I suppose some people drop off on their blogs because they don't have much to say. I have plenty to write about, but a bunch of Real Life stuff to take care of and so have had no time for blogging.

The abridged version, with more detailed entries to follow:

* We went out of town for Memorial Day weekend, plus one extra day. We are keeping busy with end-of-the-school-year stuff.
* DH finished the Dave Ramsey book.
* DH has decided to replace his 1992 full-sized truck with a 2004 Honda Civic. He did all the leg work (insurance quotes, talked w/mechanics, worked with sellers) plus he's figured out how to pay for it. I'm shocked. Go DH!
* We are looking at Away School (as opposed to Home School) for Daisy next year.
* DH used Quicken to create an expense report for the last year. Neither one of us are really sure what to do with it, but he is interested in some kind of a budget.
* We still ran a deficit in Checkbook Number One in May. Despite my attempts to pin our money issues on DH, I'm definitely the culprit on this one.

It's May 20th, and Checkbook Number One is looking pretty empty.

We got rid of The Dead Zone, so what happened?

Well, several things: the grocery/eating out dollars spent is way over budget, less is being put on the credit card (and thus being put off until next month) and there were some math errors.

I'm hoping and anticipating we'll be able to squeak by until June with another fill-up for both vehicles, and about $100 for our Memorial Weekend Camping trip (this includes about $60 for a ferry ride).

DH and I had a discussion about this last night. He had a pretty negative reaction. In reality though, this is nothing different than what's happened here in the onion patch for the last several years. The main difference is that he is now aware of it. While it's challenging to deal with his reaction, we are talking and that is a huge improvement in my book.

DH and I did talk, on Sunday evening after Daisy was in bed.

I have taken the information that I had on a file card and put it in a pocket-sized notebook. What you see on the side bar for April fits on one page.

On the next set of pages are the May spending plan (looks a lot like April) and the month-to-date totals. The next two pages after that hold the things that we talked about spending money on May, with estimate and actual expense columns. These are items that fall in the "Everything Else" category. There aren't many, or the list wouldn't fit on one page of a pocket-sized notebook.

DH wanted to see the April figures. I had already told him about The Dead Zone, so that even though it looks like we under spent by about $200, we actually over spent by about $100. He looked at May. Then he told me about a few expenses he could see coming in June. I wrote them down, although only one of them has a dollar estimate.

That was pretty much the end of the conversation. It took about 10 minutes.

Even though we have a long, long, long way to go, this conversation was way more than I would have anticipated back on April. I need to keep reminding myself of that when I feel completely frustrated by his non/under-involvement policy.

Here's the update for April for Checkbook Number One:

Income: 1372.55
Expenses:
Budget:
Groceries 500.00
MC 500.00
The Rest 372.55
Total 1372.55

Actual:
Groceries 565.62
MC 274.61
The Rest 326.86
Total 1167.09


Looks good, doesn't it? We appeared to spend 205.46 less than we made. However, we seemed to run about 100.00 short this month. How can this be?

I've determined it's because of The Dead Zone.

DH gets paid once monthly, but usually his paycheck comes in and is deposited 3 to 5 days prior to the end of the month. That paycheck is then used for next month's expenses. Those 3 to 5 days were The Dead Zone - before the end of the month, so anything spent during The Dead Zone didn't count for the current month because it was next month's paycheck, and didn't count for next month because it wasn't next month.

Clear as mud, eh? Basically some of April's money was spent during the last few days of March. It didn't "count" for March - partly because I wasn't really counting then, and partly because it was a new check. And it couldn't *really* count in April because it wasn't there.

The Dead Zone should disappear this month - all expenses now count for the month in which they are incurred. The tricks we can play on ourselves are mind boggling.

DH and I have talked about our finances twice since "the sky is falling" conversation last week.

The first conversation was the next night. DH now realized that the sky was not falling, but was not entirely clear on where to go from here, except that we should spend less.

The second conversation happened yesterday. The mood was right so I asked DH what he thought we'd be spending money on in May. With our two-checkbook scheme the regular bills are already covered, so this would be the other categories, like food, gas, clothing, recreation, household items and the like.

I made a list of everything we thought of. That came up to $410. Then we looked at what we had to spend money on. Looking at the cost of gas was rather shocking - between our two vehicles we estimated about $500 next month. Combined with groceries at $500, and church contributions at $100, we are left with $272.55.

Even though $272.55 doesn't equal $410, we stopped our conversation there, both realizing that the work is not done. The awareness is raised though, and I think that's key. With these items on our minds we're more likely to figure out a way to get them less expensively.

I caught DH in a good mood this afternoon, and showed him my spending plan for Checkbook Number One. I wrote it on an index card, and since it's not terribly lengthy or complicated it's easy to digest. Also included on the index card were this month's expenses in each category so far.

His reaction about it was positive.

That was nice but meaningless. Based on past behavior, I don't expect him to actually follow this plan. I just wanted to tell him what I'm doing.

He's pretty visual - perhaps I could make this information available as a pie chart? Anyone had any success with communicating information in that way to a spouse?

With a fair amount of savings to draw on it was easy to be in denial about overspending from Checkbook Number One.

I've gradually been realizing that we can't keep doing that. Now I'm taking a bit more action.

All of our financial stuff is set up on Quicken so it's easy to see where the money goes. You can set up reports to dissect the data anyway your analytical heart desires.

From that I've come to the following plan:

Money coming in to this account each month: $1372.55

Money going out of this account each month:
Groceries: $500
Credit Card: $500
Everything else: $372.55

I expect to tweak the numbers as I actually use this plan.

A few comments:
We could probably spend less on groceries and eating out. (In fact, we've always spent more.) I like to eat organic and local as much as possible though. . . but I can cook from scratch. We'll come to some sort of balance with it.

The credit card is likely to have at least $300 on it per month. Some regular expenses are put to the credit card, and we use it to purchase gas. I would love to see it at less than $500 per month.

Right now we operate using two checkbooks.

Despite what's going on with us, they are not "his" and "hers".

One checkbook, Checkbook Number Two, is for paying regular bills and saving for certain annual expenses. These include the mortgage, insurances, property tax, medical expenses, auto repair and maintenance, phone bills, utilities, garbage, cable (basic only!), Daisy's school expenses and some of her recreational activities, the newspaper and Christmas.

The other checkbook, Checkbook Number One, is used to pay the other expenses. These include groceries and gas, clothing, gifts, church contributions, household expenses and the credit card.

I originally set up this system when I left paid employment and we dropped to one income. I didn't want to get caught short and not be able to pay the mortgage or fix the car (or my teeth - sigh). Using a spreadsheet and a year's worth of bills I determined how much should go in Checkbook Number Two. What was left was put in Checkbook Number One.

This system has worked marvelously. We basically ended up with a built-in emergency fund in Checkbook Number Two and have not run short when needing the car (or teeth) fixed. The shortfall is not in this account.

The shortfall, about $200 to $500 per month, is in Checkbook Number One. A couple of months ago we got to the point where prior savings (except DH's bonus from 2007) was depleted. We did have a discussion about it but it wasn't very fruitful. I'm determined to do something about this shortfall. More to follow.