Monday, November 3, 2008

Disposable Income Goes Where?

I think it's time to devise an honest to goodness savings plan. We share a bank account so we have the habit of paying all our bills first and then buying/spending whatever we want after that. It's not very conducive to *saving* anything. At all. I have a percent being pulled into a 401K and I save my freelance money, but nothing out of our paychecks gets saved.

I really have no idea where our money even goes! I did the budget calculator on The Nest and according to them we should have $1100 a month left to save after bills and going out to eat/drink. Huh? What? Are you serious?

That is a very depressing revelation. I wanted to set a goal to save $200 a month and they're telling me I should be saving $1100? I must have missed a major bill or something in there because that just seems outrageous on our part. There's no way we spend that much a month on miscellaneous crap. Oh god, do we? I think I severely underestimated the amount of money we spend at the grocery store. And I didn't budget in my Target addiction. In all honesty, we could probably save nearly $400 a month if we just kept a better eye on what we buy and where we go. Yet we don't...

That is a sad, sad slice of reality on a Monday morning.

**UPDATE


Ok, so some of the fields I filled in ended up blank and didn't get included in the monthly expenses. The total to save should have been $618, not $1300. That is not nearly as gut wrenchingly awful. It's still not good though.

No comments: