I bought a house!

I have successfully committed myself to my challenge of buying nothing on sale this month. I honestly haven't bought anything other than groceries, some clothes for my son and well, a house! We close this Friday and move over the weekend. My husband and I saved for almost 6 years for our down payment and now we feel more grown up than ever since we're putting 20% down on our new home.

The real challenge has been wanting to buy all new furnishing and things to fill said house because all that we have had are hand-me-downs that I'm getting rid of and starting over. I had a huge yard sale last weekend and made $1200! If you're needing extra cash, a yard sale is an excellent way to make some change. I sold some furniture on Craigslist the previous week for things I didn't feel like haggling over. We have a small budget for furniture that we need right away and I've made a (big) list and highlighted what is urgent. And the rest will just have to wait. Fortunately, I have a trip to Ikea in Atlanta planned for mid may, and I enjoy going to flea markets too. I love mixing rustic with modern, and I have a newer found interest in scouring design mags and hacking what I can. I'm really happy and fortunate that my husband and I have been financially thrifty and on the same page over the last few years and saved like crazy. Our American Dream is coming to fruition!

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt...

I need an intervention. A wake up call. I’ve been trying to think of what to write and where to begin but it isn’t coming easy. In simple terms; I like to spend, my husband likes to more, we have no money to spend (two people zero incomes), we live on credit, we buy what we want when we want it, we ignore the problem, our debt is steadily climbing into the six figures and an end isn’t in sight. I don’t know what more to say. I can’t bring myself to look at how bad it really is because it makes me sick to my stomach and keeps me up at night. I need to get a job, but I want to be home with my children right now. So I think I’ll just ignore it some more…

Progress Report...

The wedding is over and now the fun begins! So on working on this month's goal to combine our finances, we have decided to put all of our income into a joint checking account and then transfer a percentage out into our own personal checking accounts. Mainly, the reason we decided on a percentage is because our incomes vary each month.
We have our joint checking account set up and debit cards for each of us. We went through the last two months of statements to track where our money goes and total costs for fixed bills. I did notice we go out a lot(!) but since I am not focusing on cutting our budget, I am going to ignore it for now.
Next step, get all the paperwork for automatic withdrawals. I have the paperwork for my paycheck and car payments but there is a lot more we need. I am thinking we should probably send it in all at the same time to prevent some coming from here and some there. Our goal is to get all the paperwork sent and have the mortgage moved over after the honeymoon, May 2nd.
I have been pretty impressed with my husband’s (ekk..still so new) cooperation in this process. I thought he would be a little territorial over his money or dragging his feet to get the process started, but he has been a prince through it so far. Side note: the other day he called our hotel in Hawaii to make a golf tee time and I heard him say. “I will have my wife with me and I would like her to be able to join me for the day” I almost started crying, I am someone’s wife.

"Money often costs too much" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve worked hard for what I have and am proud of it. Ok, I’ll rephrase…I worked hard for what I have, except that now I haven’t worked in 3 years and it’s not all mine. And I think about this every single day.

After raising my daughter alone and finally becoming successful enough in my field to start my own business, I met my *amazing* husband and became pregnant 4 months after our wedding. At that point, owning my own business meant I would have the flexibility later on of raising our child without being in daycare full-time as my daughter was. Unfortunately, I was put on total bed rest with him at 14 weeks and remained in bed until his birth. Bye-bye business and bye-bye income, I was forced to shut my business down.

As the “breadwinner”, I planned on returning to work after my son’s birth, but unforeseen health problems with him have kept me home for the past 19 months. I don’t see things letting up in the near future, as he remains under a Dr’s care for many issues at this time. My *amazing* husband has a great job, and has been there for 10 years. He makes a respectable salary and if I were working, things would be great. But, we don’t make nearly enough money to live on as family of four and although he sometimes dislikes his job, he is complacent and not planning to a make a move anytime soon.

I have many blessings that I did not before, but it is so very, very hard on me. I want to work. I need the stimulation of a professional environment, not to mention interaction with other people. I want to give my children all of things they want and deserve. I want to know that all of our bills are paid on time, every month and that there is money left over. I want to go shopping just once, just for me. I want to sell my townhome and buy a house with a yard, and give my children room to roam and have friends over without being embarrassed; it’s hard to keep up in this community. I want health insurance for myself. I want to travel again, I haven’t been out of our city in 3 years.

I am making little steps, I have paid off every bit of outstanding debt that we owe (excluding my townhome) in hopes of obtaining a mortgage on one income. My kids are well cared for, we have paid off both of our vehicles. I coupon like a champ and often challenge myself to see how much I can save each week. I remain in contact with many people from my previous industry and make sure to keep our relationships open and friendly. I am exploring options of how to work at home.

My goal for this month…try, try, try not to worry so much. Or find a prescription for Xanax. Just kidding. I am going to try to find a way to generate some more income for our family and hopefully put me, my children and my *amazing* husband just one step further in the right direction.

Two Things

Okay I want to backtrack for a moment...

Love:

As I've mentioned I am in grad school to change my career from pr to becoming a therapist. I'm just in an intro class but I'm learning a ton because they go over the entire field in small increments. Well...this week was marriage and family counseling and I was turned on to John Gottman a psychologist known for his work with marriages and relationships. And in celebration of upcoming weddings, newlyweds and just fellow married blogstresses, I wanted to share his Seven Principals of Making Marriage Work with you all. Also this site: The Art of Love & Intimacy has some great articles on making your marriage stronger.

& Money:

Now back on topic, you all should sign up on Mint.com. It's an amazing help for people who get really lost when it's time to budget. It categorizes your spending, send you reminders of payments and lays your debt to income, net worth, etc. out for you in a really easy format...all free. Do it.

Been awhile...

I have to admit that when it comes to the blog, I have been mentally M.I.A. lately.  In two weeks, I am getting married, leaving town for almost three weeks, and then upon return, having our reception two weeks later.  Planning the trip and the reception have been exhausting and anxiety enducing at times.  Getting on here to keep up with everyone as well as post, got pushed aside.  Which is too bad because as I read everyone posts, I feel like I have been missing out on a lot!  Traci, I loved your post on AGING.  So sweet and you are such an amazing mother!  Jen, I got a peel last month with the intent to post about but didn't so will do that now. 

Vitalize Peel
I went into the dermatologist on Wednesday for the peel.  They suggested this day because it is supposed to take approximately 2 days for your face to start peeling.  Doing it on Wednesday, will contain the peeling to the weekend and minimize your contact with the public.  From my experience, this is more for the public's protection than yours.  Unfortunately, I started peeling on Thursday with my heaviest peeling day on Friday.  I looked like a freak of nature and on top of that it kind of hurt.  It was raw skin where the old skin had peeled off.  By Friday, I was convinced they had done something wrong and I was going to be scarred for life.  I was never getting a peel again.  EVER!  I spent most of the day researching my symptoms online looking for other horror stories.  Then I woke up Saturday morning and I looked slightly less scary and I was in slightly less pain.  THEN I woke up Sunday and I was magically all healed up.  I had pretty much finished peeling.  My skin was not bright red and raw any longer.  I had this beautiful, new, ridiculously soft skin.  I loved it.  I still do.  It is so much softer to touch.  It didn't get rid of my sunspots as I had hoped it would but the effects are noticable and I will probably get another one in the fall.  The lady that performed the peel suggested I get them once a quarter/season but I am going to skip the summer peel.  In the future, I will schedule them for Thursday.

$$$$
Talk of money always makes me anxious.  I have always had issues with IT.  I think it was last week, an article came out listing Austin as the highest "spending" city in the US.  Austin's annual spending is 77% higher than the national average.  B and I joked that "our" spending (really HIS) is probably triple that.  Even though I laughed at the joke, it is not really that funny.  It scares me actually.  Over the years, I have cut down on my spending significantly.  My god, I could consume!  I would shop every week.  I would eat out mutliple meals every week.  I made a lot of money when I lived in NY and I had a lot of money to burn.  But that changed when I had Campbell, and traded in the money for flexibility.  My problem was that I didn't change my lifestyle with my pay decrease.  I had a good amount of money saved up that is now gone.  And with that, my lifestyle was forced to change.  I get sick to my stomach sometimes thinking about how much money I wasted away.  But all I can do is learn from the experience and hope to never repeat it.  Yet... I am marrying a spender.  B LOVES to shop.  He is the king of the deal.  I need to plaster the Suze Orman quote upon his credit cards.  I honestly don't know what my goal is this month if any.  Again, I get anxious just thinking about it all.  I have told B a couple of times that we need to open up a joint account to pay our bills out of and he hasn't met me with much of a response yet. Hopefully we will get that done in the next few months.  Other than that, I just don't know.  I need to think about it more.

Mrs. Jones and Me

I have a pretty nice house, but I think I’m house poor. Actually I’m poor poor since neither my husband nor I pull a paycheck, but owning a nice house costs a pretty penny. When I bought the house I was moving from a 600 sq ft co-op that I sold for twice what I paid for it in NYC so one would think that I would make smart decisions with that money. Well I thought I was by just putting it into another house and not spending it…and I sort of did that but a co-op in NYC doesn't have the expenses a big house in the country has. Also, I think it’s given us this feeling that our lifestyle should match the neighborhood. Honestly the amount it costs to heat/cool the house alone is as much as an apartment rental. Then we have the septic that went out a week ago... another $800... As if that weren’t enough now we think we must have grass. We are about to get $5K worth of nice grass and sprinklers put around our pool (another expensive item I had to have when we bought the house). The reason I want this grass is, well, because the neighbor just had her yard done and it looks so nice…and what will she think if she comes over!? The truth is, I’ve done well here not knowing the neighbors for the past two plus years but about four months ago I met a new young mom down the street and she has me going to social functions and book clubs and...buying grass. I know my issues lie far deeper than grass and I’ll get into those later but this whole “keeping up with the Joneses” thing is a true epidemic and I need to resist.

The Budget

I've learned a lot about myself in terms of money since I've been married. In short, money can be an emotional trigger for me while for my husband, it's a simple math. From age 21-31, I was a completely independent working woman with no financial support from anyone. Besides a small credit card debt issue in my early 20's , I never carried debt, and I never went without anything I wanted, to me this was doing well. I think my biggest money flaw before I got married was I was in denial about retirement. It just seems so far away and I thought contributing to my 401K each month was enough. Well I guess that could be enough if I wanted to retire a certain way, but after analyzing our finances together, we both decided we wanted more financial freedom, and the option to retire younger to pursue other interests someday, whether it be travelling or staring a business. Saving and investing more has been an adjustment but I have no complaints, my life is happy and healthy and my husband handles all the money stuff now. We de-brief once a month about how things are going, goals, etc. My husband has read several money books, but I think the one that really changed his life about money was "The Millionaire next door". Ultimately, we've both concluded that our parents didn't teach us much about money, and this is something we can't change, but we can teach ourselves, and our children someday. It's pretty simple, decide what you want, plan for it, and meanwhile don't spend what you don't have.

To answer Cassie's question, this is how we divide and manage all the funds:

We share a personal checking account

We each have a certain discretionary income each month (after all bills are paid and money is saved for investing)

We each use our own credit card to spend our discretionary money each month (we have different card and get different rewards, I get cash back, about $200 every 4 months.)

At the end of the month the card balance is paid in full and whatever we don't spend of our discretionary goes into our own high interest online savings accounts (or you can take it to buy some Christian Louboutins or whatever is on your wish list, probably won't be getting those unless I'm really disciplined)

This works great for us so far, 2 years and counting!

I'm sure this will all have to change once we win the Texas Lottery...

No more sales

This month I'm challenging myself to buy nothing on sale. Yep, that's right. I have a tendency to buy something when I think I'm really getting a deal. If it's on sale, my mind thinks of how much i'm saving, rather than what I'm spending and of course I end up spending way too much overall on stuff I absolutely do not need. Late last year, I stopped buying clothes for myself at Target and Old Navy because I find the clothing to be disposable after a couple of months. Even if it's more expensive, I'd rather pay more for solid pieces I can have for several years. This is not to say one can't find quality items on sale like big ticket items (i.e. furniture, leather and home goods). I once heard Suze Orman say you should only buy something on sale if you would pay full price for it. So, that's what I intend to work on this month and going forward. No more crap on sale, and only buying what I would pay full price for.

Happy Blogiversary!

Happy blogiversary! I can't believe we are at 100 posts? I appreciate our friendships & keeping connected through this blog. With each post, I learn more about each of you. I feel so lucky to to be connected to such a great group of friends. Love you & miss you all!

Matrimony and money…

Money! Dinero! Geld! I feel like I have been talking about money a lot lately. With the wedding next weekend (!) Jason and I are proud to be paying for the entire thing in cash! We did get help from our families but also have been saving hard core for almost the last year. Staying out of debt is really important to both of us and a wedding just didn’t seem like a good time to bring some debt into our lives. I am looking forward to not having to save for it anymore though and having some extra cash, for important things, like shoes and highlights.

We have also been talking a lot (like months and months) about how to manage our money after the wedding. This was a really big one for us as we are both pretty independent and been managing our own accounts and expenses for quite awhile. I think we have found a good compromise and system to take care of all of the household expenses within our budget but still free up some money for ourselves, with no questions asked. I am sure there will be a few meltdowns along the way, but overall, I am pretty confident we will get through this ok.

So this month, I will be focusing on balancing our household budget with our new and shiny shared checking and savings accounts. I will try to remain calm and not get all crazy over “my” money, because soon it will all be “ours.” I will keep you all posted over the progress we make in the next month in bringing over the mortgage, bills, automatic withdraws and whatnot into one account, exciting stuff, huh?

For all the ladies that have shared homes, I would be interested to know, how do you manage your money for the household expenses?

I Can't Afford To Fight Aging

So this morning I was “putting on my face” as my Aunt Pat used to call it and I realized that it's time for our month on aging to wrap. Perhaps an appropriate way to end the topic would be to suggest a good way to just hide those circles and lines. Amazing Cosmetics’s Amazing Concealer works for me – blends nicely and hides even better. At $42.00 it is pricey but a little goes a long way and you'll have it for a long time - worth every penny.

I never really heard any of the outcomes for the other facial quests out there – good results? I’m asking for a peel for my upcoming 24^th birthday in May (I started counting backwards at 30). I think I’d be much more interested in stopping aging if it didn’t cost so much…which brings us to our April topic, money. I've learned in my counseling classes that even the most reserved clients once given the outlet to talk will open up about even the most taboo topics in their lives...sex, violence...all but one - money. People don't like to talk about their money issues. I don't either but I will. I vow to seriously challenge myself this month…and I’m scared.