Forget about your budget for a moment.  What is the normal range of activities in your household?  Are you racking up expenses “going out” all the time, or do you normally stay in and save money.  From food and entertainment to more, your household’s baseline is a great indicator of your budget.

You Are What You Eat

This popular saying has little to do with finances.  Linking health to your diet, though, we can make an analogy.  The health of your budget in inextricably linked to activities that normally take place in your household.

Remove the special events and look at what is “normal.”  Now take a look at some key categories that pertain to your household:

• Food: What does an average dinner look like for you/your family?  Is there a healthy mix of dining out, carry out, and homemade meals?  Is there a preponderance of one category? (Jeffs note: H and I are planning on leaning heavily on our CSA this year)
• Entertainment: From Netflix to the movie theater, this can be a game-changer in your budget.  Consider your habits, from going to the bars and expensive sporting events to board games with the family and more.
• Shopping: Are you addicted to shopping?  By taking a look at credit card bills, you can see if this is your secret habit.  You can even break your budget by going on your computer or smartphone to shop.

Establish a Healthy Baseline

Some of us may have unhealthier habits than others.  After all, there is nothing wrong with going out to eat once in a while.  Yet, if that in itself is a habit – while on a tight budget – then you might want to partake in this reality check.

Many personal finance articles will look at particulars.  No, we’re not talking about term deposit rates and a car insurance comparison that can help you take your budget to new heights; we are keying in on that of your actual budget.  You’ll read about setting limits, giving yourself an allowance in certain categories, and so forth in regards to your budget.

What’s the point?  When you look at your routines, you can often see the health of your budget revealed through these items.  Those who are on tight budgets may be eating out too much, shopping a lot, and going out with their friends too much.  That simply isn’t healthy for one’s budget.

If you need help in these areas, look to make your “baseline” healthier.  Fall back on playing board games and homemade meals with your family.  Make a habit out of having your friends come over for an inexpensive night in – and combine it with free and cheap ways to go out and enjoy the nightlife.  Whether you’re single or have a family, you can have healthy budgeting habits revealed through how you live.

Overall, it can be confusing looking at numbers.  Surely, there is a place for that – at the end of each month.  Qualitatively looking at your actions can reveal what is present in your budget.  Do you normally engage in activities that are frugal?  Take a look at your household’s baseline to see how you are influencing your budget.

Jeff’s Note:  Exchanging habits was probably the best thing for my budget.  I started eating a home more, going out less and finding different things to do that didnt cost near as much.  As my “monthly nut” went down, I was able to increase my debt repayments and get out of debt faster.

H and I have been in our new house for about 2 weeks at this point, and have completed most of the demo we’d like to do (upstairs, anyway).  We’ve completely gutted out the bathroom and the kitchen.  We moved into a house built in the 20s, so it was kind of sad to see some of the stuff go – we had to break apart a cast iron tub with a sledgehammer and carry that to the dump, because it would have been possible to pick up and carry out in one piece, and we had to partially destroy some of the cabinets in the kitchen that were built in by the original owner (though we were able to save half of them and those went into my outbuilding).  Seeing those things come down was pretty hard, because they were so well made, but they would have been extremely difficult to use, now and in the future.  We’ve been donating what we can (and even had some mirror decorations that we donated because they were ugly as sin that made a cameo in a movie H and I watched recently).  I’m working on an article about what to do with all of that stuff to maximize sustainability, so stay tuned.

Ninja took some kids out flocking to raise money.  I think this is a creative idea to raise some cash, and some more thinking in that market is sorely needed.  I cant stand when someone comes up and asks me to buy something.  For one, I feel like the products are geared towards women (I get offers for cookies (both men & women) candybars (same) and candles).  None of those are things I would buy in bulk on a daily basis (or ever), so I dont want to keep them around.  I’d rather give the kid 10 bucks to go away, and they can keep all the money instead of some company taking a cut of the profit.   How do you guys feel?

The Simple dollar has an article about credit cards.  I agree with this – all the cards I use give me some rewards, usually travel miles or points of some sort.  I’ve built a large cache of them this way, and used a portion of them for my honeymoon, and a few other wedding odds and ends.

H and I are all moved in to our new place, and are currently living in the basement while we are renovating the upstairs.  The basement is pretty hideous – was last redone in the 70s or so and it’s got some gross brown and tan carpet everywhere.  Even though it’s small, it’s still a bit more room than our old place, and it’s just the basement!  We have finally gotten back to a semi normal schedule and are eating home cooked meals.  Unfortunate, we dont have a stove/oven so everything’s going to be done in the crock pot or the rice cooker until our kitchen is useable again – which hopefully will be soon.

On to this week’s links.

Joan over at man vs debt has a great post on side hustles.  I cant say enough about the side hustle, as it really helped kick my debt repayment into high gear from 2009-2011 when I was working 2 jobs for about 70 hours a  week, and that didnt include driving.  It put more money in my pocket, and didnt give me enough free time to spend any of that extra money, so I just put it towards debt.

J Money has a post about how his water heater broke last week and he blamed it on his poor cat.  Replacement of appliances like this is a really interesting scenario, and i’m working on a post about it for the future, and hopefully J will answer some questions for me about the replacement in the post.

Marie at Prairie eco thrifter has an article about using natures bounty.  Gardens are a great way to get some very good food for a great price.  I’m hoping I can get something planted this year, but it’s not looking great at the moment.

Bachelor Party - I’ve been to a lot of these recently and they have been of all stripes – a trip to Vegas, a camping/rafting trip and one where we went sledding and out to dinner and a few bars.  Personally, I had a great time at every single one of these, and from the people that I talked to who were there said the exact same thing.  No matter what you do or where you go, I feel like you’re going to have a good time because you’re hanging out with your friends.  I havent decided what to do quite yet, but it’s probably going to be something along the lines of a camping/hiking/fishing trip or something.  It will probably be pretty close to where we all live (except for 1 person) so that everyone can go, which is what I’m concerned about most.  My estimated cost is going to be heavily dependent on gas prices.  I know it will take me at least 1 tank of gas to get down there, and my most recent fill up was 60+
Estimated Cost: $150

Gifts for my Groomsmen - I havent decided what I’m going to get those jackals quite yet, but I’d like it to be something that each of them enjoys and gets a chance to use frequently.  I’d also like something lasting, so beer or something similar is out (at least as the main portion – I may try and brew a special batch for them).  Obviously I’ve seen a ton of stuff but dont want to go the typical route of a flask or a cigar cutter – my friends dont drink much hard booze, and only smoke cigars once in a blue moon (though prob will at my bachelor party).
Estimated Cost: Undisclosed, since I know some of them read this.  It’ll be sweet though guys, I promise.

Bride’s gift – I’m going to be 100% honest here and fully admit that I had absolutely no idea what H was talking about when this came up for the first time.  She started going on about her sisters wedding gift from her husband and I stopped her and said: “Wait, I tricked you into marrying me, and now I have to get you a gift to make sure nothing goes sideways? That’s BS”  After that I got a long spiel about how it’s tradition and bla bla (a friend of mine put a spending cap on wedding gifts for him and his fiancee, equal to the exact amount of the firearm he wanted).  I know that a lot of ladies read my blog and probably wont be happy with this, but I still question wether or not this is needed.  I have found something that I hope that she will like and that wont break the bank, but I still feel like the resources could be better used elsewhere.  I’m happy to give her something in all honesty, I just cant convince her not to get me anything (yet).
Estimated Cost: We are going to set a cost limit on this, but havent decided yet.

Well, that’s about all for the more fun stuff.  How much did you spend on gifts, etc for your wedding?

In late 2009, I put a down payment on my truck.  It was equal to slightly more than 10% of the loan, something in the order of 2600 bucks.  To date, that has been the largest amount of money I’ve ever spent at  1 time on one single thing.  Of course, over time I’ve spent quite a few grand (about 9) on the truck, through monthly payments, etc.  It never seemed like a big amount though, not nearly as big as that check.  Tomorrow, that check is going to look small compared to what H and I have to bring to the table at closing (we dont know what the amount is).

At any rate, on to the best posts of the week:

Over at budgets are sexy there’s a tale of a food truck worker.  I’ve always wondered how these things work, and it looks like a great way to make extra cash!

Get Rich slowly has a post on not having any goals.  This is something that I find rather odd, and havent really been there myself.  It seems like there’s always something for me to save for, but of course, JD is in his 40′s, well established financially and all of that, and i’m, well, not.

A lot of my time is spent thinking about habits.  In fact, today I was doing some field work for my job and we had to get out of the truck ever 4 min or so, so we didnt wear seatbelts (this was on 2 track roads) but ever time the car made a ‘ding’ noise, I reached for the belt.  This got me thinking about habits – because when I heard the ding, I went for the seatbelt even though I had mine on.  That action by me (literally all day, I could not stop my self) got me thinking about habits and sustainability.

(side shot of my views from the field)

Just about everything we do every day has a basis in habits – we get up every morning because the alarm goes off, except we really dont.   We get up at X time (5:34 am for me) because we have gotten up at that time for a year+ or what ever, and that’s just when I get up).

So all of that got me thinking: what’s the least sustainable thing that you do every week?  Bonus points for habits that get you coming and going.  For instance, I like to visit micro breweries and see the equipment, grains, malts and taste how the beer they brew.  This burns me on the personal sustainability front because I like to save money, but those beers tend to cost more.  It washes over into my fitness (bonus points if you get something that is bad for your finances and your health AND the earth) because when I drink beer I want to do nothing and that includes train for my run.  These breweries are sometimes near by where i’m staying, but sometimes they are out in far flung warehouse style areas where rent is cheap – so I’ve got to make trips I wouldn’t have otherwise made to get there.

So, what habits of yours are making your goals harder to reach?   

A while back, my buddy Ninja put a post on his site about how he wanted to be more transparent with his readers and open about his non-blogging life.  I thought that it was a great post, because I had been feeling the same recently – much like ninja, I’m not quite ready to completely come out and reveal my full identity on my blog (and i’m not sure that I ever will).  Of course, I feel like you all will be able to better understand where I’m coming from the more you know about me, so here’s a bit more information.

I was born in Colorado, and lived in a house with my parents, sister and some dogs until college.  Growing up, we were always taught not to waste things (I think it’s the german in the family).  We always recycled what we could, occasionally getting some money for the aluminum (back when they did that – it’s not so common anymore).  We would also try and grow a garden, despite the fact that we had dogs that loved to try and run over our fledgling plants or dig them up.  We were also scolded when lights or water was overused.  Mostly though, I grew up in a house just like everyone else – just about everywhere that I needed/wanted to go involved a car trip of some kind, most things that were needed would be bought at the store.

When I went off to college (I went to the University of Colorado), quite a few things changed.  The first was that I was given new transportation options: a bike or walking – I was informed that I would not be taking my car with me (it would be sold for tuition money 2 years later) and naturally, (at age 18) I had a conniption.  How was I supposed to get around, how would I get home, how would I get dinner with friends, how would I do this and how would I do that.  My dad told me that all of my friends would be on campus, probably wouldnt have a car, and I’d be able to do all that I wanted to do with the resources I had available to me (mainly, a bus pass).  Because of where I grew up, I simply informed him that was not possible and he told me that he didnt care and I was going to have to deal with it, so deal with it I did.  At first it was pretty rough, but as I started to meet more people and get to know the city more, I became fine with it, and even met a lot of people who either didnt have cars or had them but drove about 2 times per week – all other commuting was done by bus, bike or foot.  After this initial heartache, I quickly learned to deal with  my carlessness and enjoy the freedom from gas, insurance and car payments.  When I moved, I took into account where I worked and how easy it would be for me to get to campus – anything that was a pain in the butt was tossed off the list. Other than those adjustments, I never found anything else to be that bad (aside from grocery store runs) so I went from hating it to liking it.  For those of you that arent familiar with CU, it’s a typical college town in a very liberal city, so there was a lot of environmental initiatives going on and I learned a lot about sustainability, both what I think are good ways to go about it and bad.  From what I learned at CU, I really got more into the ‘macro’ side of sustainability that is typically gotten through public policy, but I did get quite a lot of classes about energy and did a lot of personal/at home calculations.

As for my finances those years, they were fairly ok until the last 2 years, when I started spending more than I earn, for reasons that I cant even explain right now – as I’m still not sure of them.  My earnings went up every year, and so did my expenses, and eventually my expenses outpaced my earnings.  To me at the time though, this was all fine because it was 2007 and the economy was roaring (I even qualified for a 250k loan for a house on my 18 hour a week job hourly wages [this bank, obviously, went under]) so I figured me with a ‘big kid’ job would step in, pay off the debt I had accumulated with 2 or so paychecks, then pay off my student loan (of around 10k) and then start saving about a year after graduation.  During the middle of my senior year, I applied for jobs, but what I really wanted to do was go to grad school to get into a field that I was partially qualified for, but not exactly – I hoped that my masters would take care of this for me.

After graduation from CU, I moved to Wyoming and went to UW.  At first I thought it would be a huge culture shock, and it really wasn’t.  College towns are college towns, they were both different but I was still happy for the change of pace.  I didnt have an assistantship when I got to school, so I took out loans for the first semester, (which are what remains of my student loans).  Mid first semester, I got an assistantship, got a regular income and they were paying all of my tuition!  It was awesome, and sometime around here was when my financial turnaround started to take shape.  I found get rich slowly and the simple dollar, and started to really think about my finances and what a disaster they were.  I could still make my minimum payments and all of that, but the prognosis was not good, and I knew it.  Thankfully, having no friends (new city/state) and a constant cash inflow made saving money pretty easy, so I was able to get on top of my situation and stay on top of it.  After some fun times, and 2 years worth of financial blog reading under my belt (as well as most of a degree) I found a job, moved and waited to start.

Unfortunately, that start date never came, and I was left with student debt payments coming in and no job.  I went back to my old job (no benefits) full time, but that meant a long commute every day in a really old car.  I found another job in a different city from that (AND the one I lived in) and took that as well.  I was hardcore into paying off debt more at this point, so I figured that 2 jobs wouldnt hurt at all.  It didnt, and I made great progress, but I was driving a lot (got a new car eventually) and was tired of it and wanted to get back to the car free lifestyle that I had lived in undergrad.  After looking for about a year, I found a job in my city, and left both other jobs.  I was grateful for the opportunity, but thankful that I could now walk to work.  As you know, the turning of the financial ship continues, but it’s gotten much easier than it used to be.

That about brings us up to today.

Readers: Anything else you want to know?  I’d be happy to answer questions in the comments.

Unfortunately, march madness is over and there will be nothing for me to do until next October when college basketball season starts.  All that’s left now is pouring over the recruiting and trying to figure out how my alma matter will hang on to its coach if they have another successful season.  In other news, I got second in my work bracket pool (after a totally disastrous first weekend) which I thought was pretty awesome!

Anyway, on to the best links of the week:

I met david from Money Under thirty at fincon last year and he was really knowledgeable.  He recently expanded his family and wrote a very detailed post about the costs of a baby.

Money Reasons wants to know if you’re trying to become financially independent.  I never really had a problem watching too much tv once I started living on my own, though I make sure that I keep it in check 98% of the time now, and occasionally give myself days where I do nothing but watch tv/movies for a few hours.

Get Rich Slowly has a good post about staying healthy.  Personally, I agree with this spot on – you can neglect your health early in life, but you’ll pay for it at some point.  For me, I just choose to do it now and enjoy it rather than cursing my lack of doing something about my health 15 years from now.

It has been pretty windy here the last week or so, with sustained winds in the 20mph range and gusts up to 40+mph at times.  It has made running outside pretty hard, so I’ve been running inside and dont much care for it.  I’ll give a more complete update on my marathon training next week, but just thought I’d mention.  Conference tournaments for college basketball start next week. Who is excited?

Very thoughtful post from Lindy at Minting Nickles about her backyard rose bush.  I think that everyone finds their purpose and if you dont know yours consider the bumper sticker “a bad day fishing is better than a good day working” – what’s your ‘fishing’?

Well Heeled is getting her grad school on and trying to figure out where to attend.  When I went to grad school I had an easy choice – I only got into one place! At any rate – good luck with your decision WH!

Beating Broke is wondering if you would be better of financially if you’re single?  I think this is a loaded question and highly situation dependent.  For example, if you married someone with tons of debt, obviously you’d be better off single in the near term, but what about in the long term?

Watson over at Watson Inc has 10 reasons to seek abundance.  Once you stop being afraid of the what if that come with a mindset of scarcity, you’ll be much better off (from my perspective).

 Information sourced from Genworth Financial

As I mentioned in my goals posts, H and I are really interested in purchasing a home sometime in the future.  Though I doubt that we will buy a home next year because of timing and getting married, though we will continue to save for a down payment.  Of course, we’re going to try to get a twenty percent down payment – which wont be too hard (relatively speaking) because we live in a very low cost of living area.  You can still buy houses close to my work for less than 100k, though most have just two bedrooms.  We are in a similar size home now, but I know that will probably be a bit small for us, I’d imagine.

Of course, being a large purchase and one that not only appeals to the sensibility of the owners, it’s a heavily emotional purchase, and that changes the game quite a bit.  People have “dream homes” and see their home as an investment as opposed to just a place to live.  Any home that people end up walking into with hopes of buying gets larded up with emotions, “perfect family holiday” scenarios, and everything else under the sun.

Typically, this results in a buy quickly falling in love with the home and beginning to get very dream with their finances as well.  They become certain they’ll get a raise of X this year, and they will have enough money to cover the payment, or they’ll get a new higher paying job, cut back expenses and their spouse/roommate will also begin working for significantly more than they currently do.  They sign the contract and buy more than they can afford.  They dont have 20% down payment, so they’ll need to get mortgage insurance, which will cost a bit more over the long run, but can fund their dreams right now.   If you’re curious about mortgage insurance, there are some free resources at GenWorth Financial on their mortgage insurance page.

Of course, even if we are able to avoid mortgage insurance, we’d still have to pay for home insurance (at least via comparison sites like http://www.comparethemarket.com/home-insurance/ you can save some money.  Honestly, I was never a big fan of insurance until this summer, when the hail storm hit and I was able to cash out a huge check. Before that, I always resented paying into insurance and never really feeling like I got anything out of it.

Hopefully, none of this will happen to H and I and we will end up saving up a whole boatload of money for our future home, and not need mortgage insurance.  Though it (mortgage insurance) can help in some cases, I like to keep the number of people I owe money to a minimum.