We are still in the midst of house hunting, which I am learning is a way to teach you patience. We have found 2 homes so far that we absolutely loved and one turned out to be on a cracked foundation so the realtor said she wouldn't recommend looking at it because most lenders wouldn't even let you borrow for that and the second we were still trying to decide about the neighborhood and the area and then we asked to look at it again and she said that someone had made an offer and the seller was accepting. This one was hard because we had actually seen it and driven back by about 10 times and discussed how we would use the space with what furniture we have, etc. I guess I'm learning the old saying, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."
Now, going off of the house hunting and the push from my friend Nicole over at the Lieutenant and the Lady, I started getting a budget together and, if you don't know me well yet, you will learn that I love spreadsheets! Literally, my husband asks me about everything, "are you going to make a spreadsheet for that?" It's basically my own version of our Bank of America online account but I am able to input every charge into my spreadsheet, so I literally type out when we go to eat and how much it was. I have separate columns for groceries, eating out, other debits (gas, random drug store purchases, clothing, etc.), bills, and income. I also have at the bottom our debt--we each have a car loan, as well as 1 credit card each. I started it back in mid-August and went back and pulled all of our charges in July so right now I have 2 full months to compare--we decreased our groceries, eating out, and bills in August! We were paying our last month's utilities from Clemson in July as well so that added to our total, but we had accounted for that so it was not an issue. We also were getting paid from Clemson still in July and Kevin got his last paycheck in August (since he was not full-time at Clemson and couldn't get paid out for his leave he had accumulated, our old boss told him to list his last-day at Clemson on July 31 so he could get paid back for some of his time he had accumulated, so that was great!) I will get my first full paycheck from UF on Friday so I'm really excited to finally get a big picture of how much income we will be taking in each month. Back to Nicole's blog, I did a couple of scenarios based on our total monthly income with percentages broken down to Savings/House Fund, Debt, and Living Expenses. I went with 15% Savings, 30% Debt, and 55% Living Expenses (bills, groceries, eating out). In order to make it work, we definitely have to decrease our groceries and eating out each month so that's something we will be working on. I'll try to keep you posted how we are doing from month-to-month.
OK so I think my blog is going a little long today but thanks for reading (if anyone is reading this) but it's nice to be able to get some thoughts out! Also, in case you didn't hear....Clemson beat Georgia on Saturday night!! It was so much fun to watch and cheer on our alma mater but it was a little emotional not being there, it's my first football season not being there since freshman year in 2005! Hope to be able to get back to a game this season. Anyway, I'll leave you with this lone picture for today! Until next time....
No comments:
Post a Comment