"we needed to implement a spending freeze"
An interesting phrase to come from my lovely wife. She is right, just to be clear there was a spending freeze. We attempted not to buy anything extraneous. However, I take issue with 'we'. If I'm not mistaken we would imply that my wife and I made this decision together. However, this my friends, is not the case.
In early July I made the statement that we would not be spending further, to help pay down our lovely accumulated debt of the past month or so (actually it is more of a savings recovery, we don't carry month-to-month revolving debt). I just wanted to be sure to make that clear.
Once out of July it was a full on spending spree I'd like to add. Moderate to large purchases of supurfulous nature thus far in August:
- Purse
- Paint and Painting Supplies (a post will follow at a later date)
- A website (orofino.me)
As we came into this month it was clear that there were a number of things that we wanted to buy, as such we needed to determine WHICH of those items to purchase. As such we listed out the items and threw them into a spreadsheet on google docs. This allowed us to see relative expense along with the priority for each item for eachother.
You can see that here, it is a very simple thing, but it allows us to track some of the 'extra' expenses.
As Jordan and I settle into this whole new marriage thing we continue to work out how best we want to handle the finance and spending stuff. I'll talk at some later point about our saving strategy and how we are saving for retirement, children, our travel ambitions, paying down school loans, etc etc.
On a side note, I find google docs to be a most wonderful resource for Jordan and I. We've got 3 laptops, a desktop, and two iPhones to our name. Having access to our docs regardless of which machine we are at or phone we are using makes things VERY easy. Not to mention I can add to the docs anywhere any time.