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That one's a mix of BFC and E/N, explaining it would tip farther into the E/N than I'm willing to go. When you've got a couple with severe sadbrains the two overlap a lot. I know it sounds like a copout. The most I'll say is I'm not exaggerating when I say being able to get some space is a need. If it was a one bedroom that somehow made the living room separated from the bedroom that would be a different story, but I can't even imagine how that would be laid out unless the bedroom was off of the walled-off kitchen. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that even growing up in a neighborhood of weird early 20th century houses.
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Jul 27, 2017 05:04
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22 Eargesplitten posted:That one's a mix of BFC and E/N, explaining it would tip farther into the E/N than I'm willing to go. When you've got a couple with severe sadbrains the two overlap a lot. I know it sounds like a copout. The most I'll say is I'm not exaggerating when I say being able to get some space is a need. If it was a one bedroom that somehow made the living room separated from the bedroom that would be a different story, but I can't even imagine how that would be laid out unless the bedroom was off of the walled-off kitchen. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that even growing up in a neighborhood of weird early 20th century houses. That's literally what a 1 bedroom is. I think you're confusing a studio with a 1 bedroom?
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Jul 27, 2017 15:25
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Veskit posted:That's literally what a 1 bedroom is. I think you're confusing a studio with a 1 bedroom? Maybe, unless he means that you need to go into the kitchen first to get to the bedroom? In which case, I definitely have seen 1br apartments like that (lived in one for several years), although this was on the east cost and in an old retrofitted victorian house. Shared it for years with my wife. It's tough but workable. We had around 750 sqft. I think a lot of the newer apartments have open concept living room/kitchens so it's not quite as broken up as he might like.
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Jul 27, 2017 17:28
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Yeah, the problem is that we basically have two rooms. One bedroom, then one terribly shaped living room / kitchen that the bathroom comes off of. If the living room allowed privacy it would be a different story.
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Jul 27, 2017 23:18
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Yeah, the problem is that we basically have two rooms. One bedroom, then one terribly shaped living room / kitchen that the bathroom comes off of. If the living room allowed privacy it would be a different story. So like you forced yourself into a situation to spend more money by instead of saying "a 1 bedroom with a good layout" you said, "I need a 2 bedroom". Do you see this problem?
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Jul 27, 2017 23:41
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That's fair. I've never seen a 1br that has a good layout like that, but I guess that's partially because I've always had to take what I could get at the bottom of the price range. I'll look for 1brs that seem like they might have a decent layout from the pictures. I'll still look at cheap 2brs too since there can be price overlap. E: please don't take this as me saying I now have license to spend all the money I want, but I realized that I am making almost exactly (-$40) twice what I was making this time last year, except now I have benefits and am not in a lovely work environment that I hated. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jul 28, 2017 |
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Jul 28, 2017 00:24
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And you still can't call up three grand and were trying to do some stupid shell game about your green car rebate. It's great you are making more money but you're still about six inches from disaster.
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Jul 28, 2017 01:41
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Oh, absolutely. It's just something to remember whenever I feel like a failure that's never going to get anywhere, and guess how often that is  ...  It also means I now have the ability to make a big swing quickly, it's all on me at this point. Making $33,000 per year I would have been able to put away $75-100 per month at most. Now if I do it right I can move, save a month's cash expenses, and pay off my CC within a year. We'll see.
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Jul 28, 2017 05:12
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Hello, thread I keep abandoning! Good news! I've found some new medications that really help and have nearly completely eliminated my anxiety. Now looking at Mint excites me rather than making me nauseous. You can pretty much ignore the "terrified of the future" part of this thread title now. My wife still isn't working, but she has been busting her rear end doing and selling her art. We try not to think about the fact that she's probably making about $3-5 per hour, but overall she's making more money than she was at her last job, and it's something that she loves rather than something that makes her miserable. We actually need to think about self-employment tax now. Before October she hadn't made more than $400 this year. We've started looking into maybe some work from home set your own hours part time graphic design positions, but nothing has really happened on that front. Probably also related to being happy looking at Mint is that my wife and I have saved over $1,000 in the past month and a half. That's the most we've ever saved without a gift / tax return. Our savings is now sitting above $1,200. We've still definitely been overspending on food, but not nearly as bad as we have in the past. My wife is super-protective of the savings account now because she's been working so hard to build it up. It's been kind of excessive at points (she wanted to be late on rent rather than pull from savings to make up the gap when we had to dip into rent money last month), but it's really helped keep savings off limits. For the record we did pull from savings, and as soon as our paycheck hit we put it back with an extra $100 as "interest". Now that I'm actually looking at Mint on a daily basis, I will make a post with my updated budget and Mint summary for November by the 7th of December. And that's a  .It won't be perfect since I started mid-month. My main grocery store is also my pharmacy, gas station, and where I get my cat food and household supplies. It's all automatically categorized as groceries in Mint except for the stuff I manually recategorized. Next month I'll be trying to keep track of it better and try to remember to split off the cat food / dish detergent / whatever from the receipts if I don't throw them away like I have as a habit for years. I need to finalize the new budget since I didn't actually put a solid budget together since I got my raise. There's not nearly as much room for savings as I hoped because holy gently caress do we spend a lot on doctors, but there's some, and we put literally everything my wife makes into savings. I'll also be getting an extra $100 per paycheck starting in January even without a potential crappy inflation-matching raise since only $100 will be taken out for the FSA rather than $225 every paycheck. The FSA will also give us about 2.5-3 months of medical costs covered, so we'll really need to prove ourselves in January-March (since we completely failed to do so in September). What would you all like to see in the Mint summary post? the Trends pie graph? Individual budget lines? Over the year+ this thread has been open I haven't put an actual month summary out, so I'm not sure what all should be on there.
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Nov 22, 2017 18:19
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Pre-December update. I just made an extra $100 selling an old Brooks Brothers suit that didn’t fit me. I’ve made most of a meal plan for a week which will include actually cooking three times and being able to bring leftovers for lunch all week. Money is really tight this paycheck due to having to replace my car battery, pay loans, rent, and my credit card all at the same time. I’m going to have to be very good with not spending money on restaurants and delivery for the next two weeks if I don’t want to dip into savings. I’ve made my plan for Christmas presents. I made Egg Nog a couple years ago that was a hit. I’m going to give out pints of that, it will probably total $45-50 with enough to bring to Christmas parties. Aside from that I’m going to get my brother a cheap pair of headphones and a clip-on mic. Then I’ll try to find a super cheap pair of warm slippers off of Sierra Trading Post for my wife. Hopefully that will end up being under $100, as well as being my contribution to Christmas parties for both sides of my family. I have sent an email to someone renting out a duplex closer to work. It would be $60 more per month, but it would be 9 miles from work rather than 60. Two bedroom, one floor, cheaper than anything else we found meeting our requirements. I know I’m probably going to have to defend the requirements, so they are pets allowed, one floor (old dog), somewhere to let the dog out without accompanying her (old dog bladder), and not a basement (depression). They said it might take a couple days to get back to us because they have gotten a lot of interest since putting the ad up yesterday. I really hope that works out. It would mean 1 tank of gas to get to work per 4 weeks rather than 6 and 2/3. And 360 miles per month rather than 600 per week. If it comes down to it we have enough money to sign the lease and pay the deposit right now. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Nov 24, 2017 |
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Nov 24, 2017 19:27
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9 miles is possible biking distance too, although whether that's practical obviously still depends on a lot on the area. But yeah biking saves money, is good physically and probably also mentally.
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Nov 24, 2017 19:47
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It would be along a highway, so while I like the idea of biking it might not be the best option. I think there might be a bus stop nearby, though. And one of my job’s benefits is a free unlimited RTD (Denver metro public transportation) pass. If I could deal with the schedules that could save me spending anything on gas, and I could gently caress around on my phone rather than driving.
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Nov 24, 2017 19:54
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The place was a dump. One "Bedroom" was an 8x10 room that was the first room you came to entering the house. One wall was entirely windows, and most of one side was open to the kitchen with no door. It was a sunroom with a closet, basically. The other bedroom was so narrow that it wouldn't have been able to handle both a bed and dressers. And the bathroom door had a little hook and ring latch rather than a doorknob. They were apparently converted from dormitories built at a country school in the '70s. We could have gotten the real bedroom that they were planning on converting into its own studio, but it would have meant the whole place would cost $1850 a month rather than $1160. Well, we aren't really in a huge hurry to move at least. We wouldn't move until February, January at absolute earliest. I'll already hit my 210k maintenance on my car before then either way.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:14
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I’ll be going to an open house tomorrow (probably) for a duplex and a scheduled showing Friday for a small house. The house is doable, but more than I would ideally want to pay. It is even closer than the dump I saw last weekend, though. That would be roughly $1360 after utilities (less in the summer when we wouldn’t be using the heat). The duplex would be $1175-1195 after all utilities in a cheaper (but still safe) neighborhood. The problem is that they want first and last (965*2 = 1930), a $1115 deposit, a $90 application fee for two people, and $400 for a pet fee for our two pets. So $3535. Possibly $3685 depending on when they want the first utility payment. That’s due at move-in, and doesn’t include the cost of carpet cleaning, lease breaking, or hiring my little brother and his friends to help move. I don’t see any way of doing that unless I can spread that out or borrow money, and I don’t want any more debt. I guess this is an example of how it can be more expensive to be poor / have low savings than to be rich / have more savings. I’m still checking Craigslist multiple times per day and keeping an eye on my Zillow and Trulia alerts. There was another yesterday, but it had already been rented when I called. There’s a decent chance that house will be too small anyway.
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Nov 29, 2017 21:13
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The duplex is willing to split up the last month’s rent portion of move-in over 3 or 4 months, which brings it down to a much more manageable amount. The rent will be kind of high the first few months, but not any higher than the average place we were looking at, and that’s only temporary. This place is cheaper and bigger than almost anything we’ve seen, and they just got done doing interior renovations. I need to put together a list of things to check on, because it seems too good to be true. I guess it pays to ask if they’ll work with you, although I made sure to tell them how much money I made when I asked.
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Nov 30, 2017 04:14
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That seems excessive. Why do they need first and last month's rent on top of a deposit? Check your local laws, that might be against the law.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:11
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I don’t see anything specifically about it in the Colorado Revised Statutes, but googling around it seems like an uncommon but not nonexistent practice. I’ve seen it at other places in the past. Now I’m just trying to find out if this is a neighborhood where I’m going to get stabbed every time I step outside. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 19:36
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Open house report: Is there such a thing as Myspace angles for rental ads? Because that's the best thing I can use to describe this place. Except instead of trying to make someone look half their size, they tried to make someplace look twice its size. This place was closer to 500 square feet than 1,000. The "living room" was an entryway 12x12 at best, the bathroom was the kind where there's about a 2x2 space surrounded by sink, toilet, shower (where you would bang your elbows constantly), and door. The "bedroom" contained the back door, and the only way you would fit a queen sized mattress in there is on its side. There were three groups of people in there with the rental agent standing outside. All of us were laughing at how terrible it was. I think the 1,000 feet thing was for both units of the duplex together. As a bonus, across the street there was a trailer park that looked like everyone there was probably involved in either the producer or consumer side of the meth trade. I knew I wasn't going to rent it before I even went in, I was just curious what it looked like inside, and in a way it didn't disappoint. I wouldn't even be annoyed if it didn't make me drive through Denver rush hour traffic getting back from viewing the place. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Dec 1, 2017 |
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Dec 1, 2017 03:35
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Nocheez posted:That seems excessive. Why do they need first and last month's rent on top of a deposit? Check your local laws, that might be against the law. First, last, security is pretty standard practice in Greater Boston.
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Dec 1, 2017 13:08
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:First, last, security is pretty standard practice in Greater Boston. Plus most places in Boston/Cambridge require you to use a realtor so add one more month's rent for that. Total cost for starting a rental in Boston is 4x monthly rent. For a long time I thought it was like this everywhere and had no idea how people living paycheck to paycheck ever found housing.
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Dec 1, 2017 16:20
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Took screenshots of the accounts as of today and the budgets for November. Went downhill since my last post, which frustrates me. Just lack of discipline. I need to put together a thorough postmortem still. I also need to get the numbers from my wife on how much her vitamins and hair care stuff costs so I can finalize the budget. Probably not going to find a new place this month. I've been on a PIP, and while last I heard I was doing well enough and I thought I had continued to perform well, I checked in with my boss. He said he wants to talk more thoroughly in person on Monday (he was in Canada this week), but he said I'm still on the bubble. I hadn't done anything to make him want to fire me, but nothing to make him really want to keep me either. He said I had been inconsistent. So I'm not spending any large amounts of money this month. Besides, at this point I don't think there's enough time for a 30 day notice to our landlord anyway. The PIP ends at the end of the year one way or the other. Hopefully it works out and I continue to get my great benefits and this pay next year. I'm kind of concerned about the prospect of having to go back to doing desktop support since I haven't actually gotten experience in SQL like I was supposed to yet. The strange thing is that at our team meeting last Thursday he said that end of year bonuses had been decided and that everyone who qualified for one (not the contractor) had gotten a pretty good one. He had said at the PIP meeting that depending on my performance for the next few months I could still get a bonus. So Monday I'm going to find out how me being on the bubble matches up with him saying that everyone got a good bonus. I've never known him to be anything less than completely honest, so if he was lying about the bonuses that will actually severely impact my trust in him and probably mean I'll be looking for an exit even if I'm welcome to stay. He said on my first day that he expects full honesty from his employees. If someone lies to him once, all trust is gone. I really like him, but that goes both ways. Life never gets boring.
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Dec 2, 2017 09:22
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you really need to figure out why you got put on a PIP when you thought you were doing well
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Dec 4, 2017 02:17
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Oh, the PIP has been in place since September. It’s just that I had only been receiving good feedback aside from being late too much (which I resolved shortly after, got switched to a medication that doesn’t make me super tired in the morning). I had been getting good feedback both from my manager and director, but I haven’t had a meeting with my manager for a few weeks because of scheduling. I had been completely disorganized and overwhelmed and it resulted in a big thing I was doing going absolutely to poo poo back in September. He’s had me organize more and has been going over how I schedule everything in my week to help keep me on track. He and the PM have also helped me become assertive enough to say when a deadline is unrealistic rather than going along with it because it’s somebody high ranking saying they want it then. To be clear, the tardiness was mentioned as a problem that was holding me back while still being overall okay. Not something that was going to ruin me, but obviously I still wanted to address it. I don’t feel completely screwed, I just thought I was doing better than I guess I am. I’m going to start applying around just in case. I really hope it’s not because last month it turned out the way I was specifically told to do three things by someone no longer here was completely wrong. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 02:31
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Open house report: Is there such a thing as Myspace angles for rental ads? Because that's the best thing I can use to describe this place. Except instead of trying to make someone look half their size, they tried to make someplace look twice its size. This place was closer to 500 square feet than 1,000. The "living room" was an entryway 12x12 at best, the bathroom was the kind where there's about a 2x2 space surrounded by sink, toilet, shower (where you would bang your elbows constantly), and door. The "bedroom" contained the back door, and the only way you would fit a queen sized mattress in there is on its side. There were three groups of people in there with the rental agent standing outside. All of us were laughing at how terrible it was. There is. Fisheye lens shots are rampant on rental and estate agent sales ads to make the rooms look bigger.
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Dec 4, 2017 13:53
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Ah, poo poo. Stuff happened yesterday and I didn’t get the post or budget done. Guess I need to do at least some of that at lunch so I don’t get banned.
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Dec 4, 2017 15:17
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Ah, poo poo. Stuff happened yesterday and I didn’t get the post or budget done. Guess I need to do at least some of that at lunch so I don’t get banned. No offense but so far the only thing you seem really good at or dedicated to is not following through on the stuff you say you will. I'm hoping we see that budget and a written down plan by the 7th! We're all pulling for you, but you have to keep up your end of the bargain for it to matter.
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Dec 4, 2017 19:07
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I wrote down the budget with notes at work. I’ll try emailing it to myself and pasting it on my phone, but if preview looks hosed up I guess I’ll have to do it at home. It’s not looking great, but there are a few places we are hoping (medical) / trying (food / pet food / discretionary) to reduce costs.
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Dec 4, 2017 20:29
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Why wait to post the budget? Budget in this post, November postmortem tonight or tomorrow. For the postmortem is there any reason to blank out the name of my credit union? It doesn't show account numbers (even last 4), just the name of the credit union. I don't see how that would be sensitive information, but I could be wrong. This income is net, after health / vision / dental insurance is taken out. We're on the PPO, which is maybe $30/mo more expensive, but with our expenses we can't afford to wait for the deductible to be met. Income every 4 weeks: $3900 Rent: $1020 Auto Insurance: $80 Internet: $78 (they jacked it up twice in the past 6 months, thinking about cancelling and possibly switching to my wife for a new promo rate) Mobile Phones: $65 (2 lines through MetroPCS, we own our phones in full. Company gives me $74 stipend for using my phone for work) Student Loans: $149 (graduated payments, want to start hitting those harder once CC debt is paid off) Credit Card: $140 (this is the first priority once we move and get 1 month's cash expenses in an E-fund) Loan for Hospital Bill: $45 (this is a real loan with interest, I couldn't afford the payment plan they offered and the bill came too late for an indigent claim) Netflix: $11 Subtotal: $1588 Groceries: $300 (Gluten free poo poo is expensive. We'd like to get a used kitchen-aid so my wife can start making her own bread if we can find cheap bulk rice flour, but that's not going to happen soon. Also trying to find some good cheap rice dishes) Pet food / medicine: $100 (cat needs some joint thing, dog needs more expensive than average food because cheap stuff leaves her vitamin deficient) Subtotal: $400 Dr: $475 (we're hoping to find some medications that would bring this down by reducing or eliminating her need to see an expensive out of network doctor) Prescriptions: $310 (some stuff isn't covered by insurance, we're already using the mail order for a discount) Subtotal: $885 E-Cigs: $75 (this is an estimate, we haven't tracked it yet. Hopefully a bit lower, but she vapes a lot) Home Supplies: $30 (also an estimate) Gasoline: $300 (This is part of why moving closer and paying more rent would actually be GWM) Mechanic / car parts: $50 Personal Care: $65 (haircut every two months, her hair products, makeup) Subtotal: $515 Discretionary spending: $300 (I know this seems like a lot, but early last year we were going out several mornings a week for breakfast, getting OrderUp almost every night, and the only thing that changed later in the year was we didn't have time to get breakfast. Trying to stick to $200 hasn't been working, I want to try to try to manage this for the next few months and then pull back to $200) Total: $3688 Left Over: $212 + wife's income + whatever we can sell Next year (if I'm still at my current job), I'll be getting an extra $90 or so per paycheck since my pre-tax insurance costs are going up a tiny bit but I'll be putting $125 less pre-tax per paycheck into my FSA. The goals currently are to find cheaper but still gluten free meals, see if our dog is okay long term with some cheaper food from the same brand, and stick with our discretionary budget well enough to dial it back again in a few months. Like I said before, next month, February, and March are the biggest months of next year. Having a fully funded FSA will let us put at least 5-600 more a month into savings until it runs out. Hopefully more, we’ll see. If I stick with going by month rather than two or 4 weeks, there will be an additional almost $2,000 in March with the third paycheck for the month. We’ve started putting money into savings immediately when the paycheck comes in rather than seeing how much is left after we spend most (read: all) if it. We’re probably going over on prescriptions this month, it’s time to order a bunch of three month supplies of stuff. Long term that’s good (three months for the price of two), short term it means going over budget. Prescriptions is a monthly average. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Dec 5, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 20:39
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No postmortem tonight. I spent all night either eating or making egg nog. Tomorrow is the 5th, which means I need to post the screenshots and summary tomorrow, Wednesday, or Thursday. Or else I eat a ban. The sooner the better in case more poo poo comes up. I've been posting the nog all over the place, so I'm going to post it here too. 15% ABV, surprisingly smooth already. Heavy cream, half and half, whole milk, egg yolks, bourbon, brandy, rum, and rye. Plus a ton of sugar. It doesn't have all of that alcohol in it, I just put the extra brandy, rum, and bourbon in mason jars so I had the empty bottles to store it for Christmas parties.
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Dec 5, 2017 05:23
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After a year of this thread being open, there's finally a monthly update. Be gentle, it's my first time  November 2017 Accounts as of Dec 1st:  Budgets at end of November:   Big things: Yes, we spent way way too much on eating out. It wasn't great through most of the month and then went downhill fast in the last week and a half or so. The saddest thing is that this is actually less than most months. In the past when I've gotten up the courage to check it's been like $600. That's where the most money is hemorrhaging from. Groceries, it's hard to tell how much of that was on actual groceries and how much was on prescriptions/gas/pet food/toilet paper/dish detergent/etc. I've been better about that so far this month. Other notes: Mobile phone and student loan didn't get taken out until the beginning of this month, so they will probably show up twice for December. Just a matter of hanging in pending a while, I think. Personal care is pretty high too, and didn't have a budget that month. A lot of my wife's makeup got stolen last month and so she replaced the basics. One problem we've had is that we stick a certain amount into an account designated for fun purchases every paycheck. That would be fine except we overspend like crazy and still put that same amount in the next paycheck. I feel like one of the keys to stop living paycheck to paycheck is going to be living off of budgets rather than accounts, this attempt at pseudo-envelopes just isn't working right. There's some transactions I just don't recognize and my wife can't remember. We don't think they're fraud, but sometimes it's things like "What did you make a withdrawal from the bank for two weeks ago?" "I don't remember." Keeping up with this daily or every few days should keep this problem to a minimum in the future. Questions: The "Credit Card" part doesn't seem to work right, since it nets to zero. I want to denote that there's a credit card payment being made even though it doesn't change my net worth. Is there a good way to do that in Mint?
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Dec 6, 2017 06:26
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Is no responses a bad thing or good thing? I found out why I’m still on the bubble on Monday. Too much break time leading to too low productivity. I misunderstood something my manager said a few weeks ago and thought we had a paid lunch. So we cleared that up, and hopefully things will be smoother now. Thankfully he realized I was just confused and not trying to take the company for a ride. Today he said I’m “inside the bubble” which I guess is the good side to be on. In my defense WRT the lunch thing, this company is a weird mixture of US and UK culture, so I thought it was related to that. I also see people gone for an hour+ and gone at or before five all the time. Maybe they come in much earlier, maybe their managers just don’t care as much. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Dec 8, 2017 |
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Dec 8, 2017 01:17
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Quick update: Hit $1420 in savings this week, doing well on groceries although it's only 1 week in so far. Trying to figure out something else easy to make that will last most of a week. I'm going to make a beef and cabbage stir-fry with rice (in a pasta pot, no wok), but that will probably only last a day to day and a half. Having something in the fridge that can be microwaved in 3 minutes makes for a lot less temptation to go to OrderUp. I'd like to find somewhere that has bulk rice flour / pasta if I can. Having cheap gluten free stuff available would save a lot of money. My mother in law is fine with us keeping the KitchenAid for a while, so that opens up a lot of options. Today we opened up a reverse-tier savings account that we're planning on keeping $2,000 in, at least until I've paid off my CC and then we might increase the cash E-fund. There's not much in it yet, but we're going to be getting some money later this month and we're planning on sticking it in there. It's 3.25% APY, 3.2% compounded quarterly. The bottom tier maxes out at $2,000 so it makes sense to not put any more in there. I've looked around a bit and I'm not seeing anything else liquid with anywhere near that return. Our current plan is to move mid-January if possible. By that point we should have enough saved up without the E-fund. If not, February. Then all savings (and a bonus that will be $1,000 at minimum post-tax) goes into the CC until that's paid off. That will give us an extra $95 per month. We'll see what's next after that. By that point I think we should be good to split savings between debt reduction and buying new stuff like computer upgrades for my wife so Photoshop is more stable and responsive (plus so her computer isn't just a gigantic POS in general) and maybe saving up for a (cheap) car that's not 19 years old. Definitely CC first, though. That thing is something I've been struggling with since the beginning of 2014, so it will be good to see that balance gone. And it should raise both of our credit scores quite a bit, which means if we do decide to get a loan for a car, which I would rather not, the rates would be far better. I've been keeping track of Mint for roughly a month now, which is longer than ever before. Maybe my post reads as being overly optimistic / counting my chickens before they hatch, but this is the most my wife and I have ever worked together on our finances. I feel like we actually have a chance now. Does anyone have recommendations for cheap and easy recipes that can be made in a large volume? I like using the crock-pot, but that's not a necessity. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Dec 10, 2017 |
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Dec 10, 2017 00:42
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I really like BudgetBytes for cheap / easy recipes. You can sort by protein etc. depending on what's on sale. She also has some great meal prep posts that might be helpful for your family.
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Dec 10, 2017 07:01
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I love budget bytes. That’s where I got the cabbage and beef stir fry. There’s also a nice simple soy ginger green beans and salmon for nice dinners in where you’re willing to spend a bit more. For a while I was in an all chicken all the time mindset, but then I realized that it’s okay to mix it up a bit as long as we’re bringing down our terrible eating out costs. Especially with our Costco membership, it brings down the cost of pork and beef quite a bit when I’m using a lot at once anyway. The nice thing is the Kroger near me always has boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs for $2/lb. Costco’s bone in thighs and drumsticks are cheaper, but I am terrible at and hate deboning chicken so the convenience is worth an extra $1/lb. also because my freezer is tiny. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Dec 10, 2017 |
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Dec 10, 2017 17:15
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Is no responses a bad thing or good thing?
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Dec 10, 2017 20:32
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Sorry, wasn't trying to seem needy. I just kind of expected a bunch of people to jump on me telling me how lovely I was doing. I guess I've been reading the Zuarg thread too much. The thing is that the credit card payment budget is always showing as 0 since I guess it shows as a negative expense / income / whatever on the card so it balances out the expense from my bank account. Maybe if I assigned the transaction on the credit card that nets the whole thing to zero to another category it would show right? I'm just not sure if there's a normal way to fix it or if I should just jury rig something.
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Dec 10, 2017 22:24
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Sorry, wasn't trying to seem needy. I just kind of expected a bunch of people to jump on me telling me how lovely I was doing. I guess I've been reading the Zuarg thread too much. Less responses is usually a good thing. People being busy aside, you'll see the most responses when you do something really stupid and everyone falls over each other trying to pull you away from the ledge (or to berate and/or mock you if you already did it) and give you alternative suggestions and plenty of reasons why you should definitely not have another kid or buy another car or quit your job to live in a yurt for the rest of your life. Don't get overconfident or anything, but your mood does seem up since you came back to this thread in November and you do seem to be doing a lot better. You're right that you could have done better last month, but it seems like you spent less than you made and you didn't do something unwise like spend so little that you're going to overspend next month to make up for it. Your idea of making eggnog as Christmas gifts was a great way to save money and have a thoughtful gift for people.
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Dec 11, 2017 01:57
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Thanks. That makes sense. We’re over $1600 in savings now due to a reimbursement check from our vision insurance and my wife just raking it in. Her earnings have been skyrocketing over the past couple of months. Probably because she’s been working almost full time so her quality has been rapidly increasing. Even post-tax, she’s made more than she made at her last job, and that was no withholdings because we weren’t married yet and she was making like $4,300 per year. At the beginning of October we were around $200 in savings, so that’s $1,400 in less than two and a half months. At this point, I would say 2:1 odds of us hitting 2k by end of year. Then I plan on sticking $500 from my first January paycheck into savings, which should get us where we need to move during January. Then in February we’ll get my bonus (company performance is half of it, so even if I get nothing for personal, that’s $965 post-tax and $700 or so in withholdings). I thought our internet was out over the weekend, but it turned out to be router problems. Somehow moving the router into the other room fixed it thankfully. I also was offered a promotion for the same speed plus streaming movies for $45, $32 less per month. I need to check for gotchas like the price going up if we move, but that would be a nice (if small) savings. To be fair to my November spending, $214 doesn’t show because it was pending until the beginning of December. We’re still in the black, though, and that’s a refreshing feeling. E: they didn’t have/wouldn’t offer the $45 package, but they did offer 200mbps for $50 for 12 months no contract, same price after I move. So that’s $27.50 saved per month at least. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Dec 12, 2017 |
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Dec 12, 2017 18:05
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Do you think it would help morale (it doesn’t sound like she’s sick of doing it while things are going well right now, but just a thought for later) if you changed to a system like “80% of her commission income goes to savings, 20% goes to slush (fun money)”? Or some other proportion, whatever works. You’re not currently relying on her income in the budget, and I don’t want to encourage you to spend MORE money (you could pull money from slush to cover overages though), but it does seem fair for an especially profitable month to result in some sort of short-term reward.
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Dec 13, 2017 03:09
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I like that idea, but this month we just want to pump everything into moving. Maybe if next month is a good one too, we might do that. Maybe save it up for a big fancy Valentines Day dinner in February. I made the suggestion to her, she’s thinking about it. I’m hoping she’ll get a big burst of business after Christmas. Her clientele is mostly young enough to still be getting money for Christmas, so even before she started doing this full time her busiest time was immediately after Christmas.
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Dec 13, 2017 17:13
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