Friday, November 16, 2007

WBRFS #7

SHOWDOWN!
Budget Ronin vs. the Fist of the Open Future!
"Goodbye Old Friend! Greetings to our Newest Adversary!"

That's right. I didn't even start with an apologetic intro. I'm on time today! I have, however, spent a good deal of the day kicking around what I wanted to write about. I mean, here I am on time, but lacking something to complain about.

Thank goodness for the Internet and it's infinite array of diversions. You may be surprised to find that many of the places you go to find out fun and interesting facts are littered with material designed to activate your consumer bloodlust. Yes. I was shocked, too.

I'm usually fairly immune to advertising, but occasionally there will be some sort of product that will be lurking in a clever flash sidebar that will grab my attention enough to make me go and look at some flashy thing that I totally don't even begin to "need" in the way that I need food or clothes or beer. After I see it, however, my brain will get all obsessive and suddenly I'll recognize that this is exactly what the advertisers want.

Sure, sure, you know all of this already. So what does this mean to you, the readers of Budget Ronin?

Um? Give me money so I can buy things? I totally want to consume!!!!

The halfway point in the challenge is now much, much harder, I came to realize today. Couple that with the fact that we are almost done paying off the Budget-Mobile (the penultimate payment clears this afternoon). The Mayday Challenge after the first of the year will actually be not to break the challenge and buy things that we'll actually be able to afford for a change.

I think that it really just "feels" like we'll have more money than we actually will. I've been focusing heavily on the last couple of days to itemize and estimate things on The List. The List is now the new name for all the previous lists. I've even come up with clever acronyms for things. So far we have:

1. WLI: Wish List Items - Things that are "pie in the sky" things that we'd like to have the money to do once in our lifetime, like taking an exotic cruise around the world or hiking the Cotswold Trail.

2. LTI: Long Term Items - Things that will most likely require financing. Not that we're planning to get one, but a new car would be a prime example.

3. STI: Short Term Items - These are things that are outside the scope of impulse buying but don't require financing. These are things that we might have charged to a credit card at one point, but we'd do better at saving cash a month or so in advance to purchase without creating more debt. Fixing the struts in the Budget-Mobile is a fine example of this.

4. OPI: Outstanding Payment Items - The few random collection agency things or doctor's bills that are not much, but we need to catch up on to resolve them on our credit history. These are tricky, because most of them are just annoying, not expensive, so we fall into the trap of letting them ride for another month because we need to buy tortilla shells instead.

So I've got a spreadsheet with all the WLI, LTI, STI, and OPIs I can come up with. Frankly, even if you drop off the Wish List Items, it's a hefty bottom line. It's made me realize that despite the challenges that we have recently beaten, there are always new financial challenges out there. Has anything really changed? Will I fall back into old habits? Will the sudden rush of money cause me to fall back into bad habits?

It's a tough call. I'll confess that despite the excitement or enthusiasm expressed here in my interweb-log, I don't really relish saving reciepts, crunching numbers or making lists. I look for excuses to do it and it doesn't take much to derail me if I let it. I guess that's why I try to be as honest as possible here, because I think a lot of being a fiscally responsible person is being honest and transparent. No, I'm not going to give you all access to my online banking to watch me, but I will try to report not only my successes, but my failures right here.

For example, since our payoff discovery, Budget Naginata and I have already made a new exception to the rule that allows us to order takeout once a month. We started it last month to justify our celebratory dinner and we've let it ride so far because we've both had a bit of extra income from side projects. I'm trying hard to keep this to once a month.

So when I re-read my entries to see how amazing I am, instead of convincing myself that it's a good reward to get something new and shiny, I'll be humbled, if just a little, to remember how this all happened and why I got started on the Challenge in the first place.

Whew. That was a lot.

Better head out now before a cause a market panic in my IP. (Look, real market-type talk!)

B.R.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Holy Carp!

I just fished myself out of the gutter. I've been under a rock trying to get a side-project done, not even realizing that it put me 2 weeks behind for the Showdown. I'm a very bad Ronin. No wonder the feudal lords never made a Samurai of me.

Ok. So... We're past the halfway mark! Woo!!!! A week or so past, you know, when I should have been keeping up with the Showdown, I could have actually posted this little fact when it was timely. Regardless, it's still relevant.

So how are we doing on the downhill slide? Things are not too bad at the Budget-Compound.
Both Budget Naginata and I have some extra money coming in from side projects. Our Budget-Mobile is still on track for being paid off at the beginning of the year. Our credit card debt is now a thing for the history books, at least for the time being and Naginata and I are trying to get things organized for what's coming up next year.


Already we are looking at funding one big home improvement project that will greatly help the resell of the ole' Compound, as well as making the place a bit more energy efficient and comfortable to dwell in. It will cost some money, however, so we're trying to approach it with the mindset of getting as much of the cost front-loaded as possible and have a timely schedule for paying it off.

We also have repairs on the Budget-Mobile to slot and we're looking forward to and actual perhaps vacation this coming summer.

Other updates: The hot-tub still languishes unsold, unused, unwanted in the back. The Budget-Truck could use some nuts and/or bolts to get it back up to 100% and we still have some miscellaneous unpaid debts that would be great to get rid of.

It looks like we've settled on the following percentages for our Budget Buckets right now: 70% household maintenance, 10% Long Term: Savings, 10% Short Term: Projects, 10% Fun (after the Challenge is over, for now, we'll be putting that extra 10% into Long Term). Ultimately I'd like to get our debt for our household expenditures down to 50% and put more in Long Term Savings and add some to a Charity Bucket. There is at least three more persistent things we pay for, two of which we might be able to resolve inside of a year or two. This is pretty critical, especially if we want to take on the extra cost of the home fixup.

I think I'll save more about what we plan to do to the Compound on a later post (perhaps this week's Showdown).

That's all I've got for this quick update.