All of this talk about national budgets and national debt has re-inspired Tim and I to focus more on our budget again. For the first few months that we lived together, Tim and I were very good about keeping track of all of our spending and logging it into an Exel Spreadsheet. We definitely fell off the wagon after Christmas though.
With the wedding out of the way and talk of house hunting in the future, we realized that we needed to get our own debt and budget under control again. When I say get our debt under control, I do not mean to say that we are drowning in credit card debt or anything of that nature. However, I did have quite a bit in student loans. For you nosy folks out there - I am not going to be putting exact numbers in here (I'm not one for sharing). We already have our debt under control - over half of my student loans have been paid off and the remainder will be paid off by July of 2013. The only other debt we are dealing with is a car payment that will also be finished in October of 2013.
Tonight I finished up the new Excel spreadsheet to figure out where all of our income goes every month and where we should be able to cut. Tim and I tend to over spend in entertainment (on video games, movies, books, etc) and on dining out (which we do on average 2 times a week, if not more). In order to get this in check, we will use a cash and envelope system for both dining out and for entertainment expenditures. At the beginning of each month we will place $100 dollars in 2 envelopes and that will be the money we can spend in each of those categories. Once it is gone, then it is gone. Whatever we do not spend can either be put back into savings or rolled over into the next month.
With the cut backs we should still be able to save some each month, and theoretically by the end of the next twelve months we will have enough put away for a down payment on a house! AAAAHHHH that is exciting stuff!
So, there it is the Hanson Budget plan :)
(P.S. we finally finished painting the trim in the bathroom :)
