Hellobee Boards

Miscellaneous? You mean paying for other people to do things?! You paid for plane tickets and Disney tickets for SEVEN people!

You would have so much money left over if you cut back on that. I know sometimes people really really need help, but people do not really really need all these lavish vacations.

You said " So I was able to determine average spending on most of those categories and think we can stick to a budget there" which is great! Stick to your budget. Grow your savings, take vacations, etc. But girl that is crrazzytown paying for that much stuff for other people! If DH and I couldn't afford to go somewhere, we'd sit our butts at home, not let for someone else buy our trips!

I was once way over my head in debt and told myself I would never do that again. That's when the above happened. It isn't fun, but life isn't fun if you have tons of debt you're paying off either. Oh, I know that for sure. You just have to buckle down and say, this is our budget, we can't go over. If that means missing out, it means missing out. Blah. Being an adult stinks!

Yikes! You sure do pay for a lot for other people!!

We almost never travel. We actually RSVPed no to every single long-distance wedding in the past two years (mostly because I was pregnant and we didn't want to travel with a toddler).

We have a savings account linked to our checking account that isn't technically used for savings, so I use that as our extraneous expense fund. We usually know when a big expense is coming our way (a trip, a big gift, a wedding weekend, throwing a party, etc) so a few months out we'll start throwing cash into that account until we have the amount set aside that we've budgeted for that expense. I try to keep at least $200 in that account at all times, even when we're not saving up for something specific.

For emergencies like a big vet bill, parking tickets, etc. if we don't have enough cash on hand, we use a credit card. I hate hate hate doing that though because it's too easy for us to keep a high balance. That's what we did in the past and that's why we're in way too much debt than we should be

Have you tried using mint.com to track expenses? Its really easy to use and does a great job of helping you establish budgets based on your past spending history. It also notifies you when you've gone over budget.

We save for major purchases (travel, furniture, large gifts, etc) and don't buy things if we don't have the cash on hand to pay for them. We also have an emergency fund set up, but we only use that for true emergencies.

We have a budget based on what we know we need to spend for that month -- bills, groceries, and gas, all based on fixed amounts or ballparks based on our average spending -- plus a set amount that goes into savings (though with baby on the way we've been spending more on my doctor's bills and random stuff like the car seat so much less has been going into savings). Anything left over is for eating out and miscellaneous expenses like random trips to the drugstore, overages on groceries etc., the odd piece of maternity clothing, a book here and there.

Anything unexpected that tips us over, like car repairs or illness, goes onto a credit card and we make a plan for paying it back. DH just had $300 in car repairs so he put it on his credit card, we are paying $150 toward it this month and $150 next month so it doesn't just stay on the card. We never put anything on a credit card without a plan for paying it back. Unfortunately, we don't have enough extra to cut out credit card use entirely, and are not willing to cut things like cable, Internet, etc. so that we can make that happen. That's our personal choice, and everybody has to make the ones that are comfortable for them. We have cut down our debt significantly so we are more comfortable temporarily putting something on credit rather than sucking the money out of savings.

If we know we have something coming up, we decide whether we will have enough in savings to pay out of there (we are budgeted to put about $500 into savings each month so it currently serves as emergency and random fun stuff fund, but we have a set number we do not want it to dip below). If the fun thing would dip us below our limit, we either put extra aside, or don't do the fun thing. Like others have said, paying as much as you pay for other people to do and get things is just not something we can afford to do. Not to get too personal, but I think that you should develop a plan and boundaries so that you can beef up your savings.

One way to defray the costs of things like car repairs, vet visits, etc. is to track what you've spent say, over the last couple of years on those things. Say last year you spent like $300 on car repairs and the year before, $500. Make a plan for setting aside $400 for car repairs throughout the year -- $33 per month, $16 per paycheck, whatever. You can make a separate account or just put it all into one savings account like we do. If you end up with a $400 bill in February, you can take that $400 out of savings as long as you keep putting in the xx designated amount for car repairs. We don't do this, but we really should. It helps soften the blow of unexpected stuff.