but if I cared enough I could keep in touch just on the web. As a parent and a homeowner, I have things I could be doing otherwise than wasting my saturday/sunday in front of the tv. I am a little weird in that I like getting things done more than watching sports. 3. Definitely no crazy business decisions until after the baby comes. You have no idea what your free time is going to be like, or whether or not you are even going to want to do more work, especially when your kid is 3+ months old and they start to be more interesting as little people. 4. You asked on the last page about what you should do with the big car loan looming over your head, dave ramsey, etc. His logic doesn't apply here, you have two huge lifechanging/costly events coming up (wife not working / baby coming). You need to pile up every last cent you have for the what ifs. If the baby is delivered and it's not as expensive as you thought and your wife not working is going well financially, then hey congrats you have a bunch of money to throw at debt. Until that time, you save your pennies. Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough, is you need to slow down 3000%. Becoming good with money is not a sprint, there are no quick fixes. You don't become automatically good with money by selling your PS4 and having a few thousand dollars in the bank. Historical, repeated success is what you need to strive for. I don't mean to be rude, but all of your posts reek of this. "This is conservatively how much we'll have saved by [MONTH], we'll at least save $XXXXXXXX this month" - NO. You do not count your chickens before they're hatched. It does look like you guys will save a decent amount this month, but you don't pat yourself on the back until you've done a good job. Your posting in the hypotheticals and don't have enough of a track record for us to trust you. And when you are saving a decent amount the real temptation comes in, you want to reward yourself for doing good. That is not how this works. "BUT WE HAVE $5k IN SAVINGS WE DESERVE CUSTOM MAHOGONY UKULELES YOU MONSTERS WE NEED TO LIVE" "I was reading this book and I'm not convinced that I need to expand my business and make all the money ever" - You're again looking for a quick way to make money. NO. Right now you need to be in "Holy poo poo I need to save all my money" mode. You have a large chunk of debt, you have a child on the way and your wife may not return to work. This is absolutely not the time to be thinking about big, life changing events. If you ran with this business you'd convince yourself you need a new computer and business license and then you need to spend all this time doing work which you're not going to have soon with an infant. Make the best of what you have now, i.e. eliminate wasteful spending. Reading up on financial stuff is all well and good, but you're making like 20 posts a day in your thread. Slow your role, guy. People are freaking out because you're doing back of the napkin math and then already planning your future "treats" that you haven't earned yet. It's they same thing that freaked us out with the Tuyop thread, and he even had steady financial progress while talking about buying a Yurt and making GBS threads in a bucket and a new macbook air. SLOW DOWN.
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Aug 18, 2014 14:40
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Your credit score is going to increase just by making regular payments on your car loan regardless of whether or not you have a secured credit card. While I don't think the credit card is a bad idea per-se, it goes right along with my last comment in this thread - you're looking for a quick fix to your financial problems. You're making progress, and it's good progress, but you're not one financial decision away from being good with money, it's a whole bunch of repeated good decisions. Last month's "I should start a business" is this week's "Well we want a house in five years so I'm going to get a credit card ok you guys to raise my score heres my new card what do you think?"
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Sep 3, 2014 19:05
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Knyteguy, I think people are jumping on you because the "things you want" are not budgeted/planned out of your blow money. You're planning to set aside "extra just this once" blow money on top of the $100/mo you're already giving yourself. You can have things. You save your blow money for those things. That's what blow money is for. You don't get get extra blow money just because. I've got $340 in my blow money envelope while accruing $40/month. I don't have time for extra stuff right now, so I don't spend it unless there is something I want.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:11
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I'm coming around a little bit to the other thinking of things. Instead of micromanaging your purchases, I think the recommendation of setting your savings goals first and then you're free to spend whatever else beyond that is worth a shot. That's pretty much how I learned financial discipline - working towards my goals FIRST, then whatever "left over" is discretionary. You're making pretty decent money, and if you want to buy a wireless HDMI thing that's fine. Your savings, like a bill, are something you have to pay, the only exception ever being some sort of unavoidable emergency that you couldn't have planned for. Whenever you get paid, you put X amount aside just like any other bill. Then, when you've hit your savings goal and you don't have other obligations, sure you're allowed to spend money. After you do this for a while, you may notice that if you have $300 left over you'll still want to save a portion of that because it's now habit and you like seeing that bank balance go up vs. chasing the next toy to buy. This is the basics of the dreesemonkey finances plan:
We're afraid that this might lead you to spend left over money just because you have it, even though you've met your savings goal. Which might eventually lead to over-spending, which then leads to robbing from your savings goals.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:03
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I couldn't find the posts about it, what's the details on grandma matching your house down payment or whatever? I'm not going to harp on you for the vacation or PS4, but if the PS4 costs you $500, what percentage is that of the down payment you're supposed to have saved? In other words, if you're supposed to save $10k, that's a full 5% on the down payment you need that you're blowing in one month. Just something to put it in perspective.
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Sep 22, 2014 13:44
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Knyteguy posted:2.5%. We need $20,000. Gma wants to open a joint account and she said she'll match us every dollar up to $20,000. In effect then it is becoming 5% if grandma is planning to match your down payment. I'm not telling you to not take your vacation (I think this is more reasonable than the PS4), but between the vacation and the PS4 you could be 10% of the way to your house down payment IN ONE MONTH. That's pretty incredible. You also have to get a reality check that your baby is going to be born relatively soon (which you've been saving money for - good job) and you're horribly underwater on a car. Baby + horrible car loan + house down payment while your wife stops working is going to make things pretty tight, just so you're aware. n8r posted:This has got to be quite a bit of the frustration that some posters are having currently. The poster who said that Knyteguy is practicing reconciliation not budgeting is darn accurate. This 100%. Your massaging of the numbers to fit whatever plan you just came up with *cough* vacation *cough* is what's frustrating lot's of people. You don't see to be planning far enough ahead. Don't get me wrong, you're putting away a good amount of money right now, but once your wife stops working and the baby is here your income cushion is going to be greatly reduced. You need better long range planning for things since you'll have much less wiggle room soon.
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Sep 22, 2014 17:06
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KnyteWife I'd at least look into state and local government civil service jobs as well. Pay should be reasonable and time off and benefits should be pretty decent. I'm a database developer working for local government and I get almost 6 weeks of vacation a year. Since it's a technical job, pay is fairly meh compared to private sector DB guys, but it's good for the area and the job is very stable and overall really laid back. Worth a look at anyway.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:58
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Knyteguy posted:Like I kind of said guys everything has been a blur since the move. I know it's not a great excuse I know, but it's true. It's been hard to focus on keeping this thread as updated as I've committed to doing, but I'll work on that. "Just wait until the baby comes" - The parent of a 4 week old and 3 year old
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Dec 8, 2014 19:48
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Our 4 week old is on a new formula that is 3x the cost of what started her on  Just hope if you plan on bottle feeding that your baby doesn't have any allergies or digestive issues.
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Dec 10, 2014 14:06
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Just for comparisson sake, my wife is on maternity leave now and it's through short-term disability benefits that our employer offers. She needed to use 1 week of sick time before it kicked in, and then she receives 66% of her pay for the 8 weeks recovery time from a C-section (we got it in one lump-sum check). She is off longer than that, utilizing vacation time and then taking some unpaid to have 12 total weeks off. You guys really should have had all this figured out months ago, TBH :-/
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Dec 30, 2014 17:40
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Knyteguy posted:(not to you slap me silly) Look I have some really loving personal reasons to want to go down here and gas is cheap as hell right now. If you guys remember there was a BFC "allowed" trip back in November that we cancelled, so I was thinking this would take the place of that. I think it's not the right time to do this, and gas prices should not be an excuse to go. Here's some math to show why it's silly to use gas prices as an excuse: Reno to Santa Barbara looks to be about 520 miles, so I'll round up to 1200 total accounting for running around visiting family while you're there. You have a corolla that should get at the very least 30mpg (probably closer to 40mpg to be honest) on a long trip like that. 1200miles/30mpg = 40 gallons of gas total. Let's say you can reliably get $2.50/gallon gas right now. That will be $100 on the nose for gas. If gas jumps back up in 6 months to $3.50/gallon you will pay an extra $40 in gas for the whole trip. If we use 40mpg, which is probably closer to what you would actually get (if you don't get anymore speeding ticket, leadfoot), the difference in cost between gas jumping a dollar would be $30. If saving $30/40 is enough to a deal breaker to make or break a trip, you simply cannot afford it. $40 is nothing, you'd spend more than that on the trip down there just in food.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:23
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Veskit posted:Visiting the grave and planning a road trip before you've had a baby. First it's to see family and friends then the story changes to there's a grave you HAVE to visit which is the linchpin in the entire trip. It's all so out of left field. I've been harping on this point over and over and over again, but you need to learn to sit still, do nothing for some time until the major instability is gone and then plan things out. I'm not going to quote myself but I went back through this thread to find a long-winded post I made very similar to this. I re-read it and still holds up. KG you need to slow down, being good with money is a history of making sound financial decisions over and over again, there is no quick fix.
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Jan 21, 2015 21:29
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KG I've been meaning to post for a while for what's really helped me tremendously with food/grocery budgeting. In short, I simply started counting calories. I'm on a food-budget now. The parallels between dieting and budgeting are pretty much perfect, but the obvious advantages of watching what I eat are:
From your past posts I know you're a desk jockey like me and it sounds like your only real exercise/activity is walking the dogs. Walking is my exercise too, since I don't really have a lot of time at home I'll take a 2 mile walk most days while I'm at work to get up and get out for a little bit. Since I'm not very active I have to be really strict with my diet to get any results. As a disclaimer, I will admit just because these things work for me doesn't mean they'll work for everyone. I have a few things going for me that makes it easier to stick to a diet.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:55
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Knyteguy posted:Hm, I've tried using MyFitnessPal in the past for this, but the Windows Phone App sucks (work issued, no reason to buy a second phone). Alright I'll give this a go again. I also like the idea of a walk during lunch. I used to do that and I'd like to start again. I miss having a job that kept me ridiculously fit; I just don't miss the pay. If you're going to give MFP a try again you can find me on there with the same username. I've already got tuyop added on there  The walks are the best part of my work days, I can catch up on a podcast and just think for a while without being in front of a computer. Highly recommended.
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Feb 5, 2015 02:34
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KG, I believe your plan is to have your wife return to work after 6-8 weeks or whatever. How flexible are your jobs for when your kid gets sick? My daughter just started daycare and surprise surprise she got an awful cold her second week there, she spiked a fever so she had to go home and cannot return for 24 hours (which means out the next day too). How are you guys going to deal with stuff like that? My wife and I have a good workplace that allows a lot of flexibility so it's not an issue for us thankfully.
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Feb 19, 2015 20:46
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Great news KG, post some baby pics soon
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Feb 20, 2015 19:16
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I'm going to buck the trend and say if you're actually sticking to the paid meal plans, it's worth $10/mo or whatever. You'll save 10 times that by not giving in to restaraunts/takeout and you'll be eating healthier. Yes, ideally you could plan your meals yourself for free, but if it's something you're genuinely going to stick to in the long run it will save you money and be better for you. Maybe in a couple of months when you get into a routine with the baby and your wife is back to work you can revisit it, but I don't think it's a terrible idea. But if you're paying $10/mo to have these meals planned for you AND you're still eating out quite a bit, then yea, knock that poo poo off. For what it's worth, my wife and I have the hardest freaking time with meal planning. We both work and have a 3.5 year old and 4 month old, so it's Pretty loving Hard™ for us to get any energy to put into planning/cooking. My only saving grace is that I'm dieting and eat a lot of the same poo poo all the time so the staples are covered for breakfast/lunch. And please don't abandon your thread, you were just getting started and still have an enormous mountain of debt looming over you.
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Mar 11, 2015 16:36
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Sticking to a diet and drinking beer don't really go together when you're trying to eat <2000 calories a day. Sad, but true. In general, I think most fitness people say that you can't out-exercise a bad diet. The chances of you working out with enough intensity to offset a few beers a day is pretty low.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:53
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SiGmA_X posted:Good. As long as it's covered by the budget, who gives a gently caress. Agreed, poo poo goons you guys are (something) awful.
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Mar 23, 2015 21:18
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Knyteguy posted:Oh yea I figured she would have to report taxes, but this confirms it. We won't be going for the care credit while my sister is watching them. $350 is nothing for nearly individual attention. The care credit is worthless anyway, it has a maximum of $600/child credit on your taxes. Not worth it if you're trying to keep your sister happy, IMO. This year we'll spend > $15k on daycare and "get back" $1200 on taxes. Edit: You should have been saving for the bachelor party ahead of time. I have on coming up this month as well (I'm the best man) and I created a "Fun with friends" category in YNAB to come up with stuff like this separate from our discretionary spending. My wife is also going on a wine trip this month so we'll be blowing ~$700 between these two things, but we planned for it. dreesemonkey fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 16:59
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Knyteguy posted:Car payments since November I know this is from a few pages ago, but man. Interest: Not even once. This is like 2/3 the interest I pay on my mortgage at ~1/5th the balance.
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Apr 9, 2015 17:02
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Yea dude, bike to work. It's 3 miles, that should take you like 10 minutes or some poo poo and while I don't know much about Reno, I can't imagine there is a better time of year to be biking to work than right now weather-wise. Even in hot rear end summer you should be able to do 3 miles without sweating too bad. I wish I could bike to work, but I live about 10 hilly miles away, the roads aren't bike friendly, and my wife and I already carpool to work (same employer) so it makes no sense for me. I think we will all applaud you for putting the second car thoughts off the table right now.
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Apr 9, 2015 18:28
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Knyteguy posted:Especially when we just had a kid ourselves and it can be incredibly difficult? Tough love: You were the guy that told us according to the internet moving is more stressful than having a kid. And we all told you different. How many times did you flip flop between "The wife is going back to work" to "The wife is staying home" to "My sister is watching our kids" to "I guess we need to find a sitter because <reasons>" leading up to and even while your wife was on leave? Because of your inability to plan ahead (and stick to it), now you're stuck bumming rides off your sister because on your last long hiatus from this thread you decided to get $10k underwater on one car instead of $5k underwater on 2 cars. You're not awful: Despite people completely jumping down your throat about every little thing, I think you guys are doing "ok". You were able to cover your unexpected tax bill (once again showing lack of planning/looking ahead) and had saved enough (hopefully) to cover all the delivery expenses for your kid. That said, I think we all agree that the stress of a having a kid at home and adjusting to the new schedule hasn't been doing you any favors. Often I think reading these threads that I'm glad I don't have my own because no doubt everyone would jump down my throat all the time too. I'm over my restaurant budget for the month already.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:42
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BarbarianElephant posted:You seem to be a bit easily sold on things. My feeling is you'll get an awesome offer in bumfuck nowhere 6 hours away, and take it because the interviewer persuaded you it is fantastic. Yea it would be the apartment thing all over again. "We're moving to a much cheaper place, we're going to save so much money!" 3 months later "gently caress this place, we're moving out, it's unsafe and I want to mow the grass and be close to my mom"
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Apr 23, 2015 16:43
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Honestly, I don't think you should be considering anything that isn't local or remote work right now. Ideally I hope you can just get a raise at your current position to bring you closer to market rate since you seem to like the job and work environment. Get some more experience, maybe do some freelance on the side, and then in a few years you'd be in a hopefully much better financial position to do whatever you'd like. Right now I could see you making a hasty choice, jumping at a job that pays you maybe $30k more and then your wife not finding a job, and between that and maybe getting state income tax now you'd be effectively no better off than you are now.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:57
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Bugamol posted:No you didn't. He gets a pass for this, there is nothing sensible about healthcare costs / billing or trying to estimate these costs.
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May 1, 2015 21:28
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Before you get too pumped about that job, ask yourself if you really want to work that much. I generally have really low stress job but last year I was the lead (read: only person) on a hugely massive project with an unbreakable deadline and it was incredibly draining to do nothing but work all the time. I'm an in house developer. Things have calmed down by orders of magnitude since we (I) met the deadline and it is so so so much less stressful. I honestly don't think I'd go back to being that busy even if someone offered me 30k more or something. (FYI I make about what you do now) My best friend just left his own cushy in house job to do Web Development at a private company and he hates it. He can't do things right, only fast. The project managers don't ask him input on how long he thinks things will take so he's already behind the gun. Every second of your day is accounted for and it is so draining to be thinking and working all day every day. Sounds like it could be good money but that's it. Money isn't everything.
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May 2, 2015 01:09
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Knyteguy posted:dreese I've been thinking about the amount of commitment necessary for the consultant job (again the SloMo type one). I've done consistent 6 day 14 hour shifts before and I was pulling maybe $600 a week (cable installer). It may be worth it, especially with the opportunities to move up, but I don't know if it's necessary to work so many hours. If I put that amount of time into my education I could finish my bachelor's degree in CSE (our university has a decent program http://catalog.unr.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=8&poid=3515&returnto=1858), or I could possibly get a job paying similarly without having to work consultant hours, though it could take a couple more years to get more experience (I'm talking experience for the big tech firms). Just a quick comment, but I honestly don't know how beneficial getting your bachelors would be. I would think experience trumps all when looking for a developer, but I guess it all depends on the employer. Unless you want to get into management someday or something more specific like project management, man gently caress going back to school.
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May 4, 2015 19:15
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