Photo Credit : Simon Davison
TH and I have always been pretty good with tracking our money… meaning, we create a budget and track our income and expenses. We’ve been doing this for a few years and it’s sooo much better than a ‘check book’. Especially considering that we rarely ever write checks anymore. ONLINE BANKING ROCKS!.
When I was in college I got my first credit card. What a scam. I think the APR was something like 35%. Of course, since I was a student, I wasn’t making any money (just spending it)…and even though I was in college I still wasn’t smart enough to realize — don’t spend it if you don’t have it!
My parent’s always told me NOT to get a credit card, and if I did I should pay it off each cycle. But what did my parent’s know. Right?
Then when I had the option to move back home and stay with my parents (where I could’ve saved money) — I didn’t. Instead I moved in with my then boyfriend and had all these bills b/c we were living on our own. I had a super low paying job as did he, and we racked up more debt and we were sinking.
Eventually I got out of that relationship and out of debt.
TH is one of those guys who was smart enough to stay at home after college, get a job and save save save!! I don’t know about you, but I find that rare for a guy in his 20′s to do that. He saved enough to purchase his 1st home. He also listened to his parents and has paid off his credit card bills every cycle. That works?! Why didn’t somebody tell me that?!?!
It took awhile for me to adjust to his thinking, b/c he was obviously right and I am obviously stubborn.
So, here we are now. We’ve been tracking each and every expense in our own little tracker (excel spreadsheet) and we keep it online on Google Docs (b/c you can access it and update it anywhere as long as you can access the internet). We can even make updates simultaneously… I love it.
We keep the same budget each month for our credit card expenses (not including any cash or check purchases). We almost always go over the budget. Then we struggle to pay it off along with the cash/check stuff we didn’t really ‘plan’ for.
Last month, we went on vacation ($) and my sister got married ($$). We racked up $7,000 an obscene amount on our credit card. … since TH likes to pay off the CC every cycle NO MATTER WHAT — I went into a mental breakdown. I was moody, psycho, pissy — money (or lack thereof) will do that to you. How the hell did we spend that much money and not bring a single item into our home??? At least if we had something to show for it (like some new camera equipment 
) I could kind of come to terms with it.
I don’t know how we did it, but with some ‘fiddling’ we managed to pay it off. I hope to NEVER EVER go through that again. The pain in it all, was that it wasn’t totally unforeseen. Yeah, we knew that we had ‘extra’ expenses this month, but did we think we’d spend that much? No. We just thought, “Whatever, it’s going to be a big bill this month, but oh well, we’ll deal with it when we have to.”
NEVER again.
Now we have a new tab on our budget spreadsheet that will track each month’s NEWLY ALLOTTED BUDGET. The new budget will encompass all Cash & Credit expenses. Every single penny that comes in and goes out. We also split it up to show what I am spending, what TH is spending and purchases we make TOGETHER. Who do you think spends more??
Check out my SPENDING CONFESSIONS.
wow, i can’t believe you just paid that all off…i would have been pissy too! i paid off all my credit card stuff and on a whim, before we moved into the house, we bought a TV and i opened up a credit card to do so. we were still in the apartment and would be for about 6 months, so circuit city stored the tv for us. i guess, out of sight, out of mind, but i didn’t notice that i wasn’t getting bills for the TV. for a few months. then, i thought, “wow, shouldn’t I be getting billed?” lo and behold, wrong address was transmitted somehow and my credit was blown to bits.
i couldn’t buy my other car on my own, T had to cosign, my credit was so bad. i was so sad. then this year, when i bought my car…i DID IT!!!! on my own!!!!!
CHER : That sucks!! That’s kinda what happened to me in College. The CC i got, i lost. Didn’t know the company name even so I couldn’t call them to figure out where to send the $$.. mail was being sent to the college campus and i never got the bills either. I was stupid. 1 yr later i have an insanely low credit score and need to pay this stupid thing off! It’s been along time, but it takes 7 years to come off your credit report!!
I wish I was a billionaire! Ryan and I are going to start a budget this year, I think. Now that we are certain how much money we have coming in and know what our expenses are, we are ready to tackle this. You should post your budget (a blank version, of course) for us people who are looking to start one.
My parents are the opposite with credit cards – my mother has so many of them she will be in debt forever. That’s how I’ve learned to stay away. I only have Khols and VS, and thats because they send me sweet coups! Haha.
Julie, that’s great you are starting the budget. It’s sooo much easier when you know for certain or a decent estimate of what is coming in… I’ll post a blank version for sure! It’s simple, but it does what we need it to do!
About my parents, just b/c they give me good advice, doesn’t mean they follow it. I think the advice comes from lessons learned on their part. HA!! Make sure to keep your oldest credit card (major or store) open forever. The longer the credit history, the better. Even if it’s bad.