yup yup… some people’s minds are all kinds of jacked up on debt drugs and that’s a whole other situation for sure… can’t even whisper a benefit of debt to them or they’ll snort the whole thing!! lol…

best compliment a guy can get, jeez… thank you 🙏 🙏 So glad you’re getting something out of them!!

I love this! I do something similar in Excel now that our spending habits are in alignment but I definitely have old notebooks chock full of notes listing our fixed expenses and what wiggle room we have and when for variable expenses. It really helped us get on the right page, no pun intended.

Hey Paul – in case you are interested in systems that work for other people, we finally figured out something that got us off the “holy hell, we spent HOW much?!” roller coaster and didn’t even end up being a big fight.

It is super low tech, but it works for us. We use a spiral notebook.. So we get paid every 2 weeks, thus we pay our bills together every 2 weeks. At the end of bill paying, I turn to a new page in the notebook and on the top line, I write today’s date and the amount of our next paycheck (or paychecks depending), rounded down to the nearest $100. Then, underneath it, I add a line for the savings and bills that we expect to get in the next 2 weeks as well as any pending charges on each of our active cards. One line for each expense. Each amount gets subtracted from the previous total, so we have a running balance at all times.

Then we proceed to charge all of our expenses on credit cards to rack up those sweet points lol.

Regardless of which credit card is used when we are out of the house, we get the receipt on paper and as soon as we come home, we add a line to the notebook and subtract the new charge from what we had available. If we buy something online, same thing (except no paper receipt) – we write it down and subtract the amount from what is available.

Then 2 weeks later we pay all the bills, including the charges accrued on our cards. No fuss, no fights, and we both know how much we have at any given time.

Ugh yeah, that’s a whole other situation – I’m sorry :( Love the heart of your mom though and her tires!! That is so sweet, haha…

That sounds so delightful :)

Ahhh yeah, sounds like a fun Come to Jesus meeting is in your future soon :) Bring lots of wine and make a date out of it and maybe it’ll go over a lot easier?! Lol… I bet she doesn’t even fully understand the extra debt that’s piling up so you’ll prob be good once it’s all aired more in the open.

Yes, based on the numbers alone we should have an extra $600-$1000 a month in excess (depending on how hard we go on variable purchases). What I am saying is that, It’s not that I don’t notice it piling up. I’m just tired of having to be the Mr. Krabs of our family.

This wasn’t an issue when we first got married and used only debit and kept the credit cards for only large planned purchases and in the event of an emergency that exceeded our emergency fund. I’m thinking we may need a return to those days and everything will work itself out.