Meal Plan

Posted on by Jordan

One of the many benefits of having a wife who is not only on board with the Dave Ramsey plan, but also a spread sheet enthusiast is that we have historical records of our budget (both planned and actual) going back almost to when we got married.

 

This means that we aren’t saying “boy it seems that we are spending more on food these days” we are saying “our food spending is %50 higher than it was two years ago!”

I have seen some numbers on the actual rate of increase in food prices, and while they are non trivial, they do not explain the change in our budget. So then the question is, how much of that came from adding Hannah, how much came from changing what kinds of food we buy, and how much is the actual price changing on us?

Surprisingly, it’s hard to know. We don’t have any real records of what individual items we were buying, or what meals we were eating over that time. While it would be wonderful to keep those kinds of records, it starts to seem more than a little silly to devote much time to it right now, given the other things vying for our time.

What I can do is post the meal plan I worked up for the week. I have gotten much more disciplined about doing a full week’s plan now that swinging by the store to grab that one thing we forgot about is a major pain. We don’t always end up making everything on the plan, but it at least gives a good framework to build a shopping list from.

  • Monday: Grill Burgers
  • Tuesday: Cabbage Skillet with ham
  • Wednesday: Carnitas
  • Thursday: Pesto chicken and pasta
  • Friday: Chicken and quina
  • Saturday: Stir-Fry

I would like to actually include links and or post recipes for the things that aren’t obvious like burgers, and in some fantasy world where I can spend 10 hours a week on this, IĀ  would do cost per serving breakdowns as well. Here in the world of actual time constraints I think I will be happy with just getting the plan posted, and hope that it comes in handy down the road when I am trying to figure out if our eating habits are what is impacting the monthly budget šŸ™‚

 

-Jordan

 

Dave Ramsey Live!

Posted on by Jordan

I seem to be falling behind… lucky for me March ended up being kind of uneventful, so the fact that I am just getting this posted doesn’t mean you missed much.

Heather and I went to see Dave Ramsey in Kansas City. We bought the tickets months in advance, and Heather suffered a small amount of ridicule at work for her excitement over having the tickets. The fact that the event later sold out was somewhat vindicating I suppose.

It did mean that the friends who we talked into going to the event with us were unable to purchase tickets, so we had to go by ourselves.

To be completely honest, I was doing a little bit of foot-dragging in the weeks leading up to the event. I mean, how exciting can it be to see a five-hour recap of the class we took three years ago? Well, the answer to that is, a lot more exciting than you ever would have guessed!

Dave is a gifted speaker, and his team puts on a great event. We really enjoyed it.

Reflecting on the event, I think part of the reason it’s worth doing is that culturally, it’s hard to talk about money and budgets with your peers. It was refreshing to be in an environment where people could say “I am debt free!” Granted, a person could go into the office on Monday and say that, but I don’t know how many friends that would make you… or maybe I am taking too dim a view of humanity… at any rate, it got Heather and I excited to buckle down and focus on our financial goals again, and that alone makes it worth the price of admission.

-Jordan

Yay Wireless Plans

Posted on by Jordan

There are a few things I have wanted to post about, and this topic is the best non-picture post I can think of.

Heather has my PC tied up re-doing our budgeting system, it looks like we are going to abandon Quicken in favor of a multi-page spread sheet. I was expecting Quicken to be less intimidating as a finance tracking tool than Excel, but it appears Heather has far more familiarity with spreadsheets than I do. In reality, Quicken wasn’t a great tool anyway, as it is built to track what has happened and we were trying to use it to manage a forward looking budget. I know I am wandering off topic, but I am kind of excited to have Heather working up this spread sheet. šŸ™‚

So, getting back to wireless calling plans….

Heather and I spend a lot of time in the car these days, and in the absence of much else to do, we make quite a few calls during this time. I had been trying to keep an eye on our minute usage, but our billing date is mid month somewhere and I clearly lapsed somewhere along the line. To make a long story short, we went over quite a bit. Like $120 over. More than a little disappointing considering I had realized this was a possibility, and then forgot to keep a close eye on remaining minutes as the billing month was coming to a close. what makes it even more frustrating is the fact that when IĀ  changed our plan, the new service wasn’t that much more. The old plan was the most basic package, with a second line and unlimited texting thrown in. Upgrading to the next tier of plan meant we got the texting for free, doubled the minutes we could use, and added ten numbers we can call without using minutes (our choice as to what numbers for that). The new monthly bill hasn’t come in yet, but I think it will end up being about $10 more. That’s right, T – E – N as in 10… so the one month we went over will cost the same as upgrading our plan for an entire year. Makes me kind of annoyed at Verizon, but I doubt any of the other carriers are much better with this kind of thing.

-Jordan

Wrapped Up Another Month

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I just finished our first full month using our budgeting system. I won’t go into detail, except to say it was fairly painless. I don’t know how much of our success was due to our really being on the same page, or due to the fact that very little happened last month to complicate things.

We are loosely following Dave Ramsey’s system. I never would have guessed being married to a business major with some accounting classes under her belt, that I would be the one to get to do all the detail work of getting the budget together and keeping track of receipts. Somehow that’s how things worked out though. I shouldn’t complain though, Heather has been really supportive, and I am happy with the system I worked out.

As I mentioned a few days back, we finished paying off my Escape. Our next goal is to build up a substantial “emergency fund.” We are using <online bank’s name censored> for an online savings account, it’s not quite by the FPU book, but I had an account with them already, and they sync really well with the existing <bank name censored> accounts I have. Back when I opened my account the interest rate was incredible too… It’s not quite as good now, but still considerably better than just a normal savings account.

-Jordan

** note: my editorial review board felt naming the banks posed a security threat, so the post has been edited accordingly.