A Year of Money Tracking and Budgeting

Today is September 1st, which means it's the first day of our "fiscal year." That's right, the Mr. and I, as a "family", have a fiscal year. Yup, we're crazy like that.

This all started on our first wedding anniversary where we decided that every year we'd set goals for the following year. One of our goals for last year was to start tracking our money spent and start managing to a budget.

So for the last year I've been tracking all of the money that come in, goes out, and is saved in a giant excel spreadsheet with formulas. Every. Single. Dollar. Yes, it was tough, but so worth it!

Now today marks one year of finance tracking and budget management! To celebrate I ran some "analytics" of our year of spending to share with the Mr.



I always think it's interesting and helpful to understand how people spend their money, so I wanted to share some "fun facts" from my personal financial analysis with you all:

• We spent 45% of our take home income* on our mortgage, HOA dues, insurance, property tax, utilities such as lights, internet, etc. (Yup, home ownership in California is expensive!)
• We spent 12% of our take home income on food and drinks (including eating out and groceries/wine)
  
• We spent 10% of take home income on traveling (much of that was the Europe Trip)
  
• We only saved 5% of our take home income this year (one of this year's goals is to improve that next year!)
• The biggest single purchases of the year were plane tickets to Europe, the kitchen backsplash, the new Stearns and Foster mattress, the Mr's snowboard, USC Football Season Tickets, the iPad, and the new kitchen lighting.
• In a year we made 13 trips to Costco, averaging $217.52 per trip.
• In a year we made 35 trips to Fresh & Easy, averaging $20.63 per trip.
• The restaurant that I most frequented this year was Speciality's. I went 20 times this year! That's because it's right by my client's office in Northern California.
  
• Other restaurants that we frequent are Subway, Starbucks, Pinkberry, and Buonos (a little pizza place near our home).
  
• The clothing stores I shop at the most at are DSW (all of my work shoes!) and Nordstrom.
  

The best part about tracking spending for a whole year is that now I have great data to plan this year's budget. I'll drink to that. Cheers!


Another item is crossed off the Baby Bucket List!

*Take home income = money after taxes, 401Ks, medical insurance, and tithing

Saturday Caturday Pictures and "Fetch" Video

You all I know that I'm a crazy cat lady and I realized that haven't featured my "sweet beast" (as the Mr. calls him) on the blog lately, so it's time to fix that!



What's Judah been up to lately?

Sometimes he sleeps in his bed...


Sometimes he sleeps in our office/guest room.


Sometimes he plays with his toy mouse.


And sometimes he plays fetch!


I'm so excited that I finally got a video of him playing fetch with me! He's so hilarious!

What's in your Fridge Friday

My blog friend, Jessica, is doing a fun Friday feature called "What's in your Fridge Friday."

I think this is so funny and so perfect for nosy people like me types!

So what's in the Newlyweds Next Door's Fridge? ...


The main shelves contain: Milk, salsa, cranberry juice, Brita, a half of an onion leftover from last night, Parmesan cheese (for these potatoes I'm making tonight), Trader Joe's yogurts, bagels, bread.

I warned you before, we tend to not have a lot of food on hand.


The meat drawer contains: Turkey lunch meat, ham lunch meat, procsutto.



The produce drawers contain: apples, limes, oranges, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, asparagus, corn, and arugula.

Our produce drawers are a little lighter this week because our CSA came last week, not this week.


The door contains: Pacifico beers, 3 kinds of cheese, PB&J, and a whole lot of condiments.

Now I know it doesn't seem like we have a lot of food on hand but I did cook two meals this week! I made Thai curry chicken and veggies stir fry on Wednesday and Gazpacho on Thursday.

How did I cook without a lot of food on hand?

I've been doing a new shopping technique where I buy staples that keep a long time (like rice, condiments, soups, cereal, frozen food, etc.) once a month at Costco. And then when I'm not out of town working, I do lots of small trips to Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy on my way home from from my office and only buy fresh food for the next 2-3 days out. It keeps me from getting overwhelmed with shopping and keeps me from wasting food. I'm lucky that I have to drive by a Trader Joe's to get home from my office.

Now, tell me, what's in YOUR Fridge? Or better yet, link up to Jessica's blog, My Beatles Babies.

Identity Crisis Solved

A year ago I went to the DMV to change my name to First Name, Maiden Name, New Last Name.

And they would NOT let me.

My two choices were First Name, Middle Name, New Last Name or First Name, Middle Name Maiden Name, New Last Name. I blogged all about that drama here.

So for over a year my Social Security Card (which has my name as First Name, Maiden Name, New Last Name) and my Driver's License (which has my name as First Name, Middle Name Maiden Name, New Last Name) did not match.

Um yeah, that caused some problems!

Well, on Monday night while I was out celebrating my work promotion with the Mr. I somehow dropped/lost my driver's license. Ooops.

I decided that if I was going to go back to the DMV to get new license I should try to get my correct name on that license.

I'd heard from Mrs. Kiwi on Wedding Bee that the Culver City DMV let her get the name she wanted, so today I went over there to get a new license. I waited about an hour an half before they finally they called my number. Then I explained to the nice lady that the Long Beach DMV "accidentally" left my middle name and maiden name on my license and explained to her that I needed to drop my middle name to match my Social Security card. And guess what?! She let me! Hallelujah!

So in about seven days I'll be in possession of a California Driver's license that reads: First Name, Maiden Name, New Last Name. YAY!

Speaking of Monday night's promotion celebration here are some pictures from it.

The Mr. congratulated me with flowers, a card, and champagne. So sweet!


Hilarious card!


I changed my clothes and was ready to celebrate!


We enjoyed wine at District Wine, a fantastic new wine bar in our neighborhood.


And we ate sushi and drank sake at Wokano!


Does anyone else out there have any name change horror stories?

It's Not Easy Eating Green

For a long time I could have cared less about organic food or being green in my food choices.

I had decided that organic food was probably just an expensive gimmick. I mean if the food and the plastic packaging was allowed to be sold, it had to be safe, right?

Or maybe not...

It all started when I gave up artificial sugars and lost a bit of weight and massively decreased my sugar cravings.

"Hmmm that was interesting..." I thought to myself. I wondered if there was more to this whole "chemicals and food" thing.

Then I started doing some research about eating organic. Reading books. Watching movies like Food Inc. Reading blogs, news sources, and magazines. And I started to become convinced.

What stood out most to me was some of the alarming stuff about pesticides/chemicals and fertility. So I decided to make it a part of my "Baby Bucket List" to stop eating non-organic food from the "dirty dozen" list and limit the amount of BPA in our home.

(BPA is a compound used in some plastic that is an endocrine disruptor, which means it mimics or alters the effects of a particular hormone, in this case estrogen, potentially throwing your body way out of whack. It's found in the highest quantities in certain plastics and canned goods. You can read a great article about it here.)

I'm happy to report that I've now accomplished both!

Here's how I did it...

First, I realized my biggest obstacle to eating organic food was just getting into my house. So I looked into getting an organic food delivery service, and found a great one called Beach Greens.

We signed up and now two times a month we get a crate that looks like this:


It's filled with some of most delicious fruits and veggies I've ever had!

Like juicey oranges...


And crunchy kale...


I supplement the deliveries with additional "Clean 15" fruits and veggies from the local grocery store. But overall we're eating a lot more fresh produce and a lot more organic produce and loving it!

(Note: To find a CSA like Beach Greens in your area, go here.)


Then I went on a BPA purge.

I got rid of every plastic bottle that has #3 or a #7 on the bottom. Then I went to Costco and bought glass food storage/microwave dishes and got rid or the plastic ones.


The left container is what I got rid of and the right container is what we have now.

And (sadly) I stopped buying by my beloved canned soups.

I know I can't purge all BPA from my home, but these were the best places to start according to my research.


Obviously, I can keep improving my green ways of eating and living, but overall I feel like I'm off to a good start. My next "green" task is to start making more of my own organic cleaning supplies!


Note: This post is not intended to tell you how you should or should not eat. I know people still having conflicting opinions about organics, BPA, chemicals, etc. So I won't judge you if you're not on the organic food train. This post is simply my story and journey.

Two Year Anniversary

Two years ago today I married the love of my life.



And on that amazing day we pledged to love, cherish, and honor each other for the rest of our lives.



This weekend we celebrated us.

Two years of married "us."

We celebrated by taking a little stay-cation in Santa Monica.

We had a hotel room with a gorgeous view!


We went out to dinner at an amazing french restaurant called Melisse. It was some of the best food I've ever had in my life - lobster, beef, chocolate souffle, pinot nior and so so much more. Our eight-course meal lasted over four hours!

The place was so nice that I felt weird taking pictures there, but I did manage to get a picture of us at the hotel before we went to the restaurant.


Then when we got back home yesterday we exchanged cards and gifts.

We both made each other home-made cards.


And since it's our "cotton" anniversary we both centered our gifts around cotton.

I got the Mr. a tempurpedic pillow. He was so happy!



And he got me an apron that I've been wanting from Flirty Aprons.

I love that it's my favorite color.


I feel so blessed that I could spend another wonderful anniversary with my amazing husband. Here's to many more!

Stay-cation

This weekend we have something to celebrate.

So we're doing a little stay-cation.

(That's a vacation where you stay in your own city)

We'll be going here:


Staying here:


Eating here:


And drinking this:



Big stay-cation recap coming next week. Stay tuned!