Making a Budget

Ben and I both are pretty much on the same page when it comes to money. There are certain things we feel are worth spending money on--such as healthier foods or books--and we both understand the importance of savings. We have set many financial goals for ourselves--never having a car payment (by not buying a brand new car) and saving a 20-40% down payment before we buy a house. We aren't the best with our money, but we aren't bad either. Besides student loans, we have no debt (and even student loans we have done everything we could to keep those very low). 

The one thing we haven't done that you, really, have to if you want to be good with your money is write out a budget. 

We just sort of are careful with our money but still do pretty much whatever we want. Right now, we are living on Ben's part time, $13 an hour job and both going to school full time. A few months after we got married, we had my part time income (about $800 a month) added as well. We had about $4000 in savings when we got married, which was promptly wiped out by tuition when school started. When I was doing our taxes, it amazed me to see how little we had made since we'd gotten married. It amazed me because we've been fine. We had to get a student loan for me second semester, but other than that, we haven't had to ask for money from anyone. It has always just worked out so that we had the money we needed for everything. We definitely were living off of tithing blessings. 

Now that I'm almost done with school, saving money has become more important to me because it means that we can move. Which means, as soon as we have the money, we can buy a house. That is so exciting to us. We both want a house so badly. 

I have been reading a lot online about budgeting and saving money. I have started doing things such as meal planning and making a price list to cut down our grocery list. This morning, I decided to write out our income and expenses to see where we were at. 

We have about $1300 in expenses. That's with $150 limit for groceries and other necessities (shampoo, toothpaste, etc.) and $60 for gas. The other expenses are set and there isn't much we can do about them. 

Our income is about $1360. I make $160 from teaching dance monthly, Ben (this month!) started getting paid from his Youtube channel, which is about $100, and then Ben makes $1100 from his job with Kynetx.

I was showing Ben and he said, "How do we survive?" It was hilarious. I honestly don't know how we've made ends meet. We aren't huge spenders, but we do spend money on things that we don't really need. We eat out sometimes and buy books. 

I do want to save money though. Every blog you read will tell you that it isn't how much you make, it's how much you spend. That is true, but to not spend when you make very little means a lot of sacrifices. 

We have done a good job in the last year cutting back on expenses. We use our iPods for texting and have (call only) phones that are part of his parents' family plan, which brings our bill to about $20 a month. Our car insurance bill is as low as can possibly be--we have only one, not very nice or new car. Our rent is very reasonable for such a nice apartment--it's actually reasonable for any apartment. We save money other ways with our apartment as well: our landlords let us use their internet; we live literally next door to UVU, so Ben just walks to school; we are super close to the freeway; the only utilities we pay are electricity (about $25 a month) and gas (about $5). Plus we love our ward and the people we rent from. We will probably stay with this apartment until we move to a house. 

I've gone over and over our expenses. They aren't very large but it would be nice to be able to lower them. I honestly cannot find a way we could cut back on them. We could get rid of our phones, but we don't think it's worth it. We want to get rid of our Gold's Gym membership, but Ben is locked in for another year and they say there is no way to end it early (*grumble grumble grumble*).  

We do have about $3000 saved from our tax return, but that money is baby money (hooray!) saved for our birthing center payments. We also have Ben's school tuition for summer (mine is mostly paid for by scholarship and financial aid, thankfully). 

Basically, Ben and I have decided that we just need to make more money. Haha. Ben is working on a game project right now and we want to start a kickstarter (which is basically a place you can put unfinished projects up to let people preorder) for it in July. We're asking for $20,000 and are hoping to get more than that from the game. If that is successful, then it will be a huge step in our savings for our house. With Ben's schooling, we also have decided to take it slowly. It will work better for his personality while he's working to only do one or two classes at a time until he finishes. Since I'll be finished with school, our former $8,000+ annual college tuition will be dropped to less than $3,000. SO NICE. 

Anyways, I am not really sure why I wrote this post. It was mostly for me to think through all of this. I needed to remind myself that Ben and i have been cutting it close with our budget since we've been married and it's always worked out, not to mention look forward to when we can have more of a savings cushion this summer. I do think that we are going to have a lot of money, simply because Ben and I are both dreamers; we have so many ideas and Ben knows how to make those ideas work. I know that the budgeting habits I am learning right now while we have such a small income will serve me well throughout my whole life and let us use our money wisely, no matter how much we have.