WBRFS #6

Well... one week on time is a good start. Last week Budget Naginata was away from the Budget-Compound, so Budget Edamame and I held down the fort by ourselves. I took a couple of days off of work to be with her, including Friday. Pardon my truancy.

Showdown!
Budget Ronin vs. the Perplexing Percentages of Peril!
"The alchemy of finance! Don't let your world explode!"

Things I meant to do this weekend:
1. Clean out my inbox.
2. Work up a budget spreadsheet.
3. Talk with Naginata about said spreadsheet.
4. Bake some muffins.

Things I accomplished:
1. Delicious muffins.

I just wanted to post that to demystify the oft-glamorized world of the Budget Ronin. An unproductive weekend, aside, I've been looking at some numbers here at work on my coffee break and think I'm looking at some reasonable percentages. Mind you, I am expecting some fluctuation as we continue to pay off some long term debt, but right now I think we' can say that 70% of the income can cover our obligations and expenses, which leaves us with 10% for short term projects, 10% for long-term investing and 10% for fun. That is the standard we'd like to shoot for. I think starting there and then reducing our obligations by 10% so that we can put that over to charity or redistribute to savings.

I haven't given it a lot of consideration because it looks like we're overspending on our obligations just over 5% or so. Which means we could trim off that amount from fun and still meet our budget. I have identified close to another 20% of our obligations that is long-term debt. I'm not sure we can escalate the payment of this in any easy way and still save a good chunk of money, but I intend to bring it up to Naginata so we can make an informed decision about it together. If we can move it over, we can easily get to 60% income only to obligatory cost and leave 40% open for savings/investment/recreation.

Having 40% of the Clan's income going to exactly where we want it to go makes me very happy. Assuming the car payments go according to schedule, we should be on track for being close to 30% at the top of the year.

I'm trying to think of a good way to organize receipts and expenditures. Maybe buckets or folders that get emptied out once a month. Hmmm. I know there are several online services and several computer programs that would let me track expendatures, but I would really like to make things less complicated, not more. Streamlining is what I'm aiming for.

If we are hitting our percentages, especially our obligatory expenditures and our LT/ST savings, then I'm not so inclined to be nitpicky over the remaining % points. Again, less worried that spent $5 over on any one thing, more worried if we come in 5% over budget per month.

I'm going to try and hammer out something solid with Naginata this week so that this Friday's Showdown isn't another repeat episode.

Enough rambling for now. Let me go look at buckets, baskets or bundles for our new receipt accounting.

This post came in under budget, but over time.

B.R.

WBRFS # 5

Bang! Right to the Weekly Budget Ronin Financial Showdown!

Showdown!
Budget Ronin vs. the Crushing Fear of Unseen Expenses!
"From out of the Darkness, razor-sharp receipts! Beware the papercuts, Ronin!"

This is still a tough time for us. Despite the deluge of great news about our debt and car loan, we still don't have money. Just resolving the debt wasn't like winning the lottery as far as our bank account was concerned. So we've still had to be very careful, even though I can tell the mood between Naginata and I regarding our finances is markedly different. We're very excited at the prospect of making progress instead of just filling holes that seemed relatively bottomless.

As part of the changes going on around our house and blog, I'm going to stop blogging my receipts. Taking my last Showdown to heart, I'm going to start planning for a monthly budget report instead. I've done a good job at curbing impulse shopping (all shopping really) and I think the previous half-year (177 days to be precise, but still, pretty darn close) has strengthened my resolve quite a bit. I think at this point, reading that I spent $2 on bananas or 10 quatloos on tribble food. Yeah. You thought my quatloo jokes were done, didn't you?

Anyway, obscure fictional science-fiction currency aside, I am going to start working on a monthly analysis that tells us more of an over/under of where we are hitting on our percentages for the month and year. I kind of screwed the pooch on some receipts for the last few weeks, so I won't be doing October, but November and December still give me ample time to ramp up for our first new year of non-car/non-credit card budgeting. I'll probably try some formats and names out just to see what looks good visually.

So sometime in the next couple of weeks between now and All Hallows Eve, I'm going to try and do some number crunching with Budget Naginata and see where we want to put down our numbers. It's like projecting for the next fiscal year, which is all business-like and far too grown up for my own tastes. Regardless, it's a positive first step and while I don't really want to run our household like a business, projecting a profit for the Budget Clan's 2008 fiscal year is an altogether new and giddy experience that I want to be a part of. I think I might have t-shirts made or something. Let's see the Gamemasters of Triskelion beat that!

Further updates from the Budget Clan?

We still have not sold/unloaded the hot-tub. We're thinking about just giving it away at a loss. Now that the extra couple of hundred does not seem an insurmountable loss, I'm inclined just to reclaim the deck space and my sanity.

Our first credit-card refund has arrive and been deposited. Our second is en route. Our last credit-card disbursement has been paid. I have to verify with the creditor it has bee received, but I'm pretty sure this clears us on all the cards.

Our Budget-Mobile is still slated to be paid off by the end of the year. Yay!

Budget Naginata and I are looking to move banks from Spank of America to something else. Recommendations and/or advice are welcome. Something online would be fine, but we would like someplace we can physically make deposits instead of having to mail anything in.

Well, that's it. Showdown is on time and I am off to work on pie charts... or maybe just some pie.

Compounding intrest daily,

B.R.

WBRFS #4

[Note: I started this on time on Friday, the 12th, which is why I'm so happy.]

Back on track, today, after several personal delays, we are back to the Weekly Budget Ronin Financial Showdown. Setting the calendar reminder was a big help, too. Today's episode is...

Showdown!

Budget Ronin vs. the Spectre of Spending!

"Don't be distracted, Ronin! Let your aim be true!"

I put the last sum of credit card money into the debt repayment system today. I authorized CCCS to make the final disbursement on my behalf and I just need to follow up to make sure the credit card company gets it in a few days. I can't even begin to tell you what a relief that is. But with the big refunds in the mail, I do feel like we can breathe a bit easier. It doesn't feel so bad.

There, my friends, is the challenge. It does not _FEEL_ bad, but it is not necessarily good. It is not as if Budget Naginata and I have a great deal of money saved. Should we run into an unexpected car expense, we still do not have the means to fix it yet. While planning to pay off the car and starting some significant savings sounds like a great idea, I think the sudden rush of money feels very intoxicating. I'm looking at things and thinking to myself: "Wow. In a couple of months I could buy that no problem."

It occurred to me today that this is exactly the kind of thinking that got us in trouble in the first place. I don't think we'll rush into getting credit cards so quickly this time, we have plenty of credit building power from our house, a large school loan and paying off some miscellaneous collections. I may consider getting a single gas credit card to put our gas expenditures on that we can pay off in full each month, but right now I'm more concerned with paying off the car and fixing up our broken things.

But no single monthly paycheck is going to cover all of this, so we need to look at our newfound income and split it up into discrete sums that we can use to further our goals. I've done some reading online (original authors forgive me, I've forgotten exactly where), but most budget blogs/financial specialists I've studied break it up into percentages of your total income. Here's a couple I remember:

Plan A: 60% living expenses, 20% investing, 20% savings.
Plan B: 60% living expenses, 10% investing, 10% long term savings, 10% short-term/fun money. (I know I'm missing 10% here, but that's what I honestly recall).

I think you get my intentions here. I'm looking at what we spend against what we should save for (retirement and investments) and would still like to factor in some fun. So the question I ask you faithful readers is this... what percentages would/do you chose for your budget? I've got some ideas, but I need to talk it over with Naginata.

Ideally, I'd love to get our living expenses down to 50% of my income, but I'm assuming 60% is more realistic. With the remaining 40%, I wonder what I would feel comfortable allocating to Savings, Investment, Charity, and Fun? Do I make it an even split? Do I weight one over the other?

This is my big conundrum for the day.

[Note: Now it's Monday, the 15th.]

Still my conundrum, a few days later. Dang, I almost had it all done on time, too. I probably just should have posted as is/was. I have more to talk about, but I'm totally not with it right now. Sorry for the late Showdown posting.

More debt-free than ever before!

B.R.

[10.16.07 edit: There's a line above that got spell-checked into nonsense, so I substituted something that sort of made sense to me now.]

Mistakes were made...

I know I skipped my weekly Budget Ronin Fianancial Showdown last week. I think I was turned around from having to make up for one from the week before. But rather than try to make up and miss another, I 'll just plan to start up again on time. There is, however, a hitch. I'm on the road again for business, so I don't have all my receipts to catch up on. Nor do I have all my Budget Ronin tools and implements of destruction.

So I'll probably do the next WBRFS next friday. Right now this is me setting myself a calandar reminder

OK. Reminder is now set.

So... what's been happening since the big reveal last post? More typically good things. We recieved a notice back from two of our creditors that we had not only finished our debt repayment, but that we had actually paid over by a significant amount. After a quick call or so, we now have two refund checks in the mail. Sweet Victory is even sweeter!

We're going to sink that money into eliminating Budget Naginata's overdraft debt that I highlighted a few weeks ago here in the 2nd Weekly Budget Ronin Financial Showdown. That will put us more square with our finances and take one more card off the table. We are then looking at a better place to start a new account that we will both use.. Advantage: Budget-Clan.

Naginata has gotten some great freelance work, and we're on track for everything. For a change, I have nothing but good fiancial news to report.

I'm on my expense account, so I will be eating craptacularly well today, enjoying every meal. I will probably do another update before the week is out.

I have something else on my mind, but I'm not sure I have the time and/or focus to go into it now.