Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 9:26:56 GMT -5
The good news is that we can swing it... just barely. I think. Oh, what our shenanigans last month hath wrought. I'm open to thoughts, but mostly I'm posting this to keep myself organized and on track because it's obviously going to be a tricky month.
Income: $8,350 - no, this isn't typical (I wish). Here's the breakdown, with dates of income for clarity:
5/31: Current balance in checking, $1,500 6/2: DF paycheck, $650 (sometimes higher, but I'm using $650 for safety) 6/9: DF paycheck, $650 6/15: FB paycheck, $1700 6/16: DF paycheck, $650 6/23: DF paycheck, $650 6/30: DF paycheck, $650 6/30: FB paycheck, $1600 Not sure when: Previous apartment deposit, $300 (assuming we get the whole thing back, and we should since we left the apartment in perfect condition - I've always gotten my deposits back in full)
Outgo: $8,500 $7,200 (updated, so the next paragraph may not make sense) - obviously a slight deficit but trust me, after last month I'd be THRILLED to enter July with only a $150 balance on the credit card, I'll be amazed and delighted if it actually comes out that close. Here's the breakdown, with due dates (if applicable):
6/1: Car insurance (mine, bi-annual expense), $370 6/1: Union dues, $115 6/1: Taxes, $500 (see below)
6/1: Back dues, $215 (see below) 6/11: Utilities, $160 6/15: Car payment (mine), $200 6/15: Student loan (mine), $200 6/15: Car payment (his), $370 6/15: Car insurance (his, monthly expense unfortunately), $220 6/18: Engagement photo shoot, $250 6/18: Catering deposit, $500 6/30: Credit card balance from last month, $2,500 6/30: Rent, $1,200 6/30: Phone (his, mine is paid for by work) $70 Anytime: Outstanding checks waiting to clear my account, $450 Anytime: Wedding insurance, $50 Anytime: BART (him), $120 Anytime: Additional expenses (gas, groceries, etc. - much much less than we usually spend but we obviously need to be careful this month) $300
Taxes and back dues: I didn't find out about these until I opened our mail this morning (it had been piling up for awhile) and I found two very scary letters addressed to DF - one said he was three months behind in his union dues, and the other said that he had an outstanding tax bill. Hopefully, he has taken care of both of these by now - but if he hasn't, they will obviously be the first ones to pay. And I think there's a good chance he hasn't.
IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY:
I could probably get out of or put off my car payment, the wedding insurance, the photo shoot and the catering deposit without penalty (which would save us $1,000 from this total). I'd rather not do that, though, at least not until I see how this plays out.
If I find out that DF owes the back dues and the taxes, I'll see if I can pay the dues with a credit card over the phone and put a check in the mail today for the taxes. By the time it clears, there will be an extra $650 in the account, bringing my balance up to $1,950. So even if all the outstanding checks clear at once, there will still be a cushion of $350.
It's a mess, I know... but hopefully by next month I'll have us sorted for good (and neither of us loses our jobs in the meantime). In the normal course of things, our expenses total ~$3,000 against a monthly income of ~$6,000 so we'll be okay if we just get through this temporary mess.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 9:30:08 GMT -5
Oh yes, I'll have to pay my traffic ticket (not sure how much that will be) and an $85 annual membership fee for something as well. Needless to say, last month was totally full of screwups and fail.
Good times.
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wodehouse
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Post by wodehouse on May 31, 2011 9:39:25 GMT -5
Not directly commenting on the dollars involved here. But, budgeting is one thing, cash flow is quite another thing. Budgets can look good on paper but when it comes to actual cash flow there may be humps and bumps. I started tracking/projecting my cash flow years before I ever made a budget (that only happened in the past few years).
I use an Excel spreadsheet as my checkbook register. Each year I fill out the next year's worth of expected transactions...deposits, mortgage/rent, utilities, payments, cash withdrawals, average (budgeted) monthly charge card amount, savings, a monthly reserve fund amount (covers car repairs, etc). A graph shows me how the cash flow runs throughout the year. when things may be tight, etc. I've used this method for probably 18 years and found it to be very helpful. (as each transaction actually occurs, I "check" it off and adjust the amount if necessary. Maybe Quicken now allows you to do this sort of thing but back then it did not.)
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CarolinaKat
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Post by CarolinaKat on May 31, 2011 9:40:35 GMT -5
Okay, I'm unmarried so this may be a dumb question. What exactly is wedding insurance?
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haapai
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Post by haapai on May 31, 2011 9:50:10 GMT -5
Oh, yucky!
A fairly simple four-column excel spreadsheet (date, checking balance, inflows, and outflows) can help you plot a path through this sticky time.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 9:56:18 GMT -5
Okay, I'm unmarried so this may be a dumb question. What exactly is wedding insurance? It's not a dumb question. Ordinarily it's a total ripoff, but in our case it's required. Wedding insurance covers a variety of things, up to and including your venue (in case someone in your party burns the place down), acts of God that would prevent your special day from moving forward, like an earthquake that shuts down the city, and I believe there are also variations that protect things like a last-minute date change. Our insurance is required by one of the venue halls. It's a million dollar policy covering us if anything should happen to the event hall while we're in it. It seems very excessive to me, but we have to have it and I'm just glad it's only $50.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 9:56:38 GMT -5
All I can say is I wish you luck on that $300 for gas AND groceries for the month. We've done some "living out of the pantry" months, but with gas prices so high cutting that is hard.
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dividend
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Post by dividend on May 31, 2011 9:58:31 GMT -5
I agree that part of the issue is cash flow, and I snipped some pieces of your post that highlight that. 5/31: Current balance in checking, $1,500 I'd be THRILLED to enter July with only a $150 balance on the credit card, I'll be amazed and delighted if it actually comes out that close. Anytime: Outstanding checks waiting to clear my account, $450 I could probably get out of or put off my car payment. So even if all the outstanding checks clear at once, there will still be a cushion of $350. I'm a little bothered by the fact that checks that you've already written are counted as upcoming expenses. It's a mindset thing, but I would look at this as $1050 is your checking balance. When you say credit card balance, do you mean actually carrying a balance, or do you mean transferring money from savings to cover a little overage? Have you depleted your entire savings on moving/wedding stuff? I know that this is a temporary situation,and that in normal months you guys are fine, but if this situation can happen once, it's good to think about how to keep it from happening again, because there's no such thing as an "ideal" month.
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giramomma
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Post by giramomma on May 31, 2011 10:10:52 GMT -5
Do you have the option to pay three months of car insurance instead of 6?
Do you have an angel food ministries that you can go to? You used to be able to feed a family of 4 for $40/month. That should help keep you on target.
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Pants
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Post by Pants on May 31, 2011 10:13:33 GMT -5
FB, while I would normally not propose this, you could float your cc balance another month. Even if you pay $2000 instead of $2500, that would cut you a little slack, and only cost you a few bucks that you could make up next month? Just a thought...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 10:14:51 GMT -5
Any way to cut the car insurance, like increase the deductible?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 10:17:27 GMT -5
I don't have much to add, except that I agree with those that say this is a cashflow issue, not a budgeting issue. The two are related, but also different.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 10:17:31 GMT -5
All I can say is I wish you luck on that $300 for gas AND groceries for the month. We've done some "living out of the pantry" months, but with gas prices so high cutting that is hard. Fortunately, neither of us HAVE to drive on a daily basis anymore (hurray) so we can keep gas pretty low. I'm a little bothered by the fact that checks that you've already written are counted as upcoming expenses. It's a mindset thing, but I would look at this as $1050 is your checking balance. Good point. That's a totally reasonable way to view it too; I guess I just see it as something that should have been deducted from my account last month, but wasn't - ergo it's upcoming. (This is actually three separate checks, to the same guy and he's driving me crazy never depositing them). When you say credit card balance, do you mean actually carrying a balance, or do you mean transferring money from savings to cover a little overage? Have you depleted your entire savings on moving/wedding stuff?Balance from last month. Bad times. Normally I never carry a credit card balance. At least we should be able to pay it off this month (or early July at the latest) without touching savings. We have $2k left in our EF, which I do not intend to touch for any reason unless one of us is dying. I hope to get at least another $1k in there in July. Savings from August, September and October will make up the remainder of our wedding budget. I know it sounds cocky, but I have literally never had a month like this on my own. Maybe once or twice I came up to within a couple hundred of what I brought home and I had to trim back my savings contribution that month, but I've never actually been over and I've certainly never missed a bill of any kind. I love DF and I'm not going to backbite him but he freely admits he's not very good with money. Now that I've taken the reins on our finances, there's a bit of mess to clean up. I honestly don't mean to sound all "I'm great, he sucks" but there's a reason DF wanted me to handle our finances. Now that I have the ENTIRE PICTURE, it's going to be much easier for me not to let things slip through the cracks. I didn't even know how much his bills were for at least a year. Made things very tricky.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on May 31, 2011 10:21:03 GMT -5
Another option would be to pay the credit card in full to avoid interest but then charge your gas and food to roll it into the next month. Honestly looking at the way you are having to manage cash flow I think you are spending too much on the wedding. Most of the biggest expenses are still coming up and you keep getting financial surprises from DF. Is there any way to cut the wedding back to your original 10k budget before you increased it? If you just stuck to the 10k you could fund yourself you could save part of your parent's wedding gift to have a cushion to get you through months like this.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 10:23:31 GMT -5
Do you have the option to pay three months of car insurance instead of 6?
I have to call my insurance agent this morning - I'll ask about this when I do. Thanks for the suggestion.
Do you have an angel food ministries that you can go to? You used to be able to feed a family of 4 for $40/month. That should help keep you on target.
I don't think we're there yet... we have a lot of stuff in the pantry and DF is a really good shopper when he wants to be. Given that the budget is so out of whack because of two huge expenses he didn't tell me about... I think he's going to want to be a really good shopper this month ;D
FB, while I would normally not propose this, you could float your cc balance another month. Even if you pay $2000 instead of $2500, that would cut you a little slack, and only cost you a few bucks that you could make up next month? Just a thought...
Plan B is to let part of the balance ride until July. Trust me, I'll be taking care of our other obligations first. The credit card is not high on my list of priorities at the moment. Keeping us out of arrears with the IRS and the union is my top priority today... and getting the insurance matters settled.
Any way to cut the car insurance, like increase the deductible?
For me, probably. But my insurance is really low already ($60/month) and I doubt I'm in much of a position to bargain since I just got a ticket. For DF, no way. He's lucky it's as low as it is.
I don't have much to add, except that I agree with those that say this is a cashflow issue, not a budgeting issue. The two are related, but also different.
I agree too. Hopefully when I post my July budget I'll have happy news to report that we're finally back on track. Automating my savings solved all of the money problems I was having last year, but it's not an option right now.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 10:24:23 GMT -5
Not much help for this month, but if neither one of you drives much anymore, I'd look at getting rid of a car or downsizing to something that just needs liability insurance. You're paying over $850/month for cars and insurance.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 10:28:24 GMT -5
Is there any way to cut the wedding back to your original 10k budget before you increased it? If you just stuck to the 10k you could fund yourself you could save part of your parent's wedding gift to have a cushion to get you through months like this.
No, not anymore. It would have been an option before I put down a pricey, non-refundable deposit on the more expensive venue. And as sensible as this advice is, I don't regret the choice. With my parents giving us $10k for the wedding, assuming we can save another $6,000 on our own between now and October (doable), we'll be fine and even have enough left over to start rebuilding our EF right away.
I do plan to take a closer look at the current wedding budget tomorrow when I review our June finances, to see if there's anywhere I can cut back. But it likely won't make a lot of difference. The priciest vendors are already booked, so any cuts we can make at this point will be somewhat minor ones on stuff I wasn't planning to spend a lot of money on anyway, like the flowers.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 10:31:06 GMT -5
Not much help for this month, but if neither one of you drives much anymore, I'd look at getting rid of a car or downsizing to something that just needs liability insurance. You're paying over $850/month for cars and insurance.
I was JUST talking to DF about this yesterday. It may be an option but we need to hold off and make sure he won't get transferred again. He is only able to take BART right now because of his location; if he were to get transferred again (and even though this store is supposed to be permanent, I wouldn't put it past his company) then he would need his daily driver again.
He can't drive my car for a couple reasons, or else getting rid of his car would be the obvious solution. As for selling my car, it wouldn't really make sense. It costs us only $260 of that $850 you mentioned, it's much newer, gets better mileage and it's in much better condition. We could easily drive it for another ten years (if we could both drive it).
I would love to get rid of his car but as I said, we need to see how his job situation plays out first. Plus he's upside down on it, so that's a concern as well.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 10:55:20 GMT -5
Firebird, I have full coverage on my car (2003) and pay less than $40/month, but without a ticket. There may be a way to lower it. Have you mentioned to both your insurance companies that you do not drive to work. When I was busing to school they put my car under "pleasure" driving and it lowered the price a bit. Btw, how did you get ticket young lady? (I hope you take that as a joke, given that you are my age
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 10:59:56 GMT -5
We pay $90/month total for three vehicles. The van is a 2005 with full coverage and the two cars are liability only. If he's got such a bad driving record, I'd get him a 3-5K beater and just carry liability.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on May 31, 2011 11:11:36 GMT -5
My calculations put you entering July with an overdraft of $790. You're going to have to juggle a little more than just gas and groceries.
My grasp of what is regular for you is not the greatest, but I suspect that your finances are going to be yucky/scary for more than a month. 6k by October may still be doable, but I'd want to check, just in case.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on May 31, 2011 11:26:50 GMT -5
Have you had the chance to sit down and have a heart to heart with DF and see if there are any more surprises coming up? The past few months you have had the rent check on old apt bounce (he didn't make a deposit to cover it), move-in deposit on new apt bounce twice (he spent the money in the account that was allocated to pay rent) and now a past due tax bill and overdue union dues that you found out from the mail and not from him. I know it is unromantic but can you sit down with him and try to find out if any other expenses are coming up? Maybe pull your credit reports together and see if there are any other debts that you need to plan? It is so much better to know in advance, I expect if you knew about the tax bill and union dues you could have planned for them better.
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midjd
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Post by midjd on May 31, 2011 11:36:34 GMT -5
I don't have any new advice, but I agree with Kari that you should see if you can ferret out whether there will be any more surprises (it looks like you would have been OK but for those) and maybe work on a cash-flow spreadsheet. DH and I had similar issues when we were planning our wedding - I was a contract employee, so my pay was very sporadic, and it seemed like someone needed a deposit or installment just about every other week. Being able to know what is coming in and going out at any given time should make things less stressful
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 12:02:46 GMT -5
Does he have to pay all 3 months of his dues right now? My mom works for a union and often they are understanding as long you are paying it off. You could pay $65 this month and then the next $150 next month?
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raeoflyte
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Post by raeoflyte on May 31, 2011 12:05:07 GMT -5
Sorry to hijack--I'm wondering if someone could send me their cash flow spreadsheet template? I've done projections on paper, but would love to use excel and have the planned expenses plugged in.
FB--good luck! This too shall pass!
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on May 31, 2011 12:33:30 GMT -5
Thanks, everyone. I agree that we need to have a heart to heart. My guess is that DF will be surprised about the tax bill, but I'm hoping the union dues are a mistake - as far as I know, he's been paying those.
We definitely need to pull our credit reports together - legit ones. The leasing office supposedly pulled ours to find out if we could have the apartment, but when we got a copy there were a lot of errors on both, so that couldn't have been a good one to pull. I'm putting that on the list now.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2011 12:38:19 GMT -5
FB, I'd pull that one and correct the errors.
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moneymaven
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Post by moneymaven on May 31, 2011 12:49:24 GMT -5
Okay, I'm unmarried so this may be a dumb question. What exactly is wedding insurance?
It's not a dumb question. Ordinarily it's a total ripoff, but in our case it's required. Wedding insurance covers a variety of things, up to and including your venue (in case someone in your party burns the place down), acts of God that would prevent your special day from moving forward, like an earthquake that shuts down the city, and I believe there are also variations that protect things like a last-minute date change.
Our insurance is required by one of the venue halls. It's a million dollar policy covering us if anything should happen to the event hall while we're in it. It seems very excessive to me, but we have to have it and I'm just glad it's only $50
You'd be amazed at how often these policies pay out. I wish I had gotten another type of wedding insurance, which covers lost deposits, etc. in case an act of God interfered with the wedding. In our case, it did! Our wedding was in between two massive blizzards and I had family coming into Colorado from all over the country. I couldn't imagine my poor 80 year old grandmother stuck in an airport for days, so we canceled the wedding. We lost some money on deposits.
One thing I wish I had done was ensure that every contract we signed had an act of God clause in it which would have covered us. We lost a few grand over it.
But we took the rest of the money and slapped it into our home down payment. I am so glad we did.
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moneymaven
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Post by moneymaven on May 31, 2011 12:50:52 GMT -5
I should also add that we still got married. Went to get our marriage certificate. In Colorado, you can solemnize your own marriage. So we signed the paperwork in my car on a Monday morning, split an orange and went to work.
I'd bet no other YM'er can beat the cost of our wedding. ;D
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on May 31, 2011 13:14:28 GMT -5
I'd like to suggest that you not only cash flow June, cash flow July, too - maybe every month up until the wedding. Put in all the fixed expenses you know and then add best guesses for variable expenses (gas, groceries) based on the tracking information you have. It's pretty easy to do- just set up an Excel sheet like a check register (and have it do the math for you). You can then also set some conditional formatting options so that if, in teh cash flow exercise, your balance ever drops below a certain amount, the cell turns bright red and alerts you to the issue. Then you can make changes to your plan now, instead of panicking later. (And I can send you my excel spreadsheet if you want.)
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