This is How We Do It

Today I would like to share with you how I run our household finances. I know it isn't going to be the same as most of you, but there may be some elements that are similar. Also, I am hoping that this will give you some insight into the situation that I am in now.



Income:
I would like to start off by looking at my current income at this time. Now, I have to state right off the bat that I am not entirely proud of my sources of income. But it's what I have so I have to work with it.  Due to the fact that my kids are not technically mine (my brothers) I do get a monthly welfare check. There is nothing I can do about that. Regardless of what my income is I will always get until they reach a certain age. This is basically my child support for them. It isn't much at all and I use it to pay some of my rent, as it doesn't cover all of it.
A couple weeks ago I did start a part time job delivering newspapers. I don't get paid very much doing it but it is a good way to get some cash in my pocket.
Now since I did work last year, I did get an income tax return this year.
The biggest source of income for me I am especially not proud of but yet its the one I rely on the most right now. That's food stamps. Yes I do consider this an income because without it I have no clue how I would run my house hold.



Expenses:
After I lost my job I learned just how little my family can live with and still be happy. We eliminated a lot of things that we "thought" we needed.  One of the first things to go was cable, Internet, and home phone. WHAT!?!?!?! No Internet? No cable? Yes we did without it for almost a year. After much debate and consideration and I finally starting to work a little, we did decide to get Internet back again. This decision was mostly based on the hope that I might be able to hopefully utilize the Internet to get a little more income coming in. I will check back with you later to let you know how that goes for me. But as far as not having anything for almost a year I have to say it was quite nice. We actually sold the TV!! Yes we are one house in America that does not have a single TV anywhere in our home. It just came down to we don't need it so why have it? I found that my family was spending more time together, playing games, horsing around, talking to each other, and playing outside more. I noticed that we were actually enjoying not sitting in front of the TV all time.
The second thing to go was the car payment. That was a hard one that we held onto for a long time. I tried very hard not to let the car go. But it eventually got to the point where we had no choice and had to turn the car in. I owed way too much on it for what it was worth, and I had no idea how to sell it for what I needed to in order to get out from underneath of it. Unfortunately, though, that is one more thing that added to my debt. It sucks that I still have to pay for a car that I don't own anymore but that's the card I played so now I have to deal with it. We did eventually get a really good deal on a cheap beater car that will do for now. But I did learn a very important lesson. No matter how good of a job I have, no matter how much income I have, I will NEVER ever buy a car on loan again. You just never know what could happen. More on that another day.
Now on the list of expenses we do of course have what I call our 4 walls expenses. These are the monthly bills it takes to run our home, rent, electric, water, Internet, cell phone bill. These are also areas that I have learned to back cuts on.
Then we have our variable expenses, food, clothes, medicine, gas, cigarettes, (yes we do smoke and I do figure that cost into my budget) school supplies, household cleaning supplies etc.



What we do:
OK now that we ran down what we do have and don't have, I will share with you how we do things here.  The most important things are our 4 walls. So we will take care of them first. Now as I mentioned early I did get an income tax return this year. I figured out that return could pay all our main bills for almost a whole year. So that's what we are going to do with it. We put it all into a savings account that is a little more difficult to access. When any one of our main bills is due we go to the bank get out the exact cash we need and pay the bill. Having it in that separate account decreases our chances of unnecessarily tapping into it. Now I do have to note another lesson I learned through loosing our income, the importance of an emergency fund. Before we transferred the taxes to a savings account we took $1000 out of it for an emergency fund. This money went into yet another savings account with the strict purpose of emergencies only. Look in the future for a post about the importance of an emergency fund.
At this point we have all our 4 walls taken care of. We can breathe. If we had nothing else coming in we could survive. That's an important and amazing feeling. But we still have our variable expenses.
This is what we use our monthly child check for. We budgeted out what we would need for clothes, cleaning and house supplies. We use the envelope system for this. I will explain that in more detail another time.
Last we have our play money. This is where my paycheck comes into effect. First thing out of my check is savings money. I know what your thinking... we have an emergency fund and enough money to pay our bills for a year... why save more money? Well this is why, I said we have enough to pay our bills for ALMOST a year. My goal is to have enough to pay them for at least 18 months down the road. In order to make that happen I have to continue saving. Plus $1000 is not that big of an emergency fund. It is just a buffer between us and life for now. Now once we get to where I am no longer laying in bed at night wondering what in the world am I going to do, then at the point we will start using some of my paycheck to start paying down debt. Once we take out a portion for savings and/or debt the rest gets divided between my boyfriend and I, since he does just as much work to earn that money as I do. This is our "play money" we can do with it what we want. Its not a lot at all but it is enough to keep us on track and out of our savings money.






So that is how we do things around here... for now. This has changed before and I am sure will change again, and again. Its all about working together, and figuring out what works for you, and your situation at that time. When I was working I had a nice fancy budget on Excel and at that time it worked for us. Now, things have changed and our budget is a simple piece of notebook paper folded up and stuck in my purse. What is most important is I know exactly where my money is, and where it is going to go.
I hope that our situation is not that uncommon from some of yours. And you see that you are not the only ones with very little to work with. But I also want you to know that even with very little something can be done to make it better. Follow me and watch how I do it, read about my mistakes and what i learned from them and then go make some of your own mistakes to learn from.
I would love to hear from you about your unique situation and how you do things. As well as some of the struggles your family is or has faced and how you over came them. I look forward to hearing from you.


Thank You
Judy




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This is the beginning!!!

I will start off by introducing myself. My name is Judy C. I live in NE Ohio. A little over 5 years ago, my life took a very unexpected turn.  My husband at the time and I were granted custody of my brothers 3 very young children. They were 5, 3, and 14 months! We had a lot of struggles at first, but slowly things began to smooth out. I will add more posts later about different things that we had to over come including a move across the state, and an eventual separation from my husband, and how we handled it all.
At this point however in my life things are "OK". I am at a point now where I am learning to live a very different way of life. And that my friends is what I would like to share the most with you. I recently lost my job. Grant it that I worked WAY too much for WAY to little pay, it was still a job. As devastating as it was to loose this job, I am beginning to see that it was a blessing in disguise. I now have a whole lot more time with my children. When before I was lucky to see them 3 times a week! I do however now see the infinite importance of a savings, frugality, and "creative spending" as I like to call it.
I would like to share with you some of the things that I am learning on the way. I have found many different websites and blogs all over the Internet about saving money, frugal living, budgeting, couponing, etc. But I began to notice that all of them were hosted by people that have been living this way for many years, and are fully adjusted to it. I haven't found any that were by anyone just starting out. So that is why I am here.
It has been almost a year since I lost my job. But it has only been a few months since I really started getting serious about completely revamping my life, with the goal of comfort, stability, and fun in mind. In future posts I will share with you events of the last year, new things I am learning, as well as the trials and errors I have along the way.
One of the first things you will experience with me is the world of blogging. I have no clue at all what i am doing, when it comes to blogs. So please be patient with me as I work out all the kinks. I hope that you enjoy walking with me along this road to my future. I also hope that you can learn with me as well as offer me any tips or advice you may have.

Thanks for Joining Me
Judy C