Money Talk

(Note:  I have some family members who read this blog.  Don't think that we are going without, or that we are in dire financial straits.  Ya'll know we are fine.)  

So, now that our 20th anniversary road trip is over and paid for (partially out of savings, as we planned) it's time to get serious about saving more money.  Mr. GV makes a good living.  I certainly cannot complain about that.   

Although I don't want to get into specific numbers regarding salary, I do have a breakdown of what percentage of his check actually gets deposited into checking.  

This is what comes out before the money comes to us for our usage:

Taxes 19.2%

Retirement 19%

Savings/Medical FLEX account 8%

Insurances 3.6%

Total=49.8%, so let's call it 50%.  

So that leaves 50% of his income to pay the bills.  The only debt we have is our mortgage.  Our other debts (student and auto loans) have been paid off for several years.  We use credit cards but they are paid in full every month, and have been since we've been married except for two times:  the first few months of our marriage when I was fresh out of college, he was in college, and we had a wedding to pay for AND one month when we moved for his residency, he didn't get paid for 6 weeks, and I had yet to find a job in our new state.

Our standard bills are: mortgage, utilities, phone, trash, Internet, online photo storage, Hulu, Netflix.  

Then you have the variables:  groceries, household items, home repairs, pets, donations, bicycling costs, gifts, auto repairs, clothing, home improvements, post office, restaurants.  

We do just fine.  And then, like any other household, an unexpected expense comes along.  In the last couple of months we spent over $2,000 on car and truck repairs, and over $3,400 on a new heating and air unit.  And we have that money in either short-term savings or long-term (emergency fund.)  The a/c, for instance, came out of the emergency fund. 

Of course I am thrilled that we have saved the money to pay for those items. Thrilled!  But we are also facing the reality that there are several repairs/replacements that need doing around our house and that in the next few years we are probably going to need a new car.  So we would like to build up that savings as much as we can.

Which means going on a tighter budget.  Strike that, it means going on a budget at all, which is something at which we have never been good.  We tend to go on a budget, then fall off the ol' wagon within a couple months.  

So, expect some posts about our money-saving adventures in the near future. I would love to hear how others approach budgeting!