Hello everyone happy Saturdate for those going on a date on a weekend. It’s my rest day today and I am excited to stay at home with my baby and my hubby. I’ll be blogging one entry before I’ll start my day with my boys.
What’s that one thing that you hated the most to discuss as the source of fight between you and your spouse? Well, if you are going to ask me, it’s about financial disagreement. I just hate fighting about money. Mon and I share the same sentiments about MONEY. It is something replaceable and it should not be the cause to destroy our relationship. As much as possible we do away from fighting about money. It doesn’t mean though we are living a luxury life and we don’t have any financial concern. Yes we do have one. But we don’t fight about it, instead we find ways to face it.
Just like what happened to our iPAD MINI. It’s totally damaged. Mon loves this iPad so much, even in going to the toilet he brings this with him.(EYES ROLLED with pouting lips) It got accidentally submerged in water and it won’t turn on anymore. Instead of giving him my 2 pages lengthy recitation of anger, I chose to shut up and let my anger go. It wouldn’t fix our iPad anyway. I don’t have any plans of having it fix from an Apple store, it might be too costly. For anyone who knows how to fix damaged iPad for a lesser consultation fee please contact Mon. Pfft!
I’d rather discuss to you about how we manage our finances. I want to move on from our damaged iPad.
This is how we budget our income.
Every pay-day, Mon’s question has always been like this, “ My pay cheque is now available how much should I give you?” With his structure of questioning you can really tell I am responsible for budgeting our finances. It’s a tedious job, I tell you. It’s like beating my brains out in carefully auditing to make sure I can track down each of our expenses. I sometimes get tired of doing it and when I tell Mon to do the budgeting instead, his response has always been consistent with a big,“NO.”
Both of us are employed, we allocate his pay cheque for our utility bills like the electricity bill, water bill, phone bill, home mortgage payment and investments while my salary is for our savings and groceries. I do make a list first on what items are needed for the week before going to the store. I am aware of my impulse to hoard grocery items which aren’t really needed. It makes me feel satisfied seeing our fridge is full. To control my compulsion, I follow a list to avoid over spending and it works for me. Mon doesn’t oblige me to use my salary to pay for our needs but I do insist to help him. With the cost of living in Cebu, it’s difficult if I will just stay at home, though we can still survive with his salary alone but that’s going to be a very tight budget for us, especially now, we have Akyn in our life .
With Akyn, our priorities have changed when it comes to our spending pattern. We’ve learned to prioritize our needs versus our wants. I do have a credit card but we use it for emergency needs and for installment plan with zero percent interest, for me to earn points I can redeem.
We still do shopping but that’s going to be very minimal. If I want to buy something expensive, it’s a courtesy for me to let him know about it. It’s not a requisite for me to do but we practice it to maintain transparency with our spending expenditures. Same goes with him, he lets me know if he plans to buy something extravagant. That’s one way on how we build our trust in our relationship by not keeping secrets, when dealing with money matters. We don’t restrict each one to spend but we do discuss it first if our budget can still accommodate additional spending areas.
Together as a team, Mon and I has agreed to combine our finances. There is no HIS and HERS anymore, only OURS.
Cheers to the lovely weekend everyone.
