Welcome!

Welcome to Economic Endeavors!
This blog is dedicated to bringing you the hottest deals, coupons, money savers, and money makers available, both on and off the net!
Thank you for visiting, and please stop by often to see what's new :)

Subscribe!

If you enjoy this blog, please use the buttons at the top of this page to subscribe to the posts or comments by RSS feed.

To have my posts sent to your email, subscribe here:
Subscribe to Economic Endeavors by Email

Changes in FInances

For those of you who don't already know this, my husband Tim works at a Nissan dealership as their Business Development Manager. That's a fancy title for a job that's isn't really that fancy. He's responsible for taking care of the customers who contact the dealership through their website or through other internet means. He then tries to get them in the door for a test drive and hopefully to purchase.
He's been working there, in this position, for a year and a half. About 3 weeks ago, he was approached and offered a promotion to IT at another dealership in the franchise, but at that time they didn't give him any of the details about any potential change in his pay.
This week, he had a chance to sit down and talk with the woman who will be his boss in the new position, and he found out that he'll be paid $3/hour more, but the new position doesn't pay commission (which his current job does) so I'm estimating that his net pay should remain about the same. The main difference is that instead of getting a commission check around the 11th of each month, he'll be bringing home more weekly.
This has given me the push I need to make a new budget, which I have been mulling over for a while now.
Our current budget hasn't changed since he started at his job, and it includes:
  • our rent (we live in a mobile home that we own, but we pay rent for the lot we live on)
  • car payments
  • insurance payments
  • utilities
  • payments on our two credit cards
  • my husband's student loans
The budget was centered around four weekly paychecks a month. Our bills require us to set aside about $370/week, and the money left over weekly after bills pays for gas and food and usually one meal at a restaurant. His commission check wasn't budgeted, and occasionally there are months when there are five Fridays, so he gets an extra check those months, which also wasn't budgeted. The plan always was to use this "extra" money for things like clothes for the family when needed, gifts, household items that aren't necessities, and once a year, in the summer, we spend a day taking our oldest daughter to Cedar Point theme park, and once a year, in the winter, we spend a weekend at Kalahari Resort, which has an indoor water park. And presumably, the remaining money from these checks would go into savings. In all honestly, however, we have nothing saved right now. As humbling as that is to admit.
So that's a huge problem that I want to tackle with the new budget. It's been a source of stress between my husband and I on many occasions, because he and I look at money very differently. He would be happy putting every spare penny in savings, and he is hesitant to make purchases until they're absolutely necessary, if not overly so. Now, I wouldn't call myself a shopaholic, and neither would my husband, I'm sure. On the contrary, compared to most of my friends who have pretty common shopping habits for the most part, I am the frugal one. But given the fact that we only make a small amount more than we need for our living expenses, I need to be more respectful of that money and the hard work my husband puts in to earn it.
With the new budget, I plan to incorporate those "extra" things like clothes, gifts, vacations, etc., and set aside a budgeted amount each month so that the money is there when we need it. I'll use an envelope system for this, with envelopes marked with each category. I also plan to budget our savings, to make sure that there is money being set aside for that purpose.
My husband likes to put our savings into low-risk stocks, and last year we were able to increase the humble amount we were able to save by about 20%. Those stocks have since been sold to pay for Christmas and taxes, so now we're back to square one.
I am excited to get to work on the new budget and to start implementing it. I also would like to make a list of both long term and short term financial goals that I'd like to achieve once the new budget is in place.
I'll be sure to update with the new budget as well as the list of goals once I've finished setting them in place.

0 comments:

Post a Comment



 

different paths

college campus lawn

wires in front of sky

aerial perspective

clouds

clouds over the highway

The Poultney Inn

apartment for rent