Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. For the past 5 months I’ve been a stay at home mom.  There are a lot of things that I’ve noticed over these past few months about our money spending habits.  Before I quit my job, Mr. Money and I enjoyed eating out frequently.  It was our hobby I guess.  Well, after we had the baby we’d find ourselves so tired that we’d grab take out or just go out for dinner.  Looking over our budget and bank balance, I’ve realized that’s got to change.  We just can’t afford to go out to eat like we used to and still be able to meet our savings goals and stay on budget.  I’m going to make a conscious effort to meal plan a bit better and make sure that we aren’t just being lazy when we go out to eat.  Maybe it would help to have a set night to go out to dinner? I get the moving itch every few weeks [...]

For 2012, I wanted to come up with a more accurate budget, seeing that our baby would be born this year and hopefully we’ll be able to control our spending without worrying too much about it. I figured if I budget better, then I’ll hopefully be less stressed about where our money is going. Of course, I’ve also decided I’m not going to be so darn hard on myself because I’ll have a baby and have no clue how that’s going to impact our budget. If it costs us more money than I anticipated, then it does, and I’ll adjust our budget accordingly. Here’s our 2012 budget: Mortgage- $793.19 Escrow- $215.00 Energy- $150.00 Car insurance- $88.00 Verizon- $40.00 Cable, phone, internet- $125.00 Food- $350.00 Retirement- $100.00 House Stuff- $50.00 Gas- $200.00 Some notes: The mortgage is just principal and interest.  I used to round the payment up to $800 or so, until I found out that the extra money that I was paying was being applied to the next month’s payment!  Talk about annoying.  To make additional principal payments, I [...]

2012 is already here, and I’m a little behind on our financial and life goals.  I’m a little uncertain about what I should aim for, as we’re going to have a brand new baby and will have to adjust to the new expenses and life with a child.  My goals this year will be attainable (I hope!) and I am crossing my fingers for the best year ever.  It certainly will be interesting and a lot different than past years!  Here are some of the goals I’d like for us to accomplish: 1. Set up a savings account for the baby. The baby has not even been born yet and already has a stash of money.  I’m going to open a custodian savings account for the benefit of the baby.  I will also have to research 529 plans in case that’s the way we want to go.  I’m thinking it would be easier just to open the UTMA (Uniform Transfer to Minors) account and wait until the money accumulates and then go from there.  We’ll see. 2.  Figure out life [...]