Way Under Budget

Well the trip to Hawaii was a bust.  The weather was poor and both the expensive sightseeing tours were canceled for various reasons. 

On a good news note for the spending front, my digital SLR died after five years of great use.  It was an early Canon Rebel XT.  So instead of replacing it with the similar model I'll move up to the Canon 7D.  I'll add in the differential as new spending.

The wife has been going a little crazy with some internet kids clothes shopping so I'll have to add those numbers in soon.

Now we are getting through some money...feel the economy accelerate!

I booked the hotel at $320 per night plus taxes and parking and stuff and its going to be close to $400 per day for 5 days.  And booked an air tour of the Big Island for $800.  Add some rental car, gas and restaurant food and we'll be hitting budget!

Gotta go pack!

Finally a Day getting close to Budget!

I booked the car and one of the sailing/snorkelling trips in Hawaii.  That was $500.  And then spent $70 on snorkelling gear.  So that totals $570 and budget is $670 so we only were shy by $100.

I think as soon as I book the hotel we will be easily blowing through the budget as anything decent seems to be $400 or more.

I think I better go and start a spread sheet to keep track of where we are at.

Day 2 was better...we booked tickets to Hawaii

It's tough to get out of the frugal mindset (probably easier than those of you trying to get into the frugal mindset). When I realized the wife had other commitments this coming weekend I thought I'd take one of the kids away.  So instead of picking where I wanted to go and just pay I did my usual cheap guy thing and found $270 round trip tix to Hawaii so that is where we are going for 5 nights.

I also called a friend to see if he can get us the bro deal at a hotel...no response on that yet.

So only spent $540 today...but that's better than the $65 on a shirt yesterday.

I've linked this to Facebook and Twitter so hopefully by the end of January or so we have found some followers and started to get some advice on things to buy and  services to spend our money on.

Lame First Day

We had a great evening out and weren't hungover this morning.  Went for a nice breakfast with mimosas for the wife.

The only thing we bought that we wouldn't normally have (remember that is one of the rules, if we were going to buy it anyway it isn't part of the $245k) was a $65 shirt from the restaurant we were in.  It's a cool shirt and the wife has for years saying I would look great in this particular style.

Given we have to spend an average of $671 per day we are off to an inauspicious start.

We'll try harder tomorrow.

Help Us Spend our Extended Tax Cuts

Backstory:   President Obama wanted to let the Bush era tax cuts expire for the wealthy but not for couples making less than $300,000. The idea was to stimulate the economy. The thinking was that those couples making less than $300,000 would spend any tax savings. The argument for not extending them to the really wealthy was that if the wealthy got an extra $1,000 they would probably save it because they could already buy everything they want.  The money wouldn't get recirculated so the government might as well tax it.

However, the Republicans wanted an extension and got it. This is despite the existence of a group of wealthy Americans pushing for the cuts to expire for the over $300k crowd as they were willing to pay those taxes and thought it was good for the country.

My wife and I don't mind paying extra taxes as long as they are going to pay off the debt and not perpetuate government waste. We in fact would not normally spend the extra money we saved because we can already afford everything we want and are just socking money away.  So, as a result of the extension in the tax cuts, we will have extra money and this is where you come in.

We will have an extra $245,000 or thereabouts.  This is based on our expected income for 2011 multiplied by the 4.9% that the tax rate didn't increase. So basically we need to spend almost $1,000 every Monday to Friday for the entire year.

So we have an idea. We are going to do the right thing. We are going to spend it. All of it. And we need you to help us because we really aren't very good at spending. 

We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to be in the position we are in.  We both started companies that were successful.  Both of us scrimped and saved to be able to start those companies.  When our peers were buying cars and eating in restaurants we were eating pasta at home.  So we came of age not being good spenders...so please help us.

We want to develop some rules. We want the majority of the money to remain in the USA.  For example (if we hadn't already bought 5 iPads) we could buy an $800 iPad because only about $150 goes overseas while the rest goes to an American company.

We could get lots of massages as that money stays right here in the U.S.  We could buy American art.

Outrageous tipping is a good way to get money into the economy. But our schedule and waistlines don't allow eating out too much. The same schedule problem limits how many luxury vacations we can take. 

We want most of it to be in smaller purchases, no houses, boats etc. because we want to spread it around.

None will go to organized charity as we already have a gifting plan outside of this money.

We were thinking things like hiring people we don't normally hire to do stuff for us...we just don't know what stuff we don't need but will get anyway.

Give us suggestions!

We will blog, Twitter and Facebook our daily spending starting Jan 1, 2011.

P.S.

Please don't flame us for being fortunate...all our companies provide tangible services and products to people who voluntarily purchase them.  We are just trying to give back in a fun way.  If too many people annoy us we'll just take our tax cut and go home :)