First!

Here is the thought that gave birth to this journal*:

I wish that I made enough money for Barack Obama to want to raise my taxes.

I've been teaching long enough to have substantial debt. I know that there are many, many people with more debt than I have, but I really have no desire to think about their debilitating finances when I have my own with which to grapple. I graduated from college owing a couple dozen millibucks to Nelnet, picked up a car that costs me $454 a month, then got married. Then had a child.

We have subsequently run up enough credit debt that we have virtually no credit left, even though we are working as hard as we can to pay it all down. Having both of us in school again really isn't helping with the finances, even though it means that my student loans go on hold for another two years. Here's the big problem, though. I make $30,000 a year**. Sure, I don't need to pay for room and board because of the nice deal where I work, but I make $30,000 a year. This is before tax, to support a family of three with a car payment and credit cards.

I'd like to break down where that $30,000 goes. If I actually were to receive every cent of it, I'd get $1153.85 every two weeks, adding up to $2307.70 each month. After taxes and Social Security and whatever else, though, I actually bring home $996.93 every two weeks, $1993.86 each month, and $25,920.18 in a year. Once our car payment, insurance, and Netflix are gone, we have about $1325 left for our other monthly bills. Meeting minimum payments on our phones and credit cards reduces our monthly income to about $900. Driving is not something that we view as a luxury any more, nor do we go out to eat much, but the child needs diapers, the animals need food, the cat needs litter, and we do need to keep a certain amount of milk and cereal in the house. With the cost of gas as it is, this brings us into the range of $750 a month for anything extra that our family wishes to do. This would include investing in our future, investing in our child's future, fixing the car, buying unexpected necessities or extra treats, and maintaining basic courtesies like sending gifts to people. If we were capable of being truly disciplined and actually setting aside half of that $750, we would be able to save $4500 a year.

We aren't able to save that kind of money, though, because we have family obligations that keep us driving a few hundred miles a month or flying 4000 miles a year. We do indulge in extras (eating at IHOPplebee's instead of McDonald's) and we do even get the oil changed in the car occasionally. We are putting money into the bairn's account, but we keep losing money in our own because of overdraft fees (here's an area for federal oversight: why should someone with a $5 balance be charged $105 for purchasing three items that all cost less than $10?). When everything is taken into account, I think it's pretty remarkable that we are managing to do as well as we are on $25,920.18 (tip of the hat to the wife/financial wizard)! If we had ten times that amount pre-tax, I think we could stand to eat 5% more in payments to the federal government.

Hell, if we had ten times that amount pre-tax, I might eventually be able to retire.

*Call it what you will, but I still don't like "blog".
**My wife makes a small stipend as well, but spends her time being a full-time student and a full-time mother. Any income that she could bring in by working more hours would be more than offset by the money put out for child care expenses and, to be honest, neither of us is willing to turn our child over to someone else for rearing. We shouldn't need to be.