99k by 2011

Well, I have found the culprit, and the culprit is me.

I *did* enter in the expected escrow check refund.

CORRECTION! It was mostly me, but partly YNAB - it was entered, but YNAB has this little quirkiness where even though there aren’t enough entries to span the entire screen, it will still have a scrollable scrollbar, and the scrollbar was scrolled down ever so slightly so that the pertinent escrow entry was hidden from view.

Doh!

So, in a way I’m relieved, because this means I didn’t make a truly HORRIBLE mistake that I have no idea what it was. I deleted the escrow income entry which threw my top “Available” balance into the negative around 1600. Not fun, but it wasn’t *too* hard to tweak things around to fix.

I moved everything out of our “buffer” category (which is pretty much like savings, for those not in the YNAB know). I had to get rid of any savings in the car repair/tires categories, and then I was really in a pickle. Since it’s the end of the month, it’s not like I can change our grocery budgeted amount, because we’ve already spent all our money on groceries. Now, maybe it’s just me, but it’s awful hard to cut back on money you’ve already spent. I didn’t mind pulling money out of the car categories, because when the check *does* come in, it will just go right back there (buffer too).

But after I cut out the “easy” stuff, I was left with the hard stuff. I have $375 budgeted to tuition, as my husband is in school and that’s the amount I figured would keep us OK each term for tuition, and I worked hard to figure out what the “average” monthly amount should be. I also have $110 going into a “Christmas” category, and I didn’t want to pull it out of there either, even if I knew I could just put it back the next month. Something about those categories staying rock solid and never ever changing just makes me feel happy.

But there was no other place to pull the negative $100 I still had!

I sat and looked at my budget screen for a long while and finally, I decided I would lower the budgeted amounts for categories that had already been spent. I chose to do this in our “debt reduction” categories, as that’s an area that won’t mess up the data too much. (ie: i want to know that I budgeted $400 for groceries, and I don’t want any weird tweaking to mess that up.)

In doing this, the negative amount is carried over to the next month, subtracting it from the available balance.

This is better shown by looking at YNAB:

Lowering the budgeted debt amount:

OK, so I’m getting a little slap-happy with the photoshop, but it displays my point - much easier to reallocate money you *haven’t* spent yet, then money you have.

YNAB - Please fix that damn scrollbar thing. And let me reconcile, while you’re at it

So I logged on to our bank account this morning to see a puzzling number. ~$1700.

How can that be? Let me explain.

I just wrote a check this morning for my kids’ school, which is ~$1400, so that number up there will soon change to ~$300, not to mention a few gas purchases that always show up as $1 until they finally clear for the real amount.

School tuition is budgeted for! Gas is budgeted for! And I have money built up in my “buffer” category, and there is also a couple hundred built up here and there in categories that won’t be spent until later in the year.

What is going on?

Have I miscalculated something?

I must have, because this can’t be right.

The only thing I can think of, is maybe I have already entered our expected escrow refund check as “income” (thus making it available to assign to categories and spend), even though it hasn’t arrived yet - but I checked on that last night, and I *thought* that I hadn’t entered it.

Hmmmm.

I have to admit, I used to be a quicken user. I would go through spots and spats of not using it, and then have a ton of transactions to download and enter at a time. I would plan ahead by entering upcoming bills/paychecks ahead of time in the register so I could see the timeline of when the money comes in and when the bills getting paid goes out, but even doing that, it didn’t give me/us the control over our money that YNAB does. I actually hadn’t opened it up since about November. And with YNAB, I haven’t done any hard core reconciling or register balancing. I enter in the transactions by hand every night, or every other night, and since we have money socked away, I idly make sure the balance on my checking is kind of close to the balance in YNAB, but I haven’t really worried about the actual account balance.

OK, I take that back - when we refinanced our mortgage, I was VERY worried about the checking account balance/register and timed everything out just so, in order to take enough money to closing and still have money for certain bills etc. But now? This is nothing like that.. I was clear sailing, the end of the month is nigh, everything should be comin’ up roses.

I feel like I’m cheating on YNAB or something, but I really do need more register/account balancing going on.

I have checked out a few other money programs, one my brother swears by adamantly (Ace Money), and it does look pretty good, but the budgeting aspects of it are nowhere close to YNAB, so I’d be doing 2 money programs, and that just makes me tired thinking about it.

Argh. Frustrated.

Oh, and a teeny side note on the power bill - Last night I was feeding our cat, and thought, “Damn, it’s cold over here in this corner!” glanced at the window, and realized it was open a crack.

ARGH! ARGH SQUARED!

So while I am anxiously awaiting our credit statements to actually happen, I’m also very anxiously awaiting our power bill.

I was not happy when our December bill came to the tune of $350, but was REALLY not happy when January’s bill came to $450!

We used ~4000 kwh in that bill!

Now, there was a few culprits, namely, we hadn’t changed our air filters in some time, so we quickly did that.

Next, I set our programmable thermostat on the main level (which is for main level and basement) to be quite low while we are away during the day. Since we both work, and the kids are in school/daycare all day, there’s no need to heat the house while we’re gone. I set it to start heating again about 40 minutes before we’re due to be home, and then turn down low again at night when we’re all snug in our beds.

We have another unit in the attic, with the thermostat in our bedroom, but it is not a programmable one, so we haven’t done anything with that. Also, I don’t think the attic unit uses gas - I think it’s the heat pump variety, and I am unsure of the issues of setting the temperature super low while you’re out for that type of unit, so it’s just as well.

The only other culprits I can think of, is .. well.. we’re geeks. We have a LOT of computers, and some gadgets. 3 TiVo’s, a firewall server, the husband’s desktop, all running 24/7. The husband has since turned his computer off when he’s not using it, but the others pretty much have to be on all the time. We both open up our laptops for a few hours every evening as well.

We do use CFLs in our basement and in our kitchen, but we haven’t changed out many in our upper level (or the hallways of the main level, now that I think about it) so that’s something we can target next month.

I can’t WAIT to see if the filters and thermostat made a difference in our next bill.

Antsy? Ansy? Antsey?

I don’t know what the proper way to spell it is, but I have got ants in my pants, because it’s the end of the month and I’m eagerly awaiting statements to post so I can finalize February’s numbers for my spreadsheet.

The car loan and home equity loan is done, as well as credit card #3, but I’m still waiting for cards #1 and #2.

In looking over our debt spreadsheet this past weekend, I wasn’t too happy with the numbers. We had a total amount of ~$910 going to the credit card debt for February, well below what I wanted.

We originally wanted to throw $1000 at the credit cards, along with any dependent care reimbursements we got from our flexible spending account. That should be $1385, total. So as you can imagine, I wasn’t happy with $910.

Of course, some things have changed, like the $800 brake bill that popped up, and the fact taht we may have a hefty tax bill come april, but still - we were only $90 away from the $1000, and it’s not my fault the reimbursements are slower than molasses.

So I talked it over with the husband, and he agreed that we could pull $90 out of our “buffer” category to at least get it to $1000.

I hadn’t yet made the payment, and so imagine my glee when waiting for me in our mailbox, was a $192 reimbursement check. So after I deposited that (I love USAA’s Depost@Home feature SO MUCH!), I went ahead and send in a payment, and rounded everything up a bit as well.

So we won’t be making the $1385 number, but we at least made our $1000 +$192.

Yay.

So I budgeted money for both my husband and I to get our oil changed this month. My husband took his in on Monday (president’s day) and blew the budgeted amount because he got synthetic. That man and his car! I’m just kididng, I KNOW he always gets synthetic, and I approve the use of synthetic instead of fossil fuels, so why didn’t I budget for that? Blah.

So, I still needed an oil change, and my brake light has been flashing on and off for the last month or so, so in the back of my head, I knew that when I took it in, it was going to be more than just the cost of oil & lube. We dropped it off to be looked at today and sure enough, when I got the call this morning, it was not good news. The front brakes were pitted and worn down through the pads into the …. um… whatchamacallits, and it also needed new calipers. The rear brakes weren’t so bad, but needed new pads, and the brake fluid was dirty and gross and they recommended a full flush. On top of that, he told me that the clutch was really worn out, but this I already knew and have been socking money into a “new clutch” category (that’ll cost around $1k). I confirmed what I already kind of knew, which is it won’t hurt the car to drive it until the clutch totally gives out - which I don’t WANT to do, but I want to hold out as long as I can. It’s already getting pretty loose in the shifting - how does a worn out clutch drive? You shift, put on the gas, and the engine revs up without “catching” the gear and giving any forward momentum. I have to accelerate pretty slowly.

SOOOOO… the damage is about $800. In the back of my head, I knew that there would probably be some brake work, but I was hopping it would be around $300-400. So, bummer.

However, my husband summed it up perfectly.

“You know, if we hadn’t started a budget, I would really be freaking out about this.”

Amen and hallelujah! I’m going to have to raid a few categories to cover this, and I may have to dip into the buffer (I hope not!!), but this is way better than just having to charge it.

A big battle between relieved that we have funds to cover this, and frustration that this will probably put off a big debt payment even longer.

The good news - my husband had his yearly review and it was good, raise amount and bonus amount will be finalized and given to him next week, with all changes effective in first march paycheck.