Category: Finances

  • i love ynab!

    i love ynab!

    I love YNAB! You Need a Budget is the budgeting software Jared and I have been using since early 2013.

    YNAB uses a zero-based budget which means you budget every dollar you have. You can set up custom categories, and track all of your financial accounts. The software is made to link to your accounts, though I do not have it set up this way because I like to put in every transaction manually, like an old-school check register.

    Our categories are pretty basic and haven’t changed much over the years, since we started. There is a Giving section, subdivided into Charitable Giving (my favorites are Atlanta Habitat and the Atlanta Ronald McDonald House) and Offerings for church. Next is a section for credit card payments, subdivided by each card. Credit cards are debt, but there is a separate Debt section subdivided into our Car Payment and Mortgage.

    Next is Savings, subdivided into Emergency Savings, Home Maintenance, Auto Maintenance, Vacation, and Boy Allowance. After that is Monthly Bills, which includes Electric and Gas, Water and Trash, Insurance, Phone, Internet, Entertainment (which includes all our streaming services), and Web Hosting.

    Then comes Every Day Expenses, which includes Groceries, Restaurants, Gas for the car, Medical, Clothing, Personal Grooming (Haircuts), Pet Care, Date Night, School Expenses, and Surprises. Interest on the credit cards gets lumped into Surprises.

    Next is a section for Business Expenses— Jared’s work expenses,and my photography business expenses.

    Finally, comes Annual Expenses. This includes Gifts, Safe Deposit Box Fee, Car Registration, Christmas, Taxes (this mostly refers to my estimated taxes), memberships (this includes the recreation center when our membership is current, along with Amazon Prime), and Family Photos.

    As you put in transactions and categorize them, YNAB automatically adjusts category amounts accordingly.

    You can set target amounts, both by total amount and by the monthly amount needed, which is supposed to help those who want to forecast. Sometimes I cheat and forecast a month or two anyway, though, based on anticipated income and any goals we may have.

    Anyway, this is our budgeting software and how I have it set up! I love YNAB!

    You can read more about why I write about what I write about here, especially when I write about my budgeting strategies.

  • financial (and perspective) overhaul

    Mom Photographer

    Financial (and perspective) overhaul — I am writing today from the skate park with Oliver.

    Today I said goodbye to the Fuji GW690III film camera, as well as the Fuji X30 digital camera. They got sold at KEH to pay the difference for the iPhone 15 Pro Max I traded my old iPhone 13 Mini for last week. Verizon gave me a very decent deal on the trade-in, but there was a difference and the sale of these two cameras that basically always sit unused more than made up for the deficit.

    When I bought the Fuji GW690III, I thought I would take it regularly to sessions and weddings. It came along like twice, but it never found a solid place in my work flow.

    And to be completely honest, the iPhone 15 Pro Max replaces the “purse camera” function that the Fuji X30 served.

    The Christmas break was a time of introspection and expense assessment, along with re-assessing both current and future priorities. It has been a healthy introspection period and Jared and I (mostly me) made a lot of changes to current expense obligations that will serve us well in 2024.

    I have been a domain name hoarder for a long, long time. I won’t say how many I had, but it was a lot. For no good reason. Well, I thought they were good reasons when I bought them, but those purposes no longer serve me. So the great majority of them will lapse this year. I am 100% okay with that fact. I purged over the series of several days, bit by bit. It was sort of like shedding layers of an identity that no longer serves me.

    I projected our income for the year, taking all things equal as though there would be no business income to rely on, and then I projected all known expenses and obligations for 2024, both personal and business. Then, I re-assessed every expense we have had for the past couple of years. 2024 will be the year of actually consuming the online education resources I have already bought into but may or may not have already used. There will be no more gear purchases unless something is sold, and that will not happen this year as everything is very useful at this point, unless I do decide to sell the gf 35-70 but I doubt it.

    I still have to do it but I have already made a list of the regular groceries we have purchased and like to have on hand on a regular basis, but I am going to go through and itemize them by price and make out a realistic grocery purchase rotation. We have to be careful because grocery budget does get out of hand for us. Our restaurant budget has been out of control the last several months, as well.

    Financial (and perspective) overhaul — Part of what has helped with this finance overhaul has been the solid step toward self-acceptance of the fact that, for all purposes that matter, I am a retired person at 44 years of age and our budget should reflect that fact, and there is zero shame in it, either. This photography business is fun and I love that I can do this, but the reality is that it is likely that I will be on SSDI for the rest of my life (well, until it converts to regular Social Security when I reach traditional retirement age), and 12.5 years into this SSDI journey I am finally coming to a place of self-acceptance with it.

    Next to work on is getting over the shame that it has taken me over a decade of my life to accept that I am essentially retired. But that is work for another day.