Disqus - Latest Comments for dewayne

Re: The Cart and the Horse

Dewayne — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:32:41 -0000

Hi Wilbert,

I appreciate you offering your experience. I love your ideas, and as you were describing how you use your credit card as a spending tool with a set limit per month, it makes me think of it as a higher tech version of the coffee can approach (which I use actually!).

I encourage you to offer any other best practices you feel appropriate to share, and certainly appreciate your kind words!

Re: The Debt Free Vacation

Dewayne — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:45:29 -0000

Hi Carl!

Thanks for the great suggestions! The key seems to be that you setup a system for saving that you know you can keep to. In your case, keeping separate accounts at ING keeps these funds from getting mingled into other funds.

I love your comment, "This way we don't go into further into debt for our fun but still have a chance to have some fun." I would add that the fun doesn't come with any regrets financially!

Congrats to you and much success!

Re: I Need Some Help!

Dewayne — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:00:55 -0000

Thanks Josh! I have the Carfax thing going, but I appreciate your comments about the OBD2 scanner. I never knew about this! I'll be making use of Autozone because of this advice!

Thank you!!

Re: Budgeting versus Expense Tracking

Dewayne — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:27:48 -0000

Hello Mrs. Micah! Certainly a tracking mechanism plays a part in personal financial management. For instance, I use BudgetSketch to set my intentional plan each month of how I will spend my money. My wife and I do our best to stick with our plan all throughout the month. When my wife receives our bank statements, which obviously shows our past performance, she then uses what I call a tracking tool, in our case QuickBooks, to in essence "track" how well we are adhering to our budget. If tracking expenses is the cart, certainly our budget plan is the horse. We use expense "tracking" as a means of validation of whether we are following our budget or not.

If we were to manage, let's say our food budget, each month simply by tracking what we spent in previous months, we will get a very good idea of what we spent and how that impacted our cash flows. If I find I am spending on average $1000 a month on groceries, how do I know if this is acceptable? If I set an intentional budget goal of $700 per month, and force myself to adhere to this goal, I just may find out a few things. I may realize that $700 a month is just not enough to feed my family, or I may find that I am wasting $300 buying foods we don't need, or I send too much on name brand products and can save by buying generic products. Budgeting forces me to evaluate how I am spending. In the latter case, I can take this a step further and allocate the $300 I found in my food budget to paying off debt. Would I have really found that $300 a month if I was just tracking what I spent each month?

I completely agree with you that expense tracking is necessary, but it only works effectively as a validation tool for a good budget plan. Using both together is the key!

Thank you so much for your comments. This is all about helping ourselves and our communities find ways to better our financial situations, which I believe greatly strengthens our families.

Thanks again!!