bills, bills, bills | pad patter 3.23.17

That would be hard having a changing pay schedule. I'm a control freak and would be nervous I wouldn't have money for upcoming payments. Thankfully, we have never fought about money. Neither one on us would ever go out and spend a ton of money without first consulting with the other. We always talk about the BIG things - like cars and such. We don't nickel and dime each other to death. We both know how much money we have for incidentals, lunches and fun things.

I have a similar system with certain bills coming out of each paycheck. I get nervous when Rob changes jobs and the pay schedule changes - makes me have to rearrange bills in my spreadsheet. We've been on weekly, bi-weekly and monthly pay schedules. Monthly was the hardest. We were on that when we first got married. It was hard, but taught us to budget and save to make it through each month. Now, we're pros at it and just have to make sure the money is moved to checking when the bills hit. We have savings for emergencies, medical, the kids' college, hubby's new car and 6-months salary in case of unemployment.

This is so us. I was a tight wad (still am to a point) and he was the spender. We've both evened out and have met in the middle. I still lean to the tight wad side and he likes to have 6-months salary in savings. He calls it his "so I can sleep at night fund", basically it's so we can survive unexpectedly losing a job. Back when he worked at Iomega, they had layoffs two or three times a year. I had just quit working my job to stay home with our 2 year old son and it was really stressful not knowing if we would have a job or not! Rob was especially worried about it because he feels like he's not a man if he can't support his family. We lived very frugally and saved every penny we could to build up that 6-months savings. We've added more to it as his salary has increased over the years and we both rest easier knowing it's there if we ever need it.

 

I think it's hard to switch from millions of dollars at your disposal to thousands or even just hundreds of dollars. I know it's easy to get used to a certain amount of money and then how hard it is to adjust if you have to take a pay cut.

Yep, my hubby is the spender and I'm the penny pincher. But to be fair, my hubby isn't as bad of a spender as I probably made him out to be in that first post. Yes, he is freer with money than I am, but he does like having his savings as peace of mind. I also think that most of the time he is probably more on target with some things than I am. I would penny pinch us to death if he'd let me. He works hard and says that we deserve to live a certain lifestyle now. We don't go over the top, but we do eat out weekly for date night and try to do a family vacation every year. He also likes his entertainment and recreational activities, so we've spent some on that too that we wouldn't have spent if we didn't make as much as we do. He was the one who told me to get a creative cloud subscription, because my happiness and being able to enjoy my hobby was worth more than the measly $8 a month it would cost me to get it. He said he spends more than that on his diet mtn dew and sports channels. He was right, we work hard and should be able to enjoy some of it. Especially, since we aren't living paycheck to paycheck and are still putting some in savings each month.

Oh yes, those scrappin sales can play havoc with the scrappin budget. I have a craft/scrappin budget and Rob has a fun stuff budget. That way we both stay happy.