Money Management

My money management skills have ranged all over the place. from really awful to pretty good and then back again. I love to budget, sometimes hate to live a budget. I tried really hard to teach Matthew and Cole budgeting skills. Cole was a born money manager. Matthew not so much. But technology has developed tools to help with that. Our bank has the ability to set a recurring transfer to another account to help with incidental expenses that only occur every so often like the dentist or insurance payments or even the dreaded new car expense. We've set Matthew's money up so that these are taken care of. Now there are things like Venmo and money movers that allow you to sit at a bar and move money from one person to another. Life seems to have gotten really fluid these days. Which is why the whole cash thing is so illuminating to go to every now and then. Last year, I really ran up my credit card. In an effort to fix this, I went back to a cash budget. And in the wake of this, I really learned, I think finally, how to manage my money. We are paid every two weeks. It is one of my responsibilities within our marriage to handle the money. Don gets a cash allowance and has a personal credit card that I pay without ever looking to see who or what he is paying. This is a source of pride to me as I have had a long history of trying to micromanage Don and it never comes out in my favor. Never. I recently sat down with our insurance agent and went over our policies. We pay over $6000 annually for various types of insurance. Life/homeowners/car. The standard. When I saw that number, I realized that one of the stumbling blocks to our finances has always been those insurance payments. Years ago, I tried doing separate accounts to save for those but life always seemed to happen and I would empty those accounts and move on. This time I was determined. It probably helped that Matthew had moved out and was now in charge of himself and his food/car/lodging. That is one expensive boy. I started the every two week transfer. Pretty simply. With just IRA savings. Then I added the insurance. Then vacation/Matthew's student loan payoffs/Christmas and birthdays. I decided to pace myself and it has worked flawlessly. Since the accounts aren't fully funded, I am really just storing money until the first of the year when I will start tapping those accounts as those payments come due. In addition, I am planning stuff out every two weeks and paying cash instead of using my debit card. I had really gotten bad about racking up those charges. Having to think about them two weeks in advance really makes me plan the movies and yoga and gas. I think it is going swimmingly. I still owe $5000 on my charge card but I have stopped digging the hole. Even the airline tickets we bought for New York for next week on the card, I immediately turned around and paid down. Seems silly but I really am trying to stop the bleeding. Part of this is because we have lost one mouth on our payroll and can accommodate this. but in the past, I have just adjusted our spending up whenever we got a bonus or an account was paid off. Now, I really want to be about getting that IRA funded and the equity line paid off. I want to be not just a good money manager but a great one. So I need to analyze what the stumbling blocks are and figure out ways around them. The automatic transfers are amazing. They will really help with the accumulating part. Christmas is always a stumbling block. So is the doctor stuff that is constantly happening around here. I am hopeful that my doctor stuff is over and that we have a handle on Cole's. Don, fortunately, is the healthiest dude available to have at 55. Another stumbling block has always been the clothes that Kim sells. I haven't figured that one out yet. But I intend to. Not buying except for Goodwill is going to be a good start. But I can tell I've got work to do. Another thing that I am doing is dipping my toe back into the stock market pool. Pokemon Go was released a few weeks ago and both Matthew and Cole are high about it for completely different reasons. James, an 11 year old across the street is enchanted with it. Even Linda Bhame at church, one of the crustiest of the crusty matriarchs at church knows about it. So I've opened an account today with Charles Schwab and I'm going to buy some Nintendo stock. Silly reason to buy stock but there it is. I'm also going to buy some stocks on the 50 year paid dividend list that I like. Don doesn't like energy stocks or utility companies but Johnson and Johnson, Lowe's and Cincinnati Financial are all on that list and I figure I'll at least get dividends and the tax write off of the IRA investment. And thanks to my accumulating strategy, I've got a good amount of money in that account. I find it slightly thrilling to be back in the stock market. I'll bet that won't last. But there it is. And I'm planning on keeping my mouth shut about all these strategies. Sometimes I have a bad habit of blabbing about my plans. Then everyone wants to weigh in and I start to doubt my strategies. And I end up changing and then I am back doubting myself and I am so tired of that. I am smart about money. And I will be successful at managing it. I am going to balance my accounts monthly and plot the movement of the money, hopefully upward. 2017 will be the year that I wipe out credit card debt and start to rack up the money in the bank.