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Home > Archive: October, 2007

Archive for October, 2007

long time, no blog

October 30th, 2007 at 10:21 pm

Well I haven't written in forever. Mostly because pharmacy school had been taking up waaaay too much time, but also because DH and I have been spending money left and right.

We are actually doing ok in terms of actual money available since we both made some extra money this month, but we've spent much more than our normal alotted amount in several categories. Like 2x the amount of gas and 1.5x dining out budget.

We did make a financially responsible decision though. Instead of me flying to Maine and then both of us flying to Oregon, we decided that we were going to just spend Christmas in Maine. My mom might fly out for, but otherwise it will just be the two of us.

Since DH has to put his first and last month for his new apartment, we decided that we are not going to put our extra money toward the car. That shouldn't really affect us, the rate is super low and we don't actually have that much owed on it.

2nd rent payment

October 14th, 2007 at 07:55 pm

As you may recall DH is moving to Maine next month while I'll be staying in Florida. We'll end up living apart for about a year and a half.

We are currently living in a 2 bedroom apartment that we got for a steal of $800.
In order to save money I'm going to stay in the same complex, but move to a 1 bedroom apartment. So my rent will be about $640. DH just found an apartment in Maine that sounds nice and is in a great spot. The rent is $740/month. So all together our rent will increase from $800 to $1380.

Thankfully almost everything is covered in his rent...even heating since Maine winters can be rough. The only real bills I anticipate him having will be electricity and TV.

I'm starting to freak out a little bit because concrete numbers about how much this year apart will cost us are starting to trickle in. That increase in rent of almost $700 is going to eat up most, if not all, of the money that we had been saving or using to pay off debts.

Thankfully, we know this is coming and can plan ahead some for it. Instead of putting extra towards our car this month, we are going to add to our emergency fund. Moving always results in increased expenses (deposits and purchasing new items), and I'd like to have a little bit more of a cushion available if needed.

September update

October 6th, 2007 at 09:07 pm

September wasn't that great of a month in terms of our budget..we had some areas that we overspent a lot, but we did pay off my car, so that made me happy.

The first area we overspent was in travel. DH had to buy plane tickets to move up to Maine after Thanksgiving. Normally we wouldn't have to pay for this, but the Navy kind of gave us a raw deal on how they wrote the orders. They were trying to save money, but it cost us money!

Next was clothing. DH and I rarely buy clothing, but in September we both had things we needed to buy so we spent $130 vs our budgeted $50. For the month of October, I've already spent our clothing budget and I have a feeling that we me needing to continuing to need "professional" attire and DH needing clothing to handle the winter in Maine, this will be an area we will continue to spend in.

We spent a lot more in eating out than normal, this month, but we didn't go over budget. I like to plan most of my budget with cushion, particularly eating out and groceries. So spending up to the budgeted amount is uncommon, but hey--that's why we've allotted money to that area!