Cash — $1.00
Bottle of water at tonight’s District Championship games. I’d intended to grab a bottle out of the garage on the way to the game but forgot. There was no way I could go 5 hours without a drink so I picked up a bottle at the concession stand.

Cash — $9.00
Admission fees for The Husband (he gets the senior discount) and myself. We both had a great time although I was in a phenomenal amount of pain and then had to leave my seat for a while because someone wearing a strong scent sat down next to us. The Daughter’s team won District and will now proceed to Regionals.

Wendy’s — $2.79
Dinner for The Son.

Unfortunately we had to change our cello lesson schedule. Our initial day (Thursday) was perfect because it was the day after orchestra rehearsal. This allowed The Son and his teacher to discuss points covered in rehearsals that needed to be reinforced and identify tough passages that needed extra work before the next rehearsal. The initial time (1:15 pm) was close to perfect because it had us finishing within 45 minutes of The Daughter’s school release time. The location (the teacher’s apartment) was perfect because it was within a mile of The Daughter’s school and 1.5 miles of a Whole Foods where The Son could munch down an afternoon snack while waiting for school dismissal.

The problem, that simply could not be overcome, was the fact that the teacher and his wife have two cats. I’m allergic to cats. Very allergic. Very. Very. Very. Allergic. Asthma-attack allergic. The first lesson sent me into a pretty good (read: bad) asthma attack. After that I started wearing a mask while in the apartment. But The Son and the cello bag and even my own purse and shoes were tracking cat hair home with us. Plus I was experiencing stronger allergy symptoms after each additional lesson despite wearing the mask. The final blow to the perfect lesson time/date/location was that The Son was exhibiting increasing allergy symptoms.

Now we have a Wednesday lesson. The location (college campus) is further away from home. The time, late afternoon, means that The Husband has to leave work to pick up The Daughter from school and bring her home because I can’t get her and get home in time to get the son to his lesson. Even worse, the commute from the lesson location to the orchestra rehearsal takes us through the very worst part of highway commuter traffic at the very worst time of the day. Luckily, there’s a Wendy’s 2 blocks from the lesson location. This means we can pick up some dinner so he can eat as we make our way from one end of the metro area to the other in stop-and-go traffic. And the 45-minute-lesson-to-rush-hour-traffic-commute-to-hour-long-rehearsal is a bit of a challenge for The Son whose biggest pleasure is entire days when he doesn’t have to leave the house

Some people, The Husband included, would simply say find a new teacher. Out of the question. The Son has formed a real bond with the teacher. The teacher likes the son. This relationship is not to be underestimated nor under-valued!

Vitamin Cottage — $2.59
An Odwalla Strawberry C Monster juice for me to help tide me over until I can get home from our lesson-commute-rehearsal marathon to some real dinner.

Kroger — $19.75
The Husband took The Daughter to the store on the way home from school today. He’s a real push-over. All she has to do is bat her eyes at him and he melts. They bought:

• 2 cans of hairspray (ostensibly for the use of the girls in the school play to be performed this weekend). I made it clear that the spray will not be used in the house.
• pound of butter
• chips
• tub of prewashed store-brand organic lettuce. I gave The Husband and The Daughter an earful about this purchase; prewashed lettuce is more expensive and doesn’t last as long. I was particularly displeased with this purchase because the lettuce is already bad. I’ll have to return it for a refund tomorrow.

Overall a light day in terms of expenses but heavy on gas usage and frustration level. Getting home to a 13-to-1 loss in the first game in The World Series did not improve my mood. Tomorrow’s a heavy commuting day as well. Let’s hope the Rockies can get their stuff together for Game 2.

Costco Gas — $56.72
The Tank’s tank was empty so we left the house early on the way to The Son’s Tuesday classes so we could stop by Costco for a fill-up. I pumped 21.251 gallons @ $2.669/gal. My odometer reads 115,440.

Target — $35.09
Today almost turned into a Shopping-While-Impared day (my pain level is depressingly high) but I ended up putting back several items I knew I didn’t need. I also managed to leave without buying any photo frames — I need some but they weren’t on sale so I’m going to hold off until they are. I’d hoped to end up with another large box of Tide Free but they were out of stock I ended up with:

• one pair of opaque black tights (this is what I went in for, The Daughter needs these as part of her costume for the upcoming school play) — $4.99
• 10-pack of Daisy 3 razors (for The Daughter and I) — $9.29
• 2 huge bags (total of 210 pieces) of Hallowe’en candy — $9.99/ea.

Cash — $1.50
Slice of pizza for The Son who helped me staff the concessions table at The Daughter’s playoff game.

edit: added the following expense paid by The Husband today

Qwest — $128.64
A lower phone bill — now that’s a welcome sight. Last month I cancelled The Daughter’s “Pic Mail” service. We had intended to keep that service for only 3 months after her 15th birthday when she was given her new flip camera cell phone. That was in late February. Guess we went a little beyond the 3 months

Parking — $1.50
Took The Son to his first basketball practice today and had to find a place to park — no easy task on a busy college campus. Found a lot that charged $1.00/hour and the parking angels must have been looking out for me today because I just happened to have $2.00 cash on me. I never carry cash — a habit that’s gotten me into trouble more than once. But believe it or not the lot had a meter that would have allowed me to use a debit card if I hadn’t been able to scrape together the cash. I, for one, like this move toward plastic. I live a cash-less life and I’m glad to see the rest of the world catching up with me.

Late last week in the wake of our What if Daddy Were Rich conversation, The Husband and I were discussing budgets. I’d been a bit reluctant to tell him about the YNAB* program I’d bought and was trying to learn to use because I knew he’d write it off as another wild hare I was chasing (and possiblity rightfully so). So I’d been introducing the subject of budgets and finances one small conversation at a time.

This weekend I showed him the software and we had a little chat about cutting some of the “fat” out of our spending. I admitted that part of my issue over the past several years has been that I have no idea of how much money comes in. When I was younger earning my own paycheck and paying all my own bills, I was good at saving and good at budgeting and good at being frugal. These days, all I’m responsible for doing is spending money. I keep the fridge stocked, the kids clothed, and ensure that there’s always a supply of TP in the bathroom cabinets.

So I explained to The Husband that while life is good the incentive to be frugal has disappeared. Call me shallow or short-sighted but I need an incentive to save money. I need to see the results of my effort.

The way it works now, I spend the money and he pays the bills. In other words, I’m fat, dumb, and happy. But I’m tired of being fat, dumb, and happy. I told The Husband I want to be fat, smart, and happy.

Could this be a dawn of a whole new era?

Church — $20.00
Weekly offering.

Einstein Bros. Bagels — $13.88
A dozen bucket deal (13 plain bagels, 1 plain shmear, 1 pumpkin shmear) plus a frosted cookie for The Daughter. The Son declined saying he was going to going to skip the cookie and try eating healthier.

Sports Authority — $97.53
Ouch! Boning up on basketball gear. The Son starts basketball tomorrow. He’s never played basketball before so he has no gear at all. He had no shorts that he could use — he’s outgrown most of the shorts we purchased this past spring and even then they were all khaki dress and cargo shorts and not really ideal for running up and down the court for the 1.5 hour practices. So I picked up a pair of nylon basketball shorts. I also picked up a pair of sweat pants for him; he didn’t have anything like that either and I don’t want him getting all sweaty and then coming out into the cold in his shorts for the commute home. We’ll forego the basketball shoes at this point and just have him wear his regular tennies.

This will be The Daughter’s second basketball season so she already had one pair of basketball shorts plus her uniform shorts. But she’s a real clothes-horse so of course she needed two more pair of shorts. Once we got home and I looked at what we’d bought and what she already had, I told her to pick one pair and I’d return the other. She was not happy but, hey, I’m the mom and what mom says goes. I did say we’d keep an eye on the sales and see how she does with three pair of shorts (plus the uniform). We took care of the shoes issue earlier this year — last year she suffered two major ankle sprains so we decided that basketball shoes were a must for her this year. She’ll also use her ankle brace during practice and during games. I’ve got my fingers crossed that neither will be hobbling around on crutches this year.

Great Outdoor Clothing — $8.59
Cute black belt that The Daughter just had to have She does wear belts almost daily and did not have a black one so I bought it. Now that we’re keeping better track of how much we’re spending and on what, I am determined that she will be held to her budget.

Gap Outlet — ($43.21)
Returned two items purchased for The Son on Day 27 — a sweater vest (didn’t like the color and too big — also too expense, we thought it was on sale but it wasn’t) and a pair of shorts (inseam too long).

Gap Outlet — $37.81
Bought two pair of khakis size 16 for The Son but will have to return them — they’re great in the inseam length but there’s not enough room in the waist to hope that he’ll get more than a month or two out of them. We’ll stick with size 18, I guess.

Barnes & Noble — $16.89
Bought a book for my nephew’s upcoming birthday and a small clothbound book that closes with an elastic band to keep in my purse. It turned out to be the last day of Teacher’s Appreciation week so I was able to get a 25% discount on both books even though neither one was purchased for classroom use. I saved $5.24!

Wild Oats — $54.09

• bag of Cheese popcorn — $1.99
• store-brand bag of mixed nuts — $3.29
• chocolate wafer cookies — $3.99
• O’Coco’s cookies — $4.59
• dozen Nest Fresh eggs — $2.99
• hummus — $3.29
• salsa — $3.29
• string cheese — $4.99
• fruit leathers — $4.99
• ?? — $1.99
• ?? — $1.29
• Country Life chewable Adult multi vitamins — $15.49

Two lessons learned tonight: 1) stop taking hungry children to the grocery store! and 2) just because the bottle says chewable doesn’t mean they are chewable. The Husband and The Son hated these. I’m hoping I can return them.

This trip wiped out my $50 grocery card. The balance was put on my 1-2-3 Rewards card. Didn’t I say something about trying to make it through the rest of the month on my existing Grocery Cards?

Diamond Shamrock — $12.94
It’s a long story but this purchase was for 4.509 gallons of Super Supreme unleaded gas put into a 5-gallon container borrowed from the neighbor. I didn’t file it in Auto: Gas in my YNAB* budget because it wasn’t put into either one of the family vehicles. The gas was used to get The Husband’s grown daughter’s new used Mustang running again. She came over to show us the car, let The Daughter and I drive it, and then when she was set to leave, the silly thing wouldn’t start again. Naturally, I did what any self-respecting woman in my position would do — I asked the guy next door to take a look at it It was determined that, despite the fact that the gas gauge read 1/4 tank, the car was out of gas. We put most of the gas into the tank leaving just a bit which he poured into a hose thing and the car finally started.

Haircut — $0.00
The Son was getting a little shaggy so I gave him a haircut. Not his favorite activity by any means but he’s got a concert coming up so we couldn’t put it off any longer. I figure my home haircuts save us about $18 - 20/cut.

Kroger — $28.39
This is the kind of shopping trip I hate. Not that I spent a bunch of money on stuff that I otherwise wouldn’t have but we had stuff in the house for dinner and instead went to the store to buy different ingredients and ended up paying a little more, perhaps, for some items because they weren’t on sale. But the car saga pushed back the haircut so then the haircut ran right up to when The Son and I were planning to start dinner. He needed a break to recover from the trauma of the haircut so we changed our planned menu to one that didn’t require as much effort and preparation time. The Son likes cooking and wants to learn to make some of his favorite meals so we’d planned to make Tuna Under Biscuits tonight. We switched to meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and broccoli instead — for which I had none of the needed ingredients in the house.

• 1-gallon Horizon Organic 2% milk — $4.95
• 2 boxes Ghirardelli Double Chocolate brownie mix — $3.00 ea. (saved $0.38) [one box will be made and delivered to the neighbor who helped with the car]
• 4 Idaho potatoes — $2.79
• 2.10 lbs Coleman ground beef — $10.43
• 1 bag Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips — $2.00 (saved $0.99) [I’ll make cookies for the kids soon, or even better, maybe teach The Son how to make cookies]
• broccoli — $1.29 (saved $1.02)
• onion — $0.38

Dinner for 5 (us plus The Husband’s youngest son, our regular Saturday night dinner guest) with 3 slices of meat loaf leftover to tomorrow’s sandwiches cost a total of $14.89 (not including the cost of the two eggs, some oatmeal, and 2/3 can of V-8 used in the meatloaf).

Update on my YNAB Purchase

A week ago last Thursday (Day 40) I purchased and downloaded the You Need a Budget* budgeting software. I will admit that despite my initial excitement about the program and determination to get the most out of it, the process has not been without hitches. I’d call myself fairly technically inclined and I’m used to being able to jump into a new program and, with a little trial and error, figure out what’s going on pretty quickly. I had no trouble understanding and getting on board with the programs 4 rules.

1. Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck
2. Give Every Dollar a Job
3. Prepare for Rain
4. Roll with the Punches

And I had no trouble understanding the general layout and design of the program — the what-it-does part. What I had trouble with were the nuts and bolts mechanics of the program — the how-to-do-it part.

I don’t know if it was the threat to my self-image as a technically “with it” middle-aged mom or my determination to get full use out of a program that showed so much promise, but I stuck to the task and worked through my initial confusions. Of course, the really friendly and knowledgeable forum users who answered all of my questions didn’t hurt in helping me over the hurdles. I’m pleased to announce that I think I’m well on my way to mastering the program and putting it to full use. Also, at this point in the process it appears that my initial expectations of what this program had to offer were, if anything, too low.

Building My Categories

I know from past Quicken experience that it helps to put the extra effort into fine-tuning your categories before you put a ton of effort into entering transactions. The YNAB program* comes pre-loaded with some basic categories but new users are sure to want to make changes and additions to fit their individual needs.

Over the past few days I’ve played around a bit with categories and will share my category list below. First, though, I’ll share some of the questions I asked myself in figuring out how detailed I wanted to be in tracking my spending. Past experience has taught me that being too detailed leads to unnecessary time requirements and the longer it takes to enter my transactions, the less likely I am to continue using the program over the long term.

So I asked myself:

Q. What are my goals in keeping a budget?

A. I have two. First, I want to see where our money is going and then, second, I want to see where we can cut back. As I posted yesterday in Our Debt Load, debt reduction isn’t necessary but even we could benefit from spending a little less and saving a little more. I suspect we could reduce our monthly expenses a satisfying amount without feeling any real pinch.

Q. Specifically, what information do I want to break out? And what information can be lumped?

A. For example, which categories do I want to know how much we spend down to the person (clothing). Which categories do I want to know how much I spend on each individual child (cosmetics, allowance) and which items do I just want a combined children total (activities fees, books & materials). Which items am I happy having lumped into one big catchall category (charity). Which items should logically be lumped together because they’re billed together (Gas & Electricity, Cable & Internet).

For each person/couple/family, the answers to these questions are going to be different. Obviously, if you don’t have children you don’t need to know how much you spend on their clothes, toys, or activities fees. If you’re living on a really tight budget, breaking your grocery purchases into smaller categories like staples, treats, beverages might help keep splurge spending in check.

So, as promised, here is a breakdown of what my budget categories look like right now:

• AUTO
  • Car Insurance
  • Gas
  • Loan Payment
  • Maintenance, Repairs, Tires
  • Registration
• CHARITY
• FOOD
  • Groceries
  • Restaurant
• GIFTS (*)
  • Immediate Family
  • J’s Family (The Husband)
  • L’s Family (Me)
  • Other
• HOUSEHOLD
  • Computer Hardware
  • Computer Software
  • Consumables
  • Durables
  • Postage, Shipping, Supplies
• HOUSING
  • Improvements
  • Mortgage
  • Other
• I…. (The Son)
  • Allowance
  • Clothing
• KIDS
  • Books & Materials
  • Equipment & Rentals
  • Lessons & Activity Fees
  • Other
• L…. (The Daughter) **
  • Allowance
  • Clothing
  • Cosmetics
  • School Lunches
  • School Tuition
• MEDICAL/HEALTH
  • Alternative Care
  • Co-Pays
  • Prescriptions
  • Vitamins/Supplements
• PERSONAL
  • Books & Music
  • Cleaning & Laundry
  • J’s Clothing (The Husband)
  • L’s Clothing (Me)
  • Haircuts
  • Memberships & Subscriptions
  • Other
• RECREATION
  • Entertainment
  • Vacation
• SAVINGS
  • Buffer
  • Emergency Fund
  • IRA (Me)
  • Joint Savings
  • Personal Savings
• TAXES
  • Property
• UTILITIES
  • Cable & Internet
  • Garbage
  • Gas & Electricity
  • Phone
  • Water

* With The Husband’s five grandchildren and my six nieces and nephews, two siblings, and parents to shop for in addition to our own children, I like keeping our gift budgets separated out like this. It helps at Christmas time when we seem to hemorrhage money. Also, a few years back I became aware that it was important to The Husband that I spend more money on his grandchildren than my siblings’ children (hey, we all have to have a few little issues, right?) so separate budgeting is helpful for that as well.

** One of my main goals with budgeting is to calculate how much it costs to clothe and accessorize The Daughter. I don’t want to guilt her or give The Son ammo to use against her but I do want her to have a sense of how these expenses add up. Thus the separate categories under each child and the combined categories in the general Kids category. Also, this is laying the groundwork for a clothing budget project I have in mind (more on that soon).

So there you have our budget categories. How do they differ from yours? Did I miss something important? Do you think I’ve over-categorized?

Consumer Reports — $20.00
A subscription to my favorite magazine. I haven’t been a loyal subscriber over the years — instead I subscribe for a year and then it lapse for a couple of years and then pick it up again when the right offer comes along. Not that I’d mind a lifetime subscription, mind you. It’s just that magazine subscriptions are something I’m not really good at spending money on.

School — $150.00
Two more grocery cards — picked up the $50 Wild Oats card I had wanted to get the other day and another $100 Kroger card. I’m curious as to how close I can get to the end of the month using only the grocery cards I have left in my wallet.

Safeway — $50.00 (approx.)
The Husband did his monthly Safeway shopping. Something about if he spends $50.00 he gets $5.00 back? Anyway, he picked up 4 cans of BumbleBee canned salmon — this stuff is the Cadillac — no, scratch that — the Rolls Royce of canned salmon. Super yummy. He also picked up a new jar of CholestOff by Nature Made @ $20.00. Expensive stuff, that. The balance was spent on various groceries to stock his little ‘fridge at the office — juice, crackers, etc.

I’ve read a lot of personal finance blogs that are dedicated primarily to tracking the blogger’s journey out from under overwhelming debts. I applaud both the impetus (shedding debt) and the effort of journaling their trek out of the abyss.

There but for the grace of God…

In our case, despite daily credit card use, The Husband and I do not carry a credit card debt load. Our debt load consists only of one car loan and our mortgage.

The Car
We bought our 2007 Subaru Impreza wagon in July of this year — the same month that we made the loan-retiring payment on The Tank (our SUV). The new Subaru was purchased to replace the Subaru Legacy wagon we purchased new in 1994. The day we brought home the new Impreza, we sold the Legacy for $900. It was 13 years old and had in the neighborhood of 224,000 miles on it and still ran well with no major issues. The dealership wanted nothing to do with it

We bought the Impreza through the Costco Auto Buying program. If you ask me, it’s the only way to buy a new car. First of all there are no pushy salesmen to deal with — Costco purchases are all run through the dealer’s fleet sales department. From what I understand, the deal one gets through the Costco program varies depending on the manufacturer of the car you’re buying. It’s typically in the neighborhood of $100.00 over dealer invoice.

We couldn’t be happier with the Subaru and we couldn’t have been happier with our purchasing experience either. Because we were buying a 2007 (the 2008’s weren’t out yet but were due out soon and the new ‘08 was a model redesign year), our deal was particularly sweet. We paid nothing over invoice (that’s right, actual invoice price only and yes, we saw the invoice) plus we retained the Subaru incentive being offered that month (the pot was sweetened in July) of $1,500 cash back. We also opted for the 2-year 1.9% financing.

The Husband made a payment today and showed me the payment details. Our monthly payment is $904.15. Of that amount, $871.63 is applied to the principal of the loan with only $32.52 in interest charges.

The House
We bought our house in the spring of 2002. The Husband has owned several homes over his lifetime [he loves reminiscing about buying his first home — a brand-new 2-bed, 2-bath in Boulder, CO for $18,000] but I was a first-timer. Before buying the house, we’d rented a house for 8 years and rented an 2-bedroom apartment for about 5 years before that.

The Husband had a pretty definite budget in mind — which was about 1/2 of what we qualified for. We got a VA loan (The Husband had previously bought a house with a VA loan and didn’t think he could use it again; his brilliant wife did the research and found out that he could). We had nothing to put down and thus financed the entire purchase price. I don’t remember what the final numbers were but the seller accepted our offer of $224,000 (it had been sitting vacant for nearly a year). We got a 30-year fixed rate at 6%.

Shortly after buying the house I read somewhere that by simply making one extra house payment per year a homeowner can effectively take 8 years off of a 30-year mortgage. I was floored! So I mentioned it to The Husband and we agreed make it our plan.

According to our this month’s mortgage payment statement, our unpaid principal amount is $208,910.83. Our October payment was $1,640.10 and of that amount only $342.58 was principal. Interest was $1,046.27 and $251.25 was applied to escrow.

Each spring The Husband sends in a check for $3,000 in lieu of our $1,640.10 payment. So once each year, we apply (approximately) an extra $1,360 to our principal pay-down. That’s like making 5-1/2 principal payments and saves us approximately $5,755 in interest each year. And with each extra payment, the principal paydown portion (how’s that for alliteration?) gets bigger.

I’ve seen it argued that homeowners are better off applying that annual extra house payment to higher yield investments. That may well be — in some cases. However, in our case, that extra payment brings me peace of mind. With The Husband turning 73 next spring and battling cancer for the third time (a battle that, statistically he will not win this time), anything we can do to make the future a less scary place is good.