My Family’s Money

My wife and I are beginning to look into what capacity she should remain on at her job. Her job is one of those things that isn’t too terrible, but the long attrition of minor inconveniences and annoyances is taking its toll. Her boss is sweet but can be extremely controlling. The boss’ my-way-or-the-highway mentality on insignificant issues has been grating. Since the job is in the service industry (well, kind of), sometimes her clientèle can be pretty childish. Among my wife’s major complaints is that they don’t listen and follow simple instructions. Such is life.

So its time to hit the books. Luckily, I have tracked practically every purchase we have made since we were married this past March. I love the power of spreadsheets. When I double click our dusty computer files I’ll be able to see when we spent our money, where we spent our money, how much we spent, and what category I (sometimes arbitrarily) decided to put those purchases in. I even have an overview spreadsheet that automatically updates totals when I make a change on a monthly spreadsheet – and it has graphs! Did I mention that I love spreadsheets. Now I know that there is software out there that probably does what I have done in such a better way it is ridiculous, but that eliminates the fun and and adventure of doing it yourself.

I can’t say enough how very nice it is to have the freedom to even have this discussion with my wife. If we had not at the very beginning of our marriage decided that we wanted to have kids and have the mom at home, we would never have made the decision to try and live on one income even though we had two. If we weren’t living like one of our incomes was extra money, the option for my wife to scale back to part time and focus on other things that she loves to do that are also productive and help the family would be off the the table. Necessity would demand it. But as it stands, scaling back to part time is still only one option and even the degree of scale back is up for debate. We have decided to let the numbers tell us the consequences of our choices before we make any final decisions.

Our main considerations are as follows:

• We want to have kids – the sooner the better. What type of financial foothold should we have established before we start making the babies? How long will it take to get us there?
• Our cars are old and getting older. With my car over the 150,000 mark and my wifes over 200,000 both of them a far from peak performers. Our current lifestyle demands that we own two, how much should we save and when do we expect to need it by?
• A masters degree looms out in the distance and seems like the course we want to take. How much do want to sock away now before babies and school hit?
• Retirement? I may be 25 but already the thoughts of getting a good start early on a future that means no work and focus on being productive in ways that enrich the world is pretty attractive. The earlier the better, but at the cost of what?
• With families that are important to us on both coasts, seeing them is an expensive but desirable thing, where can we find the money for this?

All in all we have several things to consider, and the numbers won’t answer everything, but at least we can walk into this with eyes wide open so that when things get hard we can look to the prize and stand firm.

Other Posts in this series (in order of appearance):
Jobs, Can’t Live With ‘em …
The Job Dilemma – The Numbers
The Job Dilemma – My Wife’s Potential Income
The Job Dilemma – The Decision
The Job Dilemma – The Resolution