I'm just not ready to be a Freegan.

I'm all for being cheap, but I'm just not ready to become a Freegan. Heck, I can't imagine being a Vegan. I like my food dumpster-free. Not that the two have anything to do with the other... but still.

I love meat.

How do we manage our $$$$ ?

The quick answer to that is we don't. About two years ago, a co-worker mentioned to me that he uses a personal money manager. My co-worker said "It changed my life." I was intrigued. "What does a personal money manager do?" I asked.

Quick and simple answer? They (the short answer):

• Examine your situation and determine the best coarse of action to get your sorry, spent rear-end out of debt.
  
• Create a weekly budget, that you stick by. (Now you are accountable to somebody else, which is what we like since we have no will power of our own!)
  
• Pay all of your bills. Every bill will now come to your PMM. You no longer write checks, or pay the bills yourself. This also means that they have Power of Attorney over your checking account. The first month is a little weird not paying your bills, but believe me, it is worth it.

That is the short answer. Does the PMM cost money. You bet, but after the PMM sets the budget, you are on your way to paying off the bigger picture.

Why not just do this yourself? Because:

• You are accountable to a third party you are paying for. (We need it, we have no self control)
  
• Your PMM has set you up on a budget that you can live with, and you have the desire to not be stuck in the previous position you are in now.
  
• Now that a professional is taking care of paying the bills, you can focus on finding ways to bring income into your household.
  

So, how do we find someone we can trust? We got lucky by word of mouth from a co-worker.

Wikipedia, has a little more on financial planning here.

Be sure to look for a planner who is a member of the Financial Planning Association.

Now that we have a Personal Money Manager, now we are focused on getting rid of our debt, and saving for a house.

The first part is adimitting you stink at managing your money...

For my first post, I think the best thing to say is "I stink (or perhaps really suck) at managing my income."

I make OK money, but always seemed to have a little money in my bank account. Then I met my wife. She was in the same boat as me, as we both spent a bulk of our money having a good time. So after out trip to Europe, and getting married last October, reality finally set in. We want a house, we want a family... and we have no spare income to do it. How in the hell are we going to fix this?

I will get into the details of how we are righting the ship in the posts to come, and hopefully communicate the huge change in our lives to make things better.