Somewhat Z related...

polarity · 09-30-2009, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kannibul

2 incomes, no kids.

Use Microsoft Money, input all your incomes and your bills.

I have 3 checking accounts. One for income deposits and electronic payments, one for expenses / purchases (gas, groceries, starbucks, eating out, movies, etc), and one for unbudgeted expenses (ie, starbucks, eating out, movies) - weekly, we transfer $XYZ that covers our budgeted amount for groceries and gas. What we don't spend on groceries and gas, goes into unbudgeted. Unbudgeted covers anything "extra".

It sounds like a pain, and in a way it is, but, it also forces you to realize what you have and what you DON'T have...and makes you a lot more stingy on buying something.

Using Microsoft Money, you can project out future income and bills - I have mine currently clocked out to the end of next year, which helps in knowing where those extra checks will hit, and keeping everything above $0. We also have a "Buffer" line item (for us, $600 in income/deposits, $100 in expenses, $0 in unbudgeted) - to help cover anything that we "oops" on.

In addition:

Bought a house that was literally 1/2 what they approved us for.

Last December, I refinanced our Civic for as much as we could get, was originally set up on a balloon payment after 48 months, and it had higher than a 10% APR, refinanced it, got a lower APR (around 6%), did it for 5 years for the most I could get from the bank - used the "overage" to pay off my motorcycle (which also had an APR over 10%). This reduced our expenses immediately, which I started rolling to my Credit Card (APR over 10%), which after that, will go to her card which had a higher balance, but lower APR (and higher min. payment)

I also have (and will) use this years tax return. I also found out I misfiled my previous 2 years taxes, and refiled them, getting a lot more back - enough to pay for my credit card, then allow me to fill it back up, and now it's half paid off again (due to payments, not tax returns)

Lastly, I CLOSED our credit card accounts - this locked the interest rates. I still have to respond to the credit card company when they send a notice of change, and declare that I'm not interested in raising my interest rate (duh?)

Not a lot of people know they can close a credit card account while it has a balance and it DOES NOT hurt your credit score.

Even though I bought the Z, I'm still chucking a good amoutn of money to the credit cards - more than my Z payment and civic payment combined...but, I also don't have cable tv at home, or a phone at home (cell phone is a pay as you go as well - it's cheaper if you don't talk/text ($10/mo vs $??/mo!)), and my wife and I car pool, which saves quite a bit, when you think about it (we work close to eachother, and drive the civic which gets decent mileage)

Anyhow...I'll spill more if anyone's interested...

I'm always interested. I'll give you some back story aswell since you were so polite as to share. My wife and I started out with me doing IT and her working in a physical therapy clinic, she was doing office work/pt tech (therapist assistant type stuff), between the 2 of us we made maybe $40,000 a year.

All of the sudden we hit the jackpot, I landed a job making over $100k a year. I worked for 2 years then got her on, so we bumped to over $200k a year. Going from having no money to lots of money we went nuts, bought anything and everything we wanted. Took spur of the moment vacations, etc. We were independant contractors so taxes weren't even held out of our checks. So checks were coming in for just short of $20k for a month. My first couple years and her first year we went retarded and blew through cash like it was nothing. Then come tax time realized what we had done. Took us 2 years to correct that mistake (as well as other mistakes we made before the job with dumb credit decisions).

After about 3 or 4 years in we got smart, decided it would be a good time to buy ourselves a home, get the cars we wanted, plan a budget for when this work ended and we did. Another year goes by and we decide to quit the work and move back home (this was 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and constant travel, literally you didn't go home for a year at a time or so). So we move home, I go back to IT, she goes back to work at the hospital.

Now we have our house payment, and our 2 cars (she drives an 08 accord and I drive the Z). We pay our bills just fine, we have some savings and we go about our lives, but looking at the paychecks coming in getting debt free just doesn't even seem realistic at this point.

For the record I'm 26, most of the dumb things I did were years ago I've had every type of bad habit imaginable and lots of money went to those things. I don't claim to be smart these days, just smarter than I was before. People sharing experiences in my opinion is the single best way to learn. If I told you that bears and kill you, you file it in your mind and move on. If I talk to you about a friend who was eaten by a bear and give such detail that it burns in your mind, you will damn well remember forever that if you hear/see a bear it's time to hit the highway. No, I don't have such a story, it just seemed like a good way to get the point across.

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