|
Knyteguy posted:Savings / Retirement: 0 Knyteguy posted:
This here is the toughest thing about reigning in your budget - getting past the idea that "We just need to spend a little extra this month. A new game console only comes out every few years/it's the holidays/it's my wife's birthday". You have to realize that there's always something like this and you need to 1) budget for it 2) treat it as a need and reduce your spending elsewhere or 3) acknowledge that it's a want and not a need and do without. I feel your pain, because I had a PS4 preordered too, but after going over the numbers with my wife, we discussed it and decided now wasn't a good time to be spending ~$500+ (console, extra controller, PS Plus subscription, games) on a new console. You can't look at it from the perspective of "It's the holidays, I deserve this". You have to be mindful of the fact that you have no savings. What if you lose your job or your wife loses hers? What if one of the cars needs an expensive repair? What if one of your pets needs surgery? Going out and buying a PS4 when you have no money in savings is exactly the reason you're broke, and you'll continue to be broke until you can change the way you think about your money. NJ Deac fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Nov 20, 2013 |
#
¿
Nov 20, 2013 20:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:22 |
|
|
WampaLord posted:Holy poo poo, your company is delaying paychecks due to lack of cash on hand? You need to be looking for a new job yesterday. Knyteguy posted:
You really should be in complete freakout mode over the missed paycheck. A delay in expense reimbursement is one thing, but companies that are run competently don't miss payroll. It's simple business common sense - if your employees aren't getting paid, they'll stop working. If your employees stop working, revenue stops coming in. No revenue, no way to keep running the company. Either your boss is incompetent or the financial state of the company is dire. If the company is missing payroll, it probably means they're already behind on paying their vendors and other outstanding invoices. Yes, clients may pay erratically, but good business owners plan for that and keep reserves on hand for the invoices that take a few months to get paid. I would strongly suggest taking advantage of any leads you have on a new job. This isn't the time to be thinking "Well, they'll probably pull it together" - this is the time to be planning an exit strategy so you can land on your feet. Also, given the fact that your employment situation is so unstable, I would strongly consider delaying putting additional money towards your debt until you have at least a couple of months of expenses lined up in an emergency fund. Is your health insurance through your employment or your wife's? Knyteguy posted:Also we got hit with $112 in overdraft fees because we had money in Paypal, but they still decided to bill our bank when we weren't ready (I mean we used our PayPal MasterCards which tie directly to our PayPal funds). To ensure this won't happen ever again I removed our bank as a backup funding source for the card. We get 1% back for using the MasterCard, but it's not worth it. Maybe once we are very good about YNABing things and we have every single expense predicted and entered we'll go back to using it for the 1%, but that really sucks. Also it just ate most of our eBay business revenue as well (which is the whole reason for having the card and money in PayPal). We've only been in business for 2 months so there wasn't much to eat. Also our credit union charged us on 3 overdraft fees, but only let one of the charges go through. Does anyone else think that's pretty dumb? You mentioned earlier on you just put an extra $40 towards the truck for the month in the same post you mention you overdrew your checking account accidentally. You shouldn't be putting any extra money towards your debts until you have at least a minimum buffer in your account to prevent stupid errors like this from happening. The proper remedial measure here isn't to decouple the card from your account (though that's not a bad idea) - it's to make sure you have enough in savings such that every dollar you spend isn't potentially your last. Going by your first post you've had problems with overdrafts in the past (and may still have your name in Chexsystems?), so blaming this one on Paypal (as horrible as they tend to be) seems a little unfair since you already have an established problem in keeping enough money in your account. When is your sister moving out? That's a ticking time bomb to the tune of an extra $500 a month you need to be addressing before it becomes a problem. We're still not sure how you're spending an extra $2000 a month, and that extra $500 might be a huge problem.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2013 00:09
|
|
|
Knyteguy posted:The PS4 has been planned since June (literally), and the bass was almost a month ago (yes before the payday loan was paid off). No, neither of these were planned. You may have WANTED a PS4 since June, and maybe you had one PREORDERED since then, but you didn't have one PLANNED since then. Just wanting something for a long period of time doesn't mean you can go out and buy it when you're living on a budget. Planning a purchase like this means that, starting in June, you should have been setting aside at least $75 or so per month into savings for the PS4. Similarly for Rocksmith. The best way to handle planning of big purchases like this is to set up a certain "fun money" for you and your wife each month (memorably called "Blow" in the Zaurg thread). Want something for yourself? It gets categorized as fun money and used against your balance. No remaining balance? Sorry, you don't get to buy whatever it is. I still can't believe you ran up $100 in overdraft fees literally a week after spending your last dollars on a PS4, not to mention the fact that your company when you're on the razor's edge of not being able to pay your rent. Hell, your credit is trashed so you don't even have the luxury of treating a credit limit as a pseudo-emergency fund in case you DO have to go a few weeks without pay. You mentioned earlier in the thread that you tried going to a cash envelope system but "It didn't really work for us". Why didn't it really work for you? Is it because you kept running out of money in the envelopes? That's sort of the entire point - to limit the amount of money you can spend on impulse purchases. This will all get a lot easier once you have a minimal buffer in your account. I know it was like someone turned on a light switch for me once I had a month or two's worth of expenses saved up, and that completely broke me out of my paycheck-to-paycheck spending habits. The problem is that it's tough to get there in the first place. For the time being, you really need to cut out the impulse buys and enjoy the stuff you have. That means no more video games (and Christ, definitely no more consoles!) or other luxury items for at least a month or two while you build up an acceptable buffer in savings. NJ Deac fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Nov 25, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2013 23:56
|
|