No Debt Plan is about getting and staying out of debt with a plan. Kevin, the author, is passionate about budgeting, saving for the future, and using goals to reach financial freedom. You can subscribe to his blog by RSS or email.
This interview is part of a new feature he’s developed called Subscriber Swap Saturday. The basic idea is to get the subscribers of one blog to subscribe to the other blog for at least a week, just to try it out. After a week if you don’t find that blogger’s content enticing, drop it. The hope is that over time you will find several writers that you weren’t familiar with who provide meaningful content to you. You can read more about Subscriber Swap Saturday at his get out of debt blog, and you can read his interview with me here.
How did you get started blogging?
I started blogging way back in the day where you had to manually update websites with HTML code. This was before tools like WordPress and things like that came out to make it really easy. After that I had a personal blog that I ran for a while, but I was really bad at maintaining it.
Over time I noticed I was giving a lot of advice about personal finance to folks. I was reading a bunch of personal finance blogs as well. I decided to bet myself that I could blog consistently for at least a year. I figured by then it would be habit and I could keep it up. I’ve been able to do that, so I’m pretty happy.
How did you come up with the idea for Subscriber Swap Saturdays?
Great question! I wish I knew the answer! If I remember correctly I was trying to come up with some sort of series that wouldn’t be your typical “this is how you do X”. I also knew there were a bunch of other bloggers out there trying to make it in the blogging arena. I don’t consider myself a “big dog” in terms of popularity, but nonetheless I wanted to give some exposure to some blogs that were smaller than mine. I figured interviews would be a great way to get everyone some exposure.
One of the ways to get out of debt is to develop a monthly budget. What is your monthly food budget (if you don’t mind sharing), and what do you do to ensure you don’t go over budget?
Our food budget is broken down into three parts, really. It sounds complicated, but bear with me. First we have our grocery budget of $220 per month. This covers all breakfasts, my wife’s lunches, and our dinners. Second we dedicate $50 to eating out every month. This is a small enough amount to not be very significant, while also limiting us to two or three meals out. This is good for our health and our wallet. The third is my work lunches. I am required by my employer to take 3-5 clients out per week — but they pay for it. So I have a separate category that I dip into to pay for the lunches, but then that money gets reimbursed and goes right back in the pot.
Many people think $220 is unrealistic to feed two people for a month. They are used to eating out or grabbing something at the store on the way home. If my work didn’t pay for lunches our costs might go up $20 per month. It’s all about planning and cooking the meals yourself.
If someone is new to budgeting, how would you recommend he or she get started?
Find a program that works for you. I always recommend people use an Excel spreadsheet because no program that you pay for is really going to meet all of your needs. But setting up a budget from scratch in Excel might be too advanced for some folks. From there I would recommend one of the free websites out there like Wesabe, Mint, YouNeedABudget, etc. I am cautious with these sites because they pretty much need your account information to login and pull your balances. That makes me nervous — and is why we use Excel.
At the very least someone just starting out should grab their receipts and bank statements from the last two or three months and just give every dollar a name. Put each purchase in a category. Doing that alone can really open the eyes of some people — “what do you mean we spent $500 eating out last month?!”
What are your top 3 financial goals for 2009?
1. Maintain full time employment! — My job is relatively secure, but losing income would be a huge financial blow.
2. Fund all of our savings categories (Roth IRAs, future kid general expenses and education costs, car savings, etc.)
3. Grow my income from blogging.