Lazy

[dancerjodi]

We need to get better about spending money for convenience. We've leaned on it a bit too heavily as new parents, but now our babe is almost 10 months old and it just isn't sustainable.

My bank has a neat system similar to mint.com where you can categorize and track spending, but internet connections are too slow for me to use it (I would need to categorize each expense before having a useful summary). Thankfully they also let you download a chunk of activity to a .csv file. I grouped in Excel and compared to our budget, heh. Some expenses are higher than normal and that's to be expected (have you seen the cost of gas) and we've been doing a lot of home improvements around babyproofing. Still, there is too much unknown ATM trips, restaurants and Dunkin Donuts runs in there. Particularly with this holiday season approaching, we should be smarter about this sort of thing.

(Jen, maybe we'll cook you guys one of our awesome CSA steaks on Monday?)

Happy about our weekend. On Fridays we tend to stay in and make our own pizza, get Mina to bed and watch a movie or catch up on the DVR. Tomorrow Miss M is going to spend the day with her Auntie, where she is sleeping over so that we can go to a wedding. Sunday we are celebrating my Mom's birthday over breakfast there. And Monday we visit with friends and (gasp) I may actually make it out to Ceremony for the first time in forever.

Have a great weekend peeps!

Comments

I track my gasoline and medical expenses via Chase Fullpay

[samhain66.livejournal.com]

I was a little shocked at how much I pay per month for gas. No more spending on the credit card until I can get the gas expenditures a little more under control! :_)

[dee-cee.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it helps, but E&I did the same thing the first year if both kids. Chili's and our local pizza place were on our speed dial. Then a Babies R Us opened down the street. Helpful at first, then you look at your bank statement... Ouch.

[sajuka.livejournal.com]

This year http://www.youneedabudget.com/ (YNAB) has really helped me gain an understanding of how the budget and the spending go together (it will import that CSV file for you) -- it is mostly a glorified spreadsheet, but one that has had a lot of work put into ease of use. For all the financial tracking I did in the past, this is the first time I've really understood where my money was going and the consequences of my choices.

[dawntreader]

i think i need to be more mindful of these things and i don't have a Mina! wise words, wise words.

though i can't believe 10 months have gone by already.... amazing! all in all, sounds like u r doin it rite. ;)