Decision Making

I'm a pretty terrible decision maker. I agonise over every little detail, wondering if I'm making the right choice, terrified of making the wrong one, even after the decision has already been made. This is pretty bad when the decision is simply which DVD on a Saturday night, but, alas! That's just me!

We've been faced with a big decision recently. HUGE. Life changing. And with it, comes all of these little decisions that also need to be taken care of. To say that I am scared is a massive understatement. I feel as though the weight of the world has been put on our shoulders. We have mixed support from our families. My family think it's something we should jump at, that it is perfect for us and a great opportunity. Greg's family think we are rushing things and not thinking things through. In a way, yes we are rushing things, but in no way are we not thinking them through.

They don't understand just how much thinking through my brain does when it comes to a decision like this.

With all big decisions I like to do a pros and cons list for each outcome. It also helps to do a "what's the worst that could happen" scenario. That also helps you to realise any precautions you need to put in place. With any financial decisions, I double and triple check budgets, for every situation we may be faced with.

I make sure we have every detail covered. Of course somethings we forget things, but generally, I have a plan for everything. And last but not least, I make sure we are both satisfied with our decision. It needs to be about what is right for our family. It doesn't matter what is right for everyone else, so long as you are doing the right thin by you.

With that in mind, we are still weighing up our options on our most recent big decision, but I'm sure it will be made in the coming days or weeks.

Budgeting for Maternity Leave

I am 22 weeks pregnant today, which means in roughly another 3 months, I shall be waving bye bye to the office and heading off on 7 months maternity leave. It will be bliss, believe me. But it also means that we need to plan our finances accordingly.

We have a number of credit cards with interest free purchases that need paying off within the next 12 months that I need to take into account, along with car loans, rent and other bills, and of course christmas. Greg and I sat down and tweaked our current budget for the next 12 months to get me through my maternity leave.

I use a simple excel spreadsheet, and start off by listing all regular expenses. We are both paid monthly, and I include a weekly, fortnightly and monthly figure in my budget. Our expenses include rent, loan payments, daycare, insurance, internet and phone bills, amongst other things. Yours may look completely different. I also include groceries and petrol money.

This is my everyday budget. I have to now include extra repayments on our credit cards to ensure their balances are paid off by the correct due dates. To work this out I simply took each balance and divided it by how many months were left between now and the due date and put this figure into my budget. This is what I need to put on this particular card to have it paid off by its due date.

Once I have worked out how much is left over from our income after the expenses are paid I allocate this to savings. Normally this would be split in half and half would go into savings, with the other half going onto one of the loans but with maternity leave coming up, savings are going to be extremely important as emergency money.

I think that quite possibly I did leave it awfully late to make sure that we were covering ourselves financially, though it really didn't occur to me just how quick my maternity leave was rolling on up until my boss asked how much longer he had before he had to hire someone to replace me!

Do you budget on an everyday basis?
What method do you use?

 

I am back blogging for the first time a long time, please bear with me while I set up my social networking pages!

Jumping Back into the Unknown

You will all have to excuse me while I get back into the blogging game. It's been a long time since I blogged over at Organised Chaos. I considered going back there, but wasn't really feeling the love, so With Grace and Charm has become my new home!

Life is full of mishaps and blunders, and getting through it isn't always easy. I'm just trying to do it with a little bit of grace and charm, and hopefully get out alive!

So feel free to come along for the ride and share your family muddles on the way!