2008-02-06
Accounting
Jacey returned me to the position of family accountant. I think this is partilly driven by my ability to coerce her into letting me purchase things; I'm not susceptible to myself. When I'm minding the money I become a penny pincher.
Tonight I've paid all the bills for the month, gotten some various money related ducks in a row, and rebalanced my 401k. That's cooking!
We used to use Quicken to track our money. I was really happy with it until my bank stopped working with it. I haven't seen a clear picture of our spending habits in quite a while. This weekend I setup an account on Mint.com and associated our checking account and main credit card. We get cash back on the card and use it for most of our expenses and usually pay it off each month.
I was shocked and appalled to see how quickly we backslid into our previous, wasteful ways! While Jacey wasn't working we were able to live on my salary plus a little from our savings every once in a while. We didn't touch savings, other than to contribute, for the first half of 2007. In the third quarter we were supplementing my paycheck with a little from savings each month. Now that Jacey is back at work and bringing in money we should be set, but instead we are eating out a lot, going to movies, renting movies, shopping for fun ... all easily justified now that we're both bringing in money. Ugh, we are overall poorer today than we were 6 months ago living on just my income!
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