The Weight of Money

Since the move into our new house, finding time to manage budget items has been difficult. It’s not so much the lack of time, but a lack of motivation and prioritization. When things are not going well, we’re often reluctant to face and deal with those problems. Hiding from problems and letting them slide is so much easier than facing reality and taking action to solve them. Unfortunately, most problems escalate and what would have been solved by just a little attention and dedication in the beginning becomes a giant ordeal when left alone to fester for too long. Luckily, I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.

Back in June, I discussed quitting my job, a difficult and unpopular idea for most readers. The idea of signing on a house on day and leaving your job the next isn’t all that logical. But, for mostly emotional health reasons, I made that leap with personal faith that I’d figure out how to make it work. Now it’s time to face the reality of how I’m making it work, or not.

First, I’ll be honest and upfront - I have not tried to solve the jobless situation and the more it worries me, the more I stick my head in the sand and ignore it. Obviously, this isn’t the solution to the financial stress this decision has cause. Hopefully looking at the number will light a new fire to take care of things.

Because of of our budgeting methods (YNAB), we didn’t feel the loss of income until August. We had a loss of almost $2,000/month in income, leaving us with an earned income almost $3,000 - a pretty serious reduction of funds. The move adjusted certain expenses as well: Housing increased $300/month, Gasoline: increased $250/month, Utilities: decreased $220/month, personal spending has been mostly eliminated, everything else remained fairly constant.

Even though the numbers are pushing back against this decision, we’ve still been able to make ends meet. So far, for the year, here is how we’ve done staying within budget:

• Jan: under $90.28
• Feb: over $812.23
• Mar: over $355.90
• Apr: over $507.50
• May: over $646.96
• Jun: over $533.29
• Jul: over $310.71
• Aug: over $73.95

This actually shows that we’ve been improving in the past two months of staying within budget. It’s important to note that because we do zero-balance budgeting, anything over budget means we spent more than we had to spend. Because we spend last month’s income during the current month, there is always extra in the bank to cover these overages (though it is a bad habit). Of course, that means that we start out the next month short, a snowball effect of overages that takes a lot of work to correct.

We’ve been doing account transfers, mostly from the partner’s personal account to our joint account to add more available funds. These are mostly ebay funds that we’re just accumulating in his paypal account. I’m very happy to see that money enter the budget because it was something I had tried to count on earlier this year.

My personal business expenses took quite a chunk out of August’s budget, so much so that I decided to pull out cash from my personal savings to cover for it. At times it seems like a cash shuffling game, but it is helping us stay on track even without my previous income. The partner also received a raise in July which has helped ease the loss of my income.

Some issues we’re still facing: limited cash for emergencies, constant repairs being justified, and a honest need to get a workshop built asap, The workshop would will kill our cash reserves, something we’re not comfortable doing.

Other numbers for us to keep in mind:

Joint Savings: $6,500
Personal Savings: $5,000
Credit Card Debt: $16,000 (arg, it went up $3,000 in July)
Child Support Tax Intercept: $4,000 (this probably won’t be released until Oct/Nov)

Honestly, I still need to get a job. I’ve been offered one and have tried, unsuccessfully, to turn it down so far. However, seeing how hard it will be for us to take care of debt and house repairs - I think I need to rethink that decision. Also, I’ve been making more through my business, but mostly it’s just enough to cover all of our farmers/butcher market needs. I either need to get serious about making this work or find a job — right now, finding a job seems like a better option except that I’ve moved to the land of low-wage workers. I discussed getting a job with the partner and putting all but $200/month toward debt reduction. Perhaps, instead, we could deplete savings to eliminate debt and then use income from a job to rebuild savings. Options, options, options.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 1:29 pm and is filed under budget/goals, debt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.