Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Budget Clarification

I was looking over my budget and realized there are some things I haven't explained yet. My husband is a Marine, and because of that there are certain expenses we don't have. For example, our house, and all utilities except cable and Internet are paid for by the military. As well as all our health care and life insurance. You won't see those expenses coming out of our income. As for income, I don't know if I should post the amount, but just so that my budget makes sense I will say that it's more then $45k, but less then $55k a year (not including my income of $1400 a month since I am quitting next week.) I don't mention our retirement because it's a TSP, (Thrift Savings Plan) the military's version of a 401K, except the don't match. The reason I don't mention it is because we started it when we were 18 years old, and it comes straight from his pay. We've never seen that money, and it's just nothing something we have to think about monthly.
And probably the last thing you might notice is that while we have 2 vehicles I only make a payment on one. DH drives an '02 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab, which we are still paying on. I drive an '02 Pontiac Grand Prix, which we were able to pay off within the first year of owning it thanks to a deployment to Iraq. Have a vehicle paid off and completely mine is a wonderful feeling, however we are far from paying off the truck, and I think it's going to be a 2010 goal to pay it off in full!

So I think that should clear things up some. I think it makes my budget make more sense when you know the basics. If you have any questions let me know!

1 comments:

Melissa said...

wow thanks for being so open about it all.. I mean really it's none of our business but it sounds like you have everything down to a science which is good considering most people I know have no clue how much they have or owe.