Hi. A recent thread of mine got moved to this forum and I'd never been in here before.

I'm just wondering if anyone likes to do the budgeting or paying the bills? I do all the budgeting and bill paying in my family because I love it. I look at our situation everyday for fun and see if there's one more thing I can tweak. I love to watch the Suzi Orman show and read articles and books on finances.

Anyone else around here like this?

What I can't figure out is investments. I've got savings, insurance, and budgeting down--but investing is a big scary hole.

ETA: No, we're not rich. I've been like since my boyfriend left me when I was 3 mos. pregnant (5 years ago), broke, terribly in debt, car in repossesion, and I had to make serious changes.

I don't mind budgeting when we have money...I hate it when we're broke!

I am getting into as of late. I used to hate it and DH used to always do it, but work is really hard for him and this is something I could take off his plate, besides I'm the one who spends the money anyway. It is frustrating when you have no money. But it is so much easier to keep myself from overspending if I'm on top of exactly how much we have budgeted, how much we've spent, etc. What I find gratifying is coming to a birthday or christmas (starting shopping now) and knowing I've budgeted for it and then coming under budget.

We have money invested for our long term goals (retirement, college, etc) but month to month we are tight and I have to keep myself seriously in check or we could easily eat into our investments rather than continuing to grow them.

My life would be so much easier if I could convince DH that living frugally is FUN! I see it as a challenge and feel proud when we meet our goals, but DH, even though he plays along and tries to follow the budget, always kind of rolls his eyes and chuckles at my mock enthusiasm, LOL! :lol

I don't know if I love it, but I have been known to get obsessive about it. I really do like the feeling that all of our bills are taken care of every month with no problem through our budget though. :thumb

My dh loves to pay the bills and do the budget.

I mean, he LOVES to do it. We actually had talked about it last night. We have a budget that is pretty tight (dh is getting his phd). We have a spread sheet where we plug in everything we buy (by catagory) and it totals what we have spent for the month and whats left.

I enjoy looking at it whats left. I love when we do well with food or bills and there is money left to save.

I love to budget. I love to pay bills. I love walking to the mailbox and picking out the bills knowing that I have enough cash set aside for them. We are living close to the bone while we pay off a lot of debt, so every opportunity to save spend less means that I am one dollar closer to having moutntains of student loans paid off.

And I live for payday. All that planning and scheming and tinkering and then bam! I send it all out to our various debts and bills. Sooooooo gooooood.

I don't mind budgeting when we have money...I hate it when we're broke!

:yeah:

I love to budget. I love to pay bills. I love walking to the mailbox and picking out the bills knowing that I have enough cash set aside for them. We are living close to the bone while we pay off a lot of debt, so every opportunity to save spend less means that I am one dollar closer to having moutntains of student loans paid off.

And I live for payday. All that planning and scheming and tinkering and then bam! I send it all out to our various debts and bills. Sooooooo gooooood.

:yeah:

I get a sick (good) feeling when I can pay something off. Today, I'm going to make a deposit so that tomorrow, I can pay off our last credit card!!!! :jumpers: :jumpers:

Congrats Betsy!

I like paying bills. Budgeting I'm not so good at but DH does the spread sheet thing and we work on it together. It's some of our "together" time.

I love to budget. I love to pay bills. I love walking to the mailbox and picking out the bills knowing that I have enough cash set aside for them. We are living close to the bone while we pay off a lot of debt, so every opportunity to save spend less means that I am one dollar closer to having moutntains of student loans paid off.

And I live for payday. All that planning and scheming and tinkering and then bam! I send it all out to our various debts and bills. Sooooooo gooooood.

:yeah:
I like it too, it's waaaay better than homework!

Can I just say that I love to be quoted. :grouphug

And congrats Betsy!!! We just paid off our last credit card and it was an epic moment. Never, ever again will I have credit card debt. :thumb

Even when money is tight I find it relaxing! I am SUPER anal about it all though! :lol

:yeah:

I get a sick (good) feeling when I can pay something off. Today, I'm going to make a deposit so that tomorrow, I can pay off our last credit card!!!!


THAT'S what keeps me going! We haven't paid one off yet, but we will soon, and I'm looking forward to that feeling!

I love it too! I'm a big planner and list-maker, so it's right up my alley!

This is funny, but I think I'm just starting to see what all the fuss is about. My dh is super finance/frugal guy. I'm the eye rolling spending money for fun, wife.

In an attempt to help dh, (and get him to lighten up, and off my back) I got Quicken. I thought it would show him we are doing fine so relax. Well... I am totally hooked! Entering all our info, setting up monthly bills, projected cash flows. Every day I will look at it, see whats new, what's comming up next.

It is so fun, I just want to make to good numbers grow and the negative ones shrink.

Yay! I knew I couldn't be the only one.

I definitely agree, it's funner when there's at least a little bit of money to move around. But, meeting goals and feeling successful is great.

I too am a list maker so maybe that's where the enjoyment comes from?

1

I too love to budget and pay bills. I take pride in knowing that I can pay for our needs (our wants is another story but I don't think you ever have enough money for that). I grew up with a single mom and it was always very stressful in our house. Money was tight. It makes me feel good that I can pay for things and not worry. We are not at all rich either and that is what makes it a challenge.

that's funny. i'm the same way. i handle all of the bills and just figured out a new budget for us because i'm going to be a SAHM offically today (yah) so we are going to be brrrrroooookkkkkkke but i'm still excited to put our new budget in reality. it's going to be a challenge but totally worth it

I am such a nerd when it comes to budgets and tracking expenditures, savings, and investments. I created the mother of all spreadsheets, and I love to enter the info and see where we are at on the different goals we have set. One of the things I do at my job is work with couples who are wanting to get married, and I love the financial part. One of my newly married couples actually called me the other day with a question because they were moving and they were using the materials we went over to plan their new budget - it made my day :thumb

I like paying bills when we have to money to pay them with a little left for "just in case". And budgeting has kinda become an obsession of mine. I'm always trying to find more ways to save money...especially by doing things that are also environmentally sound, like low-flow shower heads and stuff. :) It's a challenge 'cause we try to support local business, organics and avoid gmo's and chemicals. Trying to keep the karma good:thumb ...maybe that's why we've somehow made it so far, 'cause I haven't always been able to figure out how those ends were meeting!
jiva

whew!! I thought I was the only one! :D Since my husband left, though, about a month ago, I've been actually withdrawn from wanting to see our balances. I mean, I don't think we'll pay anything late or not pay it, there's just no extra money anymore. I used to always plot out how the extra would be spent, how much the savings had grown to, etc. Since savings is just barely growing, and there's no extra, the fun is kinda sucked out. But I'm still obsessive about calculating it all, just in case! :wink

I love budgeting and paying my bills!

I especially love giving large chunks of money to my cc debt! I'm hoping to pay off around $2k in the next 2 months and DH's normal take home is only around1200!!! Budgets rock.

I *don't* like budgeting or paying bills very much, but it's encouraging to read that there are do many people out there who do enjoy it. I think if I had more $$ to go around I might get into it more. :wink

My mother LOVED doing the home budgets, keeping her checkbook perfectly organized, etc. I don't think I have the knack for it, but it's something to work toward...

I like trying to find ways to cut down expenses, but I wouldn't call it budgeting. I DON'T like trying to set a plan out beforehand and then trying to follow it, rather I look at the day-to-day and figure out what I can do to reduce it. My favorite website to help with it is the finance forum at Fatwallet (http://www.fatwallet.com ).

I really like the investing side of it, too. I was very heavily into that before I had DD, I mostly traded options on stocks, but I was also trading commodity futures and options on those futures. When DD was born, I just didn't have time to do the research it required, so I found a managed account and a really good trader takes care of it all for me now. The gripe I have with most of the mainstream investment books is that they ignore SO many of the markets, usually just focusing on stocks on bonds. They completely ignore options, commodities, FOREX, and real estate (although most people have more than enough in the real estate market with their house, IMO).