Progress Report

9:34 pm ByFiled UnderFiner Things, Mission SAHM

Well, the numbers are in.

Last weekend as I sat with The Hubs to review our budget and spending for the month of April, I couldn’t help but have butterflies in my stomach. I felt like I did when I was a kid and my dad let me watch the movie, Alien – afraid of what I would see, but not willing to completely cover my eyes so as not to miss what would happen.

Luckily, the outcome was more like the book, The Little Engine That Could than any of the Alien movies.

To my glee, we came in under our budget for April! Yes, we managed to not only spend less than what The Hubs makes, but we were able to save all of my salary and some of his too. Our six-months-of-expenses nest egg is growing exactly at the pace we want it to be and our spending was less than what we thought.

This is definitely the direction we need to be headed in order for me to achieve my goal of being a stay-at-home-mom.

There will still be some tweaking to do in May (we went over budget on groceries for our first week this month – look for a post coming soon with more details on those plans), but it looks like my ambitious plan of leaving the work force by the end of June isn’t so far-fetched after all.

I am beyond excited about this!! Heck, while I’m throwing out movie and book references, I’m going to go ahead and say that I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when the yellow brick road finally leads to that wizard. She’s not home yet, but she’s almost on her way.

And while it isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done, it has not nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

This success, while certainly not a guarantee that we can live this way every month of our lives, makes me feel so hopeful and encouraged. This dream I’ve been wishing for is finally a real prospect. And that is definitely a finer thing in life – progress and the hope that comes with it.

This post is part of “Finer Things Friday” hosted by Amy at The Finer Things in Life. Head on over there to check out more of the finest.

Tagged, ,

Mission SAHM Part II: Our Plan for Trimming the Budget

9:52 pm ByFiled UnderMission SAHM

You may recall that in a recent post, I said that I’m going to quit my job in 90 days after a three-month trial run of living off only The Hub’s salary. This may be a bit ambitious, but that’s the goal for right now.

Welcome to Mission SAHM Part II: Our plan for trimming the budget.

With April almost under our belt, I’m pleased to report that things seem to be going relatively well. Since the month isn’t over yet, we haven’t totaled our exact expenses, but so far we’ve come in under budget each week at the grocery store and have greatly reduced excess spending. I’m taking this to be a positive sign.

One of the ways we’ve been doing this is by following the tips from Crystal Paine, a.k.a. Money Saving Mom, and her 31 Days to a Better Grocery Budget series. We’ve set our grocery budget and despite the fact that I don’t usually have many coupons or anything other than the goal of keeping the total at or below our weekly amount, we’ve actually come in below budget each week so far.

This isn’t so say it hasn’t been a challenge, and a bit of an adjustment.  It may mean that the weeks we have to buy diapers may be weeks where we eat a few vegetarian (or beans and rice) dinners, but it can be done.

Following Crystal’s advice, I’ve only been using an envelope with enough cash for a week of groceries and a calculator at the store. My wallet and all other payment options remain at home, thus forcing me to stick to the budget by eliminating the option to go over by using my debit card to pay.

I have to admit that the first day I tried it, I felt a little dorky walking around with a calculator totaling up every item I added to the cart, but once I saw the difference it made in what I spend (because it forced me to think about the need for every item), I stopped worrying about it. Now I feel cool with my little calculator and the dollars I’m saving.

The next thing I’m going to do is record every single dollar that I spend on a note pad that I carry in my purse. I wish I could say that I already started doing this (as I had planned) since April 1, but unfortunately we haven’t made it a habit yet.

We’ve done this exercise before and it’s quite helpful in keeping you accountable for every dime you spend. It also helps me think twice every time I think about buying something because I have to admit that I’m a bit competitive and I feel pretty awesome when I can go days without having to record anything in my notebook. Especially when my stretch beats The Hubs’ stretch. It’s easy to fall out of the habit of doing this, I mean, when you’re juggling a baby who is ready to eat, a full car of groceries and trying to make it home before melt-down time, who wants to dig through their purse, fish out a pen and a notepad write down what you just spent? But I believe it will be a great help in keeping spending under control, so I will be very disciplined about doing it.

In addition to the above, we’re going to investigate our options for reducing our car insurance rates. My vehicle is almost paid off (only 6 more months of payments left) and when it is, it may be more cost-effective for us to reduce the amount of coverage. Especially since it won’t be driven nearly as far when I’m no longer working.

We’re also going to look for ways to reduce our monthly cable, phone and utility bills. For example, we currently have a bundled phone/cable/internet package, but we literally never use the phone. I honestly don’t even have any idea what our home phone number even is, so why are we paying for this service?

Also, once I’m no longer working, it won’t be essential to have a data plan on our cell phones so we’ll scale that back to something much less expensive. Our plan technically expires in July, but I have a sneaking feeling that if we’re willing to sign a new contract with them, they’ll let us do it a few months earlier.

That leaves our mortgage as our biggest expense. Unfortunately, with the housing market what it is, to sell our house now would likely mean taking a loss. We would be incredibly lucky to even get what we paid for it, but there may be a way to reduce this expense.

We’re going to investigate the cost to lease our home and rent something closer to where The Hubs works. It’s questionable if this will save us any money at all though. Especially when you consider that our home is in need of improvements in order to get it into a condition that would be appealing to renters. Taxes would be another concern. But it’s still worth exploring so that’s what we’re doing.

What about you. What do you do to save money? Is there any technique you think we should explore?

Tagged,

Mission SAHM: The Plan, So Far…(Part I)

9:46 pm ByFiled UnderMission SAHM, SAHM

I’m going to quit my job in 90 days. That’s my goal anyway. It’s also the mantra I’ve been repeating to myself to help me get through my workdays lately.

I blogged recently about the need to make things happen instead of waiting for them to change.  As I promised in that post, The Hubs and I finally got to take some time to sit down and really discuss what we want to do and how we’re going to accomplish it (See? This blog really is helping to hold me accountable for what I say).

Here’s our plan so far:

During the months of April, May and June, we’re going to do a practice run of living off of just The Hubs’ salary. That means I will be locking my debit card and check book from my own bank account in a safe and only using it in an emergency. All of my income will be banked to help pad our savings account so that by the time I quit, we will hopefully have 3-6 months of expenses saved in a rainy day fund.

This is going to be a challenge.

Not that I consider myself a big time spender, but in calculating our combined expenses for the past three months, there is definitely room for improvement. And there will have to be if I want to quit my job. So we’re going to have to look for ways to pinch pennies, reign in our spending and reduce our expenses any way that we can (more on that later).

It’s also a little bit scary. For one thing, I really, and I mean really (did I mention really) hate the idea that this just might fail. I’ve already been desperately seeking this for more than a year. I can’t imaging how devastating it would be to find out that even more time is required to make it a reality.

For another, and this may sound selfish, but I’m afraid of giving up my independence. I was raised with the idea that spouses should have separate bank accounts. I witnessed first-hand the tension that can result when they don’t (and don’t agree on how to spend their combined income). What if that happens to us? What if it becomes an issue in our marriage?

I have to keep reminding myself that we’re doing this as a team. We’re going to work together to make it work. But in the back of my mind, that fear is there.

I guess that’s one of the reasons we’re doing this practice run. So we can work out all the kinks before real life hits. And deep down, I know my fears are a little irrational. The Hubs and I have a solid foundation. We work best as a team and I know that we’ll be able to make it work. Besides, The Hubs has a way of being able to discuss almost anything calmly and rationally without letting his emotions get in the way. It’s almost annoying if you want to know the truth because for once I’d like him to be all huffy and wordless the way I am when we fight, but that’s another post for another day.

The point is, we have a plan. And I’m really excited about it. And maybe a little scared. But I know that some way, some how we’re going to make it work.

Within the next 90 days would be nice.

In the next post of this series, I’ll discuss the ways we plan to reduce our budget. For now though, I want to know what advice you may have.

If you’re a SAHM, how do you make it work? What tips do you have for living on one income and cutting back expenses? What kinds of things have you tried that you would never try again?

Tagged,