A Little Experiment

fEver since our last IVF failed and I had to quit my job to move 3,000 miles away I've become a bit more thrifty. Actually Brandon would probably call me a tightwad. But whatever you want to call me, I'm concerned about saving money. And not just saving money but keeping it around for the long term.

Brandon and I would like to have the option of doing adoption if IVF doesn't work out for us. But he also plans on getting out of the military in 5 years. Before he gets out he hopes to have his engineering degree but that will be difficult to achieve while working full-time in the military, especially with deployments during 2 of those 5 years. So we expect that he'll need about a year of schooling after getting out to finish his degree. So someone will have to work to keep us covered by health insurance, not to mention day care costs if we do end up with children.

Finding a job might be tough for either of us so we decided that we need a good amount of savings to keep us afloat while Brandon finishes college. We estimated that amount to be $12,000: $1,000 every month for a year. Brandon will get his GI Bill while he's in school which should be about $1,500 a month. That means I'll need to make at least $12 an hour at a full-time job to make ends meet. The problem is getting that $12,000 saved up, along with emergency savings and adoption savings.

See now why I worry?

So for the past 3 months I've turned into a Frugal Fanny, clipping coupons and signing up for deals at restaurants that we frequent so that we can save $5 on our dinner. But all that saving is working. I've managed to save an average of $30 a month from grocery coupons. That may not sound like much but it adds up to $360 a year. But I'm looking to save more.

As I said in my last post Brandon and I had an awesome time in Maine. I really hope to go back some day. But that awesome vacation came at a price tag of about $1,000. That's a lot of money for a birthday getaway. Money that we could be using for more important things. Like making babies. After getting back and looking at our credit card statements I knew that something had to change.

Last night I sat down and took a look at our budget. I type up a monthly budget to see where we stand financially and where our money is going. For the purpose of this experiment I will share our general monthly budget with you.

Income
Brandon (and military housing pay)- 3,750 (1,875/paycheck)

Expenses
Rent- 1,295
Electric and Water- 150
Cable/Internet- 120
Cell Phones- 100
Groceries- 320 (80 per week)
Gas- 240 (30 each per week)
Allowance- 160 (20 each per week)
Car Insurance- 120
Misc Spending- 300
Gym Membership- 55
Netflix- 10
Charity- 35
IRA- 100
Savings- 600
Total: $3,605 ($145 left over)

I deliberately left out my unemployment income because Brandon and I are trying to live as though we only have one budget, especially since unemployment is only temporary. Now you may be thinking to yourself "Wow, she can save $600 a month?!" But I don't. Because somehow we're never able to stick to our budget. Even though we budget for miscellaneous purchases money gets spent and before you know it, we're staring at a bill for $2,160.43 on our Citi card (in my defense $250 of that was for embryo storage which I'm deducting on our taxes). Needless to say, our budget isn't doing its job, hence the reason for this experiment.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I have an idea on how to save a ton of money (borrowed from this article). The idea is to not buy anything for 30 days. It seems easy enough, right? I mean, it's not like we're going a year without spending. So I figured I would give this a try. Not only to save money but to make our family (and my readers) realize what's really a "need" and what's just a "want". I also want to find things to do with our time that don't cost money and to hopefully bring me and Brandon closer together.

I pitched my idea to the husband after he got home from the dog park. His response? "So does this mean we'll have more sex? Cause that's free." Thankfully it wasn't his first response. His first response was to ask questions about my definition of not spending. Here's the list of rules I came up with:

1) Groceries don't count but we'll be cutting back on junk food (especially because of our upcoming IVF).
2) If we can buy it with a gift card we already own, it's okay. So Brandon bought some new running shoes with a Kohl's gift card we have
3) Purchases of Sunday newspapers are allowed because the value of the coupons outweigh the cost of the newspapers
4) All monthly payments already set up will not be affected (Netflix, gym membership, and charitable contributions)
5) Haircuts for Brandon don't count because he has to keep his hair short for work

Starting tomorrow everything else that is not a necessity is subject to the spending purge. No more eating out, no more purchases for the dog, and no more buying things we don't need. Instead we'll start going to the library for new books, attending free events in our area and volunteering. At the end of the month I hope to have saved about $400. I'll post updates throughout the month as to what we're doing to keep ourselves busy and debt-free. If all goes well then maybe we'll try this for a month every year to get on the right track for our savings goals.

I'm looking forward to the month that lies ahead and hope that I can trim the fat from our budget AND my waistline. Wish me luck!