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Home > Yay! I'm getting the spouse on board slowly, and I'm working hard on a budget

Yay! I'm getting the spouse on board slowly, and I'm working hard on a budget

January 27th, 2009 at 11:02 am

Lately my wife has been turning the computers off at night and whenever they aren't in use for a few hours. I had started doing that last year on my New Year's budget kick, but I got out of the habit as I worried about the BIG things, like balancing the budget and minimizing CC interest paid, keeping college bills paid, etc. So this is a great sign, I just have to build slowly on it.

And on the budget front, I know what I want to do now. I was working with the numbers exported from Quickenonline to a spreadsheet, and I want to graph them, to sort of emulate that new type of income/expense graph that they just added to Quckenonline. I'm trying to visualize how I can be overspending by about 10-20% per month on checking alone. Unfortunately, Quickenonline only goes back to May 8 for me - I'm not sure why that is - fixed number of transactions, software change, etc.? But it's a good amount of data to work with nonetheless.

I'll keep you posted! It's fun to at least have the hope of getting in control.

6 Responses to “Yay! I'm getting the spouse on board slowly, and I'm working hard on a budget”

  1. Little L Says:
    1233075877

    Are you using a credit card to pay for every day items? Its easy to overspend that way because you never see the money actually leaving your account. That is, until you pay the bill Frown Hope you are able to figure it out.

  2. Carolina Bound Says:
    1233077966

    Oh yes, the numbers crunching is fun. Making a game out of your budget is the best motivation!

  3. Analise Says:
    1233078247

    Good luck. I used to use Quicken but now use an Excel spread sheet for my budget.

  4. Koppur Says:
    1233101854

    Glad your wife is on board! Smile

  5. homebody Says:
    1233104677

    What happened, did she see you stressing, giving up things for yourself you needed in order to let her and the girls have what they wanted? What did it do you think??

    Very happy for you though! I use YNAB for budgeting and Quicken for the reports.

  6. Ralph Says:
    1234554025

    Oops, a little lapse here.

    Carolina Bound: I agree, it is fun when it isn't depressing! It used to be great fun when I was single and solidly in the black!

    Analise: Yup, Excel is more easily customizable. I still miss the old Quicken for Windows 3.1, it was SO gosh darn user-friendly! The modern standalone computer version probably is also, but I am thoroughly in no-spend mode now. Plus practice in Excel is always good and pays dividends since I use it quite a bit at work.

    Koppur: STARTING to get on-board! We've got a looooong row to hoe, but just the impression that she cares even a little is an immense help.

    homebody : She has seen me stressing for years but she never really believed me - she looked at our nice 401k and thought we were rich! Now that that has crashed, I think she sees it ain't that much money and it is needed for old age AND untouchable for now, so I think she is STARTING to realize that things are serious. It's a journey of a thousand miles.

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