[speaker001:] so do you keep a family budget
[speaker002:] well not a real strict one but we do work hard at saving for the future and do that primarily through uh payroll reduction at my employment
[speaker001:] that's a good way to do it what what we usually do my wife and I fortunately she likes to keep the numbers and I I don't um
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so what what happens is uh I make the money and she spends it but she spends it carefully and then at the end of the month she just tallies it up and uh we have basically categories spend this much in this area this much in that area and uh although I don't keep that in mind as we spend we do um kind of get to the end of the month and see how we did
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and uh you know at the beginning of the month too we also take out some some savings and put them aside so we we know we don't have that to spend that appears to work pretty well
[speaker002:] I actually use a computer to keep track of our family uh expenses I enter all the all the checks that we write and most of the cash that we spend and all the credit card transactions into a computer program that and keeps track of where all of our expenses go and every few months I look at that to get an overall idea of of uh how our expenses compare to my income and make sure that we're not getting a beyond uh what we should be spending in any particular area and try and figure out for the for the year whether we're going to be able to to cover the unusual expenses such as property taxes and others things that come up from time to time
[speaker001:] um-hum do you have a uh specialized program or do you or do you just use something like a spreadsheet
[speaker002:] uh it's a specialized personal finance program and it seems to seems to work real well
[speaker001:] we've got uh a couple of those but uh I've been trying to get get my wife sold on a spreadsheet
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and have her uh doing it that way and she prefers still just to do it by hand um
[speaker002:] huh
[speaker001:] she says as long as she's dealing with the numbers and it's just adding them up and then subtracting from the the target totals she says it's just as quick to do that way as to to uh enter it on the computer and have it check the arithmetic
[speaker002:] yeah I think I think generally people do find that that probably is just as quick to keep by hand the only question is whether whether the additional reports and the uh
[speaker001:] so
[speaker002:] you know the the nice record keeping that it gives you is worth a little bit of extra time
[speaker001:] well that's kind of the way I feel and uh I use spreadsheets a lot and a lot more than she does so I feel like she's you know if if she did do it for a couple months she'd probably like it but she was just that
[speaker002:] right right do you have any uh any particular ways that that feeds into your long-term uh savings or retirement plan
[speaker001:] um our as far as our family budget goes yeah what we do is we kind of know what what we're making and we've been doing keeping track long enough that we know what we need to spend and pretty much all the difference
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] goes uh well it goes into two or three different places what have what we call an education account where we put aside some money for each of our children every month
[speaker002:] uh-huh right
[speaker001:] with the desperate fear that by the time they are old enough to use it it's not going to be enough anyway
[speaker002:] have have you right
[speaker001:] and uh then we have kind of just a savings account and and right now all we've been doing is taking that and and putting it away in a money market account we haven't been investing or anything like that uh
[speaker002:] huh
[speaker001:] yet we just moved last year into a home just last week bought a car and so we have some kind of substantial other commitments to take care of right now but
[speaker002:] makes it difficult yeah
[speaker001:] we uh you know we even with all that we're still able to put some aside
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] how about you
[speaker002:] well I contribute as much as I can to our four O one K plan at work and we also have a a uh company stock purchase plan which I contribute to and between those two that's that's pretty much all that we're able to save but fortunately those are fairly substantial and I feel like that's at this point the uh the the most important part of our long-term uh savings plans and then hoping the hoping if I get a few raises that I'll be able to get beyond that but right now that's all I'm able to save
[speaker001:] well it's it's nice to have something you know people say that if you're if you're not saving money you're spending more than you earn and uh that's probably the case
[speaker002:] uh-huh right
[speaker001:] you know you never can live down to the last dime so you're either coming out ahead or coming out behind
[speaker002:] right I know we're just getting started on our family so