Plans and Goals for 2008

Tomor­row is the first day of a new year and I’m excited about some of my finan­cial and bud­get­ing goals and resolutions.

Goals:

YNAB Bud­get
Decem­ber marks the third full month of using my YNAB Pro Bud­get­ing Soft­ware* and I’m excited to get a fresh new start tomor­row.  Instead of rolling over my 2007 data into 2008, The Hus­band and I have agreed to start the new year with a fresh new bud­get.  He has agreed to share all of his expense and income info with me so I can com­bine it with my receipts for a com­plete and accu­rate fam­ily bud­get instead of the more “house­hold” bud­get I’ve been keep­ing so far.

Don’t get me wrong — my hus­band has never hid­den money or info from me.  It’s just that he’s bet­ter at detail stuff and has always been the one to pay the bills — a task I will­ingly handed over.  I, as the stay-at-home-mom, am in charge of 99% of the fam­ily pur­chases — a task he will­ingly leaves in my capa­ble hands.  In other words, we each do what we do best:  he makes the money and I spend it 

Since pur­chas­ing and set­ting up the YNAB soft­ware, I’ve been shar­ing the data with him and he’s gone from scep­ti­cal to cau­tiously inter­ested to an as-long-as-I-don’t-have-to-do-it con­vert.

I’m really excited about this step for­ward for two rea­sons.  One, even though we’re def­i­nitely liv­ing within our means (spend­ing less than we earn), I think we could eas­ily trim our expenses with­out feel­ing a pinch.  I’d like to take an active role in putting more into sav­ings every year and spend­ing our money a lit­tle more con­sciously and wisely.  And, two, as much as I’ve learned not to live in fear of tomor­row, I can’t hide from the fact that my hus­band is old and sick and the odds sim­ply are not in his favor to be around for another 30 years (he’d be 103).  The more informed I am about how much money we have and where it is, the bet­ter off I’ll be if and when he can no longer han­dle our finances.

So, put sim­ply, that goal is to enter absolutely every expense and income — no mat­ter what the source — into our YNAB pro­gram in 2008.

Not Paper or Plas­tic!
Another much sim­pler and some­what silly goal is to keep track of how many bags I don’t use — in all my shop­ping, not just at the gro­cery store — by using my four ChicoBags* instead.  I also want to track how much bag credit I earn over the course of the year by using those same bags.  I plan to keep track of both the num­ber of bags and the total bag cred­its earned in the side col­umn of my blog.

If you’d care to join me in this chal­lenge, please sign up in the com­ments below and we’ll do reg­u­lar check-ins on our chal­lenge status.

Res­o­lu­tions:

No Knick­Knacks or Trin­kets
I’m not one prone to pur­chas­ing knick-knacks or trin­kets but every once in a while I go all nutty and buy some­thing silly for around the house.  Why do I do that?  They always end up being a waste of money as well as a waste of space and energy.  Knick-Knacks and trin­kets take up space and they gather dust.  I resolve to not buy any­thing resem­bling a knick-knack or trin­ket for my house and I expect my read­ers to call me on it if they find any­thing like that in my daily $$ post­ings.  The one excep­tion is art­work.  I do not con­sider art­work for my walls to be knick-knacks or trin­kets and my walls are pretty pathet­i­cally bare.  I am slowly and care­fully try­ing to rem­edy that situation.

Returns
I would say that my most costly weak­ness is un-returned mer­chan­dise.  I get heart pal­pata­tions when I think how many things I have lying around the house that I own but don’t use sim­ply because I never got around to return­ing them.  If I were to kick just one bad habit, this would be it.  I resolve to end the year 2008 with­out adding a sin­gle item to my col­lec­tion of non-returned items.

Cul­ture and Life-Enrichment
The one area in my bud­get that has been most neglected is that of cul­tural and life-enriching events.  I have noth­ing at all bud­geted for tak­ing the chil­dren to con­certs, plays, and other cul­tural events.  I resolve to cor­rect that over­sight in 2008.  I will cre­ate a cat­e­gory in my bud­get so that when I hear of an event that I know we’d enjoy, I will already have money set aside and won’t cringe at the price per ticket and say we can’t afford it.

Related posts:

1. I’m back? Yes. I’m back!!
2. Stop Spend­ing My Money, Mom
3. Day 235: Din­ner & The The­ater, etc
4. Weekly Roundup and Link Love — ER Edition
5. Novem­ber Bud­get Overview