Now that my husband is working again, we are looking for ways to save money. It's tough for everybody to find that extra little bit every month to put into different accounts. With both of us being 1099 employees, my husband and I have to also manage our own healthcare savings and retirement savings as well as emergency savings and college funds for the kids. Contract work varies, so you have to have a long view of income. One month may be great, and the next may be nothing, so saving becomes extremely important to cover the months off.
I read articles all the time about ways to save money, and most of them we already do. Starbucks is a problem for us, but we're working on it. Other than that, we don't buy a lot of extras when we go out. We eat probably 90% of our meals at home. So where do you find money to save when you're already following the financial gurus' advice?
Goals
I would love to answer that here, and I hope to be able to offer some advice in the coming months. For now, I'm setting goals for how we want to live and where we want to put our money. We've talked a lot about traveling and exposing the kids to different cultures. But I don't want to get into the trap of constantly chasing more money to be able to do that. Instead, I realize that we have more stuff than we need, and we don't need all these cheap, disposable things that are advertised to us. It's just a matter of limiting those impulse buys and conveniences that add to every grocery store or Target bill (or, this week, Ikea. Oops. The kids department is so hard to resist!).
To begin our journey to better household budgeting, I've set goals for where we want to dedicate any extra we can create:
1. Replenish our savings from the time out of work.
2. Start saving in an HSA.
3. Make regular contributions to retirement accounts.
Creating a budget
In the past, I've added up what we've spent at the end of every month to see where all our money is going. I've reduced every bill I possibly can over the past few years, so there's not much more we can do with fixed expenses.
With my husband just having started his job and having a lot of new expenses, I've got a few preliminary steps to do before I feel like I can set a true budget.
1. Track all expenses from August to determine our current spending.
2. Keep all receipts and add up impulse buys, unnecessary purchases, and one-time expenses (i.e., school supplies).
3. Develop realistic numbers to fill in spreadsheet.
Because we're not together and, in essence, supporting two households during this contract period, we're sharing a spreadsheet that we both update. It is very detailed because the highly variable and semi-variable costs are the primary places we need to look to find extra money. That's also where most people don't realize how much they spend (according to advice I've read online).
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| Yes, this is detailed. My husband is an engineer and a whiz with Excel. We have many spreadsheets like this. |
I'm hoping to be able to get a positive number in that bottom row that can then be applied toward my goals.
What do you do to budget? Where do you find the best ways to cut costs?
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