Help with a Budget-Please!!

DH and I just sat down and spent the last hour figuring out what our shared average monthly expenses have been for the past several months. We broke spending into categories of auto-payments (mortgage, car insurance, home insurance, property taxes, utilities, cable & internet, phone), groceries (food, paper products, toiletries, cat food, cleaning products), entertainment (netflix and eating out). All of our other expenses are not shared (gas, haircuts, clothes etc) and we pay them out of our own individual accounts.

The budget comes in when the baby gets here and I stop working. We will be living on DH's salary alone (he's a high school science teacher) and as we are spending now, we are spending 17% more annually than what DH earns. This 17% is of course my income, which will go missing in March. At that point, we will also have my COBRA health insurance payment of $147.00/month for me and the baby. We will also have the baby expenses (diapers etc). DH will also absorb what were my individual expenses.

Under the new budget, all of the things listed above as auto-payments do not change in amount and are fixed automatic debits from out bank account. So they go into the new budget as a lump sum of money that we can't change. However, groceries and entertainment spending are life style dependent. We don't belong to a gym, don't get salon/ spa treatments, don't have any memberships anywhere, don't smoke, don't have expensive hobbies, so we are running out of areas to trim the fat from. We have already talked about lowering our car insurance to only liability. Where else can we cut from?

Beginning in Feb, our monthly budget will be:

groceries- $500.00
entertainment- $60.00


I feel like such an idiot, but we have never really worried about money before with only the two of us and two incomes. My question is, how do I stick to these numbers? I will be responsible for most of the grocery shopping and need some tips or hints about staying within the budget without going crazy. I have already made a list of things we will not longer be buying (alcohol, pop, most junk food) and also a list of what we need and can only get at a certain store.

I have never cut coupons and don't know where to find good ones for things that we actually eat (we don't eat processed foods like pop-tarts or hot pockets). Here we have Kroger, Harris Teeter, Food Lion and Lowes Foods grocery stores. Is there a special place to find coupons for specific stores? Is there a place to find coupons for specific products? Does joining a place like Costco or Sam's club really make sense for only 2.5 people and will it help us to save?

How do I organize myself for grocery shopping? Other than saving receipts, do I start a file folder that I take to the store with me? What is the best way to shop-daily, weekly?

Any info or advice is much appreciated. Thanks so much!

A trick to make coupons really count is watching the store ads. Buy items that the store has on sale that you also have coupons for....PLUS look for stores that double coupons! Also, plan your weekly menu before you go shopping. Only buy what you need for that week. If there is a great sale look at buying bulk and freezing/storing the excess.

Some areas that you might find savings is internet/cable/cell phones. I am not saying get rid of them, just look at your packages and see if there is a way to trim back a little (slower speed internet, fewer channels, bundle packages)

I hope that helps some. It's scary to go from two incomes to one. In our case we are actually doing better with just DH's income than we were with me working because we spent more carelessly with my paycheck.

Remember you will hopefully have income tax return too!

Well my Dh and I started making a menu for the week and making at the shopping list, and we try to ONLY get what on the list! It has helped us ALOT. We were buying soda, junk food, and WAY to much food for one week and then wondering why we didn't have as much to put in our "fun account(savings) We buy soda from time to time still, but we have cut down on ALOT. I don't use alot of coupons either... MOST of the time there aren't any for the foods that we eat. I am VERY picky and don't let my boys have Red-40 dye (well just about ANY dye for that matter)". ... so that cuts out ALOT of cereals, and other things that we did eat before. We do have a Sam's memebership and we don't seem to get alot of food from there, but we do get out cleaning and bathroom stuff from there MOST of the time. We are a family of 4 and we don't have to buy TP or papter towels but like every 3 or 4 months. I know I'm not much help, but I am should sure some of these other ladies will be more help.

We have a SAMS membership too (family of four almost 5 with two almost teen boys!!) We buy cleaning supplies, paper goods, and bulk food items like canned chili, mac and cheese, snacks. We buy a side of beef each year and that helps tremendously!

Here are a few tips I have heard to help:

*When meat goes on sale at your stores, buy it and freeze it so you have it when you need it and don't have to pay too much for it to make a meal
*Plan your menu's, but plan them around the sale flyers
*Make larger portions so your DH can bring leftovers for lunch and you will have lunch to heat up while you are home with the LO
*Clip the coupons for your Sunday Paper

I would say that Sams/Costco is a good option even for only 2.5 people, OR if you know someone that has a membership it might be worth having them buy you a few things now and again. Here is a list of things we buy from Costco:

TP
Paper Towels
Dove Soap
Lotion (Sometimes)
Razors
Dishwashing Soap
Liquid Dish Washing Soap
Laundry Detergant (Sometimes they carry a FREE option so its safe for the LO)
Wipes
Diapers (I personally don't, BUT most of my friends do)
Forumla (And a lot of my friends have been using the generic brand and have loved it)

Do you have a Super Wal-Mart near you? I have found that grocery shopping is MUCH Cheaper there. As for Haircuts, etc. my DH has started going to a super cheap place, that has saved us $20 a month and I never get my haircut, only a bang trim now and then, so we are good there.

If I may ask, is your Insurance better than your DH's, is that why you are taking the COBRA package? Have you looked into it closely, sometimes the packages are tricky and you don't have COBRA as an option forever.

We buy White Cloud Diapers (Wal-Mart) for our DD (17M old), and will do that for this LO once she is out of Size 1 diapers, I like how soft the Swaddlers are for a newborn, but once they are a little older the White Cloud does just fine. And we always buy generic wipes (Costco). And while you may plan to breastfeed I would have a back up plan in place, it doesn't work for everyone, and with this LO we have decided to go with a generic store brand formula (mostly because our daycare lady provides it through the state food program, so we will only have to buy enough to feed our DD at home, not supply any for daycare which is the bulk for us). It saves a TON, its 50% of the Similac Price...

And like the PP suggested, check into your cable, cell phone plans and see if you can do anything about those. I am not sure I would cut Car Insurance since you will be in a worse position if somethign were to happen without two incomes, it probably wouldn't really save a ton anyways. How about refinancing, right now is a very good time to consider that?

You have to factor in Co-Pay's for your little one every month or so for the first few months, because they see the Pediatrician so often, unless your Insurance covers "well visits".

I totally second what everyone else is saying with the cutting back. We only pay $12 a mth for our cable, granted we only have 20 channels and 3 of them being spanish and 3 are local PBS channels but we have the local news stations like ABC, NBC etc. We have 4 cell phones but have the lowest cell phone plan and share 450 min wtih free nights/weekends. We shopped around for the cheapest car insurance plan with full coverage of both vehicles for $1000 a yr. this is kinda what i base my monthly bills on..

1 Mortgage 989
5 Trash 35
5 Electric 200
11 Cable 12
12 Phone 75
11 DISCOVER 100
14 Citi 200
17 Van Payment 400
20 Home Equity 175
22 Cingular 85
26 Car Insurance 101
Gas 150
Food 300
Dogs Misc 30
House Hold Misc 150
Life Insurance 49
******TOTAL******** ---------
$3051mth or $710wk

with income we have a shortfall of 242.00 mth... Where we make it up.. NO IDEA! how we do it? GOD!

Because we have such a low income we qualifty for fuel assistance, WIC, Mass Health and some food stamps. We budget as much as we can. I plan on returning back to work a while after the baby is born but not rushing back. We will manage till then. But our monthly groceries add up to about 600.00mth for a family of 9. You might want to find ways to cut back on food if you can.

The sacrifises are all worth staying home if you can manage.

Thanks for some great suggestions so far!

LGT,
My insurance is A LOT better than DH's. Its a plan tailored by my university for graduate research assistants, so its pretty darn good. I have a $100 deductable and only a 10% co-pay for anything in network and get COBRA for 18 months. To contrast, my co-pay for the chiropractor is $2.68/ appt and DH's is $45.00/ appt at the same clinic with the same chiropractor. Its only $147.00/month for me and the LO to be on my COBRA, but near $400/ month to add me to DH's insurance with the LO. We're going to go with the cheaper option for the 18 months and then freak out then when we have to add to DH's . My insurance does cover well visits as well as most specialists. My COBRA plan is the one saving grace once I stop working. If we had to go on DH's insurance right now, I would not be able to stop working.

Wow, that sounds like a good deal for your COBRA! It'll cost around $400 a month when I quit and DH adds us to his insurance.

We have a Costco membership, and that helps a lot. We buy our TP, paper towels, garbage bags, detergent, etc there too, and even the non-store brand are SOOOOO much cheaper than in the stores. We also get like cases of canned corn or big packages of meat (that get frozen) that seem to last forever, and are also much cheaper than grocery stores. It's hard for us to limit our spending there, though, because everything is such a good deal that you want to buy everything there and it will add up if you aren't careful. We have some big changes to make too, but I think me being home and having time to cook and make lunches will help us with our spending. I feel like we don't go out that often, but since we rarely cook anymore we have to be getting food somewhere, right?!?

I am working 2 more weeks and then I am done. I am also very concerned because we will be going from 2 incomes to 1. I have started doing a few things to cut down on our monthly expenses.

1) We just canceled our XM radio: saves us $90 every 3 months
2) I am turning off my Blackberry w/internet, text messages, we pay extra $10 to start free nights at 6pm instead of 7pm. I will be going back to my old cell: that will save us $60ish every month
3) I have put the doggies on a cheaper dog food: they were on Nutro $41 for 35 lbs we have switched to Alpo 50 lbs for $20 (they don't seem to mind)
4) My DH has flex spending so that helps us with co-pays
5) After I quit working I qualify for WIC and once Jacob is born I go back to get WIC for me and Jacob (which will cover formula if we need it).
6) I do check the sale paper for the grocery store and I do cut out coupons now. I have noticed you have to be very careful with that and only get what you need. That is something I will have to work on. I have also started to buy generic items.
7) I will be saving on fuel because I won't be commuting 60 miles a day.
If we have to we will have to cut the cable bill, although we need the high speed because DH can work from home
9) We also have our off road truck and trailer that we can sell if need be.

So I am worried but I feel better knowing that we at least have a plan. Whats going to hurt us is personal property taxes are outrageous and at tax time we always have to pay. I know until I can work again that our spending days are over for now. Only the necessities. Somehow like everyone else we will figure it out and make ends meet.

Its good to read about what you ladies are doing. Its giving me more ideas of what I can do to cut costs.

Dee

Dee, your post reminded me about taxes! My DH just changed his exemptions to be the head-of-household with a baby, and his paycheck went up by like $300. Even though I obviously make more than that a paycheck, it's nice to know that just that piece should help with the extra insurance costs.

That COBRA plan is AWESOME!!! That is a life saver!!!

I am not sure if something like Avon, selling Jewelery, etc would interest you, but my BF started selling Jewelery when she made the move to stay home and its covered their grocery bill every single month. I am not sure if you will need $500 a month for food, my BF figures she spends between $80-$100 a week at the MOST and its a family of 4 with two kids that eat normal food, not formula or baby food. But you will figure it out after a month or two.

I was wondering what should my DH claim on his tax forms for work?

Is it better to do head of household and claim me and the baby? How does that work?

Previously we claimed 0 or 1.

Dee

If you always have to pay taxes in April I would recommend still staying with 0, if you don't you might end up having to pay even more. I am clearly not an expert on this, so you might want to check with a Tax Advisor, but 0 is the safest to avoid having to pay more, because 1 or 2 might not take enough out of his paycheck to cover it. Does that make sense?

Both my DH and I claim 0 and we likely will keep it like that once our second LO is born. Sometimes towards the end of the year its safe to change it to 1 or 2 for the last few months to add some extra income to your paycheck. But you need to make sure that you have enough deducted before you do that...

I agree w/ PPs that $500/ month may be a lot for food, but we are figuring paper products, cleaning products, toiletries, cat foot into that $500.

Based on that, I am not sure if $500 is too much or not?

Should we have a food budget seperate from a household products budget?

I was thinking it was best to keep it at 0. I just wasn't sure since we have the LO coming if he needed to claim head of household. So next tax time when we are figuring out our taxes we will be able to claim Jacob on there. Hopefully we will be able to get some money back.

Thanks,
Dee

I had high hopes of Olivia helping us out at tax time, but NO SUCH LUCK, we have still had to pay.....

My DH and I currently both claim 0 but because of our new house (we bought in October 2007), we're going to end up getting some serious cash back this year. I'd rather have the money during the year, so we obviously did something wrong this year. We are newly married with our house, so we wanted to be safe. This year, we'll be losing half of our income and adding the baby, while still paying ridiculous amounts of interest on the mortgage, so we're switching DH's exemptions to HoH and adding the baby. I think that just means 2 exemptions, and I'll keep mine as is for the time I actually get paid this year and hope we come out pretty close. If we didn't have the huge interest deduction, we'd probably keep DH at 0 exemptions, just to make sure we don't pay.

My mom's a tax accountant, so I guess I should probably ask her, huh? Doi.

We had to pay the past two years, but that was because of stock sales. Normally we have so much in medical deductions that we end up with refunds. This year we should definately get money back since we didn't sell any stock and have massive medical with the cancer treatment and IVF! Hubby claims all exemptions on his W2. It's the itemized deductions that seriously help us out!

I hate taxes.

My DH needs to redo his tax info. My sister use to do taxes at H&R block. I will have to send her an email and see what she says.

Dee

i with most ppl on this 500.00 is alot (IMO) for food and such. we have a family of 4 ( me, dh, and 2 kids) we dont spend 500.00 a month. we do eat alot of leftovers and dont have a cat. i think your budget is good. he dont have any extras here so our money goes a long way. also if you sepnd less somewhere then you will have more to spend somewhere else. we dont have cable, we got 8.00 a month netflix. and i sell on ebay for extra money when i want something thats not in the budget.

$500.00 is a lot for your food budget. I know it has been said, but that is you budget for the 2 of you for a month WOW.

I spend about $150 every 2 weeks for our family of 5 at Walmart/Aldi.

Now to cut cost's on meats-
I buy the rolls of ground beaf. $6 for 3lbs
Ground Turkey $.99 a lb-Aldi
Bags of chicken breast's-Aldi
We only have steak or pork chops or roasts once a month if the budget allows

I do buy most of my things at Aldi's because they are so much cheaper. However there are some things we go to Walmart for-
Lunch meat
cheese
bread
diapers
pop
Cascade Complete(I know $$$$, but it works so well and 1 big bottle last's us for about 2.5 weeks)
TP(gotta have angel soft)
shampoo's depdrants etc

Just an example here is our meal menu this week-
Mon-spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread $6.xx
Tues-chicken stripes and fires-$6.xx
Wed-eggs, pancakes, toast-$4.xx
Thurs-soup and sandwhich-$5.00
Fri-pizza-$8.xx
So just M-F we spend about $30 for dinner. Lunch is about 1/2 that.

I am thinking that it is way more expensive out here in California. We spend an average of 700-800/month on grocery's here to feed our family of 3. We don't eat a whole lot!

Well I have to say.. I think we spend about $500 a month on food and household things. But we are a family of 4 and I stay home. DH does try to take leftovers so he doesn't have to eat out. I know that our food cost will go up a bit when Caleb gets here because the formula is about $20. a can, but.. I can't BF and that's the only formula that I will buy.

Lacie

I think the budget may be a cost of living thing. We're in Raleigh, NC and a gallon of milk costs near $5.00. Even when the gas prices started to drop, we still had gas at 38 cents above the national average and most expensive in the Southeast. We really don't eat a lot, don't buy meat that often (maybe one meal a week) and don't by snack foods and we're lucky to keep it under $500/ month even with buying generic brand paper and cleaning products. We do a lot of dried beans, pasta, soups, pancakes for dinner etc. and buy a lot in bulk (sugar, flour, popcorn).

I think we will set it at $500 for a month or two and see how low we can get it within that amount. I am going to check and see if we have an Aldi's within a decent driving distance. I used to shop there alot when I lived in PA and OH and it really was great. While Raleigh is urban and there are Wal-marts everywhere, the nearest super Wal-mart is a bumper to bumper 30-45 min. to the extreme other side of the city through crazy traffic. I am going to check it out and see if the drive is worth what they have there.

Thanks for some great suggestions and help!

Here is an Aldi link for anybody if that want to see if there is one near them.

http://www.aldifoods.com/us/html/service/store_locator_ENU_HTML.htm

I am lucky I have Walmart, Sams and Aldi right next to each other.