REMATCH: Blockbuster vs. Netflix

I'm really annoyed that Blockbuster literally NEVER ships the movie that's sitting at the top of my queue.  Weeks ago, I banked up a bunch of Popular Mechanics for Kids episodes for Alex and that seems to be the only thing Blockbuster feels like sending me.

I guess I can just take them straight to the store when they arrive and exchange them for the movies I actually want to see, but it's annoying!  And don't even get me started on the employees at our local Blockbuster.  Seriously.  Don't.

New strategy

I'm getting really fed up with myself over this budgeting thing and my complete inability to give a crap about it for more than five consecutive days.  It's stupid is what it is.  I know I CAN do it, but I also kinda know, deep down in the bowels of my soul, that it probably ain't gonna happen.  Just like a diet, I can do it for a couple of weeks, but then I fall off the wagon and I'm right back where I started.  Only fatter and more pissed off.

So I'm trying to think of a new strategy.  As much as I HATE to do it and would never recommend it to anyone else, I think we're going to try to use our credit cards instead of our debit cards for a while.  I figure if I set up an automatic payment on our credit card for $1700 a month, then THAT will be our discretionary budget.  I won't have to worry about whether certain charges have cleared or not or where we are with our bills.  I'll just have to check the credit card balance at any given time to know how we're doing.  Then I can reconcile everything at the end of the month when I get the statement. 

This seems like an incredibly simplified way of going about our budget.  My only concern, really, is that statistically speaking, people spend more when they use credit than they do when they use cash.  I'm not sure how that plays out for our situation, though, since we use the debit and still manage not to pay enough attention to what we're spending.  If nothing else, this will be an interesting experiment.

#2 it is!

Y'all picked the cheap dresses.  I purposely didn't give you the prices because I wanted a truly unbiased opinion.  The first dress was Old Navy for $19.99 and #2 and #3 were both Target for $12.99.  If you ask me, that's a perfectly acceptable cash to cuteness ratio:

Help me pick an Easter dress for the baby

Okay, I know I shouldn't do this because the poor girl is only going to stay in the dress for approximately .8 seconds before she screams at me to take it off of her so she can crawl around, but I can't resist getting an Easter dress for my daughter.  It seems like a right of passage or something.

The problem is that I've already bought three (3!) of them and I totally can't decide which one to keep and which two to take back.  I would keep all three of them because I LOVE dresses, but she HATES them, so it's basically something she's going to wear just long enough for me to take her picture.

Which one should I keep?
Dress #1

Dress #2:

or Dress #3:

Goals

So over the weekend, I didn't just go shopping to make myself feel better.  I also spent several hours looking at our big financial picture.  I wanted to see why it feels like we aren't getting ahead. 

No matter how much we put into our savings account, it always seems to come right back out again for an unforeseen expense (impromptu travel, a new suit, a traffic ticket or a wedding gift we didn't expect).  I see only one way to solve this problem and that's simply to understand and anticipate that we're going to pull money out of savings for that stuff.  We need to start an "annual expenses" budget. 

So what I did was basically figure out our budget from the top down.  I started with the budget I use here, but then I finally decided it's time for me to be straight with myself and the fact is - we're going to overspend, particularly on food.  So instead of beating myself up about it, I'm just going to start budgeting $2000 a month for our regular expenses instead of the $1700 I've been striving for.  Yes, it means less savings, but it also means a lot less exasperation and a more realistic view on what we spend.  It also means I'll be trying to increase our income to make up the difference (and I'm already working hard in that direction.)

I kept on going and finally figured out that the reason I feel like such a failure lately is that we are basically breaking even.  I want to do better than that and laying it all out there and really seeing why we aren't saving more was eye opening.  It really motivated me to change, to become a better saver.  If this blog was a 12 step program, this post would be me saying, "Hi, I'm Amanda and I'm an over-spender!"

I'm flabtastic, thanks for asking

So.  I figured out a way to make myself feel better about hitting rock bottom - go out and buy a bunch of clothes!  I wish I could say I was kidding, but I actually did drop over $150 at Mervyn's this weekend.

It was actually a strange convergence of events.  Perhaps the planets were aligned just so or I don't know, I've magically lost fat without losing any real weight, but I have never had more things fit me in my entire life.  Usually, I drag eight metric tons of clothing into the dressing room (I completely ignore those only six items at a time rules.  Even when the salesgirl is there.  I just can't keep coming out of the dressing room so often when I'm in there with the baby.)  I'm usually lucky if one or two items fit me.

This time?  Almost every single thing I tried on looked great.  I had to leave the dressing room and then keep putting things back because I had too much.  This NEVER happens to me.  So maybe I went a little overboard, but whatever.  I really needed clothes for summer.

I do have one bone to pick with CLOTHING though.  What is with the stretching out?!??!  I bought all my pants in a size fourteen, right? And they fit me GREAT when I first put them on, but after I've worn them for an hour, they look like giant baggy sacks of empty fabric. WHAT IS WITH THAT???  I think I'm going to go back and exchange all the fourteens because apparently, I'm actually just a stretched out twelve.  Does this happen to everyone else or is it just caused by all my excessive flab?  It's SO annoying!

I think this is what they call rock bottom

Today I went to Target on my way to playgroup so I could buy some cute dresses for Alex's close twin-girl friends' birthday.  My ATM card was rejected.  Twice.  I needed cash because we were going out to lunch to celebrate their birthday, so I used my mastercard at Target and then took a quick trip to my bank.

Where I learned I was, once again, humongously overdrawn.

And they charged me another overdraft fee of $120 for my incredibly lame and inexcusable lack of attention to our finances.  I feel like such an ass.  And yes, I stormed angrily down to the bank and got mad at the manager for not even CONSIDERING the idea of reducing my fees.  I'm going to write a formal complaint (not for the fact of the fees, but for their exorbitance.  The bounced charges didn't total even HALF of the fee they charged me when they paid them.) If they don't agree to work with me, I think I'll be looking for a new bank.  Not that this is THEIR fault, because I totally own the fact that it's mine.  I suck.  Trust me I'm the first person to admit it.  The fact that the bank is unwilling to budge is just the cherry on top.

Wait, I take that back.  The cherry on top came a few hours later when I was walking around down town with my friend, our five kids and two strollers and Dave called me from the San Diego airport to tell me that he'd lost his cellphone.  Again.  This time we have insurance, so it could be worse, but DUDE could this day have been any more annoying for us financially?

I know I've said it before, but this time I am SO ready to make a change.  I need a fresh start and a new way to look at these things.  My negligence has cost us $240 in only ONE month.  That is so bad I can't even get my head around it.  The stupidest part is that WE HAVE MONEY.  I didn't NEED to bounce any checks.  I just needed to pay attention long enough to transfer money before it was too late.

What a SUCKTASTIC day.

A new suit

We haven't bought Dave a new suit in, I dunno, three, maybe four years.  He was long overdue, so this weekend we went and picked one out at the Men's Wearhouse.  We've always bought his suits there because they tend to have a good selection in his size for FAR less money than the big and tall shops. 

It didn't hurt that he had a gift certificate for $185 from his dear old mom.  (Yes, it was one of those gifts with an ulterior motive!  She's been bugging me for at least a year that his suit doesn't fit him well anymore.)

I set Alex and Genoa up to play next to the five way mirror while Dave tried on suits.  He ended up picking out a beautiful medium gray Ralph Lauren with a fine cream pinstripe.  It's beautiful.  I didn't think it was that expensive either: $319.

But WOW.  By the time they added on alterations and tax, we ended up out of pocket $230 and that was AFTER the $185 gift certificate.  Thank god he didn't really love the shoes I almost convinced him to buy for $129!  He still needs a new tie and light purple shirt, so I'm sure the budget will be out of whack yet again this month. 

It makes me think I need to come up with a new way of categorizing some expenses.  I think it might help me keep on track better overall if I had a category like "one-time purchases" where I could keep track of nonrecurring things that often throw us off track (suits, exercise bikes, cell phones, the fact that we seem to need a new answering machine every year, etc).  I'm never going to begrudge my hardworking husband a new suit, but it would be nice if it didn't have to screw up our budget, y'know?

Two weeks

It's been two weeks since I last looked at the budget.  At all.  I made a MONUMENTAL financial mistake last month and it feels, emotionally at least, like I still haven't recovered from it. 

In February I was more careful with bill paying than I had ever been before.  I meticulously checked all my payments and then added everything up three times and finally calculated the amounts I needed to deposit in order to make sure we were covered.  We had actually stuck pretty well to the budget for a change and I was proud of myself for finally doing what I was supposed to be doing all along.

But then I forgot ONE simple step that I had included in my calculations.  Dave's paychecks are divided into three separate portions: a chunk goes to our credit union for car payments and longer-term savings, $300 goes to the savings account that is linked to our checking and the rest goes into our checking account.  When I did our monthly bill calculations, I assumed that I'd transfer $600 from our bank savings account to our checking account to cover everything.

And then I promptly forgot to transfer the money.

Of course, we have overdraft protection, but every time I use it, I get charged $10 for them to make the same transfer I was too stupid to remember to make myself.  End result?  $120 in overdraft fees.

I'm so bummed out about it that I haven't been able to bring myself to look at the budget since.  I know that's stupid and self-defeating and lame, but I'm just being honest here. 

I don't think we've horrifically overspent so far this month, but I could just have my blinders on again.  I obviously need to get back on track. 

Q&A: Budget categories

Kate wrote me (weeks ago) with this question about determining budget categories and I thought it would be good to re-address it:

"How do you do your categories for your budget? I tend to have too many categories. For example, what all do you include in your household? I am having difficulty narrowing down my categories. Though I could tell you how much I have spent on diapers since 2000...useful, I know."

I think if a category doesn’t add up to something substantial or consistent, then it probably needs to be lumped with other stuff. 

Household is easy that way.  For me it includes toiletries, makeup and hair products (because I buy them at Target for incredibly cheap) cleaning supplies, paper goods, batteries, office supplies, home décor stuff like picture frames and holiday items.  It’s pretty all encompassing. 

The kids category is virtually everything I spend money on that only the kids use like toys, diapers, wipes, sippy cups, etc.  I separate out their clothes into the clothing category, though. 

The broader your categories are, the easier it tends to be to keep to a budget.  It’s pretty tedious itemizing big receipts when your categories are too specific, so just keep that in mind.  If all else fails, try using the budget categories that I use. (See my sidebar for mine.)  I think they'll probably work for most families.