The Blade is Dulled, but the Battle is not Over! Fight, Ronin, Fight!

Why we didn't win.

First off, I will casually confess I'm somewhat of a defeatist. I typically look on the worst side of things and my outlook is more than occasionally grim. This is regularly vexing to my better half, the Budget Naginata.

When I get overwhelmed by something, I typically quit. No, it's not very sportsmanlike of me and no, it doesn't really solve anything. I admit all of these things. This is also the undergirding reason why I haven't been posting since the beginning of the year. Things have not been well and I didn't really want to just sit here and write one depressing post after another.

"Yes we spent money. Yes we ate out crappy food. Yes we bought nonsensical goods that don't better us as a financially independent entity."

I wasn't in the mood to do that, so I avoided it.

... so here we are. One year later. (Truth be told, it's one year and four days later, but we set May 1st to be the cutoff date, so there we go).

In the broadest sense of the contest, we totally lost. We have spent money on things that were unessential to us and we have plans to expand that in the coming months. I'm not going to break it down to you in dollars and cents, but it's enough.

So normally here is where I would shut down, lower my head and kick at the dirt a bit.

As I geared myself up to write this, however, that not everything is completely horrible. We did accomplish some pretty decent stuff over the past 12 months:

1. We finished paying off our Budget-Mobile, which makes it completely ours and saves us a bundle each month on payments.
   
   
2. We finished our credit card repayment program. This saves us even more than the car and frees up even more money.
   
   
3. We reconditioned an outstanding school loan and put us in good standing with the institution. Yes, we still owe a boatload on that, but we now can forebear during lean months, whereas before we didn't have that option.
   
   
4. Now that we have some money freed up, I started auto-drafting some money into a savings account. It's not much, but it's a good start.
   
   
5. We have used our tax refund this year to make some vital improvements/repairs to our house. We are close to a position to sell our "starter home" and possibly move into a better place closer to where both Budget Naginata and I work. It may mean a bigger house payment, but what we would save in time and gasoline should more than offset that. Should this occur, we'll also most likely eliminate a small equity loan that we had to take out to make some repairs after the first year we lived in the house.
   
   
6. The upcoming stimulus package will fix some broken things on the Budget-Mobile. We're very excited about having it in great working order.

These are some pretty significant things to happen that impact our financial standing. These are things I should not discount when I think of all the other things that have happened to us. The Budget-Clan is still dealing with a family medical issue that requires us to buy several extra tanks of gas over the course of a month and we all know that's not getting any cheaper. We are also still trying to make some final upgrades to the house to get in selling order and that requires more money. The Budget-Truck has remained unmoved for months due to a faulty starter (we think) and we have not had the money or opportunity to get that fixed.

Seriously, I could go on. Things are better in many ways, but we have a whole array of new problems. This, as I understand it, is what life is like.

I was going to ramble more... but I think I will save that until May-Day.

hmmmm.....Just to clarify....

"I'm sure that Budget-Edamame would chime in her praise if she knew that her new rations of marshmallows and noodles will soon be purchased from the salary of said job."

Thank you for the kudos on the job, I would like to point out however that Budget Edemame does not just eat noodles and marshmallows.

That does it for this edition of "The who in the what now?"

Back and Budget-ier than ever!

So...

I guess I'm a bit late and all. Nevertheless, the budgeting goes on! I think there is a certain amount of shame involved in the upcoming post, because I know I've been bad. I blame the holidays. I was looking to spend nothing, like the months leading up to December, but Naginata and I agreed that we needed to spend somthing on Budget Edamame since she is totally worth it.

The holiday rush also had us buying some meals and cutting some corners on other things as well, with one specific result. The Budget-Mobile remained our burden. We didn't get the chance to finish our payments as I had hoped. That being said, we actually rallied this month to send out that final payment. Currently we are waiting for it to clear so we can put that behind us.

So now we can start looking forward to clearing some of our debt. A school loan, an equity loan on the Budget-Stronghold we had to take out shortly after purchasing it many years ago and a small in-collections loan for our replacement AC. I'll cover these more as we get to them, but I think the AC loan should take little time and the house loan might be able to be eliminated inside of two years.
Getting back on track is the biggest thing. The holidays threw us all for a loop. Driving to relatives house cost tons in gas and sanity. Quick meals and a couple of big feasts cost more money at the grocery store than we expected and despite Budget-Naginata's amazingly wonderful crafted gifts and my banana bread, we still had to spend some money on gifts. Mind you, we tried to do it as economically as we saw fit, but out of budget spending is still out of budget spending.

Starting next month, I'll be devoting more money to savings. I'd like to have a nice pad of savings to back us up so we are less crippled by life events such as holidays or emergencies. The first of the month will still have our mortgage, which is still like 60-70% of that paycheck, so there will not be a lot of breathing room there, but with the repayment of our credit cards and our car loan, we gain so much the second half of the month. Everything I've read tells me to auto-draft savings so that I'm not even thinking about it. I'm going to set that up today to distribute a healthy amount back to us. The rest I'll use to start targeting our remaining debts.

Side-note: A great article here on automating your finances. I'll definitely be "borrowing" some of these going forward: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/01/13/how-to-automate-your-personal-finances/

Along with the other grand news of debt reduction, I can proudly announce that Budget-Naginata has a new job! I'm very proud of her and everything she's done to help all three of us out. I'm sure that Budget-Edamame would chime in her praise if she knew that her new rations of marshmallows and noodles will soon be purchased from the salary of said job.

So with new income on the way and old debt left back in '07, it looks as if 2008 has the potential to be a good fiscal year for the Budget-Clan. I promise you'll hear more from me, good or bad, to keep you all up to date.

At this point, less than 100 days left in the Mayday challenge. Even though we've fallen off the wagon, I'm going to rededicate myself on spending as little as possible between now and May 1st! Wish me luck!