Monday, October 22, 2012

31 Days to Financial Freedom, Day 22: Money is still tight

My husband and I have been talking lately about how much we're saving.  $240 of my paycheck is now direct deposited into our savings account, for a total of $480 per month.  I've been looking around online, and the majority of the websites I have found encourage people to put 10% of their paycheck in the savings account, but we're closer to about 13%.  So are we saving too much? 

Even though we've cut eating out by a big margin, as well as other extra items, we're still coming in way under what I would like this month.  Trying to save up a month's worth of expenses in our checking account is proving to be more difficult than I thought.  At the end of this month we should only have $100 left over.  That's less than we had leftover in September, which means we've spent all the money we made in October and then some.  Not cool.

Extra expenses we've had so far this month:

Extra box of diapers - $20
Supplies to install an electric dyer - $18
Halloween - $54
Couch - $192

In looking ahead to November, I already know that we will not be able to make our car payment on time (again).  I also know that Christmas is coming up, and even though we're scaling way back, there will still be extra expenses tied to that.  I'm wondering if we should cut the amount of money we're saving for the time being until we have a bit more in our checking account.  But then I'm scared that if it's in there, we'll spend it just like we always used to do!

I guess right now I'm feeling discouraged.  It seems like we're doing everything right, but there's still not enough money left at the end of the month.  My husband also told me this weekend that instead of getting overtime like we had expected, there's talk about cutting his hours at the beginning of next year.  Aaarrrggghhh!!!

I'm sorry today's post is kind of a downer!  Tomorrow I'll show you how to make handmade tortillas.  Yum!

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