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5-5-5 progress plus random number crunching

May 17th, 2012 at 06:39 pm

Yesterday I hurried home and did a free-weight workout before I lost my motivation. That takes me to 14 workouts done and 11 to go. I might just make it! NT has said he'll go on a bike ride with me tonight, so hopefully I'll soon be able to report that I'm 3/5 done with my challenge.

I must say I have noticed a small difference in my physical fitness. This morning it looked like it might rain, and I'd forgotten my umbrella. So I was going extra fast with the stroller, and I noticed I didn't get out of breath and that it felt easier to go fast than it did a few weeks ago. I would love to say that this time, I'll be making workouts a permanent part of my life. We'll see -- I've gone through many bursts of activity in my life, sometimes even lasting over a year, but I've always copped out at some point. At least I do start trying again eventually ...

Anyway, feeling very restless with finances. Part of is that our budget (especially extra debt repayment) is scaled back while we're on parental leave, which is through July. It's already dragging and I have 2.5 more months to get through! Another reason is my sister who will definitely visit is dragging her feet deciding on a weekend, and thus I don't know if I'll be able to afford tickets for my other sisters and nieces if she ever does decide. (I want them all to come the same weekend, both because it will be more fun that way, and I'm going to be borrowing a friend's condo for them to stay for free, and don't want to impose on him by asking for TWO weekends of condo use.)

So yesterday I played around with my "absolute budget" spreadsheet, which shows our gross income and breaks everything down, including tax withholding.

I updated it with our probable budget numbers in August ... I couldn't quite get everything to match up, but I'll be able to once I see how our paychecks end up in August, when leave is over and healthcare for SL has been worked out.

Anyway, on this spreadsheet I divide our expenses into "Needs," "Wants" and "Savings/extra debt repay." I pay attention to the 50/30/20 ratio espoused by many, including Elizabeth Warren in her book "All Your Worth." I don't try to adhere strictly to that, but I do like when my numbers are somewhat in line with that ratio.

It looks like our budget come August will look like this:
Needs 55.89%
Wants 20.82%
Savings/extra debt repay 23.23%

Our needs are a little high, but otherwise it looks good. But wait! Then I thought about how Elizabeth Warren has you calculate it AFTER your tax withholdings. (I include tax withholding in our "Needs" category.) So I added a line to my spreadsheet that factored out taxes from the equation, and got these numbers:
Needs 48.01%
Wants 24.54%
Saving/debt 27.38%

Now THAT ratio I really like! Smile I think our third category has to be higher than 20% because we're playing catchup from previous years of irresponsibility and brokeness: paying down excessive debt, building up an EF, accelerating our retirement contributions.

I also wondered how we're doing with our retirement contributions, since we pay into several different buckets and it's hard to tell at a glance. So I added ANOTHER line that calculated the percentage of post-tax income going to retirement: 10.92%. I can live with that! I'm still going to want to increase that ratio at some point in our lives because I feel we're a bit behind where we want to be, but that's pretty good for having two young kids and still paying off lots of debt.

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