I actually looked for work last month - I applied for about a dozen jobs, trying to find primarily something I could do at night and on the weekends. The only job I heard back from was the post for a wedding photographer for this guy’s daughter, which turned out to be a scam (not to mention really creepy).

I haven’t been doing any photo work on the side. I’ve considered starting a business, and even made some steps toward that process after Killian was born, but it hasn’t seemed like a good time. It would take a lot of energy and time to do that, neither of which I feel like I have at the moment. I would need a lot of tutoring in how to run a business, and I’m pretty slow on learning curves.

There’s a lot of other issues that have kept me from looking for work and getting a job. Perhaps one day when I feel emotionally strong enough, I can write about that.

Something I do when I make purchases is think, “If my husband lost his job, would I regret spending money on this?”

You are already watching your pennies and trying to save wherever you can. Of course there are more ways to save (so we’re both researching this couponing stuff), but it gets to a point where you just can’t save anymore without significantly changing your lifestyle and cutting out things that are really important to you/your family (swim lessons, expensive preschool, homeschooling). The only other option is to find a way to make money. Do you do any photography on the side? I was wondering if that would be something viable you could do on the weekends now and then. Just a thought. I bring in a very small chunk of change by working at my church on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and Wednesday nights–times when the kids are either up there with me in their own classes, or they are at home with Scott for Daddy time.

I know! The kids and I all go to swim class at the same time, and I factor the shower we take in the locker room afterwards as one of their baths for the week! Now *that’s* frugal!

There’s this whole couponing movement online, and if you know what you’re doing, you can get a lot of stuff for free and pennies on the dollar. You just have to know how to work the system. I’m trying to figure that out. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

Good luck. I can shave $2 off your monthly budget next time you need Quicken. I get a decent discount.

The final net income after taxes is what we use to budget expenses for the year. Then we go through our expected fixed expenses:
Savings/Investments (IRA, stocks, etc…)
Charity (Church, non-profit donations)
Housing (Rent/mortgage, utilities, repairs, etc…)
Phone (cell phone bills)
Car (Gas, Fastrak, repairs, etc…)
Medical (this is redundant with the HSA and both of us are covered under our respective jobs)
For you, Kid expenses would prob be another category (tuition, classes, teaching materials)

Then we have two discretionary expense categories:
Big expenses (yearly amount)
Small expenses (weekly amount)

Big expenses are ones that we absolutely plan together for, such as vacations, large purchases like a TV, etc…
Small expenses include everyday spending, including food, toiletries, clothing, random gifts, etc…

We each have a weekly ’small expense’ budget that we split equally between the both of us. It helps to have a ballpark target of what our budget is, and then we have a lot of flexibility on what we spend on - some weeks we might eat out a lot, some weeks we spend a lot on groceries, some weeks I blow a bunch of money at Target, etc… At first I really resisted the idea of having a weekly budget that included food, which I considered a ‘fixed’ expense, but Ryan’s perspective is that a lot of our food decisions are really discretionary - ie. buying the organic strawberries that cost more, or a bag of chips, etc…

For ‘big expenses’ we usually have a conversation when we do our budget for the year on what our priorities are for that year. Usually one priority is one big vacation for the year. Or travel to weddings, etc… We usually lump big dumps of money here too, like our Christmas gift budget, actually pretty much anything that is a large one-time expense.

Ideally all expenses = net income after taxes. We spend a good bit of time discussing where the $ is going, and where we want to be in terms of savings for the next year. We also evaluate the previous year (do our account balances approx match what we projected?)

Whew that was an essay. Hope it helps to get a perspective on what someone else does. Maybe I’ll copy this over as a blog post!! haha!