Still haven't found what I'm looking for...

(Anyone have U2 lyrics stuck in their heads now??)

So the next step in my baby-steps-toward-financial-peace adventure is to find good, user-friendly, Mac-based budgeting software.  My frustration at this seemingly simple task is mounting.

You see, no one asked ME (gasp!) for advice when they created their dumb software, which has resulted in the perfect software not existing.  For me, and most of my adults-with-kids friends, we need basic. household. budgeting. help.  What i do not need are fancy graphs and charts that show me how my stocks are doing (falls on floor laughing!).  What I DO need is a place where I can track every expense and expenditure that I make.  On my computer.  On my phone.  In the bank.  Where ever.

All softwares SOUND capable of that.  We have been working with Mint for the past 2 years.  Mint is free.  Everyone raves about how incredible it is.  I, however, beg to differ for the following reasons:

1.)   Unless you have IT experience, you can't PRINT ON PAPER a single chart or graph.  I can't figure it out.  So after spending hours on the computer correcting expenses and entering vendors for checks, I still have to take out a piece of paper and a pen and WRITE DOWN the totals for each month's expense categories so that I can know what we are spending it on.  Irritating.  Because I want to compare months, but maybe not this month and last month.  Maybe 3 months ago and next month, I don't know, but it doesn't seem that crazy to want the info on paper.  I suppose I could print a screen shot, but that seems like a silly work-around.

2.)  There is NO GOOD WAY to notate cash expenditures.  We have been trying to use cash for household expenses.  Basically anything that isn't paid with a paper bill, we pull cash out of the bank to use (more on this concept later).  The problem with Mint is that you can pull out cash and mark the category it falls into, but it's super-tedious.  What I want is a way to show that when I spent $25 at the strawberry stand, it should go into groceries and then two weeks later when I spent $15 at the school book fair it should go into our School expense category.  With Mint, you have to split EACH TRANSACTION under the cash withdrawal transaction, which is just simply irritating.  What I want to do is be able to create a Cash Account, and essentially "transfer" money from my checking bank account into the Cash Account (aka my wallet) and then assign the money spent into each category.

3.)  For whatever reason, I have NEVER had the same account balance in my Mint app and my bank account app.  So something's not being properly communicated, that much I know.

I've looked online a lot, and YNAB (which I have also tried, but before it had a smartphone app.)  comes up a lot, as does Quicken.  I have used quicken before, and now I'm starting to lean toward it again but in a weird way it feels super old-fashioned to me.  If I was Excel-savvy at all, it would probably make sense to just set up a spreadsheet, but that feels overwhelming.

When I do find what i'm looking for, I promise not to don gigantic sunglasses and sing about social justice though.

Seriously... again??

So last November, there was a bit of a fiscal cliff in our family and it was no joke.   By that I mean we had too few dollars and too many days left until the next pay period.

As in, we had an account balance of approximately $9 and a (very long) week to go before there would be another deposit into said account.

I went through a mental list of all the unneccesary things I had purchased in the last month or so, kicking myself for spending $3.50 on a latte when a house coffee would have been enough... regretting the purchase of an extra bottle of red wine... wonder why I got take out pizza when I should have just suffered through another round of grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.  Many people probably know that drill.   Regardless, I told myself that would never happen again.

Self fulfilling prophecy.  I should know better than to say "never again"s even in my head.

Fast forward to today.  It's four months later, and with no holidays or family birthdays to blame, we are in the very same boat.  We did some relatively small things that we could not afford, and in the end it has cost me any sense of calm I might otherwise have.  Learning to live within our means is hard hard hard.  For a long time, we lived how we wanted to live and figured out how to pay for it later.  Now, having absolutely no credit cards available to us means we have no ability to live outside of our means.  A lot of people would say, "That's fantastic! If you can't afford to spend, you don't spend."

Those are the people who have never lived like this before.

Living like this is by no means fantastic.  Living like this is ridiculously stressful.  But I do agree that it makes sense.  It makes sense to only spend what you make, because that means you aren't diving further into debt.  But I cannot tell you how nervous I am right now, because I have under $20 and a week to go.  I'm trying very hard to not think about this but it really does rob me of a clear mind.  I am struggling very hard to be grateful that this time I (a) have a full tank of gas, (b) have spring break next week and therefore another week of very little driving and (c) (perhaps most importantly) groceries that I think I can stretch to last a week or so.

So maybe the lesson in all of this is just to count the blessings that I do have.  And when I do end up here again, because I probably will, to remind myself that the sky doesn't fall, the sun might still be shining and there's oxygen and to spare.  Oh, and I have a working spouse, three healthy kids and a roof over my head.

And that's nothing to laugh at.

How did I get here (from right over there?!)?

This whole blog starts with a conversation I had with myself, and then repeated to a fellow mom-friend of mine recently.

How is it possible that I'm staring down 40 years old and my checkbook balance is equal when I was in college, waiting tables and paying $250/month in rent?  I was half my curent age and probably only earning 25% of my/our current income and yet my savings accounts are nearly identical.  Seriously.  That is to say, I'm not seeing a positive cash flow. 

Nothing has stumped me more than personal finances. Admittedly, nothing bores me more than thinking about dollars and cents. Nothing leaves me colder than when my dear husband sweet talks me about family budgeting over a glass of wine and candles.  But... I must admit that nothing discomforts me more than wishing payday would get here already since my kids hate rice and beans for breakfast.  I hate living on the (personal) fiscal cliff.  My husband makes a decent wage (although we have recently seen a substantial decrease due to cutbacks).  But when we get our tax info from his employer and I see the numbers, it does leave me wondering how we spent all that money on... groceries? Shoes for the kids? Seriously, where DID it go??

With all that frustration on the table, I hereby proclaim myself growed up enough to face this thang dead on.  I'm going to stop pretending that as long as banks aren't mailing me pieces of paper with detachable sides, I'm good.  I'm going to try to think about money for once, and recognize that it has power of good (providing my family with things to eat and a roof over our heads) and the power of evil (robbing me of sleep because there isn't enough of it).

Here's what I'm doing with this blog:  Being honest.  I'm not going to provide the numbers (at least, not all the time!), but I am going to be very honest about my/our money habits in the hopes that some accountability will either make me reign in cash where I can, or get some back up when I'm doing as best as humanly possible.

Join me for the ride.