Monday 15 October 2012

Yesterday I Said Tomorrow

So today is Day 1 of my new adventure.  I've started this blog to share stories about "My Wife Savings" - the ups and downs that come with trying to save money in various different ways as a newly-married woman.  I'm a Saving Wife, Saving for Life!  I'm hoping that each post will demonstrate one technique I've used to save money, and whether it was successful or not.  I can't wait to try out some of the ridiculous things I've read about, share some of my personal favourite ways to save, and create some open discussions about new ideas with those who are willing to share how they're building up their Wife Savings!

I feel a little bit of background information about us might help to profile our situation.  I am 26, and graduated last fall with my Master of Arts in Kinesiology.  I work as a self-employed Mental Skills Trainer/Sport Psychology Consultant.  I complete personal, one-on-one consulting, as well as contracted out consulting for various sport development organizations.  My income is variable, and depends on the work I am able to arrange each month.  My husband is 27, and a first year teacher at a local middle school and loving it!  He loves his job and puts more than all he has into each day in the classroom and on the court.  He teaches, coaches, and volunteers for whatever he can within the school.  His contract is for the remainder of this school year, and his goal is to land a probationary contract with the same school next year.

Our for sale sign!  You can't actually see our house in this picture, just the neighbour's!

In August of this year, my husband and I bought our first home.  He was in a mutually owned townhouse with his father and siblings while going through post-secondary, but we've since branched off and purchased our first home.  Following the withdraw of our first mortgage payment, we began to seriously discuss our need for a budget; what is our game plan??  My father-in-law has been mentioning budgets to us for a while now, and it's always something we've put on the back burner.  Now we realize that this is something that we need to get on top of to keep ourselves in line.  So last week we outlined all of our fixed costs, variable monthly spendings, savings, and investments, and realized we needed to start some extreme budgeting!  Following a few tears, minor panic, and reassurance to each other that we're fine and it'll just be 'tight' for a while, we've taken a fun (yes, I said it!) approach to budgeting.  For anyone who has seen the TV show "Til Debt Do Us Part", we're following Gail Vaz-Oxlade's use of Mason jars to store our savings.  We've often watched her show and thought "How do these people get to that point?!"  In realizing that we never wanted to get to that point, this was our first step to saving!

First month jars.


It has been a week of our money jars, and so far it's going well.   For me, I have to get used to not using my debit card to pay for things.  We take the money from the jars we've set aside and use that money to pay for whatever it is we need to purchase.  The receipts go back in the jar, along with any change leftover from the purchase(s) made.  At the end of the month, the remaining cash and receipts should add up to the original amount that was budgeted for each category.  I like it!  My husband always says he prefers to pay cash because you visually see the exchange of money and it doesn't fly under the radar like debit or credit card transactions.  I'm totally finding this to be true!  I hope that we can stay on track with these jars andI can't wait to share at the end of the month, how they really worked for us.

As a challenge, I encourage you to try out the jars too!  Use something you have in your house, whether it be old Mason jars, or your great-grandmother's prized teacup set, DON'T SPEND MONEY ON THE PURCHASE OF JARS!  Use what you already have!  Label each jar and fill it with your agreed upon monthly spending for each category.  If you don't budget for it, it's something that you'll have to sacrifice this month.  Remember to keep your jars in a hidden, locked safe.  This is your bank now, so take care of it!  Please share what your experiences are with this or something similar!  

Happy Saving!
- C

4 comments:

  1. The number of times I have cried while going over our budget is ridiculous....with him working a constant schedule and me being all over the place its tough as I never know how much ill bring in and he stresses about having to support us both. What categories do you use in your jars?

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    1. Hi Chelsea!

      Thanks so much for your comment, as you're the first on the new blog to leave a question! As for our jar categories, we currently have all our variable costs: Groceries, Gas, Entertainment (we each have a jar), Gifts, House, Vehicle Maintenance, Clothing, and Personal Maintenance. Now, the clothing jar refers to necessities, like replacing something(s) if needed. If we want to splurge and buy ourselves a 'treat' that we don't need, then it must come out of our personal Entertainment jar. These variable costs, and we determined at the beginning of the month, how much we would need to spend on each category. Hope this helps with saving, and tears! <3

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  2. We use a cash budget for most things too! We don't do gas b/c if we need gas, we need gas and the price fluctuates, but we do have our own budgets to use as we will, and also a dating budget! (As well as a bunch of other budgets... including hair... yes it's an expense that requires it's own budget at our house! haha) Anytime I refer to our budget people look at me like I'm crazy... Who knew that people don't really stick to budgets anymore? Good luck w/ the jars and the blog my friend! Cami

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    1. My dear Cami!

      Thanks so much for your comment! It has also surprised me so much to hear how many people do not do budgets as well! Mind you, it has taken us this long as well, but we also just combined our finances into the same account, so we've just recently developed our own 'money'. I have to admit, we didn't put in a date budget! I guess we were just expecting to either a) not go on any dates, b) use remaining movie and restaurant gift cards to go out, or c) take it our of our entertainment budgets. I definitely think next month we may have a date budget!

      Thank you my dear, and please keep checking back for more money saving updates! Congrats again on the baby news :). You may an adorable pregnant lady!
      - C

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