A modified nerf gun for our new hobby

This summer, we went a little overboard with the spending. It was not just adding SP to our lives, either. We added a new hobby and have spent silly amounts of money on it (though C also sold some stuff on eBay for around $1500 total to help offset those costs). We also purchased my tablet, less than 6 months after I had bought a new laptop. Went on a weekend getaway where we didn’t stay in one of our timeshare locations (so had to pay for a pet friendly hotel), and just didn’t watch our spending in general.

We did not spend money we could not afford to spend. We really never went over total budget, just switched dollars from one category to another. The fact that C took the spring and summer quarters off from school, and only took one class the in the winter quarter meant we hadn’t spent nearly as much on education costs as we expected, so essentially we transferred those dollars to groceries, eating out, and allowance spending.

It also means that the majority of me severance package has gone straight to savings. Truthfully, we are better off financially right now than we were before I was laid off, with another two months of “double” pay (current paycheck and severance) still to come, so it feels strange to complain. And yet, we have both been feeling out of control with the spending.

This month we’re on a plan to cut back. We still know some expenses will run high as we just had back to school for SP and C starts back full time at the end of the month. We’ll also be paying off end of August credit card bills that include SP’s birthday and our anniversary. I am using my tablet pretty regularly, so we’re probably going to pick C up one of his own. And the first event for our new hobby is this weekend. (For my fellow geeks, we will be participating in a post-apocalyptic, zombie, boffer weapon/nerf gun, camping LARP- though the camping is actually staying in cabins, not tents.)

While this month is a transition month for us, one where we start wrapping our minds around living on a budget again, we intend to be back on that budget come October. It actually shouldn’t be that hard with C and SP both in school full time and me being out of the house 11.5 hours per day. Our biggest problem is likely going to be keeping our eating out/take out budget under control. I think this year may be the year we master crock pot cooking.

But the new budget has been figured out. It takes into account child care and kid related activity costs. (Thanks to help from the personal finance message board I am part of- they kicked me into gear when my first iteration had completely unrealistic numbers.) It assumes higher grocery and eating out costs, but also reduced savings for house projects. Our car insurance has gone down a bit, so hopefully that will help cover some of the increased gas costs we’ll see as C starts commuting to school again.

The biggest change is that we intend to kick cable to the curb. It’s funny in that not too long ago, we increased our package and got a DVR again. But since SP has arrived, we have barely watched TV. J mostly watches Hulu or Netflix, and we also have Amazon Prime.

We’ll be keeping cable internet, and we have to have the house phone for foster care purposes, but we’ll be dumping the TV. We do need to buy a digital antenna, but considering our cable bill is over $200/month right now, I’m not expecting that one-time expense to be a big deal.

Simply talking about the budget and then putting it together helped me feel more in control. Just seeing the plan out there (as I have said many times before) puts me at ease. If the plan can’t meet reality, we’ll reassess. If reality changes in a way that the plan didn’t cover, we’ll plan anew. But for now, simply having the plan is enough for me.

I am not trying to rush September out the door (it did just get here), but honestly, I am looking forward to October.