How We Are Gaining in Our Personal Finance

J and I are working hard to get control of our personal finance before we are married, which is why so many of my posts lately have been about money. Well, that’s not the only reason – I actually am interested in it.

Here’s how we are gaining control:

1) we communicate. It may come as no surprise, but to work out a budget with 2 incomes the people bringing in the money must talk to one another.

2) bi-monthly budget meetings. J and I get together when we get paid which is every other week to talk about what bills need to be paid and how we are doing on our personal finance.

3) allocating money. We know how our money is going to be spent before we ever spend one dollar. Basically, we know that J’s income goes to certain bills and mine goes to certain bills. At that point anything left over goes to our savings and/or debt.

4) talk to someone we look up to. My Dad is really good with money. I mean scary good with money, but that’’s his job and that’s probably why is so good at it. We talked to him about what our goals. It’s nice to have someone to bounce ideas that has been there done that.

5) we are taking Financial Peace University. This is probably one of the biggest things that has helped us so far with our personal finance. First our number 4 point, my Dad pointed us in this direction and encouraged us to take the classes. Second, everything else that we were already being successful at prior to FPU (points 1-3) were taught in FPU, which made us feel that we were on the right path. We are learning how to save money and pay off debt with the snowball effect.

That’s it. 5 simple steps and we are gaining control over our personal finance, our budget, and building a savings while paying down our debt. It’s pretty neat how it’s all coming together.

Cheers!