Crazymad August!

So here we are on August the first, with a little bit of a skewed sideways budget. Towards the end of July we started spending a lot of money that was not in our budget, transferring money inbetween envelopes and stuff, so it really wasn't a good two weeks. However, we are not off track on our budgeting, due to the fact that we had made it out of debt in June, so we had a little over 1000 dollars of disposable income in July.

That said, Mr. and Mrs. Owl decided that they would like to have a baby in the month of July, but we want to have $15k before we bring Little Owl #1 home from the hospital. Our budget projections put us at our target in March of 2010, very conservatively. But in order for us to do this right, I want to adjust my (our) mental outset towards our destruction of our savings goals.

So my goal this month is to have $2000 in our emergency fund which would mean that we are one seventh of the way there. This would also put us at a $1000 dollar a month savings clip, which is very attractive to me. The problem is that we are at the beginning of our month with the following account balances:

Checking: 160.91

Emergency fund: 2548.92

That means that Mrs. Owl and I have 548.92 to live on for the whole month of August. I mocked up a quick spreadsheet to see if we can do it, and I am pretty sure that we can if we make some significant cuts and don't contribute to our Christmas fund. (which is overfunded, and we were trying to decide where to cut some money out of it.) The budget looks something like this for the month of August:

Rent & Cell phone: $30 * c

Grocery: $150 c

Gas: $180 ** c

Insurance: $54

Toiletries: $15 c

xfer to Checking: $120

*I have done some work for my parents that steadily chipped away at the amount of money this would need to be, so it is down from $420

** I start classes this month, so I WAY overfunded this to make sure that we would be able to make it with a reasonable amount of comfort. School is a 60 mile round trip so gas for the semester should be around 600 dollars. Any money left in the gas envelope rolls over to next month anyhow, so I think this is the wisest way to accomplish this.

I realize this looks way over-simplified but that is my aim here. I want to make this budget as simple as possible so that we cannot screw it up along the way. Our biggest budget expense right now is eating out, anyhow, and I want to lose 15-20 pounds this month anyhow because I am quite unhappy with the extra poundage I have put on in the past three years (160-207 pounts, I am currently at 195 and want to be back to 170) and plan on making a profound dent in that this month.

So, I will update as we go through the month. Mrs. Owl is out of town right now so I am waiting for her to return before I go cash out of the bank, unless she tells me to do otherwise.

June Success

For just over 24 hours the Owls had a positive cash net worth. Sweet! This was taking into account checking, savings (emergency fund), cash in envelopes, checks to deposit, Stafford loan and credit card balance. It was only a few hundred dollars but it was a real boost. This afternoon Mr. Owl paid for health insurance for the semester so we're back in the red but only a few more months of this.

Our super awesome Excel spreadsheet shows that we'll make the final debt payment in October. Woohoo! That is also our anniversary month so we're planning a little getaway to celebrate both. Cash only, of course. :)

Unfortunately, Mr. Owl wants to take our subsidized Stafford loans for the remainder of school as the Air Force reimburses these. I hope. :) Otherwise they will be paid back within 6 months of him being active duty. That's right - Mr. Owl is joining the military ranks. He's working to get in shape right now to apply for AFROTC in August. I'm so proud of him, I think this is a great plan and will work out fabulously for us.

June was the Perfect Month for our budget! We created a zero-balance budget at the beginning of the month, took out cash to fund envelopes and stuck to it just like we planned. We had to make a two-week business trip in the middle of the month and still kept on track in spite. We did the same thing again last week and have everything down pat. This month's budget looks like....

• Giving - 250 (c)
• Rent & Cell Phone - 400
• Plane Ticket - 223
• Grocery - 250 (c)
• Gas - 100 (c)
• Car Insurance - 54
• Cosmetics/Toiletries - 40 (c)
• Christmas & Vacation - 168 (c)
• Blow - 50 (c)
• Visa - 1312
• Health Insurance - 816

The (c) is for cash in envelopes. I'm in love with our rent right now - we're renting a studio basement apartment which has worked out nicely. I'm making peace with the one tiny bathroom sink, no kitchen and plenty of bugs.

The plane ticket is for me to visit extended family in a reunion-type gathering, which I haven't done in over 6 years. The timing was perfect for it and the ticket was inexpensive due to some gifted credit.

That Visa. Is dead. We're paying it off in cash tomorrow morning and closing the account forever. So excited about that!

Our income was higher this month because of some contractor work for Mr. Owl and various things coming in. As it is, even in tight months we are throwing roughly 1K at debt monthly. That will be totally free in October and ready to hit our emergency fund and Roth IRA.

Truth and Reconciliation

Okay... Here we are, 1000 miles later.

A lot of things have changed in both our priorities and abilities. We have basically realized that we have been living on an impossibly vague/tight budget, and we are not committed to the process at all. So we have spent the past few weeks re-arranging our priorities and budget. I will get to all of that later after I have recapped our personal progress and junk.

After completing my finals, Mrs. Owl and I loaded all of our possessions into a truck and moved back to our place or origin. (4.0 on the year/my whole Associate's! Yeah!) Our parents (well, mine) have graciously decided to rent their studio apartment of a basement out to us. So we are now living in a 550ish square foot basement that is just perfectly ideal. I have also been doing an unbelievable amount of work around the house for my parents (no, seriously) so we are not being assessed rent for these first couple of months.

This is a pretty ideal living situation for us, so we plan on staying here for the next couple of years while I finish my degree and we build up capital in order to pay for a house. (pay, not finance) So Mrs. Owl is back to work and everything is running quite smoothly for us, so there is not a whole lot more to say on this front.

A few days ago I was sitting in my chair thinking about what I wanted to do with my life/be when I grow up, which is a pretty difficult question for me. As I thought about this, I don't think my extremely outgoing and social personality is really suited to code-crunching in a cubicle farm. So I started thinking about something that met two goals:

1) Be able to work my way through school with it, becuase if I have to not work for 2+ more years I will go ballistic and lose my mind.

and

2) Something that I don't have to commit my existence to if it doesn't work out.

The idea of being a real estate broker popped into my head, so I decided I would do that. I registered for the pre-license class and prepared ten copies of my résumé and business cards to go talk to real estate offices and look for someone to employ me after I received my license.

So I went out and stopped at several places that were shockingly unoccupied. The first place I stopped that was occupied I walked in and introduced myself to the broker-in-charge and he took an immediate liking to me. I spent the next hour or so in his office talking to him about the industry and he told me to stay in touch and that he would contract me into his office as soon as I was done.

So that is that. My class will be next month and will take me a month to complete. At that point I will be able to take the license exam and then I will be legally ready to start selling real estate.

My ambitious goal is to close five properties by the end of the year. But that would be genuine madness if I acheived that. We will see. I am done writing now.

Goal

I have been in the middle of finals this week, so I have failed in two fairly specific ways:

1)  Spent a ton of money on convenience foods

and

2)  I haven't been updating here/staying on top of the two or three blogs that I read.  Sometimes I think that I am just incapable of staying on top of a blogworld.

Anyhow, I have been killing finals so far, so that is positive.  Another positive is that Mrs. Owl and I are up to 2500 in our EF, thanks to a paycheck and selling our couch, and we have all of the money budgeted for our upcoming move.  On the downside of failure number 1 up there, we have a very pathetic balance in our checking account.  But I have a paycheck coming in from some 1099 stuff I did, and that will revitalize our checking account.

So, quick and dirty, we are really killing this EF thing, despite our consistent failures.  Budgeting is not fun without specific goals, I think.  

Here is a hilarious list of online purchases that we have made in the past two months:

New computer parts - $300

New Monitor - $186

LUSH order for Mrs. Owl - $40

SEDU hair straightener for Mrs. Owl - $120

MyTMMO subscription - $90

New iPod for Mrs. Owl - $105

T shirt for Mrs. Owl - $10

Headphones - $17

Convenience:

Friend visit - $100

Varied eating out - $50ish

3 cinema trips - $90

So yeah, that is what I meant about failing.  We just suck at being disciplined, I suppose.  But all is not lost, because we were able to transfer 1800+ to the EF out of this pay cycle, which is positive.

But we are definitely needing some work on the discipline department...

Eating the Pantry

Inspired by Ambellamy, I gathered up our pantry/fridge last night and took a couple photos. We are attempting to “eat down” our pantry to save grocery expenses and to avoid packing and moving the food. After it was all on the counter I was amazed at how much food we have! Honestly we could eat a few weeks just on what we have. I’ve always been astounded at how much food people keep in their pantries and refrigerators. My parents have a positively overwhelming stockpile in cabinets, pantries, closets, refrigerator and freezer. I support buying in bulk when it makes sense to do so – but there is a point when you have to get that amount back down. It’s probably made easier by the minimalistic lifestyle Mr. Owl and I are enjoying as well.

Anyhow – a few things that didn’t make it into the pictures: red potatoes, waffle mix, baby carrots, condiments, tequila, spices and baking goods like flour and sugar. I don’t mind keeping/moving the last few things because I seldom bake.

I’m planning on only buying up to 3 ingredients for specific meals based on what we have now. This will be difficult because Mr. Owl likes his McDonald’s and I like not eating canned vegetables! Somehow we have the most of that....pictures below:

“Pantry:”


“Freezer:"

Agressive Ploys for Money

Maybe I am a desperate lunatic.  But I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad S10 for 300 dollars from Lenovo in hopes to sell it on ebay and make 30-50 bucks.  It's $440 new, so we will see.  It seems to be going on eBay for anywhere between $325 to $390, so we will see.  At worst I will break even, and get some positive feedback.

BTW - the finance software I am building is going very well.  I have completed the entry form in its entirety, and it is now writing all of our expenses and income to a SQL database.  I am working on acquiring visual studio.net 2008 pro so that I can start learning C# and use that for our report form...  We'll see how it all works out in the end, but I am very satisfied with it thus far.

Quick little note on the SHAME button:  I am going to make a SHAME button on the report form that finds all dining out purchases and totals it for the month, and then does some fun shaming stuff with what it returns.  (Total for month, how much money a year we would lose at that fixed number every month, and so on.)  

First

I. Post. First.

No, not really.  This is my first post in this new blog/adventure that we are undertaking, so I think it is important that I soften the audience up with some good wit.  Again, I kid.

I am three weeks away from finals, so this semester is about to conclude for me.  This is exciting because it is opening up more time to work (I am in the cruising point of the semester.  I am a 4.0 student so the last month is usually the easiest, because I would basically have to not take a final to miss an A in a course.)  with Mrs. Owl on some projects her company has.  This, in turn, generates more income, which is exciting.  

Due to the extreme poverty/extreme tuition of last year my next year of college is going to be entirely paid for by grants and scholarships, with a few hundies to spare.  Which is terrific.  So, and Dave Ramsey would be angry at me for this, I am drawing my full allowance of subsidized stafford loans even though I don't need them for tuition, so that I might buy a car.  The way I look at this is that I am getting a 0% interest loan for about two.five years to pay for a car.  I think this makes perfect sense in shuffling my short-term and long-term goals, in that Mrs. Owl and I both need braces, but we also need a car.

So, there used to be a car fund on our priorities list, but it is no longer there, we just added $4,500 to our student loand total which includes the car.

Finally, I am going to make an effort to build my very first piece of software in the form of our finance tracking software.  Sure, quickbooks or quicken or SOMETHING would probably do it for us, but I need the experience and it will be a lot of fun for me.  Plus I have lots of time to kill these next few months, in what will most likely be my very last summer vacation for as long as I live on this earth.

June Budget

Proposed June Budget: 

We are moving in May so these amounts are estimated projections for our first whole month in a new home. 

Income: $2,963.47

Rent: $600

Gas: $50.00

Groceries: $200.00

Electricity/Gas/Water/Garbage: $100.00

Car Insurance: $45.00

Internet: $10.00

Savings: $1,350.00

Balance: $8.47 

Our goal is to keep our checking account at $300 and move any surplus to savings after our monthly bills are paid.

About Us

Personal

Mr. Owl was born on the west coast of the United States and grew up on the east coast of the United States.  He was homeschooled through his entire k-12 education, and is currently in the process of obtaining a B.S. in a computer technology field, that will remain unspecified.  He is a devout believer in Christianity and attempts to take that belief seriously and not be a hypocrite in his lifestyle.  His interests are varied in nature, but limited in number.  Some of his interests include: good beer, cheap beer, intellectual study of the Bible, computer hardware and software, spending all of his free time with Mrs. Owl, and driving cheap automobiles for as long as he needs to.  

Mrs. Owl was also born on the west coast of the United States, though a few years before Mr. Owl, and she grew up all over the United States, although she did spend a great deal of time in the gulf.  She was also homeschooled k-12, and has received a B.A. in a musical field.  She works as a Business Manager for a web-based start-up, which keeps her very busy.  Mrs. Owl is also a devout believer in Christianity and attempts to live her life free of hypocrisy as well.  Her interests are far more eclectic than Mr. Owl's, much to the chagrin of the marriage.  They include: musical performance, web development, reading, running, crafting and sewing all sorts of totally awesome creations, spending all of her free time with Mr. Owl, and traveling the world.

Together they make an early 20's unstoppable saving (errr... spending) machine capable of achieving any goal.  They were married in the fall of 2007, after an extended long distance dating and engagement relationship, after which they laid low for a year while Mr. Owl worked and Mrs. Owl stayed at home.  Since then, Mr. Owl quit his job to return to college, and Mrs. Owl picked up his slack on the money-making front.

Fiscal

During the first few months of their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Owl spent all of the money they made, until they stumbled upon Dave Ramsey's total money makeover.  (While they are not Ramseyites, they do believe in carrying little to no debt, and establishing well-funded emergency funds.)  After this discovery they got on a budget and stayed on that budget for several months, and were shocked at the amount of money they had wasted before.  They moved 1000 miles from home for Mr. Owl's first year of school and fell back into bad spending habits for another 6-8 months, which is what brings you, the reader, up to this current day (April 14, 2009, for posterity).

Mr. and Mrs. Owl hope to be parents some day in the future, and in effort to make a comfortable and educational life for their would-be children, they are embarking on a financial journey of discipline and diligent accounting.  This is a multi-step process that is as outlined below:

1.  Create realistic and meaningful short term goals of financial savings so that they can be attacked with ferocity.

2.  Mr. Owl will create a piece of software in which all income and expenses can be input and placed in a database that they will be able to generate reports of that by week, month, year, catergory, and so on.

3.  Learn how to enjoy money while still being frugal and wise with it.

4.  Give money to others as we are able.