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February 23, 2011, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! After reading just a few stories of people hiding their spending from their significant others in this article at CNNMoney.com, I feel unbelievably lucky.
I couldn’t imagine wanting to hide receipts or credit card bills. I’d be devastated if Mr. BFS ever did that either. Isn’t it just a different form of lying? Isn’t lying a death sentence on a relationship?
Take a look at this example from the article:
When I go and splurge on Jimmy Choos or Manolos, I never ask for the box, I bring a big enough purse and just put them in my bag. I put them under the carpet in my car and wait until [my husband] is walking the dog and then they make it into the closet. After so many pairs, it’s hard to hide them.
or
I stash things in the guest bedroom. Christmas is a great time to bring extra gifts and purchases into the house. I can slip purchases in under the tree. Santa always is very generous. But I get why my husband’s upset, I definitely over shop.
Seriously?! Yep, I totally want to spend my adult life sneaking around behind my husband’s back to hide something I bought that I didn’t even need…can you feel my sarcasm?
Even if we were talking about something more exciting to me than shoes, I couldn’t imagine hiding it from my hubby. Heck, I feel slightly guilty just for hiding Christmas gifts, lol. I definitely would not enjoy my life as much if I was keeping secrets all of the time – I think my stomach would be in a constant knot. I also think this would lead to marriage problems.
I understand that every marriage is different, but I think that honesty is universal. Wouldn’t you be mad and hurt if you found out your significant other was hiding something like secret spending from you? I’d be even more mad since the money they were spending meant we weren’t going to hit our savings goals.
What do you think? Do you know of any other secret spending stories to add?
February 22, 2011, at 6:00 am
It’s been a while since I’ve let you all peek into our monthly budget. I hadn’t realized that we’ve changed quite a bit. My husband’s new job raised our monthly income a little and we’ve changed a few of our service providers. Here is how our budget looks right now:
- Mortgage – $900
- Roth IRA – $300
- Car Insurance – $115
- Gasoline – $185
- Electricity – $150
- Water – $30
- AT&T U-Verse & DSL- $115
- Sprint – $140
- Housekeeper – $130
- Lawn Services – $50
- Netflix for Us – $10
- Netflix for Grandparents – $20
- Groceries – $350
- Fast Food / Restaurants – $150
- Misc. Bills – $125
- Toll Roads – $100
- Car and Home Account – $500
- Joint Entertainment – $50
- Hubby’s Fun Money – $120
- My Fun Money – $120
- Emergency Fund/Savings – $350
- Vacation Account – $200
- Tax Account for IRS and Property Taxes – $400
- Cash for Investments – $240
- Cash – $150
- Total Budget = $5000
That comes to $60,000 a year and we make $83,000 jointly ($35,500 from me and $47,500 from my husband). Taxes, the pension, the 401(k) ,our extra 4 paychecks in long months, and our benefits account for the other $22,500 a year.
Unplanned expenses that pop up on the budget are taken from the appropriate target accounts. Extra money from our hobby jobs (blogging and sports officiating) and leftover income is split between the Emergency Fund/Savings account (25%), the Extra Cash for Investments account (35%), the Vacation account (20%), and our two individual Fun Money accounts (10% each).
Before anyone asks, we donate our own fun money to the charities we love to support and that amount varies month-to-month. That is why you don’t see giving in our budget.
I am hoping to show through our story that a school librarian and an office worker can budget their money to pay for our needs, our future, and the fun stuff along the way. 
February 21, 2011, at 6:00 am
***UPDATE: I will be finishing up my Excel sheet of entries this afternoon and contacting the Grand Prize winner via email tonight (3/7/11). As soon as it’s claimed, I will move down to the next prize on the list.
I will repeat this process for all 27 prizes so that everyone has a fair shot at any unclaimed prize. All winners will be selected using http://random.org.
But, as you could probably guess, this may take weeks depending on how fast people respond (each person gets up to 3 calendar days).
I will post the ultimate results as soon as I have them.
Thank you everyone for participating!!!***
Guess what?! As of yesterday, I have been blogging for 1 year!!! I can’t believe it! It really doesn’t feel like I’ve been at it for that long, but I guess that is a good thing. 
Before I get to the giveaway (I know, I know…), here are my interesting 1 year statistics from February 20, 2010 to February 19, 2011:
Alexa Ranking: Started at 8,531,858 and is now at 34,798!!!
MozRank: Started at nothing and is now at 5.02
Visits: More than 36,730 (I don’t have the exact number since I has my Google Analytics code installed incorrectly for 11 months…oops…I was only recording homepage visits…)
Unique Visitors: More than 16,980 (again, I messed up the tracking code, so it’s probably way more)!!!
Pageviews: More than 68,385
RSS subscribers: 296
Twitter followers: 318
Number of Posts: 429
Number of Facebook Followers: 45
Number of Comments: 5524 (Thank you so much!!!)
Total Spam Received: More than 78,000 (You all suck!!!)
So in honor of my first successful year of blogging, my fellow bloggers and I have put together a HUGE giveaway just for my great readers like you!
As you can see below, there are more than $600 worth of cash and prizes up for grabs!
There will also be at least 25 winners, so find out below how you can jump on in!!!
Prizes
How to Enter the Giveaway
***REMEMBER to COMMENT BELOW with HOW YOU ENTERED or I WON’T KNOW.
1. Subscribe to my RSS Feed or my Email Feed (3 entries)
2. Follow me on Twitter and Tweet the sentence below (2 entries)
$600+ in cash and prizes @bitfs 1 year blogoversary #giveaway event!
3. Like my Budgeting in the Fun Stuff Facebook Page (2 entries)
4. Promote my blog or this giveaway via a blog post, daily retweet, etc (1 extra entry for each promotion up to a 15 entry max)
***Again, REMEMBER to COMMENT BELOW on HOW YOU ENTERED or I WON’T KNOW.
If you are already an RSS or Email Subscriber, Twitter Follower, or Facebook Fan, please let me know in a comment below since you already qualify for those entries!
If you are new to BFS, please check out these posts to get to know me a little better:
The official stuff:
1) Contest ends March 6th, 2011 at midnight CST.
2) Winners will be selected randomly and notified by email of how to claim their prize by March 13th.
3) No more than one prize per winner – I will work my way down from the top of the list of prizes so each of you has the best chance possible for the Grand Prize.
4) Prizes will be held for 3 calendar days. If they aren’t claimed, new winners will be randomly picked and contacted.
5) I reserve the right to reject comments that I consider spam or invalid entries.
6) An invalid or incorrect email address automatically disqualifies you from the drawing…it’s hard to contact a fake email…
***You can leave one comment with all of your entries and still be safe - I am making an Excel sheet and every single entry will have its own number. For example, if you sign up for the RSS Feed, you will have 3 lines on the Excel sheet and 3 different entry numbers. I will then use a random number generator to pick the winners. Thanks!
Thank you for being the best readers and commenters ever!!!
February 20, 2011, at 6:00 am
During the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge, you helped BFS soar from an Alexa ranking of more than 8 million in March 2010 to 49,852 on October 31, 2010. Thank you!!!
Then, after seeing all the interest for my blog stats and income updates, I created a new challenge to complete by January 1st, 2011. You helped me get an Alexa ranking of 43,055, 28,687 total visits, 239 RSS Subscribers, and 228 Twitter Followers!!! WOOT!
Since I do plan on blogging full time by 2012, this is the year for a HUGE push. I have come up with new goals to keep us on the right track!
Here are my Goals for July 4th, 2011:
Here is what we are shooting for by the Fourth of July – July 4th, 2011:
Alexa – Maintain a Ranking at or around 37,500
Visits – 60,000 total visits (I started BFS on February 20th, 2010)
Feedburner Subscribers – 500
Twitter Followers – 500
MozRank – 5.5
Today’s Update
Alexa – 34,938 (WHOO-HOO, WE BEAT 35,000!!!)
Visits – 36,519 (23,481 to go…we can do it!)
Feedburner Subscribers - 293 (207 to go)
Twitter Followers – 317 (183 to go as well, yay!!!)
MozRank – 5.02 (0.48 to go)
As always, thank you so much for being my supporters! Obviously, I could not do any of this without you and I never forget that!!!
The Saved Quarter Challenge Update
I joined The Saved Quarter Challenge this year and am aiming to save at least $21,000 by the end of 2011! That would be a tiny bit more than 25% of our GROSS pay from our two full time jobs.
Here’s how I’ve done this week for the Saved Quarter Challenge ($21,000 Goal):
I have better updates after the 13th of every month since that is when our billing periods end, so here is where we funnelled away money this past week:
- 401(k) – $80
- Roth IRA – $300
- Emergency Fund / Savings – $875
- Auto and Home Maintenance – $500
- Extra Cash for Investments – $975
Total This Week: $2730
We also saved $620 to the vacation account and $600 to fun money but I’m not counting that as savings until we have some left at the end of the year.
We didn’t spend as much this month as usual – about $600 less actually. I also cashed out $700 of my blogging income from Paypal and saved it in multiple locations. The rest of the extra is simply because we live off of hubby’s salary as a school librarian ($38,000 take home pay) and save almost all of what I make ($26,000 take home pay).
Total to date: $4630 guaranteed, $16,370 to go.
Additonal Info
I will continue posting monthly and yearly blog statistics and income updates from here on out, so stay tuned at the beginning of every month!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you don’t already, you can follow me via RSS or Twitter by following those links.
To learn more about the Yakezie, check out my Yakezie page! Feel free to email me if you are a Yakezie member or challenger and don’t see yourself on the list!
If you are interested in seeing how I went from an 8 million plus Alexa rank to about 50,000 in less than 8 months, you can see My Blogging Schedule, which breaks down everything I do related to blogging.
THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING THE BEST READERS EVER!!!
February 19, 2011, at 6:00 am
I have just started a niche site, About Life Insurance,
that will hopefully be a useful resource for everything life insurance.
It’s not a blog - just a basic site for life insurance questions.
If you run a blog or site, I’d truly appreciate it if you could link to any of the posts if they are helpful to you.
If you let me know, I will be sure to return the favor.
If you don’t run a blog or site and would like to help, let me know if you come up with any popular life insurance questions that I have not covered yet.
Thank you so much just for taking a look!!!
My Favorite Posts this Week
Guest Posts from BFS
Thank you very much for having me over!
Guest Posts at BFS
Thank you for a day off!
If you would like to guest post on BFS, please contact me with your idea or post and I’d love to have you over for the day! If you are a business, please contact me here for more details. Thanks!
Giveaways and Other Info
Blog Carnivals
My carnival – Totally Money Blog Carnival – was all Valentine’s Day
at Saving Money Today!
Please check out the last edition and submit here every week!
If you are hosting a carnival that will include BFS, please email me so I can include it in my roundup. Thanks!
Top 5 Referring Sites to BFS in within the Last Week:
I post the top 25 on the first Saturday of every month.
- Yakezie
- Free Money Finance
- Grumpy Rumblings of the Untenured
- Punch Debt in the Face
- The Saved Quarter
Feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my “lurkers” too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!
Remember to check out my other blog, Crystal Clear Thoughts,
for my Weight Watchers Updates and the Kindness Commitment Posts!
I’m already down 15 pounds!!!
February 18, 2011, at 6:00 am
The following is a post I wrote as a staff writer at Sweating the Big Stuff last August and my current update. Yes, I received permission from SBS to republish my older works from his site.
Then:
As a zero-based budgeter, I am sometimes asked what we do with any windfalls that may pop up. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, but now we have a plan.
Mr. BFS and I sometimes have a few hundred dollars at the end of the month that is just leftover – extra cash after all our savings goals and expenses are covered. Most of this extra usually comes from the sports officiating Mr. BFS does after work but now a little of it is from my blog as well.
Anyway, for almost a year we just socked the extra away into the emergency fund, but hubby once complained that his extra work didn’t seem to be bringing him any extra money (“fun” money specifically). I don’t have as many hobbies as Mr. BFS, so I had never really thought about it like that. After talking about it, we came up with a system that has worked really well for us so far.
We put 50% towards our emergency savings and/or mortgage depending on how much is in the emergency account. If we don’t have at least $10,000 in the emergency fund, we put it all towards that since $10,000 is the bare minimum for us to feel secure. If that is taken care of, we split the 50% between the emergency fund and the mortgage as we see fit. Another 25% goes to our vacation account and the last 25% is split between our two individual fun money accounts.
This has been working well, but we will now be getting four “extra” paychecks each year – we are both paid biweekly on the same day since he got his new job. We agree (in fact, hubby brought it up) that $2500 just seems like a ridiculous amount to add to fun money accounts, so we will probably be putting those four paychecks a year into a second Roth IRA.
As I was writing this up, I noticed that Daniel even has noted in that he was thinking of putting some “extra” money either in savings or towards a want, specifically an iPhone.
I also came across 4 Ways to Maximize Your Stop Loss Pay at No Debt Plan and thought Kevin had some good ideas too:
1) Put it Where Your Budget Needs It
2) Pay Down Debt
3) Save It – emergency fund or Roth IRA
4) Buy a CD and think about your options
Now:
We still split up our monthly extra:
35% – Investment Cash
25% – Emergency Fund/Savings
20% – Vacation Account
10% - Hubby’s fun money
10% – My fun money
I’m not a certified financial planner, so what do you do if you are ever lucky enough to have some extra money left at the end of the month?
February 17, 2011, at 6:00 am
As you could see from our stock portfolio, my husband and I have used Scottrade.com as our stock investment company for the last 5 years. Overall, we have been very happy. Here is our current review of Scottrade.com:
Overall rating: 9/10
Pros: The $7 flat rate for trades is simple and reasonable. We also use their email alerts for any stocks we are watching. We also really like the fact there are no minimum balance rules or monthly purchase requirements. My husband likes to use their streaming trader window so he can see real-time info. He also likes the fact that our Scottrade.com account is tied to our main bank account so we can do automatic transfers, one-time transfers, and as long as we buy a security that is traded on the American exchange that is valued at more than $1, they allow us to instantly use our money while they wait for the bank transfer to go through.
Cons: If you buy small amounts of stock at a time, the $7 per trade can eat up profit quickly. It was also a bit annoying that we had to take our initial deposit to an actual Scottrade facility, but it’s also comforting to know that there is one more line of defense between our money and identity thieves.
Other Comments: We’ve been happy Scottrade.com customers for more than 5 years. We plan on sticking with them for the long haul.
Thanks to some awesome fellow bloggers, here are some more investment company reviews for you:
Investment Company Name: Vanguard
Overall Rating: 9/10
Pros: One of the best things about Vanguard is the fees. VG is known as the mutual fund company with one of the longest track records, but also with one of (if not) the lowest expense ratios in the industry. They have a variety of fund families and are well respected within the industry. I would not recommend individual stock purchases though VG as their equity fees are among the highest out there (however, given that they are first and foremost a mutual fund company, this is unsurprising). For mutual funds, VG can’t be beat.
Cons: VG is not entirely friendly towards very small investors. Typically their funds have minimums of $3K, but they do allow you to set up an automatic investment (e.g., $100/month) account that will get you started. Additionally, I’ve heard (but not personally experienced) that their customer service hold times can be somewhat excessive. Their website is not very flashy — but again, if you offer the lowest fees in the business, there are going to be tradeoffs.
Other Comments: If you’re interested in learning more about Vanguard, check out their unofficial investment forums, www.bogleheads.org, where long-time VG members dole out very solid investment advice.
Investment Company Name: ShareBuilder
Overall Rating: 8/10
Pros: Inexpensive automatic trades, you can buy partial shares, my account is connected to my ING account for easy transferring of funds.
Cons: It’s a little tricky to get the automatic trades set up. Real-time trades aren’t as cheap as some other brokers (but there are codes for free trades out there).
Other Comments: I love ING products and ShareBuilder is a part of ING. It may not be the best broker of you want to do a lot of real-time trades but if you want a place to set up inexpensive automatic trades ShareBuilder is a great place. I’ve been using them for a few years now and have been happy with them.
Investment Company Name: Sogotrade.com
Overall Rating: 10/10
Pros: Market and limit order stock trades online for only $3. One of the lowest on the internet that I have been able to find. The account minimum is only $500. Reliable at being able to withdrawal money in 3-4 business days (normal) from your investment account. Is a subsidiary of the very well established Genesis Securities. Offer ETF’s and stocks listed on NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX exchanges.
Cons: Do not have physical offices / stock brokers, if that is what you are used to.
Invest Company Name: Scottrade
Overall Rating: 8.5/10
Pros: Low Fees, Great Customer Service, Brokerages in most cities, Quality Investment Options
Cons: No Dividend Reinvestment Option, Trading Tools
Investment Company Name: Thinkorswim
Overall Rating: 8/10
Pros: Best option trading platform ever, ease of use for complex trades, charting is amazing.
Cons: Steep learning curve (they provide a lot of how-to videos, but it’s plain tough).
Other Comments: If you are looking to trade options, thinkorswim is the only way to go. The commissions are reasonable, and they treat spreads and other complex trades as one commissionable event (which saves you money when you really have 2-separate options trades). Their charting of options is the best available. They also have a “Paper Money” system that allows new investors to practice on their platform without using real money.
Investment Company Name: Vanguard
Overall Rating: 10/10
Pros: Vanguard has a great selection of mutual funds to choose between that you can buy and sell for free. It’s very easy to setup a variety of different brokerage and retirement accounts and transfer assets between them. It’s also easy to link accounts you have at other institutions so you can use their website as a dashboard and view all of your investments at once.
Vanguard has excellent support services that you can reach quickly. The people you talk to don’t work on commission so they typically have your best interest in mind.
Lastly, as you invest more your brokerage costs go down. $7 trades to start (for the 1st 25 in a calendar year) and then jumps down based tiers of investment to $2/trade then down to free.
Cons: I can’t think of anything bad to say about them! I’ve used Vanguard for twenty years and have had a great experience with them.
Investment Company Name: First Trade
Overall Rating: 8/10
Pros: $7 trading on mutual funds and stocks. Good customer service. I have mostly positive experiences when I called.
Cons: Did not take my pre IPO penny stock certificate so I had to open a TD Ameritrade account.
Other Comments: It’s an online discount brokerage and I just use them to trade. I want low fee and minimal hassle and they provide that.
Other discount brokerage charges around $50 to trade no load mutual funds and I think that’s too much.
What investment companies have we missed? How do you like yours?
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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