New Year's Resolutions

It is almost the New Year, and you know what that means...New Year's Resolutions. My normal resolutions usually comprise of things like workout more, eat healthier, get good grades (I just finished school forever, so this will no longer apply) but this year I have a real goal in mind. That is to buy a house so I have to have a household budget and stick to it.

As Nicki, my fiancé, and I enter the home buying process, we are working hard to save up enough money for our down payment, closing costs, and emergency fund. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I can't decide), we make too much money for any down payment assistance programs, so a strict budget is our only option. But thank god, Nicki is a Type A personality who loves to budget money. She researched budget spreadsheets online and came up with this beauty. We uploaded it to Google drive so we both have a copy.

We entered in our minimum monthly incomes, all of our expenses and devised a strict savings plan to get us on track for having the funds we need. We are also going to use an online money monitoring tool, like learnvest, to track all of our expenses. In order to save the money we need, we are devoting one of my full paychecks a month to savings. In addition, since I work on a salary plus commission basis, any commissions I make are going directly into our savings account.

We are not strangers to living on a budget, as law students we had to work within the realm of our student loans and we always managed. But now, we make more money, and it is very tempting to spend more money. I just keep reminding myself every time I see that shiny new gadget or shirt, or pair of shoes or beer or taxi, that I am saving for a house, and it is going to take some discipline. My plan is to just forget that I have the money. I think maybe if I pretend it doesn't exist, our savings plan will work.