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crazyfish posted:With you being $2000 in the black and in the situation you're in, you almost definitely are not tracking your spending well at all. Keep track of every single expense down to the cent for a month. If you were able to throw even $1500 extra towards debt continuously, you'd be done in under two years. I'm seconding this. When did you get your job? +$2000/month does not equate to taking out a $400 payday loan. These numbers just don't add up at all. To give you the benefit of the doubt, are you sure you're using the software correctly? That being said, $80 on pet food? Are you running a petting zoo, or are your pets eating caviar? My pet food costs me $30, and they eat pretty well. Expenses like this make me think you're not reporting the numbers accurately, because splurging on pet food suggests a standard of living far higher than $3,000 per month.
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Nov 20, 2013 06:41
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slap me silly posted:These are not compatible sets of things. I hope you are realizing it. Did you buy the Wii U and 3DS today? There is something fundamentally broken with your concept of your finances. It really sounds like you're one accident away from complete disaster, and you're spending completely ridiculous sums of money. You mention not buying two additional game systems as if you should be congratulated when doing so would have been complete insanity. You talk about payday loans and overdraft fees in one sentence, and then think you're $2000 in the black the next. Have you thought about what you're going to do for Christmas? What's your budget for gifts? I honestly don't know how you can justify spending more than a couple hundred dollars in total after you and your wife just got $400 gifts each. You need to start making some serious sacrifices before life forces your hand.
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Nov 23, 2013 03:15
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Knyteguy posted:Thanks again for the input everyone. I think we'll be getting rid of satellite radio. Is your wife going to use the weights too, or will she want her own equipment?
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Nov 26, 2013 17:49
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Knyteguy posted:Yea I know that's why we're not relying on it. I think if she really put in the effort there would be a good chance though.
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Dec 17, 2013 07:55
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I feel like you're still needing a giant wake-up call. You are barely treading water, and the only way you've come 'under budget' these past two months has been by reducing your savings and debt payments. Is your business actually making money? Have your pets had health problems? Combined these two categories have cost you nearly $1,000 over the past two months. It seems like every time we see a detailed breakdown, there are areas where you have spent hundreds of dollars more than is reasonable. Last year it was the guitar and PS4. Now it's your business, pets, and restaurants. Next it will be $1,000 on a futon. I know emergencies come up, but you really cannot afford all these expenses. I think you need to look back on all your purchases and see what they've brought you. How often does your wife use the guitar she got last year? How much enjoyment have you gotten out of your guns and gym equipment? Is your life any better for having spent $600 eating out last month? You are sacrificing your long-term happiness and stability for short-term pleasures.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:30
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Knyteguy posted:I just looked and there are some good ones on Craigslist. Bed bugs are kind of a problem around here though so that's my biggest concern. I may just be lucky, but I've bought tons of furniture off Craigslist without a problem. I always vet the sellers/house and will only purchase if they seem honest, reasonably clean (not that bedbugs come from unclean surroundings, but people who care about appearances are probably more likely to notice bedbugs) and have a legitimate reason for selling. You are going to have a ton of expenses with the baby on its way, and it doesn't seem as if you have the credit to cover you. I would seriously consider getting the cheapest couch you can live with. Are you planning on having a 'baby savings' row in YNAB?
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Jul 4, 2014 01:25
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Knyteguy posted:OK I'm not going to say either way what we'll do yet regarding the couch but your input is appreciated. Just off the top of my head you'll need diapers (cloth is more expensive upfront but cheaper in the long run), a crib with bedding, a car seat, stroller, food, and an endless supply of age-appropriate clothes, books, and toys. Not to mention the medical expenses for your wife and infant. Will she continue drawing a paycheck? What if she has to go on bed rest for a month or two? How long will she take for maternity leave? And that's not even counting the lifestyle change- it's a lot easier to justify eating out when you're exhausted and your wife is nine months pregnant. I don't mean to be rude, but have you seriously not considered how expensive a baby is? I'm childless and have never even held a baby, and I know they cost thousands of dollars over the first few years. It's possible to save here and there (hand-me-down clothing and toys, etc.) but it will be cheaper if you start looking for that before you need it. Ask your parents/Google and I'm sure you can come up with a list and a budget.
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Jul 4, 2014 04:17
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Engineer Lenk posted:Be careful about running this strictly by the numbers of wages vs daycare. A year+ gap in your work history can make you a lot less competitive for non-entry-level positions. Explaining it as SAHM can set you up for family responsibilities discrimination, which isn't protected everywhere. Isn't protected anywhere is more like it. If your wife should lose/quit her job, that's the sort of thing that is impossible to prove. The NYTimes had an article recently about women who made this choice, and they were universally underemployed/underpaid compared to their peers. Employers will couch it in terms of being familiar with the latest technologies, but the fact of the matter is that most businesses would rather hire the twenty-something with no family than the mom with equivalent experience.
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Jul 8, 2014 08:04
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Knyteguy posted:Buying poo poo like what? I haven't bought anything since we found out my wife is pregnant. In fact I sold about half of my valuable things. Also god forbid I buy one thing for an important hobby of mine (I've now decided on the $130.00 package even) after we save $4500.00 in a month in a half even while moving. I genuinely appreciate the advice here and I consider every single point, but it's important to remember that incremental rewards are an important part of training good habits. In your first post in this thread you were running a surplus of $2,000 a month on paper, and still using payday loans. Over the past two months combined you've put less than $300 into savings. Maybe you don't tell us when you're considering making a big purchase and decide against it, but so far there have been more excuses, apologies, and last-minute purchases than rational long-term decisions. I truly hope you do put $2,200 a month into your savings account, but hopefully you can see why people might be skeptical.
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Jul 18, 2014 05:39
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(seriously they can go for as much as $200,000 that's like half my retirement savings) If I sell my kid's kidney too we're at like $400,000. (I'm obviously just kidding).
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I took a look and your net worth was at -$8,000 in December. What happened between then and March? Can you post the full graph?
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Jul 18, 2014 18:17
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If I remember correctly you have no access to any credit right now, correct? If I were you I would see the lack of an emergency fund as an emergency situation and focus on that over the debt. Right now if you lose your job, or get into a car accident, or any other unfortunate event happens, you are completely screwed. You need at least one month's income stored up, preferably more.
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Jul 18, 2014 22:32
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I think it would be useful for you to post your household purchases in August. I've harped on you before for your pet care costs, but your 'necessary' monthly expenses seem extremely high on a regular basis. You might be able to save just by switching to generics/ shopping on Amazon or Costco. Even lumping your errands together on a weekly or biweekly basis would save on gas.
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Jul 22, 2014 06:39
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Bugamol posted:The real issue is days ago you bought a Kindle and blew like half your blow budgets by combining with your wife and putting some in another category, etc. Then you claim it's okay because you're definitely not going to spend more. Not going to happen. You're sticking to the budget. Now days later you're trying to pad an extra $100 into blow because you've run out. Now that's everyone jumped on you about that you're considering returning the Kindle that days earlier you assured everyone was a great purchase and an investment so you can spend money on something else. And we're still only a handful of days into the month. He's not even really returning the Kindle, he's returning it temporarily so that he can buy something else he wants more. Next month he'll be in the same situation and buy the Kindle again, so he'll be out the same amount plus a 10%ish restocking fee. You don't have to be a genius to see the parallels to the payday loans he used to be mired in. Knyteguy, do you see the value in actually setting a budget and sticking to it? Your mother's birthday is the same day each year; the only reason you didn't take this into account two weeks ago is willful ignorance. You rushed into buying something because you wanted it now. There will always be something you want now, and there will always be bullshit ways for your brain to rationalize the purchase. Your goal should be to recognize when these things happen, and to head them off.
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Aug 14, 2014 05:40
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Knyteguy posted:Why is having a credit card a 5-year credit rebuilding effort? I could just as easily close the thing the day I get it. Also I've sort of been in a credit rebuild effort since far before this thread, including paying off collections steadily and such Opening a credit card and immediately closing it will actually hurt your credit score, as you'll have a hard pull on your account. In the short-term opening up a credit card just lowers your score a few points, so this is unlikely to help you refinance. As was discussed, this also won't help your wife's score. On its face this doesn't seem like a terrible idea. But the fact that you clearly don't know how a credit score works despite your research and now have one or two hard pulls on your account is a little disheartening.
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Sep 3, 2014 05:13
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What are you planning on doing for Christmas? You clearly aren't budgeting for it in October, so I assume it will balloon your discretionary category once again. That seems like the perfect time for the PS4.
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Sep 21, 2014 23:53
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Knyteguy posted:Meh we'd probably have made close to $800 at this point if we didn't try to launch more things (but that's necessary for growth), and the time is nothing anymore. Put another way, you made $800 from your business but wasted $650 on get-rich-quick gambles. Branching out means expanding your current business, it doesn't mean buying a BBQ pit or Amway or any other completely unrelated scheme. I would treat that $75/month as normal income, and put all these pie-in-the-sky ideas down as discretionary expenses.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:10
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Knyteguy posted:Her work getting too extreme? Yes it was pretty much that. Also there were quite a few posters saying that she may want to stay at home you should try to allow that, etc. In fact I felt like I was kind of getting pushed to have her stay at home, not the other way around. People have not been encouraging her to stay at home; they've just been trying to get a solid answer from you about the decision. The second her quitting became a possibility you started becoming extremely negative about her job. It's the exact same as with your previous apartment. Maybe we are getting a skewed perspective online, but it really seems as if you make up your mind first (perhaps without even realizing it) and then look to find justification.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:10
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SiGmA_X posted:You know what the vet is, yes? Accruing for it is smart. I spent $159/mo avg for our pets last year. Food/litter costs about ~$50/mo, the rest is heart meds and vet visits. He has another line for vet savings. In the past when he had to spat/neuter the pet line shot up from $150 to $300 or so. I think the $150/month is just food and incidentals. As it is, the $50 he has allocated for vet bills is not nearly enough considering the number of animals he has. It might cover yearly checkups and preventive care, but a single emergency would easily blow out all of his allocation. in_cahoots fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 23:23
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Rudager posted:Yeah, leaving the keys in the place for them to collect is dumb, and I get that they charge him for that, but the fact that they keep the months worth of rent security deposit and then charge him for the occupancy from the time he stopped paying rent seems pretty dodgy to me. He still broke several months' worth of his lease, whether he left on the 15th or 31st (or whatever).
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Jan 5, 2015 08:27
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Veskit posted:
Those are only discretionary because he's somehow already blown through the grocery budget this month. I honesty think he's still not clear on what a budget is supposed to be. If you exhaust your grocery/personal care category 9 days into the month, either the budget is off or your spending is off. Changing the categorization just masks the problem.
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Jan 9, 2015 23:04
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Stress makes people do weird things. Some overeat, some sleep too much or not enough, and some spend money on frivolous crap because they don't have the mental energy to chose a cheaper option. You are clearly in the last group. At the risk of beating a dead horse, this is why everyone has been dreaming out about the baby. You can post graphs about how life-changing a first baby is, but at the end of the day a baby is stressful. That's why it's important that you have healthy habits (or at the very least understand yours), so that when you're exhausted and cranky you have something to fall back on.
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Jan 16, 2015 18:18
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Knyteguy posted:I didn't realize you were in software. The language is BBX/BBJ. It's really obscure as far as I can tell. I just happened to work on a system running it at my first job as a contract developer. Why don't you just stay put for six months or a year and use that time to figure out what you really want and need to be happy? In the past year you've moved twice, bought a new car, and (almost) had a baby. Now you've both considered changing or quitting jobs and moving again. It really seems like you get restless with your situation and just start throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. If your past is and indicator, over the next few weeks we'll start seeing more and more posts about how lovely your job is, until leaving is an inevitability. You'll quit the thread in a huff and take the new job. Then you'll realize that starting a new job with a newborn infant means you can't do either of them well. I mean seriously, who leaves a stable job when they have a baby due in a month's time?
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Jan 16, 2015 19:34
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Knyteguy posted:I'm earnestly doing my best here, but it's a little demotivating when I come at you all with my best, (trying to plan for stuff, asking if stuff is feasible like the trip, trying to make our budget work better), and a lot of people get extremely negative. I genuinely want to hit our budget lines moving forward, because emotionally I'm in a strong position to do so. However I feel that requires just a little more slight adjustment, like a home goods / grooming budget instead of having to use our discretionary there, an alcohol budget, and a little more. I can't speak for others, but I've been disappointed in this thread because it seems like you never really learn anything. You change your budget literally every couple of weeks, as if shuffling numbers on a spreadsheet saves you money. You justify expensive purchases today (the Kindle, this month's groceries) by rationalizing how much you will save tomorrow. But as your grocery budget shows, you don't actually reduce your spending in the coming months. Every few months you have a harebrained idea to upend your life. In addition to the moves and the car purchase you've brought up buying a house, retiring at 35, growing your small business, and moving to Florida/ Silicon Valley in the past year. Each of these things is something that requires weeks of thought, but you bring them up as if they are urgent needs that you need to accomplish right now. I don't think you are bipolar, but you clearly have problems with impulse management. And yet at the end of the day nothing really changes. You spend too much on restaurants or gifts. You don't plan for large purchases. You underestimate how much things cost while overestimating your ability to save in the future. Even when you do upgrade by moving to a house or buying a car, there's something else you need to spend money on to be happy. You aren't going to change your situation with some grand gesture, it's all about the day-to-day choices you make. The worst thing is, when people call you on it you get offended and lash out. Veskit and others may not be the most polite posters, but they have put a lot of hours into helping you. If you want to take your ball and go home, that's fine. But don't pretend that you've got everything figured out and it's the mean posters who are holding you back.
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Jan 22, 2015 05:08
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Knyteguy posted:Well we don't talk to everyone about our financial situation (I genuinely wish my wife would talk to her family a little bit). They just see oh Knyteguy is a software developer probably making bank and KWife got a new job and look at this house they're in now they must be rolling. And then they get a $20 gift card and a lovely small jewelery box and get all upset (non-verbally, he had to walk out of the room in... anger?). That's after they spend a ton of time picking out cool stuff for us. This sucks, it really does. But if her family's love for you is dependent on $20 gift cards... well I don't have to finish the sentence. That $20 is a copay for a pediatrician's visit. It's a dozen baby books purchased from a used bookstore. Hell, it's pizza delivery in two months when you're both exhausted and the baby is crying. You can't have it all. At this point it's not about you any more, it's about how you want to raise your child. Is this really the example you want to set? That it's okay for a grown adult to walk out in anger on a family member because they didn't buy you an extravagant gift? That it's normal and healthy to be in debt, so long as everyone gets cool presents at Christmas? You said earlier that your wife is better with money than yourself. It sounds like she's unwilling to rock the boat, so to speak, with you or with her family. The two of you got into this mess together following years of bad decisions, and if you're not careful the pattern will rub off on your baby.
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Jan 22, 2015 07:36
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Knyteguy posted:My wife and I both acknowledge that we suck at groceries. I dunno what to do except itemize everything and post it here for input, which I'll do to see if anyone sees some glaring issues with or something (which would be appreciated). I think you should itemize the food you already have, as well. I don't see how you simultaneously have a freezer full of food and nothing to eat. Is it just that you'd rather buy something fresh/prepackaged instead of eating what you do have?
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Feb 19, 2015 03:00
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Robo Boogie Bot posted:KG, you're paying ten dollars to be told to eat ice cream for breakfast and to smear some cheese on bread? I tried out the free version, and it's complete crap. It seems to just randomly slap together different dishes into a meal, with no thought for ingredient portions (lunch called for 2/3 of an egg). There's no thought about how well the dishes go together, or about how many ingredients are reusable. And of course the meal cost is only based on the portions listed, but good luck buying 2 cubic inches of Brie and a cup of ice cream at a grocery store. The meal plan for a single day had me buying: fresh tarragon, chives, crab, 1/3 cup apple juice, 1/6 of a pear, blueberries, almonds, 1/6 of an apple, milk substitute, tofu, 1.25 mushrooms, 1/4 stalk broccoli, 1/4 bell pepper, and tofu for $5.59. And that's not including the ingredients I already have, including soy sauce, olive oil, peanut oil, vinegar, spinach, lettuce, onions, eggs, bread, oats, molasses, and various spices. There are tons of websites that will recommend healthy meals based on what you have in your pantry. With this website you'll wind up buying tons of specialized ingredients that will either go to waste (if you follow the meal plans) or encourage you to eat more (if the leftover Brie and ice cream is too tempting). I get that it's popular on Reddit and all, but did you bother doing any comparison shopping?
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Mar 12, 2015 05:47
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Knyteguy posted:Huh. So far the portions seem to be OK with a little bit of weirdness. Maybe it's better with customization or in your calorie range. But I would keep track of that Brie and ice cream to see how much of it goes to waste or is actually used in this meal plan. You've been telling us for months how much food you have already prepared in your freezer. Why are the only options delivery and spending tons of money on new specialized ingredients?
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Mar 12, 2015 06:14
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You were able to do it with pet food by completely forgetting you had stocked up, you don't get any credit for that. And pet expenses are relatively fixed, it's not like you were going to splurge on an expensive dinner or something. In case you've somehow forgotten, you've been completely unable to 'rollover' your grocery and restaurant spending, which are categories where you have more freedom to mess things up. Once again, you over count your wins and undercount your losses.
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Apr 4, 2015 06:19
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ufsteph posted:You budget money for charity, holidays, vet bills and discretionary before allocating money for feeding your family. Most of these are categories where BFC has yelled at him in the past for not planning ahead. So he put in a new line for the budget in without really thinking about where the money was coming from. I actually think these categories are pretty reasonable, given that he's shown in the past that he can't or won't cut back on gifts or pets. The problem is that he won't make sacrifices elsewhere to make up for it.
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Apr 12, 2015 20:09
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Sticking to a budget is a good start. But you also refuse to actually listen to any of the advice in this thread. We told you that it was important to develop good habits before the baby came, and you posted lists trying to prove that a baby's not that disruptive. We told you not to rely on your sister 100% for child care. Literally every 'crisis' you think you need to spend money on is something this thread has mentioned before. Fixing the long-term planning is just as important as fixing the day-to-day. There will be another wedding/funeral/family trip that demands your money. Your car will break down eventually. If you actually think about these things ahead of time you'll be better prepared when they happen.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:55
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Knyteguy posted:I didn't feel like arguing with recruiters, when the salary range of the positions are clearly posted. They said they do their best to fight giving the employer this information. I think they use it more as a range of what jobs I may be interested in. You're still not understanding what people are saying. The recruiter's goal is to get you a job as quickly as possible. When you say $60k they frame it as, "this guy will be happy with 75k so I'll shoot for jobs in the 70-90k range". You'll interview for the job without knowing the salary, and then they'll come back saying 75k is the best they could do. It's a waste of your time and motivation. Worst case, there's a job out there that you would love for 100k but now you've poisoned the well and can't get more than 80k from them. Just because a range is posted doesn't mean that you have to accept the bottom of that range. And why would you believe the recruiter when they say they'll 'fight' to avoid giving that information? You know that information is harmful so don't give it to them. Don't leave it up to a recruiter to decide.
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Apr 22, 2015 03:44
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It sounds like you're comparing generic prices at an expensive store with brand-name prices at a cheap store and saying they're similar. The real comparison should be the cost of generics at both stores.
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May 6, 2015 17:18
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Is the company listed on Glassdoor? You have to remember that everything they are saying to you is an attempt to get you to work for them. They tell every prospective employee the same thing - talk of bonus hours, becoming a director, company expansion, etc. Unless you can verify their promises from an independent source, you should not but much faith in them.
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May 25, 2015 01:23
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So is it 50 hours for $105k, or 50 hours for $120k? You mentioned both in your post, and there's a pretty wide gulf between the two. And are these billable hours or total hours? If you can get a job in San Diego you can get a job in Silicon Valley. From there you would have easier access to the big 4 and more networking opportunities in general. Why not just apply there and save yourself the move?
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May 26, 2015 05:33
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Before we move into October I'd like to understand the September numbers. It looks like another month where, to paraphrase from NPR, every category went over apt he average. You're way over budget in baby, discretionary, restaurants, and groceries, and I don't even think you've mentioned it in the thread. This is nothing new, these overages are pretty much the norm. Your wife missing a single day from her paycheck would probably affect you by a few hundred bucks at most; you can't blame these numbers on that. So what happened to make you fall back into your old habits?
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Sep 30, 2015 02:35
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I am honestly not sure if YNAB is helping or hurting you at this point. You blow off $4000 as some sort of technical glitch. You already have a line item for gifts, because you had the exact same problem last year. And as of today it has a grand total of...$0. It's like you have no connection between the numbers and what it means for your life. How many cigarettes and red bulls can you buy for $100? And how does that compare with your consumption this week? The only way you are going to make a budget work is by having that conversation with yourself every time you go into a 7-11 and every time you open your wallet. Otherwise you'll be here again next year, saying the same old thing about how this time you're really serious.
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Oct 3, 2015 02:59
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I think the fluctuations come from the fact that YNAB only allows him to budget money he hasn't already overspent. So in some months he has less money to allocate, which leads to $50 discretionary funds that are immediately blown. It's not like he ever intended to cut down to that, it's just a number YNAB forced him to write.
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Oct 3, 2015 15:53
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Rolling over only failed because kg can't stick to a budget. He tried the envelope system but it sounds like that failed, too. He can't set YNAB to use previous averages as a guideline, because those numbers would probably put him in the red for the month. So now he's borrowing from future paychecks to balance the budget. Let's face it, until he can keep his spending under control for months on end, everything else is doomed to fail. This isn't a problem of the budgeting method, because he's not actually budgeting.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:16
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I'm just about ready to give up on this thread. After two years you still aren't ready to hold yourself accountable when it comes to your budget. You aren't willing to take out of your weight fund (something that didn't exist a week ago) to make up for your discretionary. You aren't willing to post your August numbers (I've been following your third pretty closely, and I never saw a full reconciliation). All you really want is a way to justify your purchases, and you think that posting rationalizations and excuses the thread will magically see your point of view. The people in this thread only want what's best for you and your family. And that means sacrifice. You literally cannot have it all. So enough talking about all the things you want to buy. If you're truly changing for the better, what are you willing to give up to get where you want to be? If you can't answer that question then everything else is just empty words.
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Oct 14, 2015 04:04
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To me, it's fine if you take it from discretionary or that category's savings. What you can't do is say, "well I blew discretionary by $100 and restaurants by $100 so I'll take money from the pet fund / emergency savings / next month's income and put it in the Christmas fund!" Discretionary should be the first thing you raid, not the last. Every other category is meant to accrue over time, so even if you're not buying pet food this month you'll have money to buy 2x the amount next month. But all of this is a moot point. The question isn't how will you save up for the weights when you blow through discretionary; the question is, what are you willing to cut from your budget today to save up for the weights? The budget is a zero-sum game, you can't just keep throwing items in and expecting things to work out.
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Oct 14, 2015 06:25
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