At least the box spring and bed frame were brand new. That counts for something, right?

So, have you noticed it's been a while since I last spoke about money? Because really, it's been a while since I spoke about money.

A few months ago, I had devised the ultimate spreadsheet for keeping track of our finances. Segmented by week, divided into categories, I envisioned dedicating fifteen minutes every Sunday night to adding receipts and typing figures into cute little Excel boxes, all to influence our purchasing habits for the rest of the month. And for a while, it worked. We didn't always stay within budget, but at least we knew just how much we'd overspent and which categories had received more than their fair share of TLC.

Then, on April Fool's Day, we found out I was pregnant, and it all went to pot. We have not updated a spreadsheet since, resigning ourselves to removing precious savings from our bank account each month to pay our credit card bill in full.

What can I say? My hands were too busy clutching the toilet to sort through all those tiny pieces of paper, and we knew we could always cover the Visa total, so it seemed better to focus our time on more important things, like bidding a formal farewell to life as we know it, sans any fruit of our loins.

Though we've not done well tracking our money lately, we've sure done a bang-up job of spending it. In two weekends, we'll move into a larger, two-bedroom apartment. In a few months, we'll be upgrading our cell phone plan--a plan that currently involves one phone shared between two people--so that by the end of my pregnancy we'll be readily available to each other at all times. There's talk of replacing Luke's rickety 1993 Chevy Lumina with a vehicle I would actually allow our child to ride in and paying off the Cobalt to make room in the budget for diapers, doctor's visits, and baby food. All of this while hoarding pennies for my maternity leave and preparing ourselves for Luke's eventual job loss.

To say I'm feeling overwhelmed by all we hope to accomplish during these next five months (holy crap, five months?!) would be an understatement.

Regarding our more immediate future, we've discussed replacing several pieces of furniture within our apartment to make life a little more comfortable. A kitchen table that seats more than two people, for one thing. A bookshelf not made of particle board. A sleeper sofa for accommodating the slew of guests we expect to receive once the baby is here because I refuse to put our parents on an air mattress and also refuse to sleep on one myself when I'll be getting up to feed a newborn every two to three hours.

So far we've been lucky in that we haven't had to blow any cash on major items or appliances in our adult lives. My first sofa set was purchased for a whopping hundred and twenty dollars and featured decor straight from the set of All in the Family, and I passed it on to my sister, Ryan, when Luke moved in because he had inherited a sturdier one from his brother. My parents bestowed upon me an old kitchen table and a brand-new microwave when I moved into my first apartment back in Rensselaer, and I scored coffee tables from my aunt. The TV we use was given to Luke for his birthday a few years ago, and I bought our "gently used" mattress from one of Saint Joe's administrative assistants back when I was an employee. If there were a universe called Free And Second Hand, we would be the masters of it and the bosses of you.

Keeping in mind our penchant for used (and eventually abused) furnishings, it should surprise no one that Luke and I both hyperventilate after agreeing to pay a thousand dollars for a couch or spend two hundred dollars on a damn table. We already have those things! Look! They're right there! What the hell are we thinking? Yet there were no qualms about dropping five hundred dollars on the Nintendo Wii and its related accessories, and there was never a question as to whether or not we'd take a vacation. Tell me we're not the only ones who subscribe to such madness.

In the end, it'll be OK. We have a respectable amount in our savings account, including what we'll need to cover my three months of FMLA time, and we add to it every two weeks. I'll be getting a raise this month, and possibly a bonus. I'm pursuing a freelance opportunity that'll reveal itself soon, and I'll bring in a small stipend for teaching the blogging class this fall. Luke will most likely get a raise of his own come August. There's no need to worry. Deep in my heart, I know this.

But it still breaks my arm to hand over that damn credit card.

Comments

[Isabel]

Great post. As always.

Our first house was all about IKEA. We hope to maybe upgrade a little when it comes time for the second house. But damn it, I'm all for not spending a load of money on this type of thing.

[Nichole]

Do you have a Big Lots nearby? The one I went to this weekend had a shipment of furniture from Pier One, and it was all more than 50% off. They had some pretty cool bookshelves.

[Audrey]

Oh my gosh, you are definitely not the only ones! We are all about thrift store furniture and clothes. And if I ever do buy clothes from a non-thrift store, it's only if I have a gift card. We figure, why not save money in those areas so we can afford to eat out once in a while? All of our non-particle-board furniture is hand-me-down, and that's completely okay with me for now. I do dream of someday being able to afford to re-decorate our house with our own grown-up furniture that we buy all by ourselves. But along with that dream comes the panick of "But it's so expensive! And look! This old couch is perfectly fine!"

And yet we barely blinked an eye at the boatload of money we're putting into our yard this summer. I guess it's all a matter of priorities.

Sounds like you and Luke have some exciting plans for your savings, even if it does break your arm to hand over that credit card! (Look at it this way -- with a broken arm, you can't possibly change a diaper, right? Looks like Luke'll have to do it!)

[Katie]

"Tell me we're not the only ones who subscribe to such madness."

I can't say I'm totally with you on this one right now :-) I'm considering if I should really spend $2 to take my kids roller skating.

[Operation Pink Herring]

I think you guys are in good company. All of our furniture is from Ikea, except for one wardrobe and one dresser (which Joel got for free when his dad worked at a furniture store) and our coffee table, which we got for 80% off at a going-out-of-business sale. And it does double-duty as our dining room table, because we don't have a dining room. Or a dining room table.

To make it even better, nearly all of our Ikea furniture is secondhand from craigslist or purchased from the as-is department. In fact, we only have one couch that we paid full price for, and that was only because the matching piece was a super duper bargain in the as-is section.

I can't justify spending money on real furniture because I know that eventually we will move, and either we'll end up selling it all, or it will get banged up in the move. Plus, if we had nice furniture, I'd have to be really mad when the cats scuffed it up chasing each other around the house at 80mph. Strangely enough, that's the same logic I use for keeping my crappy 1998 Jetta -- if I had a nice car, I'd have to worry about all those little scratches and nicks that come along with street parking in a city where no one knows how to drive.

But I spent $10 on a mediocre sandwich and 2 coffees at work today. And that's fine, because I'm nuts.

[Carrisa]

That Dave Ramsey has the right idea when it comes to getting out of debt... but of course it's like a diet for your finances. And it's quite obviously from looking at me that I cannot stick to a diet.

But I still think his plan is the best. If only I could freaking stick to it.

[Fraulein N]

Girl, I feel your freak-out. How about we JUST got actual, real live bookcases for our apartment? Before that we were using ... um, let's just say it rhymes with "silk grates" and leave it at that.

I'm sure things will work themselves out, especially now that you're back on top of things. Good luck on the freelancing!

[Lindsey]

The furniture thing gets me too. A lot of our stuff is hand-me-down, although we did purchase a new bedroom set last year. I'll spend hundreds of dollars on plane flights and random things, but when I see a table for $200 I'm like, oooh, $200...that's a lot...can I actually afford that?? Give me a break. Of course I could if I just stopped eating out and buying random crap. :-)

[Professor Art Nerd]

Feeling the financial crunch over here, too. But one good thing about how freakin' broke we are right now- it's making me realize how much money we must spend on miscellaneous crap, when we have it to spend. Goodness!

[Molly]

We, the proud recipients of all hand-me-down dressers, but purchasers of large television, are in your boat. Priorities, maybe a smidge off, but I guarantee if someone wanted to hand me down a big new tv I'd take it. :O)

It's good to see that we are not alone, as I read through your comments. I second the Ikea comment, though it would be rough getting it from Schaumburg to Indy. I wonder what Ikea.com charges for shipping? Seriously, those stores need to start popping up like Walmarts. They rock.

[VirginiaGal]

Us too!

There are certain things which we don't bat an eyelash on spending big bucks for (like a new SUV for each of us in 2005, as we have a talent for buying vehicles at the same time), and then on other things that spending big bucks on really does make sense for quality and durability, we choke.

That's why we haven't recovered his grandmother's good quality sofa (with fabric which doesn't match our house) and still are using a cheap sofa that has holes in the fabric, lumpy cushions from where the cats sleep along the back, and squeaks every time you sit down, but goes with our colors.

New car = fun. New fabric and labor to recover the sofa = boring. That's the best I can figure it - it's not fun to spend $ on the boring stuff?

[Silly Hily]

I feel like such an out-of-the-loop tool for having never been in an Ikea store or owning a piece of whatever Ikea sells. Lizarita, Casey, Stefanie, can you girls help me out here? We don't have Ikea down here.
Anywho, I'm really trying to get my priorities straight and realize if I didn't spend $100 here and $150 there every single weekend at Target on junk that will last a week or a month then I could get a nice piece of new furniture that will last me years and years and years. But the junk at Target? I can't resist. I'm trying, but damn it's hard.
You and Luke will be fine. I understand the not being fine now and wanting to get to the "fine" stage of things though. I'm in a bit of a finance freak out myself right now. But it'll be fine soon. I hope.