[speaker001:] how do you uh manage your budget
[speaker002:] well let's see we or I sit down at the uh in a on a monthly or a biweekly I get paid every two weeks so I make out a budget for every two weeks and I sit down and see how much money I have to have for my bills going out and then I compare that to uh how much money we need to make and then just set it up that way and allot this much money for everything and if we have any left over we'll uh you know buy clothes or have fun go out to eat or something and we're going to try to start saving as soon as we can we generally don't have a lot left over but as far as the long term our long-term goal is to to get out of debt
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and uh most most of our debts are from before we were married and we're trying to get rid of you know student loans those kinds of things
[speaker001:] yeah well I in my younger years I'd always heard the adage you should uh buy as much of a house as you can afford
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh because of the uh improvement in real estate prices and on the last move we bought ourselves a fairly large house and I've got some pretty stiff mortgage payments now
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and uh the uh improvement in uh income and uh investments and so forth has not uh come at the rate I've expected so we're still kind of hurting by the uh high mortgage payments and we haven't gotten out from under them yet
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] but uh so far we've managed to hold our own by uh trying to set up a a monthly budget
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] uh I try to take out just so much cash for me and my uh give so much cash to my wife
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] to spend on groceries and clothing and fuel for the car and then the rest of it's uh pretty much fixed expenses uh mortgage electricity uh water and uh and garbage collection and telephone bills and cable television bills and those are pretty much fixed
[speaker002:] yeah yeah that's basically the kinds of bills we have are on our budget are you know the needs the have to haves and you know those kinds of things uh we don't have a lot of uh you know like JC Penny's in our in our budget and uh maybe twice a year we're to where I can let my wife go clothes shopping like that and
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] let's see my mother-in-law lives uh not too far from here so she helps with our son's clothes when she can
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and that's real good and uh well at TI I have a real good benefits package for uh uh you know like for going to the doctor and that kind of thing so that's not something I really have to put in the budget that seriously so
[speaker001:] yeah no my wife's pretty good about uh grocery shopping and
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] she pitches in and uh makes clothes for the kids
[speaker002:] really well that's neat
[speaker001:] uh which is a big help uh one of our big problems though is handling unexpected uh uh budget items
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] like this month the uh heat pump went out and uh
[speaker002:] um yeah
[speaker001:] they want pretty close to three thousand dollars just to replace that
[speaker002:] wow so what do you do
[speaker001:] well uh we have to cut into the savings uh at this point to uh to buffer that
[speaker002:] oh wow
[speaker001:] and
[speaker002:] well that's good that you have the savings to get into
[speaker001:] then maybe we'll go for a week or two and or a month or two and then the car breaks down so it's the unexpected things that make it awful hard to control the budget
[speaker002:] wow yeah that's that's the way we are we've had a lot of unexpected things just in the last uh couple months
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] that uh really hit us hard but I've been able to work enough overtime to you know really help with the with covering the expenses so but we've never been we've been married for uh nearly four years and we've never been able to save any money and I think it's just hit both of us uh just in the past few months that we need to start saving some money no matter what we do we need to put that in our budget and just start doing it
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] even if it's you know ten dollars a week and so we're going to start doing that or actually we started two paychecks ago and that was uh I think that was a really wise decision
[speaker001:] well do you have some uh savings plans at work
[speaker002:] no actually I'm I'm not involved in anything like that at work or uh anywhere uh I don't have anything to fall back on at all
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] and I I know that's not wise but that's just uh where we're at right now my wife just went back to work part-time uh she can substitute teach at schools and uh there's so many school districts and schools here in the metroplex that uh by turning her name in if she wanted to she could work
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] you know everyday but we're we're just going to let her work one maybe two days a week and we're just going to apply all the money that she makes to uh uh our debts and try to get as much out of debt as fast we can
[speaker001:] yeah um-hum
[speaker002:] and there's and we're we're Christians and that's uh we've only been Christians for about five years but that's a a real a biblical truth in the Bible is to to not be in debt and we're really starting to see the the the reasoning behind that
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and uh because we're you know we're always well I can't be sick this week but one day
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] or you know this month but one day because you know our bills will catch up with us if I am or you know I can't we can't go on a two week vacation because uh I wouldn't make any overtime in two weeks so that would really hurt us financially and you know just things like that all time and you know we we really see how we're
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] you know indebted or nearly underneath uh the debt that we have
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] you know and that's that's really hard but so far we've never really uh been behind on any bills uh I had to put our student loans on hold once for about I think three months
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and we had a a cutback at work and uh this is this was a couple of years back but anyway but we're doing really good we're not saving but we're staying right even
[speaker001:] well we've been looking around at uh uh trying to develop some side activities that that might help out such as uh creating some craft objects that we can market in the uh local stores
[speaker002:] oh yeah
[speaker001:] or uh uh making uh some dresses for children or things l ike that or even writing children's books
[speaker002:] yeah that's neat oh that's neat yeah
[speaker001:] and uh I tried uh this past year writing uh journal articles but uh I found out it cost me more than the the honorariums I got for writing them
[speaker002:] wow oh wow because of the time
[speaker001:] uh well especially the first one because I wound up buying a lot of reprints for handouts and I ate up all my profits with uh
[speaker002:] wow right
[speaker001:] buying reprints
[speaker002:] right wow yeah my my wife made uh a whole lot of crafts last year for Christmas presents
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and we didn't uh you know have to allot any well hardly very very much money anyway for Christmas just for our uh personal family just me and her and our son and I think her mom and that was really you know about it we we made everything else that uh we gave for Christmas last year
[speaker001:] um-hum yeah
[speaker002:] and she did really good with that
[speaker001:] oh we thought we were going to be pretty tight with Christmas this past year
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] but uh we have a family dog that uh ate all of the children's toys so coming up to Christmas time the girls didn't have any toys so we had to go out and
[speaker002:] oh wow wow oh no
[speaker001:] and get them a whole new set of playthings
[speaker002:] wow
[speaker001:] now I don't know how the dog has fared eating all that plastic and uh and stuffed animal stuffing but he's still here
[speaker002:] wow wow that's pretty pretty bizarre the dog ate the Christmas presents that's funny well anyway what uh is the economy doing pretty good there where you're at
[speaker001:] so far it's uh doing fairly well uh we're in the metropolitan Washington area and uh I guess most of the area is still living off the federal government with uh beltway bandit type contracts uh our company is uh done fairly well
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and uh
[speaker002:] yeah what company is it
[speaker001:] I'm with the Melpar division of E-Systems
[speaker002:] oh of E-Systems okay
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] I see what do you all make
[speaker001:] uh we're primarily in the uh uh systems integrations business
[speaker002:] oh
[speaker001:] selling to the government