The Nest

My 6 month plan

Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008 5:07 PM

I think blogging can make me hold myself accountable for my actions, so I'm going to tell all of you about my 6 month financial plan that will be effective June 1. This way, if I start falling off the wagon again, hopefully someone will notice and tell me to wake up and kick my butt in gear.

A little background first: DH and I have acquired quite a bit of debt over the last few years and we are in the process of aggressively paying it off (I call it our GOD plan for Get Outta Debt). This started shortly after we got married and I realized that we had a problem. Anyway, we started tracking our spending, moved into a smaller apartment and paying more on our credit cards. We were doing really well at the beginning of the year, but now it seems like we're slipping. We've been going out more and spending money on things that we don't really need right now. I feel like we need to stop and re-evaluate where we are and what our financial goals are. I think we are losing sight of what we want, so I am going to sit down with DH and talk about where we are and where we want to be and how I think we can get there. I think part of our current problem is that we just let it all get too strict, we barely left any room for any fun money or going out. It's like a diet: if you are really strict and only let yourself eat fruit, you're going to get sick of it and splurge on a whole chocolate cake or something (slight exagerration, but you get the idea).

Here are some ideas I want to discuss with DH: having a weekly cash amount that we can spend on lunch or coffee (probably about $10 each for the week, which means no more surprise Starbucks for me), saving what he makes in tips to use for fun stuff such as going out to movies or the bars or whatever, planning our weeks (both with meals and bills), tracking our spending more carefully, and revisiting our budget/plan every month to see how we are doing. I think that is all doable -- we may not like a whole lot, but it will be better for us in the long run. This could all change since I should be getting some money from my grandfather's estate, but I want to plan as though that's not happening. Since tonight is another late night for him, I am going to plan on talking to him tomorrow night. I think I may even plan a date night so that it's not all boring financial talk... hehehe