Hey,
The paperless system is working excellently! This month I think I've looked at the budget 3 or 4 times, and that's when we've got a lot of unexpected bills to pay. Also, the cash system is really great. I've made one modification: In the original plan I was going to split the leftover cash 50/50 between Alex and I. This provides us with an inconsistent amount each week in our bank accounts. This goes against the theory of self-disciplining, because you can't really get used to a consistent amount and will tend to spend more during weeks that are slimmer than others. So what I've done is created a $50 each per week payment from the joint to our personal checkings. That way we get used to the exact same amount every week, and can create predictable habits. It also helps us save by adding whatever trim there is after the bills and this payment to the buffer. When the buffer gets too big, we can trim it back to $500 and save the rest.
NEW HOBBY!!!
Now that I have so much free time from not having to pay bills, I've picked up a new hobby: Learning LINUX. Jeff and I found a computer on the street yesterday, which made me remember that I've got about 8 unused hard drives (some as big as 40gig) sitting in the basement, along with another pretty boss PC I built in '04. Since I don't have any legal copies of windows, and they made it such a bitch to copy now, I thought I'd really stick it to whoever-is-bill-gates'-replacement and fire up Ubuntu.
I really don't know the first thing about linux, unix, ubuntu, or redhat. I do have a decent amount of programming experience though, and I'm pretty familiar with what goes on in the background of an operating system (remember the apple IIe that you had to boot from 5" floppies?) So I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu and ran it on my work computer today.
Ubuntu is really great! I'm going to try to keep my unsubstantiated or opinionated rants (that apple-commie kristie is so familiar with) to a minimum, but the fact that it costs a grand total of free dollars gives it some major points: 189, to be exact. For windows users, the interface is very intuitive: +5 points. It can run off of CD, so you don't actually need to have a working hard drive to run it: +8 points.
I'm going to try and keep it super simple as the free-and-legal project progresses, so if anyone wants to find an old piece of crap computer and follow along you can. I'll even give you a copy of Ubuntu on CD so you can try it out (without changing a single thing on your computer!) on one condition: you post to my blog. My blog sometimes gets lonely.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Going paperless stage II
Sorry it has been so long since the last post. I'm back!
If you don't know, I recently switched jobs from DSM to Gloucester Engineering. I didn't blog much about the transition because, well, blogs are public and that's the kind of thing you need to be careful about. The long and the short of it is that I'll be making more money and driving about the same distance and speed. This will also let me get more into machine design, and it can potentially cut the commute in half if we move up to Beverly or Salem next May. Now I'm documenting and releasing extruders to the production floor, and helping out a lot with Solidworks (they're all AutoCAD guys and, no offense, aren't the best in the 3D realm).
Anywho, as I explained in my last blog Alex and I are automating our finances. We were able to put together about $500 in that joint checking account as a buffer (Stage I of the plan), and we started automatic debit payments for all of our bills (Stage II). For anything that couldn't be automatically debited online we set up Bank of America billpay for free. Basically you tell the bank to send X a check at Y address for $Z on the Nth of each month, and they do it for you for free. W00t! N3rd.
Some highlights:
We moved our rent payment up to the 15th of each month. This has made the net paycheck amount positive each month, since most everyone else wants to be paid on the 1st too. We did this because Stage II is only automation of the bills, and without evening out the spending cash this would be pretty hard to do.
We'll be paying all of our gas and grocery bills in cash from here on, cash we take out and put in specific envelopes for the purpose each payday. We played with the idea of using a Visa prepaid card for each car and a credit card from a gas station, but we decided that adding additional credit is against the rules, and the prepaid cards are kind of a pain to reload (you have to do it at a vendor, and it's not free). So since we need to isolate this cash for its purpose, cash is the best way to go. Every paycheck we'll head down to the bank and refill the kitty with cash, and throw what we've got left from the payperiod before into savings for the wedding (we have about $500 put away in ING for that so far).
There are only 2 transactions we have to do each month: 1. pay the utilites (varies so much you really don't want to make it automatic), and 2. go get the cash for the kiddies. Life is good!
If you don't know, I recently switched jobs from DSM to Gloucester Engineering. I didn't blog much about the transition because, well, blogs are public and that's the kind of thing you need to be careful about. The long and the short of it is that I'll be making more money and driving about the same distance and speed. This will also let me get more into machine design, and it can potentially cut the commute in half if we move up to Beverly or Salem next May. Now I'm documenting and releasing extruders to the production floor, and helping out a lot with Solidworks (they're all AutoCAD guys and, no offense, aren't the best in the 3D realm).
Anywho, as I explained in my last blog Alex and I are automating our finances. We were able to put together about $500 in that joint checking account as a buffer (Stage I of the plan), and we started automatic debit payments for all of our bills (Stage II). For anything that couldn't be automatically debited online we set up Bank of America billpay for free. Basically you tell the bank to send X a check at Y address for $Z on the Nth of each month, and they do it for you for free. W00t! N3rd.
Some highlights:
We moved our rent payment up to the 15th of each month. This has made the net paycheck amount positive each month, since most everyone else wants to be paid on the 1st too. We did this because Stage II is only automation of the bills, and without evening out the spending cash this would be pretty hard to do.
We'll be paying all of our gas and grocery bills in cash from here on, cash we take out and put in specific envelopes for the purpose each payday. We played with the idea of using a Visa prepaid card for each car and a credit card from a gas station, but we decided that adding additional credit is against the rules, and the prepaid cards are kind of a pain to reload (you have to do it at a vendor, and it's not free). So since we need to isolate this cash for its purpose, cash is the best way to go. Every paycheck we'll head down to the bank and refill the kitty with cash, and throw what we've got left from the payperiod before into savings for the wedding (we have about $500 put away in ING for that so far).
There are only 2 transactions we have to do each month: 1. pay the utilites (varies so much you really don't want to make it automatic), and 2. go get the cash for the kiddies. Life is good!
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