Well, HippieHusband and I have decided to take an aggressive stance on saving money. I guess uncertainty does that sort of thing to you.
The rule is that you should have 3-6mths salary in case of an emergency. But frankly, as a PhD student, that was nearly impossible - I mean maybe if you had a grant and TA'd you might pull something off. Mostly, however, the PhD students I knew - they were living paycheck to paycheck or largely on credit.
And when we did become a two-income post-doc family, because we had lived on so little, we started accruing a little bit of money in the bank. It was so great. But then my father died and we had to dip into the money to pay for airline tickets. Almost immediately after that, I went into the hospital for a small operation. And then of course the brain tumour followed by brain surgery. So our savings basically whittled its way down to - well not much.
In December, we started thinking very seriously about our financial situation. Given that we're both on contract and HippieHusband's latest woes, we decided to start off the new year by saving his salary and trying to just live off of mine until the end of our contracts. So I've been squirrelling money away into our savings account. It was all fine and dandy until I miscalculated and we came up short in our chequing account.
Despite my association to the mathematically inclined, I can't add or subtract.
Ugh. I hate those stupid overdraft fees.
So yesterday was the beginning of new two-week experiment. Since we came up short, we have made a pact not to buy any more groceries or food items until our next pay day - two weeks from now. Instead we will just eat whatever we have stockpiled in our cupboards. We will have to be creative with the dried, canned, or frozen foods - and of course whatever vegetables and fruits I bought before I realized we had a shortfall. Thank god, I bought a bag of apples.
No problem.
This morning we realized that HippieHusband didn't have any milk.
Oh, geez it will be an interesting two weeks.
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2 comments:
I have the bank automatically put a portion of my paycheck into my savings account each month, but not the total amount I'm planning to save. Then I set a goal for that month - how much I want to have in my checking when I get paid the next month (say, $200 more than I had last month). This way I have something to strive for but if I end up spending more than I intended, there's no overdraft fee.
Eventually a chunk of change builds up in my checking account and I transfer it to savings (but not all) and start the process over again. Works for me!
Two weeks is tough, especially without milk, or bread. Those are the two things I let myself buy when I play the, "let's clean out the freezer and pantry!" game. I rather have fun with it.
I put a chunk of change into my savings whenever I get a paycheck. I watch my accounts daily (or so), so if I really NEED to put some of that back into checking, I can. But usually, seeing the dwindling numbers earlier on in the month makes me more careful in terms of what I spend.
Good luck!
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