I have never made anywhere close to what Hubby makes. Partly because I chose a profession – journalism – that is low-paying and partly because he has been working up the career ladder seven years longer than me. But we have always pooled our income and had equal rights to spending the total.
Now that I am making next to nothing as a blogger and freelancer (I totaled $6 in my first week), I feel uncomfortable about spending as much as Hubby does.
When I asked Hubby how he felt, he insisted I still had equal rights to our reduced income. But I am not so sure.
After all, I am the one who decided to quit my job and embrace entrepreneurial journalism. Why should I force my career decision, and its fiscal implications, on Hubby? Tell me what you think by voting and leaving a comment.
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I have been blogging about saving money for almost two years, but now that I am self-employed (read: earning almost nothing), my attitude towards cutting expenses has taken a very real turn. My advice had better work, or else!
I re-did our monthly budget to see how everything would work relying solely on Hubby’s salary. But instead of tracking down every single penny, I stripped down our expenses and savings to the bare minimum. What is left is our discretionary income.
Here is what my monthly formula looks like:
Income minus savings minus necessities minus irregular expenses = discretionary spending.
Income: $XXXX
Savings: $833
Necessities: rent, gas, electricity, Internet service, cell phone service, gasoline (Hubby and I each get one full tank a month seeing how I work from home and he commutes on his bike), doctor visits, medicine, gifts and my newspaper subscription to the Sunday NY Times (which is on the chopping block)
Irregular expenses: car insurance, car registration, car repairs, dental visits, Christmas presents, magazine subscriptions, charitable donations… (more…)
I grew up in a house where food was never scarce. To make sure I ate well when I went to college, my mother gave me a credit card to use for all my groceries. “I don’t want you to worry about having enough to eat,” she said.
I am grateful for my mother’s generosity when it comes to food and nearly everything else. But what I had to learn on my own is the idea that everything at the grocery store is a necessity simply because it is food is dead wrong.
I don’t *really* need to buy fresh orange juice, tofutti cuties and organic milk. These are grocery luxuries and it is easy to confuse them with necessities because they go in my belly.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to starve myself. But it’s time for me to be as savvy about food purchases as I am about any other spending category. And that means more than getting the best prices. It means resisting the temptation to buy food that I don’t really need, just like that new T-shirt from J.Crew.
So instead of including food as a necessity in my budget and allotting a set amount of dollars for it, I am including food as a discretionary item in my budget. This way we will carefully consider each food purchase. Is this something we could get cheaper elsewhere? Is this something we could make ourselves? Is this something that will go to waste? At the end of the month I’m guessing we may well be eating out of the freezer.
For 50 years Americans have been shopping at malls, but in these troubled times many are re-thinking their relationship to spending centers, says a story in the Sunday NY Times business section.
“Fiscal health isn’t possible until money is again sloshing into cash registers,” the story says. “In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure. And once we’re cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.”
Reporter David Segal, who wrote the story, goes to the behemoth Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. to meet a young couple that gets married in the mall’s chapel, to talk to shoppers who brag about the prices they paid, and hear stories from retailers burdened by waves of returns and stingy customers.
The story is told through Americans’ love-hate relationship with the mall. “If we were actually in couples therapy with the mall, we’d have to confess to something: We have changed, not the mall. The economic crisis has caused shoppers to go into an essentials-only mode. But the mall has never trafficked in essentials.”
How does a mall survive when its bread and butter is vanilla-scented candles, buttered lobster bites, and virtual submarine rides? Read the whole story.
Get a free Grand Slam breakfast at participating Denny’s this Tuesday, Feb. 3 between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. Coupons will be available for the first 1,000 guests at each location. A very limited number of rainchecks will also be available for eaters who come by but can’t stay.
The freebie was advertised during the Superbowl!
