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.