Do you know that famous saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”? Well, I’m kinda realizing that the Ninja household is kinda guilty of having a few too many “good intentions.”
Exhibit A: Living off my income.
The plan when the stork drops a few babies off at our front door (that’s how it works right?) is for Girl Ninja to quit her job and be a full-time stay-at-home mom. Since we don’t want to be devastated by the loss of her income, which would be about a 30% household pay cut, we’ve decided we should pretend it just doesn’t exist. We live off my income, and bank hers. Great plan right?
Too bad we haven’t actually forced ourselves to really practice what we preach. If we wanted to make this experiment realistic we would have her paycheck auto-deposited into our savings account, since we never access that account. Instead, her paychecks go into our regular checking account and at sporadic points throughout the month I’ll transfer money over into our savings account. Most months, this amount exceeds Girl Ninja’s, but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s time to get our stuff together and get her check deposited directly into savings. What you can’t see doesn’t exist right?
Exhibit B: Contributing to my Roth IRA.
I swear I meant to contribute to my Roth at the beginning of the year. But here I am, over halfway through the year, and I haven’t contributed a dime. Retirement doesn’t save for itself. If I want to meet my long-term goals, I have to suck up the $5,000 expense/investment and pull some money out of our savings account. Every time I go to do it, I trick myself into thinking that it’s not the right time, that we could use the money for something else, blah, blah, blah.
Exhibit C: Not eating until I’m about to throw up.
I have a serious issue with food intake. Not sure if my parents starved me as a child, but many meals I eat way more than I probably should. I have this weird complex where I hate throwing food away. This means, even when I’m totally satisfied, I will eat another piece of pizza just so it doesn’t go in the garbage. Fortunately, I am relatively active and my metabolism apparently is too, so I still appear relatively fit. I gotta get over this weird psychological complex that says I must eat even if I’m not necessarily hungry. Why? So I don’t end up obese and with high blood pressure.
We bloggers typically only talk about the good things we are doing, so it’s refreshing to finally share some of the things I’ve been totally sucking at. What are some of your “good intentions” (financial or otherwise) that you’re not totally executing?
Set up the auto deposit man. I set it and forget it. Our checks gets deposited into a couple different accounts and then from there each Wednesday and Friday and every other Tuesday they get placed into accounts for:
Vacation
Gifts
Car Purhcase
Home Renovations
IRA/investing
Credit Card Payment
Emergency Savings
We put aside $1300 a week into those accounts mentioned above, that way we always know whats available to spend.
Exhibit A & B both: The money I make at my side-hustle is supposed to go directly to my student loans; most times it does, but occasionally it doesn’t (or I’ll just transfer most of it). With how tight my budget is, and my tendency to dine out more than I should, my extra income occasionally (not often!) acts as a buffer. Also, I haven’t touched my IRA this year. At all *hangs head in shame*
You know they have these marvelous things called refrigerators where you can put leftovers so that they don’t have to go in the garbage or your stomach. 🙂
Both of you should be contributing to Roth IRAs. Have the contribution automaticly deducted from your paycheck every pay period.
We contribute to our RSP’s via automatic withdrawl from our chequing into our RSP accounts, otherwise, I guarantee, we wouldn’t have extra funds available come the Feb. 28 deadline.
I wish we were more diligent on saving for our Emergency Fund… we’ve really slacked off that one!
I’ve made a beatiful budget for each month since January (honestly, really for the last few years). We look at it then TRY to stick to it and I’m always amazed at how much we overspend. SO, I remake the budget for the next month and we try again. At least I’ve got the strategy down when we finally decide to stick to it!
I know what you mean about eating! I will literally eat everything until I have to crawl (and I have done this before, sadly). Luckily I have a fast metabolism.
The eating one is my big one. I hate throwing away food, feeling like I wasted money, but I am learning to be okay with it. Mostly thanks to my fiancee’s “you can’t eat that, it has been in the fridge for 8 months” type of comments.
EEEEWWWWW!!! LOL!
I generally put my goals on automatic and that makes it much easier. I am really disciplined, but I am not perfect. I find that I can stay with my goals 98% of the time.
I have the same issue with food, it’s something I learned from my mom. She can’t let food go to waste. Although I am guilty of not contributing to my ROTH IRA yet this year. Better get on that…
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I promised my son we will throw a party on his birthday on September but I have not saved enough money for a party until now. We may just invite friends and relatives for a simple dinner but not a real big party with games, clowns, and all that stuff.
I am with you! I need to start auto depositing. Goals for this week: open ING Direct Savings account, find where to open ROTH IRA.
I could almost write a book on that. Let’s see, my emergency fund, food budget, entertainment budget, and retirement savings. Yup, that road is looking mighty fiery about right now.
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