|
 E/N poo poo begins here. Skip this if you only care about the numbers. To get it out of the way, the first 15 years of my life were lovely. The next 5 were ok. I found the woman who is now my wife at 20. For the next couple of years I lived with my parents through college until it was too much bullshit at home and it pushed me out. I then racked up a bunch of student loans paying for housing and poo poo. I graduated in 2007 with a philosophy degree and no real experience, so I taught English in Japan for a year and made no real progress. When I came home my mom was still pretty crazy and eventually I moved into my then fiancee's house with her parents. My now father-in-law was very much interested in seeing me succeed, and pushed me to get a master's degree. I started in 2010 and in 2012 I got a job that I hated for 3 years. At the end of 2014 I managed to finish my master's and now I hold a MSIS in Computer Information Systems and a shitload of student loan debt. I started a job making 60k at the beginning of 2015. On July 16th, 2015, at the suggestion of my father-in-law, I bought a house with my wife. I'm 32 years old, and I've spent a total of 2 years of my life paying my own rent without needing loans to do so. For the third time in my life, I'm about to pay rent again. Am I an adult now? Can I put on the big boy pants? End E/N. Let's put it behind us and work towards the future. The Debt I just took out about 5000 to kill a credit card balance. We're keeping 3000 in our credit union account for emergencies right now, plus 2000 in our joint checking account as a revolving balance to pay bills. If poo poo gets hosed up beyond measure, we can lean on my in-laws because they're pretty well off I think, but they want to see us handle our own business if we can. This all leaves us with 2500 dollars for any kind of furniture we need or whatever. Fortunately the house we bought is in AMAZING condition. New windows, new AC, new water heater, all that poo poo. There's about 3000 dollars worth of work that needs to go into the house that my father in law is fronting the bill for with the expectation for us to pay it back some mystery time in the future. I've also applied for pay-as-you-earn on my student loans. I make 60000 a year before taxes and per diems. My wife makes about 28000. Combined, after withholding and medical insurance and other stuff we don't see in our checking account, we get about 5000 a month into our checking accounts. More accurate numbers will come with time. I have made this thread at the suggestion of other posters. May the criticisms come and may I not be a little bitch about it. Let's get me into a manageable state of affairs. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jul 18, 2015 |
#
¿
Jul 18, 2015 23:11
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:08 |
|
|
My Rhythmic Crotch posted:Could you update the spreadsheet with the minimum payments for the CCs and mortgage? Yeah it was to kill the delta amex. Gimme a bit to get the data on the minimum payments for poo poo I wasn't able to find before.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 00:09
|
|
|
Gonna be honest here, I have no intention of looking at my previous spending, because I don't want to give myself any self-negotiation anchor points based on the past. As far as my wife's car she drives a fully-paid Ford Escape  Do I spend more on minis than retirement? Yes. That'll be changing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 01:01
|
|
|
El_Elegante posted:Ok. This a good first step! And you are being pretty brave sharing this. Already did. We don't want kids, we want a comfortable retirement, we're riding our cars out until it's no longer cost efficient to repair them, and we don't really get vacations because our PTO is generally reserved every year for projects.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 01:55
|
|
|
Yeah, the plan is I continue to use a credit card for my work expenses, but actually pay them down every month before the grace period with my reimbursement. Don't know how much I can throw at extra CC principal yet but it'll likely be at least a few hundred.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 02:29
|
|
|
El_Elegante posted:Ok. Regarding retirement planning: when? Work until you qualify for the full social security benefit? Retire with the partial benefit? retire early and use savings to cover you until you claim benefits? I have not bothered thinking that far ahead in my life. For all I know we'll cash out and move to Belize. My situation has changed significantly several times already in my first 30 years. What the next 30 years holds for me is still in a deep fog yet to be explored. I will be doing the maximum match for 401k, and if I get my pay-as-you-earn I expect to have about 70k forgiven after 20 years.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 02:41
|
|
|
One of the things we've been doing is using personal spending accounts. We both have checking accounts with USAA that will decline a purchase rather than letting you overdraft, and have no minimum balance penalty. Using these checking accounts, we put any fun money we have into those so we can see exactly how much money we can spend on bullshit. The problem really has been that I am terrible at fun money. I always want more stupid poo poo and so the amount that we give ourselves as an allowance for this is 100 bucks a week. Sometimes, that's still not enough for me. Still, this is wayyyyy better than it used to be when I had no method of controlling my fun money spending. What is your suggestion for curbing my fun money habits? What kind of purchases should be considered fun money rather than a "legitimate expense"?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 06:45
|
|
|
pig slut lisa posted:With that said, maybe you can answer the question yourself. If I said "you can't spend a dollar on fun money for three months", what would that mean to you? What purchases would you be avoiding? Games and game accessories
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 07:12
|
|
|
Star War Sex Parrot posted:I'm sure you're being facetious, but based on current discussion: part of being an adult means coming to terms with wanting something and realizing that you can't (or really shouldn't) buy it. Find ways to be happy with what you have, get validation out of savings goals and new experiences rather than short term endorphin fixes from buying new poo poo that always seem to escalate from one to the next. Please feel free to tell me I'm full of poo poo if this doesn't apply to you, but it applies to most of my friends with spending issues so I feel comfortable generalizing a bit. I'm not at all being facetious. I feel like I have adult imposter syndrome. I'm moving into a new house, I have a master's degree, I have a legit career-worthy job, but I feel like I've been someone else's kid with someone making all my life decisions for me my whole life. Probably something we need to do is gradually reduce our fun money budget until it's down to like 50 bucks a week or so. pig slut lisa posted:I'd suggest trying to go 90 days without purchasing any gaming stuff. You can even set a target for yourself upon successful completion (e.g. $100 on day 91). If you can't go 3 months without buying any new gaming stuff, it raises the question of why you spend money on it at all. Presumably you've been buying gaming stuff for quite awhile, so if you can't make it 90 days without buying something new it's a real indictment of both your past purchases (why'd you buy it if you got bored of it so quickly?) and your future ones (aren't you just going to cast this aside in the near future?). This is absolutely relevant. I am addicted to novelty. My steam backlog is crazy and my miniatures backlog takes up multiple boxes. I should just paint what I have, and play the games I own, until I need new poo poo because I have run out of backlog. 90 days? This will take years to accomplish. Reality check: I have spent over 200 dollars on gaming poo poo in the past week. 
signalnoise fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Jul 19, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 08:12
|
|
|
Inverse Icarus posted:To poke at your budgeting a bit, I'll ask a few questions about an area that people usually overspend on: Food. 1- About 300 bucks a month I'd say 2- None right now 3- None 4- Every day at work 5- Oh god yes. The kitchen was the main selling point in the house we bought. I've been going loving nuts living with my inlaws and not having my own kitchen.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 13:12
|
|
|
Duckman2008 posted:If you don't cook at all I would bet that you may be spending more than you think. If you average just lunch at fast food at $8 (and that's conservative), then multiple 5 days a week for 4 weeks, that's $160 for each of you. So that's $240 of your $300 on lunch. What are you guys spending for breakfast, dinner and snacks if you don't cook? What are you spending on alcohol? Right now I spend nothing on alcohol. If I have alcohol available, I drink til I'm drunk every night until it's gone. Breakfast and dinner are handled at home. Snacks, maybe 100 a month tops? I'm partial to energy drinks.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 13:44
|
|
|
Psychologically speaking, maybe it'd be best to start a smartypig account where I deposit less money but eventually make bigger purchases? I dunno
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 14:15
|
|
|
I generally don't eat breakfast, but I eat dinner with in-laws. I don't drink alcohol usually, because it's dangerous.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2015 16:31
|
|
|
I kinda feel like if I go over my previous expenses it's just going to make me feel like it's a good starting point to reduce from. Rather than look at what I've been doing and adjust from that, I think I should budget a reasonable amount to everything and stick to that as a fresh start. Above all else I don't want to dwell on the past. I want to look forward with my budgets where they SHOULD be rather than a marginal difference from where they were. This is especially because I'm going to have entirely new categories of poo poo to budget for. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Jul 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 04:09
|
|
|
pig slut lisa posted:I'm confused, signalnoise. You make some good points. After work I'll sort through my Mint account.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 14:43
|
|
|
We were relatively comfortable and even nesting in our basement apartment. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, father in law shows us a house that's for sale in the same neighborhood. It is important for my inlaws that we live close by because they are aging. We didn't get that one, but it put the idea in our heads that there was a chance we could have our own space and our own life. I have never had my own space. After the possibility raised its head I couldn't shake it. Also, we are getting some financial help for agreeing to live nearby. I am presently cancelling an order for Bluetooth lighting for the new house.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 19:06
|
|
|
Thanks for that
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:While I agree that the house is purchased so you can't do anything about it specifically, what happens if your father in law decides you should have a new car? Or go on a cruise with the rest of the family? How do you plan to avoid being convinced to spend money you don't have? Tell him to gently caress himself I guess
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 23:20
|
|
|
Devian666 posted:This is quite important to do. So long as you are aware you can't afford it you can use that as an out for everything expensive. Oh, definitely. And I'll say this. I don't regret buying the house one bit. If nothing else, it's in great shape and it appraised at 170k, 10 full more than we paid for it. New double-pane windows, new roof, a gutter system that cost 10k on its own, new A/C. Also, my FIL respects me enough that when I say I can't do something, he won't push it. He's all about me not spending money, and I'm sure he'd be really positive in this thread. He just needs to be told we're being more frugal these days. And if he ever tells me to go on a cruise with him and I say I can't afford it, he'll just pay for it himself. I have to reinforce one thing here. Other people convincing people that I should spend money is not THE problem here. The problem is me spending the money. Moreover, it's me convincing MYSELF that I can afford poo poo. It's my own bad decisions that got me here and I won't be blaming anyone else. When I got my master's, it was ultimately my decision. I filled out the paperwork.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
Well, it's a paradigm shift. Between today and yesterday, I had the following series of thoughts- "Hell yeah, bluetooth lights" "If I don't buy those, I can spend half that on a new workbench instead. That'll be the deal" "If I buy some CLR and spend some time I can clean a lovely bench and just use that" So I went from buying something I don't need to wanting something I could really use to just not buying much of anything. It's being happy with what I have and reusing the stuff I have. The problem is going to come two weeks from now when I stop giving a gently caress. I can build up hype for self improvement but staying on course permanently is gonna be tough. We'll see. I'll probably lean on my wife heavily to stop giving in to my stupid requests. Might lead to some fights that are my fault. I dunno. Hopefully I can lose the magnets on my head and the inside of my rear end.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2015 00:28
|
|
|
Devian666 posted:e: when it comes to spending you could be old-fashioned and save the money to buy the things you want (after you've paid off the credit cards). That's what I'm trying to do right now. You have no idea how much I want to buy silicone terrain molds right now. RIGHT. NOW.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2015 00:52
|
|
|
Tamarillo posted:Goddamn if I could get a house for $160k with those features in an area where there were jobs I would buy it in a flash. 4 bedroom split level with a massive kitchen + closing garage too. Hour commute for me though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2015 21:56
|
|
|
Veskit posted:Like you had the information what, a year and a half ago to move forward and be better and instead you remained the same, and hell even when I brought it up you lied to both me and yourself about your spending habits to maintain it. You should probably adopt all the tips and tricks you learn in this thread, but jesus you're going to have to do some inner searching because this has been a sustained problem. You don't even play what you buy, and you feel a need to buy things the moment they come out not when they're extremely devalued and easy to buy. It's more compulsive than learned bad behavior and it should be treated that way. Maybe a budget will help but I'm going to say it's going to take more change from mindset than learning to budget. If it helps, I did reduce spending. I just didn't reduce it enough. The first time I came in here I had no spending limit. My spending limit, as it turns out, was too high (after I enacted one). Still is. So I need to cut it in like half and also do other poo poo. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jul 25, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 01:40
|
|
|
Veskit posted:poo poo you've got me, you're right, I've never committed to a budget before Do you have any advice other than seeing a therapist
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 05:04
|
|
|
Fortunately I'm already seeing a mind doctor so I'm good there, though it's pretty expensive!  Diet and exercise is definitely something I'm trying to get into, which will actually be a lot easier with the house. I'll be cooking at the very least. I think that as far as compulsive behaviors are concerned, the best thing I can do is cultivate a habit of doing. I tend to be a planner, not a doer, which is a big source of problems. I'll buy game stuff and not use it, I'll buy exercise equipment and not use it, hell I'll buy cooking poo poo and not use it. The best thing for me to do, on that end, is to actually start doing the things I plan. But we'll see how this goes. I am accommodating to a fault, so I'm using this thread as a way to be obliged to something. My therapist likes to give me homework, and I do it because I'd rather do it than be nagged. And on that note, I still haven't done the mint poo poo. So, OK thread, give me a deliverable to do. What exactly do you want out of mint? I also have YNAB already purchased. What do you want me to show you that I've done?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 07:08
|
|
|
Last 30 days is gonna be weird due to house stuff. Here's the 30 days between May 20 and June 21 Master Category Category May '15 Jun '15 TOTAL TOTAL ($2,094.13) $1,025.28 Spending Games $711.87 $653.47 Spending Unknown $39.99 $75.19 Spending Hair $0.00 $105.00 Everyday Expenses Groceries $0.00 $24.88 Everyday Expenses Spending Money $0.00 $119.23 Everyday Expenses Restaurants $103.59 $579.36 Everyday Expenses Medical $237.84 $168.88 Everyday Expenses Household Goods $73.44 $19.58 Note that the Games section for this counts the purchase of a computer in there somewhere (and a bunch of kickstarter poo poo I've since kicked)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 07:57
|
|
|
pig slut lisa posted:Also, how do the unknowns get designated that way? Are those cash transactions, or CC transactions with weird names (e.g. sometimes I'll buy something from a national chain but it will ring up under the corporate parent name in a different state, so I can't tell what it actually is), or what's going on? In any event now that you're actively tracking hopefully there will be very little "unknown" in the future. It's from shopping on Amazon and being too lazy to look up what I bought, and yeah in the future I'll be marking this stuff in YNAB as it happens so no "Unknown" category should be there.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 13:25
|
|
|
I have another idea. I'm going to use this thread as a sounding board. I will tell you the problem I'm trying to solve and you tell me the way to get it done without going overboard. Problem 1: I have a steel table that I got with the house, and it's rusty as gently caress. I want to get rid of the rust and in general clean it up along with the rest of the garage workshop area. Solution idea: Get some rust remover like CLR or something and work it in. I want to get a Dremel with a grinder/sander/polisher attachment (I already have the attachments and I want the Dremel for other stuff too) and use that to get rid of any rust and poo poo I can't work out with a scrub brush.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 15:02
|
|
|
slap me silly posted:DIY is over there. What's your plan for not spending $700 on gaming stuff in August?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 15:18
|
|
|
OK, so to be less dismissive, I'm trying to operate with the idea "Can I actually use this right now?" So for gaming, it's "Will I paint/play this in the next month?" So far everything I've been looking at and wanting to buy comes back with a resounding NO. I will not use those molds in the next month. I will not use those minis in the next month. I have poo poo that needs to be painted NOW, so whatever. That poo poo will still be there a month from now, a year from now, whenever I please. I think if I hold myself to only buying stuff I will use in the here and now, it'll go a long way. No
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 15:22
|
|
|
The hard limit, right now, is 100 bucks a week on stuff that's purely bullshit hobby stuff. I'm trying to also work in "don't buy what you won't use immediately" to stop maxing out every week. The plan then is see how much I spend when I'm not buying stuff I won't use, and reduce the cap. Should maybe also budget against home improvement items, etc..? It's kinda difficult to see what should be something that comes out of my spending budget and what should come out of some other budget. pig slut lisa posted:That's like a 5 minute task. Come on man. Honestly you could probably just say it's all hobby. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jul 25, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 15:31
|
|
|
Yeah it was initially supposed to be for restaurants and stuff too. Maybe it'd be better to eliminate that budget and simply track my spending with a new set of rules surrounding what I can buy? The idea was that this would be a way to balance my spending with my wife's spending, but clearly it's just been a way to give me carte blanche to waste money.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 15:39
|
|
|
Veskit posted:Can you come up with better challenges for yourself when trying to persuade yourself from not purchasing games? I think a good rule that would calm down your need to buy more would be something concrete and simple like only games on discount, So you know, this is what I do. It's not video games that kill my wallet, it's miniatures and miniatures related stuff. I very rarely buy video games full price.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 16:45
|
|
|
That works and it'll be a neat exercise to see how long it actually takes me to paint.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 17:11
|
|
|
SpelledBackwards posted:Are we taking Warhammer figurines, Star Wars like the other thread, or am I completely ignorant on how big and diverse the miniatures market is? I don't buy Warhammer stuff or anything else made by Games Workshop. I do have some X-Wing miniatures, "only" about 100-200 dollars worth. But there's a wide wide world of miniatures stuff, terrain, paint, all kinds of poo poo to do with miniatures. Then there's storage...
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 18:18
|
|
|
COOL CORN posted:I'm curious, what did you eat in May? $103.59 at restaurants doesn't feed two people for a month. You didn't go to the store for drinks or snacks or anything? Or would that not fall under groceries? It's likely entirely fast food. I don't eat well when I'm traveling to job sites. Also that is only the last 10 days of May.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 22:54
|
|
|
COOL CORN posted:Ah okay, that makes more sense. I'm sure you know this, but eating from grocery stores is a lot cheaper than fast food. Though, of course, that can be difficult on the road. We have 3 bank accounts right now. One is for our joint expenses, and then we each have a bank account for "spending cash" so we can have our allowances marked separately without having to necessarily track every purchase (a problem for me it seems).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2015 23:49
|
|
|
Pittsburgh Lambic posted:Learning and perfecting new recipes is a ton of fun, spending lots of time picking produce makes you feel really smug, and trust me when I say that if all you've been eating is fast food all the time, a home cooked meal tastes loving amazing. I also hear the OP got himself an awesome new kitchen! Yeah, I fully intend to cook a lot. A LOT. I have been starved for my own cooking for years.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2015 13:55
|
|
|
I am adding up the costs of all the poo poo I want to add to the house like shelving and stuff and it definitely makes an impact when you add up all the costs and look at a total.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2015 14:12
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 04:08 |
|
|
spog posted:1) Buy a handheld wire brush for $2. Yeah I suppose I should read the thread title 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2015 20:58
|
|