Week 3 Budget Wrap-up – 1/15/10 thru 1/21/10
Jan 23rd
DAMN!!! Well, I can’t say my budget was on point this week. Birthday dinner for my wife, and little purchases took its toll on my funds but hey…I’ll do better next time. However, I have been putting a great dent in my largest credit card debt. Regardless of the expenses I’ve been nailing myself with, I’m still on track.
| Week | Item Description | Amount | Remaining budget ($100) |
| 1/21/2010 | Groceries | $ 23.64 | $ 76.36 |
| 1/21/2010 | Gas – civic | $ 18.23 | $ 58.13 |
| 1/21/2010 | Birthday dinner – sushi | $ 115.00 | $ (56.87) |
| 1/21/2010 | Dinner – Toastmasters | $ 20.00 | $ (76.87) |
| 1/21/2010 | BART ticket purchase | $ 20.00 | $ (96.87) |
| 1/21/2010 | Home Depot | $ 2.34 | $ (99.21) |
| 1/21/2010 | ATM fee | $ 2.50 | $ (101.71) |
Woot! 16% reduction in one month on my credit card debt!
Jan 19th
Pretty cool day actually for me. My initial budgeting has allowed me to finally see some progress against my debt. I’m trying my best using the snowball maneuver taught by the Automatic Millionaire which follows these ideas:
- Categorize all your debt by interest rate – Highest to lowest.
- Budget to pay only the minimum on all debts except your highest interest rate debt.
- This first debt gets all your extra cash to pay off as fast as possible
- Then after satisfying your first debt, you roll that same amount you were paying in the next highest interest debt.
- After a while your amount to pay is the same amount you normally would be paying, just lumping all your previous debts together to create the Snowball of debt removal.
Today, I started that snowball off and in a big way. 16% was reduced, or 1250 bucks in one shot. Talk about painful man… It’s really tough but its wonderful to think that I could after all my debt is over with keep all that cash. The interest payments alone were the worst part of my month honestly, and they are getting down there. Especially after the banks are having huge swings in the variable interest rates of their credit cards to protect against the government trying to do some fixing to the %’s. Example of that linked here http://www.defendyourdollars.org/2009/11/credit_card_freeze_bill_frozen.html
This is just a drop in the bucket, but its a damn good start. Soon enough I will be feeling the benefits of recovering my money from all the interest I was paying.
Join me, and rock out on your debts too. SHAKKINO!!!!
Budget with real cash, not credit/debit cards
Jan 11th
During the course of my budgeting adventures I have found that using my credit/debit card to make purchases might be easy…but its just too easy. This has led me to the idea of only paying in cash for everything, and having to carry all the cash on me at once. But why do this??
1. Carrying all your budget cash forces you to look at your cash on hand everytime you buy something.
2. You can’t say, oh well I could just buy it because I have more than my budget in the bank anyway.
Why do this? There are many good online services like Mint for tracking all your expenses via your debit/credit card. It’s just too damn easy to buy stuff with your credit card. Cash is harder because you have to pick it out of your wallet, manage the change and you see every single time you open your wallet how much cash you have on hand. With your credit card, you dont see a ticker on there saying $152.57 remaining in your budget. You have a credit line or a much larger debit account balance than your small weekly budget. You just cant get into the habit of not being familiar with your cash on hand.
Yes…its tough. Yes…it sucks knowing you only have a hundred bucks a week to spend total. How bad do you want that goal thou? Wouldn’t it be nice to instead of spending 25-50 of that 100 dollars a week on interest, you could pocket it and actually do something better with that cash?
Carrying cash is cumbersome, impractical if you like to dress in tight clothes or whatever. I’m contending that cash is king, and you should be intimate with your cash. Become familiar with you cash on hand, and dont deviate. You’ll be fine, and you will thank yourself when you aren’t paying 15-25% of your cash on hand in interest on a credit line.
