One Million and Beyond

Week 12 Budget Assessment

August 19th, 2008

I was a little surprised when I tallied up the numbers for this past week. I knew I had gone over a bit but I didn’t think I was almost $100 over my budget for the week. We had some family over this week and I was expecting a few additional costs but nothing dramatic. Here are this week’s numbers:

I wasn’t surprised when I looked at each category individually since the jumps aren’t drastic. The Alcohol spending was a bit above what I was expecting but then again I haven’t purchased any of the better beers in a while so I wasn’t really estimating properly when it came to that. Food was a bit more than I was expecting as well but again the difference wasn’t great. This goes for pretty much every category.

The one category that completely surprised me was the Gas costs – I did a bit more driving this week but I didn’t think I had done quite that much. I guess all of these numbers really do add up quickly (gas costs included). The other item that wasn’t budgeted and planned for was any entertainment costs; when the in-laws were in town I have a beer with a couple of them and treated. Not expected but not a bad way to spend some money. Overall I’m a little disappointed that my budgeting was so off this week and I’ll have to keep this in mind the next time that there’s family visiting.

Posted in Budgeting and Planning | No Comments

Weekly Budget - Week 13 (Aug 18-24)

August 18th, 2008

This week’s budget is brought to by the common cold – we thank the virus for infecting us. I managed to get a cold in the middle of the summer which is annoying but there’s not much you can do about a cold. Hopefully it’ll pass quickly. This week’s budget is a bit of a wild ride since there are a few unknowns coming up that can completely throw what I’m projecting out the window. Here is this week’s budget:

So at first glance most of the categories are pretty similar from week to week with $100 going into food this week. We’ve gone through most of the food in the house so it’ll be time to spend a little bit more to get stocked back up. The major difference this week is that I need to get some car work done so the transportation budget it $250. I’m not sure how much it will end up costing – I need an oil change and then to get my car emissions tested. If everything goes well then I’ll be below budget on that line item but unfortunately this is one of the unknowns this week.

The second unknown is one that I haven’t included in the budget. We are supposed to go visit family out of town this weekend. If that comes to pass then the $30 for gas this week won’t even get us part of the way there. But I’m not sure if we’ll end up going or not (especially if this cold doesn’t go away quickly).

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Carnival of Personal Finance #165 is Up

August 14th, 2008

This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance is up, this week it’s being hosted by No Debt Plan and he themed the whole carnival around College Football. I was included this week which was very cool but there are a lot of great articles posted up, here are a few that caught my attention:

Entrepreneurs: Is Extreme Frugality A Waste of Time?

Chasing Money - Is There Ever An End To It?

Ways Not Having a Job Impacts Our Personal Finances

Spare Change

Definitely check the Carnival out – they’re always full of great posts.

Posted in Sites/Articles | 1 Comment

How to spot stupid spending

August 12th, 2008

We’ve all spent money on things that really didn’t make sense before. You know those times where you just weren’t paying attention and overpaid on parking or didn’t pay and ended up with a parking ticket. Those moments where you simply stop and shake your head wondering what were you thinking. For me that’s stupid spending. I’ve always thought of this that way but while reading Larry Winget’s You’re Broke Because You Want to Be it really came bubbling forth; I used to spend a lot of money on stupid things.

Although personally I’m a lot better at it now than I used to be I still occasionally catch myself and shake my head. For example: I need to pay for street parking where I live and I can get weekly passes from the city for $15 or a 6 month pass for $60. Personally this one is a bit of a no brainer; I should have gotten the 6 month pass. There were some timing issues with getting one and the weekly one was available online so I got that for a few weeks. Now this is a stupid expense for me since all I needed to do was make a bit of effort and I would have saved myself a bunch of money (mostly on the handful of parking tickets I ended up getting). All of this is wasted money, the weekly passes and parking tickets included.

Very often I find that the stupid spending comes about from laziness. If you happen to forget to go to the bank to get cash and decide to use a competitors ATM. Not paying attention and paying a late fee on a bill. All of these are from us being lazy. I know I’ve done it and I’ll probably do it again. Most of the time that I end up with stupid expenses I know about it, which makes them worse and I’ve started tracking a stupid expenses category in my weekly budgets.

Why catch these stupid expenses?

I’m getting ruthless on this type of spending because I’ve decided I’m done with being in debt and broke. I know it will take a long time to get out of the problem it took me years to get into but I need to stop spending my money on truly stupid things. I don’t mean trimming down miscellaneous spending since it will always come up and a lot of these things are actually necessary. I want to remove the unnecessary and pointless wasting of money like my parking problem (which is solved) and my ATM fees in the past.

The reasoning behind this strong push to remove stupid spending is because if I’m able to catch $10 a week which is entirely possible I’ll end up saving $520 a year in wasted money. That’s a whole lot of money to be throwing away for no reason and that money will be put to much better use such as paying down debt.

Another reason that I need to catch these stupid expenses is that I can’t afford to have them at the moment. The reality is that for many people that $10 a week in stupid expenses is really nothing significant and they would rather spend the money for the convenience. At the moment I don’t have that luxury and I’m frustrated with myself for wasting money for so long.

To close off this post I wanted to start a list of stupid expenses that I’ve paid in the past as both an example and get ideas from you, my readers. What have you spent money on that has been a truly stupid way to spend your money?

The List of Stupid Expenses

• ATM Fees
• Parking Tickets
• Late Fees on bills
• Buying duplicates of books
• Buying extended warranty on my car
• Unnecessary spending at the grocery store
• …

Posted in Saving Ideas, Commentary, Financial Situation | 2 Comments

Week 11 Budget Assessment

August 11th, 2008

This past week has been a great week for me since I was able to not only pay all of my bills on time and get caught up on a few things that have been lagging but I was also able to stay below budget. The best part is that i was able to stay 10.8% below budget. This is a significant amount and here are the numbers:

I made a concerted effort to bring my lunch which translated to only spending 4.66 on lunch this week. This is one of the categories that I’ve really made an effort to keep tabs on since its extremely easy to pop out for lunch spend $10 rather than taking 10 minutes to bring lunch from home. I know that this is part of the way I got into debt and stayed there. With a little effort I’ve been able to keep my food spending in check and this week is a perfect example of this.

I did end up spending more money on food but this is being tempered by my not dpending any money on miscellaneous items. This was a bit of a trade off with my wife; she spent a bit of extra money on what I’d consider a miscellaneous expense so I spent a bit of extra money on food.

The biggest expense this week was paying for my parking and as it turned out I wasn’t able to buy a 6 month street parking pass since it’s close to the end of the year. I ended up only spending $44.60 rather than the $60 I was expecting. I’m glad that I finally managed to get the parking pass taken care of since continuing to pay for weekly passes amounts to nothing more than stupid spending (and the parking tickets are even stupider).

Other than this I was able to keep my smoking and alcohol costs down a bit which I’m happy about and it’s nice to know that I am actually in control of these items. I might have been able to cut back on these a bit more but I’m still happy because both were under budget.

Overall I’m incredibly happy with my results this week. I’ve never been this far below my budget and I’ve paid for parking till November reducing a regular weekly cost for me.

Posted in Budgeting and Planning | 2 Comments

Weekly Budget - Week 12 (Aug 11-17)

August 10th, 2008

This week’s budget is back on track since this month’s parking fees have now been accounted for. I’m also making a slight change to the categories that I normally use for my budgets. After reading Larry Winget’s You’re Broke because you want to be; I thought that adding a new category makes sense. I’m going to add a category called stupid. This is going to be for spending that is completely and utterly pointless. We all end up spending money on things that are really nothing more than a waste of money. This category will cover this (hopefully I’ll keep this category low). Here are this week’s numbers:

There are some minor changes from last week; I’ve increased the alcohol amount because of some family functions this week – I’m expecting to spend a bit more money on drinks this week though I will try keeping this amount down as much as possible. I’m also expecting that I’ll have to do a bit more driving. I’m also not expecting nearly as much in the way of spending for food and for miscellaneous items. My transportation costs are now back to normal at $10 for the week and finally I think I need to start cutting back on my smoking expenses.

The new category has a grand total of $15 though hopefully I’ll end up not spending anything for this. I’m still a little unsure exactly how much of my spending has been here in the past but its time to start tracking the truly unnecessary spending. Overall I think this week’s budget is very attainable and with a bit of effort I might be able to be below budget.

Posted in Budgeting and Planning | 1 Comment

Weekly Budgeting Helped Me Control My Finances

August 7th, 2008

Saying that weekly budgeting has helped me control my finances is a pretty bold statement but it’s true. As my regular readers have seen over the past month and a bit about the only thing that has really remained on my site while I’ve become busy is my weekly budget. Even that has been tough to maintain at times but I’ve stuck to it. I’ve always had difficulty budgeting my money and the net result has been that I’ve ended up living way beyond my means. Thankfully this is no longer the case. Granted I’m by no means in great shape but I am now living within my means and these weekly budget I’ve been posting have helped me tremendously.

Budgeting can be hard

For the uninitiated or even for the perpetually broke like myself coming up with a budget can be daunting. The worst part is putting everything down on paper isn’t the hard part, it’s the actions required to keep track of everything and get spending under control. By breaking my monthly budget down into smaller chunks I’ve been able to monitor my progress from week to week rather than from month to month. Adjusting my spending and realizing where all of my money goes and more importantly how this impacts my projected budget has been incredibly helpful. Keeping a weekly budget gives you the feedback that you need to control your spending quicker than with a monthly budget and the numbers aren’t as frightening if you’re new to it or daunted by your financial situation.

Starting small and understanding your spending

If you don’t know how you spend your money there is no way for you to cut back and really get a hold of things like credit card debt. This isn’t a problem if you make more money than you know how to spend, unfortunately not too many of us are in this situation. I knew I had issues keeping a monthly budget so I broke it down further to a weekly one. A week is also a great chunk of time since our lives revolve around a weekly schedule. Once I started seeing how I spent my money for a couple weeks I realized where my money was really going (as I missed my actual budgets). Once I was able to understand my actual spending rather than what I thought I was spending I became incredibly conscious of it. At this point I made an effort to change my spending and bring my weekly budget under control.

Part of the Bigger Picture

Now a weekly budget is only a small part of any person’s financial situation but when you realize you’re spending more than you think you are inevitably you end up scrambling to make ends meet. Combining these weekly budgets has let me see progress and along with a monthly budget I’m now in a far better position to make everything line up. It has been a great stepping stone because the feedback cycle is short and you can quickly adjust and see the results. I’m incredibly happy that I switched to this approach for keeping tabs on my spending; it’s been a crucial tool for me getting my financial house at least started down the road to being stable and under complete control.

Posted in Budgeting and Planning, Monthly Planning, Financial Situation | No Comments

Week 10 Budget Assessment

August 6th, 2008

From week to week I try to figure out what will be happening and to budget appropriately keeping my spending in check. But as pretty much everyone knows this doesn’t always work out, stuff happens and we end up spending more money. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad and this is what happened for me this past week. There was a chance that we would go up to our friend’s cottage and we did. The thing is that I wasn’t planning for this because when I did my budget up the possibility of this seemed low. Here are this week’s numbers:

The impact this weekend had on my budget was pretty significant since I spent about $100 on gas to get up there and back. Overall without the additional spending that occurred for this weekend I would have likely been under budget (I’m estimating about $230). Although this weekend was incredibly expensive from a budget perspective it was very necessary for me. This is the first weekend that we’ve had completely off and it will probably end up being my only vacation this summer.

Although this isn’t a great week budget wise I was fairly happy that if I were to exclude the cost of the weekend I would have been under budget. Even if I had ended up spending a bit more I’m glad that overall I’ve been able to tighten my belt financially. I am starting to feel that my day to day spending has gotten under control and I’ll be able to tighten my belt a bit more to ensure that I’m living below my means rather than above them.

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Weekly Budget - Week 11 (Aug 4 - 10)

August 5th, 2008

This week is going to be a bit of an expensive week for me, it’s the first budget of the month and that means that i have to pay for a bunch of parking fees. It just goes to remind me just how expensive it is to maintain a car. Other than the parking costs this week will be fairly the same as the past few weeks. This week’s budget:

I am going to attempt bringing my lunch all week but I’ve set aside some funds for eating out for lunch just in case. Without the additional parking costs this week’s budget would have been closer to $220 rather than the $410 that is being budgeted.

Posted in Budgeting and Planning | 1 Comment

It’s Called Work for a Reason – A site update

July 31st, 2008

Work is something most of us say happens between the hours of 9 and 5 and although that’s when most of us make our money that’s not the only time work needs to be done. I’ve been somewhat absent on the blog recently because we moved into a new house and there was a small mountain of work that came with it. Effectively I ended up with two work periods, the one that occurred at the office and the one that occurred at home. Unfortunately when it comes to work it isn’t necessarily something that you enjoy but something that needs to be done.

This was the case for me and I’ve gotten into the habit of doing the work at hand rather than what distracts me, I go to the office to work and I get paid to do this. Granted I’m not paid nearly as much as I would like to receive I am still paid to do my job. Larry Winget’s book It’s called work for a reason really pointed it out for me. If you’re doing something and getting paid for it you should do the job and not a dozen other things that you shouldn’t be doing. Unfortunately when work around the house comes into play I’m not paid but the work still needs to be done (painting ceilings I have learnt is a task I particularly dislike).

The nice thing is that I am almost done the main thrust of the house work. Only the baby room needs to be painted before the little ones arrival and the basement needs some fixing. Overall I’m hoping that I can get back into a routine of posting shortly. I’ve enjoyed having the extra house work to do but the novelty behind it is now starting to wear on me. I’ve set aside more pleasurable activities such as this site to get the work done and it’s time to bring some of them back into my life.

There are times when work takes priority but you shouldn’t forget the other parts of our lives. Workaholics end up doing nothing but working and I believe that is a unfulfilling way to live (at least for me). Having my interests and hobbies (such as this site) really enhances my life and I miss them when they are gone. But work is work and sometimes it just needs to be done.

Here are a couple things to look out for next week: a final assessment of my contest series and my thoughts on weekly budgeting and how its really helped me put perspective to my finances (as well as the usual weekly budget posts). Thanks to all my regular readers for sticking around and for participating in the contest I ran in June.

Posted in News/Misc | 1 Comment

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