I pinky promise I won’t turn PDITF into a wedding/marriage/love blog, but you are gonna have to bear with me, for a bit longer as this engagement thing is uncharted territory for me.
Married Life Equals Hidden Expenses
Getting married is going to completely change the way I have been managing my money. Apparently, wives don’t just cook and clean (dear feminists, that was a joke), but they also do things like make money and spend money.
In years past, I have made my budget on January 1st and made assumptions about what the next 12 months are going to look like.
It has been pretty easy for me to do, seeing that all I had to account for was myself. I knew what my income would be, I knew how much food I bought each month, and I knew how frequently I was putting gas in my car.
It was really easy to make a budget once every 12 months because a few things in my life varied.
Well, Girl Ninja, I hate to break it to ya, but you’re throwin’ a little wrench in my tires.
I think I’m going to be forced into budgeting twice this year. One for now through wedding day, and again wedding day through the rest of the year. That means I have to do twice as much work, ugh.
Post-Wedding Money Management
Even more unfortunate… I have no idea how to budget for our life post-wedding. I have no clue how much women cost.
To further complicate things, Girl Ninja is a substitute teacher so her income can range from $200-$2,000 monthly (depending on how many days she works). My guess is our wedding will take place in August, which leaves me with four months of assumptions (Aug through Dec).
It really seems pointless to make a budget for the last half of the year at this point, since I really have no clue what things will be looking like.
We could be spending $900 to $1,500 on rent, $300-$500 on grocery/dining, $100-$400 on gas, blah, blah, blah. Nearly every category has a couple of hundred dollar variance.
It kind of defeats the purpose of budgeting, when you have no clue what you will be spending on virtually all aspects of your life.
Let’s Plan Short-Term Then, Perhaps?
Right now my game plan is to establish my budget from January to August and call it good.
Once married life begins, I will closely monitor our spending habits and be totally prepared to make my 2011 budget on January 1st of next year.
I guess it’s not a huge deal though, because I treat my budget like a spending guideline. Do any of you recall how much your overall expenses increased post-marriage? Do you make a budget each month, once a quarter, or like me, once a year?
P.S. a few of you bloggers (mostly women) have mentioned you would like to hear a little more about my thoughts on weddings/marriage/love, so I plan to begin touching on those topics at least once a month.
Consider me your official Love Ninja 🙂
