Sunday, April 29, 2012

New Job & Wealth Watchers

New Job

It's hard to believe I am coming up on one month on the new job. The transition has been good for me and my new team is great. I also got my first paycheck under my new salary. All I can say is Thank You and Wow! My take home went from ~$4,950 to $5,850 and I still only get paid once a month.

Wealth Watchers

I am working on a new budget but I came across an article a couple of weeks back based on the book Wealth Watchers. It was a pretty cool article and I should try to find it again so I can post a link to it but google it for now. It was basically an article about a simple budgeting program where you take your income, subtract your fixed expenses and then arrive to your discretionary income. Then you divide that number by the number of days in the month/pay cycle to get your Daily Disposable Income (I like to call it my Daily Dollar Limit).

So after struggling with my once a month paycheck and blowing my budget month after month, the article was timely because my budget for April was blown and I wasn't halfway through the month.

So based on my new salary, I figured out my Daily Dollar Limit based on my monthly dictionary income to be $40/day and that was after putting aside $500 for savings. Not bad.

I took out $280 on Sunday and allotted myself $40/day with the goal of spending less than the $40/day in case I had a heavy spending day but also so that I may actually save something during the course of the week. The ultimate goal is not to spend more than the allotment so you don't overspend for the month.

During Week #1, I underspent by $39. Week #2, I underspent by $163. The best news about this experiment is that you don't have to feel bad about spending the money because it's your discretionary income. The whole point is not to overspend and have to pull from savings or draw on credit. The more you underspend, the more you can save up for a purchase, put money away for savings and/or pay down debt. I am going to keep the experiment going. It may be the simple plan I have been looking for all along. =)

4 comments:

misskate said...

Congratulations on the new job! Good luck with Wealth Watchers!

Alice said...

Thanks so much for mentioning Wealth Watchers! Having a daily spending goal has made a huge difference in my financial world. Here's a link to the article you were looking for:

http://yourmoney.msn.com/saving-money-tips/33121423/3

Good luck!

Alice
www.ewealthwatchers.com

Anonymous said...

I'm going to check out Wealth Watchers from the library. Sounds interesting!

Chitown said...

I haven't read the book. Just the article but I may look to see if I can download it from the Library onto my iPad. =)