We all come from money

[poodah]

I have become obsessed with money. I have all sorts of goals for my money: ready savings, emergency savings, investments, down payment for a bigger home, early retirement, etc. We are debt free, but cash poor and I want to do something about it. Lucky for us, Jeff and I are on the same page--we want to do better with money than our parents and we'

Comments

[ignignokt]

Index funds are a good way to avoid the risk and work that comes with picking individual stocks. They also outperform 85% of managed funds, which charge you money. Of course, if the whole economy is tanking the way it is now, returns are still going to be bad in the short term.

[poodah]

I know, but DAMN fidelity has hundreds of mutual funds and then vanguard who they represent in my plan also has hundreds. I picked the most indexey looking of the funds with the lowest expense ratios--but somehow I still have craploads of bonds in the mix because the vanguard index funds index too much. I'm going to meet with a fidelity rep, resist the urge for a managed fund with high expense ratios, and see what I get.

On budgeting:

[asmodean451]

What M & I did when we started living together (and ours is a bit more complicated because being unmarried but committed, our finances are tied together only for certain categories) was to do about 3 months of budget monitoring, without actively trying to enforce anything. We broke down our expenses on a fairly good level of detail, it's important to understand what the typical range/swing is for categories like food, household, etc

Re: On budgeting:

[poodah]

We have a budget and are sticking to it quite well. We actually save quite a bit, but I think we can do better. For the last 6 months we've been living a cash diet and really like it. Now that we're more in the swing, I want to belt tighten, but I'm not sure what would be too tight. We've been saving about 20% of our net income in money market accounts (that's not including the 10% I put in my 403b).

Re: On budgeting:

[thatgirljj]

It's funny, I didn't want to bring this up over dinner with such a large group of folks, but Saturday when I was talking with you and M, I was sooooo impressed that you guys seemed to have an actual budget at all. When poodah was in town recently we all had lunch and Dave and I were so impressed that she (like us) actually THOUGHT about these things and was willing to discuss openly even HAVING a budget. Do you know how rare that actually is?

Re: On budgeting:

[poodah]

I think money is finally on people's minds. Part of it is advanced coupling and part of it is the economy/housing market/weak dollar. Folks are wondering aloud about money a lot more so it makes sense to examine ones spending more closely.

Of course, most of that budget talk is across the internet and less amongst people I know. I think there is still a heavy taboo about revealing income numbers and spending patterns.