Picture
Burger-Veggie Soup

Ingredients-
1# Lean Hamburger
1/2 onion
1 potato
1 carrot
1 rib of celery
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can green beans
1 cabbage
2 cups Tomato Juice

Cook meat and onions thoroughly. Add veggies and simmer on low until tender. Salt and pepper to taste.

All the credit goes to my mother-in-law, The Accountant's Mom.

 
After a year and a half of not having a budget, The Accountant created this. You have our full permission to use this for your own personal finances. I am not a whiz with Microsoft Excel. Anything that I have learned is from The Accountant. The best guide I can give you is to click on the square, enter the amount and hit enter and leave it alone. He created this with specific mathematical equations and if you do any more than that, you could compromise those original formulas if you aren't sure what you're doing. If for any reason, I make a mistake that cannot be fixed, I close the document, don't save any changes, reopen it and start again. What is so neat about this is that in the right hand column, you can see how you have done at meeting your budget. If its black, you're doing just fine. If its read, then you have gone over. If I can answer any questions about this, let me know. Send me a message or fill out the Contact Me form. I will ask The Accountant and get back with you.
book2.xlsx
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If you do not currently have a budget, I want you to look at yourself in the bathroom mirror and say, "Today, after work, I will make a budget for myself." If you're married, put your hands gently on his or her shoulders and say, "Today, we need to make a budget. Its important." Feel free to insert whatever disgustingly mushy nickname you have for your spouse, if you like.

Dave Ramsey has some other really great resources on his website regarding budgets. If you have a good 30 minutes of downtime in general, I really recommend checking out the entire site. Its a really great resource for money management.
http://www.daveramsey.com/tools/budget-forms/

Not having a budget is just letting your money run wild, without any guidelines. Its a lot like if I let my two young children go unattended in Target. Obviously, I would never do this. However, let's imagine what that would be like. Anything and everything Elmo would be open in the toy section. I'm sure they would be chugging chocolate milk and feasting on Teddy Grahams in the grocery department. Then, they would head on over to Electronics to play with the iphones and download kid's apps. It would be complete and total chaos and I would be standing there with my jaw open, trying to clean up the mess and pick up the pieces. 

Having a budget means that we can see exactly how much we're spending, where we are coming out ahead or where we are falling behind. If one month, I go over my budgeted amount on clothing, I can take that into consideration for the next month and make the changes to be sure that this doesn't happen again. Furthermore, it means that I don't wake up one day and wonder where all of our money went or wonder who ate all the Teddy Grahams.

In our house, the budget is the law. If either of us want to go outside the budget, we must have the other person's permission and we must "sleep on it" or wait 24 hours until we make the decision. If for some reason, we don't have 24 hours, then we walk away entirely. 

Having a budget might feel like a major restriction at first. However, in the end, it feels reassuring to know that we can pay all of our bills, have some money to pay off debts, or have a little extra cash to treat ourselves and go out for dinner.


 
I hope everyone likes my new website! My old one was stuck in 1995! Lol. Here, you can sign up for email subscriptions, contact me and connect with me on Facebook! That lowercase "f" in the upper right hand corner will take you straight to my Facebook page. Also, if you like what I'm writing, tell your friends. Don't keep a good thing a secret! Thanks!

 

Going to the movies now-a-days can be quite expensive. On average, a ticket is going to cost $9 per person. And if you're someone that wants to snack while you watch, you'll pay even more for that.

Last night, we took our entire family to the movies for just $4.50. How did we do that? We went to "The Dollar Theatre" here in our area. Discounted movie theaters are located all over the country. They show movies that aren't brand new but aren't out on DVD yet either. We took the kids to see Planes and we all loved it! If you or your kids are fans of Cars, then you'll like this one too! Our dollar theatre has plenty of films to chose from and they show films that adults or kids can enjoy. Also, we never pay extra cash for those 3D movies. It's unnecessary, extra money spent. Plus, it's hard to watch your kids with those dark glasses. With my luck, our toddlers would be running up and down the aisles!

We ate dinner before we left the house so that cut out the need for snacks. Each ticket was $1.50 per person and our youngest was free because she is still under the age of two. This gives you a grand total of $4.50 for a great family night out!

 

Last year, The Accountant and I went to the library and picked up a great new book. It's called The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. While we are not completely debt free, this book helped us pay down a significant amount of our debt and stay focused on our goals of living sensibly. In a nutshell, here are Dave's 7 Baby Steps:

1) Create an $1,000 Emergency Fund

2) Pay off all debts with Debt Snowball

3) 3 to 6 months of expenses in savings

4) Invest 15% of income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement.

5) College funding for your children

6) Pay off home early

7) Build wealth and give

At this point, we are still on step two, working hard to pay off our student loans. This is our only debt other than our home. This past summer, we paid off $5,000 on one of my student loans. You can only imagine the happy dance we did!

Dave recommends cutting up all your credit cards. We just could not do it. Although, we went down to one card for each of us and it's only used for gas and emergencies. Nine in a half times out of 10, we use debit, cash or check for purchases. It just feels more significant paying with these methods and I found that we used our credit card less often.

Another concept we just couldn't get on board with was Dave suggesting another job or source of income to pay off debt. Our family has one car, two kids under three and The Accountant works at least 50 hours a week. It just was not possible. However, The Accountant interviewed and was offered a new position out-of-state. Therefore, we decided, for financial and many other reasons, to make the big move.

On Monday, I'm going to go deeper into budgeting: what exactly is in our budget and how we decided on the dollar amount!


 
My husband, The Accountant, has been with his company for three years now. In that time, I have had the pleasure of meeting some really great people, other accountants, in fact. I have met brand new baby accountants who have only been at their job for about a year and I have met controllers (the papa bears of the accounting department) who have 20+ years of experience and I've met some people in between too. Most of them share all of the same qualities and have a lot in common. No, it isn't just the fact that they needed six calculators to make it through college or that they can cruise through Microsoft Excel like a Cadillac down a quiet, country road. Its a mentality. Its a frugal, money-saving mentality. There is a lot that can be learned from this.

In fact, at the annual Christmas party last year, another accountant's wife and I joked about how cheap our husbands are. I told her that my husband watches TLC's Extreme Cheapskates to get new ideas on how to save money. Then, he will often turn to me and say, "Honey, that's a really great idea!" She also shared humorous penny-pinching stories about her husband and seemed to understand that when money was spent in their home, it was done very very carefully.

Therefore, in order to be frugal with money like most accountants are, we need to think like an accountant. Here is how my husband, The Accountant, uses his knowledge and experience for our own personal finances.

1) Everything Needs to be Budgeted
Up until a few years ago, we never had a budget for anything. It just makes life so chaotic when you do not account for where your money is going or have a certain dollar amount in mind with your spending. If I give $5 to The Boy Scouts outside of the grocery store, I write it down. I write down every penny that we spend. You would really be surprised how "small" expenses add up quickly. Also, The Accountant and I have weekly budget meeting every Saturday morning over our breakfast while our children sleep. We talk about all the money we spent this week and how we're doing at hitting our budgeted estimates. We also talk about future expenses that we are going to need to address soon.

2) Everything Has a Cost
When we're planning on doing anything, from a vacation to taking our family to the movies, we consider the total cost of everything. Yes, I mean everything. This total cost includes food, gas, taxes, admission prices to the event, etc. Then, we think about how we can cut down on those costs. Sometimes, we eat dinner just before we go anywhere. Sometimes, we combine errands. Sometimes, we shop closer to home. Sometimes, when we're really trying to save money, we have to say no.

3) The Return on Investment or The ROIs
This means that when we spend money on an item, we want to get our money out of it. We want to get as much, if not more, money back than what we initially spent on the purchase. For example, we bought The Accountant, a pair of really nice hair clippers for $40 so that he could start cutting his own hair. A cheap haircut at Best Cuts costs about $13. Therefore, The Accountant, only needs to use the hair clippers about three times for this investment to "pay for itself." He has cut his own hair every 8 weeks for the past two years so we have most definitely seen a great ROI from this investment. 

4) Financial Forecasting
This can best be seen within our budget in regards to our car insurance. It is cheaper if you pay for your car insurance every six months rather than paying for it on a month-by-month basis. At the same time, we budget for our car insurance each month so that we have enough money to pay for it when the bill comes. Just like a weather forecast, we are looking ahead to see what we need to pay for and planning for that, just as you would bring an umbrella when rain is expected. This is to avoid any shortcomings on our cash flow.

 
It was the end of Fall 2006 when I met my husband, the accountant. At the time, he wasn't an accountant but a handsome and motivated young business student. I was studying Communication at a nearby university. He was quiet and a little reserved. I was outgoing and had a people-oriented personality. He was a saver and I was a spender.

After a brief three months of dating, we were insanely in love and already talking about getting married. Even then, we still talked about our dreams and our finances. We were so young too, just 18 and 19 years old but just like anyone else, we wanted to get married, have kids, and live in the house with the picket fence.

In college, I was so terrible with money. I got my first credit card and I swiped that thing wherever I went. I even over-drafted my account a few times. I had this mentality of urgency and if I saw something I liked, I should just use my credit card and make it mine. I had a hard time telling myself, "no."

The accountant, on the other hand, was so careful with money. He paid for his own education and took on 18 credit hours (on average) each semester while working about 20 hours at a part time job at a restaurant. He really worked hard and I knew my money issues bothered him. I remember him looking me in the eyes and saying, "Do you want to marry me?" "Of course I do!," I replied enthusiastically. The accountant told me that we needed to spend as little as we could and save as much as possible. I loved him and I wanted him to be my husband someday so that's just what I did. In the late summer of 2009, we got married with just $1,300 in the bank. 

No, that was not a fat bank account for a newly married couple. I wept tears of joy and relief when my husband was hired full time as an accountant. I was pregnant at the time and we both decided that it would be best if I stayed home with the baby. By now, my spending habits had drastically improved. However, I still had some room for growth. After all, we now had to learn how to live off of one salary with a little one on the way.

Tomorrow, I will share with you how we did this. I will also reveal the money saving mentalities that I learned from my husband, the accountant, and all of his accountant friends. Stay tuned!



 
Halloween came and went for our family already. We celebrated early with our kids because the 31st is just a little too close to the first of the month when my hubby has to "close the books." Our kids had fun trick-or-treating & we had fun taking them. I save money on costumes and fall decor by shopping AFTER Halloween. The day after, all the stores reduce their prices. Each day that passes, the prices will fall because the stores want to get rid of everything! I bought our children's costumes two days after Halloween LAST YEAR and spent $5 for one and $2.50 for the other. I just bought the next size up. I refuse to spend $30 on a Cinderella costume. It's just too much. Even the days following Halloween, my kids still had two to three costumes to choose from.

Another great option is to find friends or family with some older children. When they are finished with their costumes, ask if you may borrow for next year and return later. No child wants to wear a costume twice anyhow.

For some cheap family fun, we took our family to a Harvest Party at our church. Many churches put these on and there are so many great activities to do there. The only cost for us was food and we spent $5 for all of us to eat a very filling meal.

Have a Happy and safe Halloween. Remember to watch your babes closely and carefully check all candy!