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Archive for March, 2013

Gifts, gifts, gifts, Oh My!!

March 17th, 2013 at 04:55 pm

I am interested in your thoughts on the high price of gift giving and/or how much you budget for gifts.

It's funny, but I never really realized how much certain things cost until we started this spending plan two months ago. For instance, I always thought the gift category in our budget would be rather small.

Boy, was I ever wrong!! Although in my "fantasy" spending plan, not including Christmas, we would spend about $1,200 a year on gifts or $100 a month, for the past two months we have spent a WHOPPING $483.28!!

Walmart cards...$8.52
Victoria's Secret...$54 (girlfriend gift)
Victoria's Secret...$102 (son's fiance's bday gift)
Dick's Sporting Goods $161.96 (son's fiance's bridal shower - outdoor wear, go figure)
Target $117.00 (add'l wedding gift for son - after giving him $5K for wedding gift a couple of months ago!)
Cash...$100 (friend's daughter getting married)

Admittedly, since my youngest son is getting married, we had lots of gift expenses, but we have a MAJOR family bday month coming in April w lots of bdays...mine, hubby's, son's.

We will try to stay at $100 for son's gift and this year we will LIMIT our spousal gifts to $100 each.

In my previous financial haze period, GIFTS as a spending category was never really even on my radar screen. I now have learned two things about them:

1) Gifts cost much more than you think.
2) Buying gifts for others IS an investment in relationships so maybe it IS a worthwhile investment...much more so than buying myself yet another handbag.

ALSO, it seems there is ALWAYS an event which comes up and takes more money than you think. For example, at the end of March I am flying to Nashville to help my older son move to KC which is closer to home. To do that I will have more expenses than in my standard budget...already paid for flight, but hotel room, meals out during the move, new comforter I plan to buy for son's new place. There seems always to be a reason to spend money.

Once good thing, though. I now realize that these other things take so much money that maybe I don't need to SPEND my clothing allowance. Maybe there are better uses I have for that money right now. In fact, I have spent nothing on clothing in two months due to these other expenditures.

Gifts, who knew?

Do you all out there find gifts to be a pricey area? About how much do you spend? And, do you have any ways to keep it more reasonable or do you just accept it?

Changing My Evil Ways

March 14th, 2013 at 04:29 pm

We started following our spending plan around January 15. I am pleased to report that it is working beautifully! I was the real spending problem in our household as we had lots of disposable income and I was pretty good at disposing of it!

Tracking our spending in Mint and writing everything down has been a Godsend and has really transformed how I view and use money in the following ways:

1)We stopped using our charge card and switched to the debit card so I am forced to live within our income (also, no more $10-$12K monthly VISA bills to pay off!).

2)I set up a budget and know exactly what we have to live on each month.

3) I KNOW what it takes us to live each month - something I had no idea of before.

4) I now realize that all spending has tradeoffs. If you purchase clothes for yourself, you may have to cut down on entertainment, groceries, etc. For instance, this month we have overspent on gifts and instead of just doing it I had to pull funds from other areas. I pulled some money from the gas budget, for instance, as we won't need as much as I had budgeted for in that area.

My new financial learning is going great! Also, I watched Suzi Orman the other night and she gave 3 great tips:

1) Before you make a purchase, ask yourself if you NEED or WANT it. If you don't NEED it, don't buy it.

2) Live within your NEEDS, not your income. (if you can afford a 3000 sq ft house but only NEED a 2000 sq ft house, buy the 2000).

3) Learn to get as much JOY out of saving money as spending it. For the first time in my life, I am getting lots of joy from saving, where before going shopping was how I filled the emotional void.

I LOVE this new approach to money. Thanks for listening.