semi-necessities: the rest

home improvement: we put a variable amount here every month, depending on jake's pay month to month. this category is not for window treatments (boo). it's for gas for the lawnmower, or weedkiller (still working on getting hubs on the "green" bandwagon), or maybe a little mini-furnace or something this winter. needs more so than wants.

gifts: $10/month. we really don't have that many people with whom we exchange gifts. truthfully we are more about experiences and time together than material things (that few people really need, and just end up in a goodwill or re-gift box or the trash -- if we're honest). we set an approximate $15 spending limit on gifts. basically this is for birthdays or random occasions that come up throughout the year (of course there are times when we spend more; $15 is a guideline).

christmas: may seem redundant, but this one is for christmas gifts. we put $10/month here. but this also covers any christmas decor we may find we need. i know, not a true need, but something might come up. like maybe christmas card postage. or we may want to throw an impromptu holiday social thing. obviously this amount won't cover very much; but we want to have a little money available just in case.

medical care: we put $5/month into this category. this is purely for routine care. co-pays, prescriptions, etc. i have a little money in an HSA left over from a previous job, so we are using that for now (fyi: every month they charge a $1 service charge and take it out of your account. may want to keep an eye on that if you have one you're not using). we're working on transitioning to more homeopathic...stuff? so this may go to help purchase essential oils, flower essences, etc. in the future.

dolly: our sweet princess. our baby. how we love her. but not more than $30/month. we estimated this would cover vet visits, and food, and occasional grooming. jake has been dabbling in her grooming recently, so that will save some. the first time we bought basically the cheapest food available. but now that we have had some time, we will likely replace that brand with something more natural (if it's not a million dollars). we also may try to get by with every other year vet visits. or something. we're not trying to invest in this dog by any means... we just want to love her and give her a good home and life (she was a rescue).
update: found some rachael ray natural dog food at food lion. didn't really read the label but i'm going to assume it's truly natural...and it wasn't that much more than any other dog food! there were also some all-natural treats - several options - that i picked up too

so that finishes up our semi-necessities! next we will look at wants, and ways we save on them. as always, questions are welcome :)

semi-necessities: insurance

*i wrote this a few days ago, before oct. 1...i will make some changes based on obamacare (what i know if it right now)

we thought life insurance would be more than we can afford, but it's actually not that bad. and we realized that the more in debt we are, really the more we need it. jake's insurance covers what we still owe on the house, and my student loans, and roughly one year of his salary, and a little extra (we rounded up). so if something were to happen to him tomorrow, i would be more than covered. i would have no more debt, be able to give him a nice funeral, and take some time off work without worrying about anything. since we live on jake's salary, with our debt out of the way i'd then be able to live on mine. i'd probably be able to still work only part-time (this would be most important to us if we had kids). it's making me sad to think about all this! but it's the reality. my insurance would cover my student loans, a funeral, and a little extra. since my salary pays for debt only, basically he would be wiping out what he would otherwise have had to cover on one less salary. if we had kids, our moms/grandmas would likely be able to cover childcare, so that wouldn't be an additional cost.

sorry to seem morbid. but after looking at all that, i am once again so glad we have life insurance. we pay about $64/month for both of us. mine is a 30 year term policy. but in 30 years my loans will be paid off anyway. the majority of jake's is a 30 year as well, but again, at that time the house and student loans will be non-issues. jake does have a little in a lifetime policy -- it would cover about a year of his salary. so that's the life insurance.

because i work part-time, we do purchase my health insurance. it is beyond outrageous what it would cost to add me to jake's; i would literally be working to pay for my insurance. so anyway. we have the super duper cheap-o plan from blue cross blue shield. it doesn't even cover maternity costs, but i guess obamacare is going to change all of it anyway? but i'll just talk about the way it is right now. i think my deductible is about $5000, with a maximum out of pocket of $8000. i happen to know that we qualify for financial aid at our local hospital. so if something awful happened, we would first apply for that. it would knock off about 50% of the bill (from my estimations and the info given on their website). NOT that anyone should plan their lives around a handout -- but we are talking worst-case scenario here. anyway, we would then take out our "emergency medical" amount in our savings, and if we still owe, we could tap into our IRAs. it's kind of scary to think about. but the truth is that i'm very healthy, and have no propensity for anything right now, so a high deductible plan is fine. we really could even raise it. on sept. 30 i received a letter from blue cross blue shield. they automatically chose a plan for me for next year that is similar to the one i have currently. it is simply unaffordable. i have been unable to get on the marketplace, but from what bcbs is telling me, since i am eligible to be added to jake's insurance, that negates my eligibility for any subsidies? which is pretty devastating for us. otherwise i would have been eligible for at least one (everyone under 400% of the poverty level) and probably the other (under 250% of the poverty level). i have chosen a bcbs "catastrophic" plan that looks like it would be fine - this is only an option for those under age 30. i am anxious to get into the marketplace to see what other options i have. so anyway, just keep in mind that our health insurance mindset/planning is now different than when i originally wrote this.

so there's insurance. not so much about ways to save, but more some important things to consider when looking at insurance. hope it's helped :)

semi-necessities: transportation

i know that is totally not a thing, but i didn't know what else to call this next section of budget categories i will address. so these are the things that are definitely not necessities, but they're not pure wants either. today we will talk about all things transportation.

jake's car is paid for. in the future, we plan to be able to say that about all vehicles, always. but right now we are still paying for my car. financing a car is about one of the least financially responsible things to do, in my opinion. i don't say that judgmentally; i'm in the boat with ya. i just feel so stupid continuing to pay for something that is losing value every day. a few months ago, we looked into getting a less expensive car, and essentially spending whatever amount we could get from the sale of my car to purchase one. but we decided against that, because my car (a honda accord) is one that holds its value much better than others, it's safe, will be a great family car, and gets pretty good gas mileage. so we took as much money out of savings as we felt comfortable with, and used it to pay a chunk down on the car. we refinanced it with a credit union. we did opt for a longer repayment term (five years), but we are paying the same amount we would have had we financed for four years. it still saves us over $100/month from our previous payment. again, our goal now is to pay off the student loans. when those are paid off, if we still owe on the car at that point, it will become our new goal. so for the sake of transparency here: we owe about $4500? on my car. we pay $115/month. the car is valued at about $13,000. so while our current situation is not our ideal, it's a lot better than the "norm". as i mentioned in the post about savings, we do plan to pay cash for our vehicles in the future. if we need a car and only have $1000 saved, well, we'll be driving a pretty lousy car until we can afford a better one :) but we will be driving our current cars until they plumb won't run anymore.

we have a local insurance agent, and ended up saving a lot over what i was paying previously. i have no idea if it's the best rate possible. ideally we would check around every few years. we do pay our insurance once a year, which is the most financially responsible way to do it. we put back about $75/month, so by the time the bill comes, we will have all we need to pay it. if you decide to do this (and i think you should if at all possible), it will cost a chunk up front. we have both our cars and our home all with the same people, so that also saves.

we put $10/month back for car maintenance. would be nice to do more, but we just can't right now. we would love to get it built up and keep $500 on hand at all times but we definitely aren't there yet. we use this money now for regular maintenance, but at some point we will need to have some saved up for other things as our cars age.

both our cars get good gas mileage - anywhere from 27-35 mpg, depending. we drive straight drives, which helps a little, and enables us to be in a little more control over mpg. we basically try to be smart about our gas usage. i don't make random trips to just one place; i combine stops in one general area and take one trip. we budget $40/month for jake (he gets paid mileage through work, but he has to drive 30 miles to get to his first stop, which is not covered by work), and $100/month for me. those are really not high amounts. but by being smart about it, we can make it work.

so that's that on transportation. the whole not-financing-cars thing is a touchy subject, i am aware. at the very least, please, PLEASE don't ever be satisfied with or adopt the mindset that you'll always have a car payment. you do get to decide that, you know.

how we save on necessities: clothing

i will start off by saying that for about 99% of us, this no longer is a necessity. we have clothes. some of you have kids, and they grow and need other clothes. new clothes, not necessarily. new to them, yes. but i will go into all of that.

hand-me-downs are awesome. ideally, i would love to have a few girlfriends who could get together and swap clothes as we get tired of them, or change sizes, or whatever. because we all have everything we need, and at this point it's about wants. i shop at goodwill and consignment stores for clothes for us, but again, those are all wants. we are actually moving toward a minimalist approach to our clothing (in addition to other areas of our lives), which means we only have a few of each type of clothing. normally people wear about 20% of their wardrobe 80% of the time. so we opted to just own the 20%.

in order to really master the art of thrift store dressing, you have to go regularly. some days you will leave with nothing. some days you will find 20 things. there is plenty of brand name, in-fashion clothing to be found at places like goodwill, and especially at consignment stores (but go to thrift stores first - they are cheaper). then there are those rare, fun, vintage goodies that everyone will wish they could "pull off" too :)

we budget $5/month for clothing. it would be fun to budget more, and maybe we can in the future. but truly we don't need any more. that amount is basically for new underwear when ours all have holes and can no longer be worn. so whenever i buy "new" clothes (rarely for me anymore does that actually mean new!), it comes from any additional spending/fun money i may have.

reading over this, we sound pretty hobo-esque. ha. but it all ties into cutting our expenses to the bare minimum in order to get out of "slavery" (the biblical description of debt/owing anything to anyone).

how we save on necessities: shelter

so basically shelter just means where you live. we do own our house, but are not necessarily of the opinion that owning is always the better option. home ownership comes with additional costs, such as taxes and improvements -- there are always improvements (needed and otherwise). so here's how we save.

we got a great deal on our house. fortunately, it was already pretty cute. but even if it wasn't "my style" or what i would have described as my dream house, jake would have bought it anyway, because of it being such a great deal. so i guess the first savings step would be to not be too shallow when it comes to your home. because we saved so much on the house, we were able to renovate the interior. another great thing was that jake has always been a terrific saver. because of this, we were able to put 20% down on our house. this makes our overall debt lower (although we won't really be satisfied until it's all gone), but also allowed us to avoid PMI. don't understand that whole thing completely, but i know finance people say to get rid of it asap, and you can't do that until you have at least 20% equity in your home (i think i worded that right). all of that adds up to mean that our monthly payment on our home is less than what we would pay to rent anywhere. we did finance for 30 years at a fixed rate of like 4%, which is awesome. as i've mentioned, our primary goal right now is paying off student loans. any extra money we have goes to that. when those are gone, we will likely refinance to 15 years, unless the interest rate is crazy, in which case we will just pay extra. either way, it is not our intention to be "slaves to the lender" (biblical description of debt of any kind, fyi) for 30 years of our lives, or even 15 years, if at all possible.

i will also address utilities here. as far as electricity, we do pretty great. we don't leave on lights. we rarely use our dryer. in the summer, our thermostat is at 74, and we leave our ceiling fans on; in the winter it's at 67. i am going to begin using my crockpot as often as possible, because it takes way less energy to heat it up than the oven. we set up the equal payment plan with duke power - it's a free service - so that allows us to plan our budget more accurately.

water/trash is where we find we sometimes go over what we've budgeted. in the winter, when i don't sweat, and even some throughout the rest of the year, i don't shower daily. jake really needs to because of his job and being around animal guts and all. we actually do use our dishwasher, but only when it's full. a lot of our things have to be hand washed, such as wood cutting boards and utensils, pizza stone (not just for pizza), cast iron skillet, etc. i still have no idea which is the greater evil - more energy by using dishwasher, or more water by hand washing - so we try to be wise in our use of both.

i think i've addressed all things shelter-related, but let me know if i've left something out or you have any further questions. :)