How We Save Money
Saving money for newly weds can be challenging.
Were newly weds, if you haven’t caught on yet. Newly weds that had 2 different ideas of how money work and how much should we save? How much should we spend and what we should spend it on? Eat out ? Take a lunch? How much does our monthly bills cost? We had many questions that needed answers. I’m always on top of money and where its going. She on the other hand was not so much. Read below to find out how we handled our money differences.
1st. We Got Organized
Before we could get into the fat of it all we needed to get “our” finance organized and decide a system to keep things organized. We decided that I would be in charge of the finances. We started out by listing debt we both owed before marriage. The we followed it up by listing our monthly expenses as well as our financial goals.
2nd We Agreed on our Financial Goals
We set our financial goals in an open bubble type ideal kind of way. We set short term goals such as paying off our Macy’s and Home Depot open ballances as well as paying for our new King Size Bed. Truth hurts but it put us into the good the bad and the ugly of our finance situation. Currently we are buying our home. We plan on paying additional on the principal monthly and at worst cutting the 30 year mortgage into 15 years. My personal goal I would love to see is own the house free and clear by the age 35. That gives us 10 years. Besides the big stuff like the mortgage and monthly expenses we need to also save for vacations and retirement. Luckily we both have most of the same goals, but chances are we will compromise a little.
3rd We Set a Budget
It was very important for us to set up a budget! Budgets have always worked for me, for others they don’t seem to work as well. I think it is vital for newlyweds to set a budget and live by the budget. If we go over one month we need to make up the next month by not spending as much on things. I believe sticking to a budget is the only way to live. At early stages in our newlywed lives there has already been times where there are too many unknown factors and things can quickly get out of hand if you don’t set a budget early in the relationship. Having our budget and sticking to it helps us learn to spend more wisely, and think do we really, really need that or do we want that ?
4th We Put it in Writing
Often I have spent a couple of hours going through all the finances and setting up a budget, Once I had the proposal I made sure to write it down. Then I reviewed it with my wife. I use my IPhone to keep up with remembering to remember when the monthly bills, and credit card bills are due. I don’t leave anything for chance, we pay all but our utility bill online. We save money on stamps and have an electronic version of our bills available at the click of a mouse.