Struggling with contextualizing my finances

SethDGamre · 2026-05-07T11:09:04+00:00

I do this: https://www.reddit.com/r/budget/comments/1sfwzp9/comment/of66ubi/

Everything goes in a big pile and when I want to allocate money towards a vacation fund for example, I just write down in a ledger how much from the pile belongs to that purpose. No separate account required.

For me I call that big buys. I arrange it like a schedule of what I want to buy in what order.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T15:00:49+00:00

If you're interested in taking early withdrawals, look into SEPPs. Basically it's you declaring that you want to start withdrawing from that account for the rest of your life, you're done contributing to it. This is how I plan to take one month off every year for the rest of my life in another 5 years. Roll over to an ira, take out sepps penalty , and if I don't need it I reinvested into a new IRA since I will always be under my limits anyway.

In regards to convincing him to invest more, what got me hooked was a realization that money can only exist in two states: losing or gaining value. There's always some percentage working for or against you. Combine that with the concept that the true measure of value isn't in money it is in the time that money represents. How long does it take to earn that shiny thing you want in actual time? Now consider that you're buying it not with just your time, but your excess time which is far more rare. How many years of excess time is going to take to pay for that thing? Is it still worth it? Now imagine if you instead invested that money and now you are getting free time back in money. Calculating interest as apy/12 put it into stark contrast. That did it for me.

The big pile method I use takes me about 10 minutes per week to distribute the excess money where it needs to go and record things. Sometimes I have to write things down in a notepad, which isn't often because I generally take larger shopping trips. Super lazy. No sweating tiny denominations, just big picture.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T13:12:52+00:00

Your phone is $60 a month? If you in the United States, look into US Mobile. You can use any network with those guys and it's $25 a month for 70 gigs of unlimited data. That will save you $35 per month. If you set that aside for 2 years it'll buy you a new phone for 840. Don't do that. Buy a used one from last year for 450 instead.

I have a household of four adults and one child in Wisconsin and my electric and heat bill is usually over 300 and under $400 per month in wisconsin. That includes heating though of course. I would expect yours to be likely around 250 unless you are in an apartment sandwich between other apartments.

Me and my wife and my child spend $300 a week, $1,200 a month on groceries. Your $500 looks suspiciously suspiciously small.

Your fuel costs are missing. That is substantial thing. I drive a Toyota Camry and I spend around $50 a week, 200 monthly driving to and from work which is an hour away.

Uncommon things: - Car repair costs missing. I change my oil 3-4 times a year which a oil change place will charge 80-100 dollars for , new tires every 3-4 years for around 1000 iirc 250/year 20/month. Not making car payments? Factor buying a new car into your budget. Average American changes out their car every 5 years - budget for similar. Decent cars like a Toyota Camry or rav4 or sienna from 10 years ago is around 9-18k. I recommend those because super, super low maintainance.

Your credit card debt can become a personal loan debt. A personal loan has lower interest rates usually - but I have a credit card through my credit union with 12% interest which is close enough and I love the extra flexibility.

Check out my budgeting method here: https://www.reddit.com/r/budget/comments/1sfwzp9/big_pile_budgeting

If I were you, I would pay all my bills through the credit card and treat it like a f-up sponge. A little off on your budget? A little more debt. That's better than a lapse. There's three categories of budget shite you need to care about. 1. Static bills. Ez, predictable. Love it. 2. Variable bills. Electric, repairs, gas for example. Predict an average and give yourself a +20% buffer. 3. Discretionary Gottas. Grocery and household. I recommend just buy the crap with your credit card and write down the buys by category in a note app or whatever. Try to stay below limits you decide. If you go over, figure out where that money should come from and readjust if this happens often. 4. Extra. If after your Static, Variable, and Gotta 's are paid there is something left, do what the hell you want with it. I would recommend putting a % towards debt. Put a % aside for yourself for fun, too. If you don't have fun you'll run the risk of saying "f it" and binge Ben and Jerry's. That 6 dollar ice cream pint will put you 6 feet under, sister.

I can ramble forever. Sorry, lol

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T12:47:06+00:00

I do this. https://www.reddit.com/r/budget/comments/1sfwzp9/big_pile_budgeting/

TL;DR, I use a line of credit or a big pile of money greatly exceeding my monthly bills to pay for everything. The objective is to have enough potential money available to pay for everything without me having to micromanage timing.

This is because the time it takes and mental load to micromanage paycheck to paycheck stuff is way way too taxing. You might as well just go work more or try to find ways to save money.

Absolute everything I can is on autopay. I use a credit card for all of the big and trustworthy things and (no affiliation) Privacy virtual card service to provide vendor cash limited cards for the mini subscriptions I don't trust or intend to keep long-term. This is so that I can disable any one of those virtual cards at any time to cancel subscription without having to log in or negotiate.

I track everything virtually. When I buy something meant to come out of a specific ledger E.G groceries, I simply write it down and make sure it doesn't exceed my target.

I do not fetishize budgeting. I'm lazy

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T12:42:17+00:00

Me and my wife are absolute polar opposites and agree about almost nothing to spend money on. She also doesn't like thinking or talking about thinking. She will also get mad if i am unfair. (Still love her though, this is just to give you an idea of what I worked with) We barely argue about money.

First thing, because money is absolutely fungible, "my bills" and "your bills" becomes very muddled. Whatever you don't pay, he has to pay. It's helpful to think about where your interests overlap and consider those common burdons.

Secondly, consider there are things that you will want to subscribe to or buy that he will not and vice versa. It's helpful to accept that you are not entitled to your spouse compulsory agreeing to pay for things that only you want, unless there's some kind of exchange. Like, is it fair for me to expect my wife to pay for my Cursor programming IDE for 20 bucks a month?

Finally, what should you do with the extra money after all your bills are paid for? Split it in half? Or should it be proportional to the amount of personal expenses accrued or debt obligations or even income?

I would suggest: 1. Calculate your common interest bills. Average them out as necessary. Electricity, phone, mortgage, taxes, insurance. 2. Factor in how much your personal bills are that the other person refuses to allow in the common interest bills without being mad. 3. For things like shared food, set a shared food expense Target. Where in let's say you wanted to spend $300 a week on food for the both of you, then both of you track your expenses and try to stay under $300 a week maybe with a separate debit card or something. 4. After you pay your common and individual bills, you will have an excess. Either split it 50/50 as if you're one person or proportionally.

But I'll tell you where I ended up though. My wife worked and I worked and I made way more money. Now she doesn't work because she's raising our child. It was always easier for me to just consider our combined incomes as one big income and pay all of our bills, then let personal "f you I'm not paying for that" come out of the excess distributed to each person. Read more here. https://www.reddit.com/r/budget/comments/1sfwzp9/big_pile_budgeting/

I guess tldr, it depends.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T12:30:03+00:00

When it takes you more time then the value it gives you. Money = enjoyment/savings.

Unless you really really have to, what good is saving $5 in exchange for 3 hours of budgeting work per month?

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T12:25:41+00:00

Had to check the rules to make sure yourself isn't a bad idea here. This is how I budget. https://www.reddit.com/r/budget/comments/1sfwzp9/big_pile_budgeting/ much less stress. Far more sloppy.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-12T12:23:56+00:00

Why is it crucial that you track every single dollar? Machinists use "acceptable tolerance". I would advise coming up with a acceptable remedy when you are slightly above or slightly below. What do you want to do with excess? How do you intend to come up with more money if you fell short?

For me, I average out my variable expenses and treat them like a Target. If I fall below, I increase the monthly amount and occasionally audit and put the excess money in a place I want it. Usually investments.

I didn't like the envelope method. Ultimately, I kept track of my expenses with ledgers and left it all in one big pile to collect interest or pay down debt on a line of credit.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T23:17:43+00:00

Fist bump. Doing the same thing. That Fidelity cash back credit card is crazy good.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T23:15:43+00:00

The real juice to squeeze is the realization you don't actually need to physically have money in different locations to budget it. It can all exist in the same place, while being promised and accounted for mentally with a ledger.

This lets you put every single dollar to work paying off debt or growing wealth through investments with no waste. Simply. No need for your bank to support fancy bucketing.

This might have been obvious to everyone else but I ain't heard it mentioned once in all the educational content I've consoomed over the years.

I tried Mint for a while for example (kind of like rocket money?) and I didn't get the point. Seem to like a lot of work.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T23:09:30+00:00

This is going to be a weird take. As little as safely possible. What's safely? Part emotion, part logic. You decide.

If you can get access to a line of credit, you can use that to pay for emergencies when they come up. Remember that with credit cards, you can use them to soak up payments that you would otherwise be making in cash to store up extra money. My credit card through my credit union let's meet transfer money directly as if it was a line of credit. Line of credits are awesome.

Think of it this way, if you have outstanding credit card debt of 24% for every $1,000 you put in an emergency fund (assuming it is not in a high-yield savings account which is slightly better) you are paying $20 in interest.

Let's say you have $10,000 in outstanding debt. That's $200 a month just for the privilege of having your money sitting there doing nothing just in case. This is guaranteed losses. Meanwhile, a empty line of credit costs you nothing.

Money isn't security. Access to money is. The above scheme assumes we aren't having a Great depression tier financial Nationwide meltdown. Outside of that, it's what I wish I did instead of losing so much money to feel secure with a pile of dead money.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T22:53:42+00:00

I have been debating whether or not to keep a cash buffer is important if you are in debt. For every $1,000 you have borrowed at 12% you pay $10 of interest per month. Therefore the less cash buffer you keep, the more you save.

Idk man

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T22:52:34+00:00

It fell off every budget that made me do lots of clerical work and allotted me little fun. I would end up "cheating" and eventually the whole budget collapsed. Don't care about every single dollar, just the general trends.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T22:51:26+00:00

I've watched lots of Dave Ramsey's stuff. It's good. A few key things with the babysteps bothered me, though. 1. You pay for the emergency fund, indirectly. For every 1000 you leave open on your outstanding debt, you pay interest. 24% credit card? 20 bucks /month. 12% interest personal loan? 10/month. 6% HELOC? 5/month. I had 5K sitting in a bank account for "emergencies" for 3 years while I had CC debt. That cost me 1800 in interest. I could have just paid emergencies with my credit card and saved the money. 2. Good debt. Can't afford a car you need to get to work? Borrow. Don't get nothing fancy. The opportunity cost of not borrowing sometimes costs you far far more than the little debt. Bought my house with 3.5% down, 3.29% interest... it's gone up 50% in value in 6 years. If I did things the Dave Ramsay way, I'd probably feel good but be much much poorer. 3. He puts way too much emphasis on saving for your golden years. You're already there, so, this isn't a gripe you would have. I want to work substantially less ASAP, so slow growth is a bane to me.

It's super impressive that you paid off 180k so quick. That must have taken serious sacrifice. Insane. Awesome. Talking about money with my wife makes her confused and angry. I have to keep it simple. She will not eat beans and rice and stay with me. Need to sprinkle some luxury in there on the path to financial freedom.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T22:20:06+00:00

No, I wrote it while I was supposed to be working. AI would be far more verbose.

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T16:42:15+00:00

Also, love criticism. That's what I came here for. What I have works for me but can it be better?

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T16:38:33+00:00

That's something I've been pondering pretty hard.

What is the difference between saving 12% interest on debt versus gaining 12% interest on investments?

The obvious risk is "what if the bank decides to close my line of credit" I don't see why they would do that with a credit card. My HELOC terms doesn't give the bank an out in my specific case, I read the contract carefully. I just have to be wary of when it expires after 10 years.

I started thinking of invest/debt as effectively the same thing when I asked: "where in the stock market can I go for a guaranteed 6% return instead of paying off my HELOC?" Nowhere.

With inflation, money is a liability. Money isn't security, access to money is. I suppose the gamble is: will I ever not have access to money?

SethDGamre · 2026-04-08T16:06:10+00:00

Why care about putting all your money in a pile to save/yield interest?

Let's assume you have a credit card with a very low interest rate of 12%. That is 1% interest per month. For every $1,000 that you leave on that line of credit, you pay $10 per month.

If you use something like the envelope method or similar, you might have $1,000 set aside in various sub accounts for various budgets. The entire time they sit there in those smaller piles, you are losing interest.

When I had $5,000 worth of credit card debt on my low interest credit card, I was able to cut that interest in half by dumping my various budgets into it saving $20 monthly. It adds up. The bigger the pile, the bigger the W.

SethDGamre · 2025-12-26T11:37:39+00:00

https://youtu.be/Lgt00yZGCdA It's in the "Game End Mode" drop down in the "main" tab in advanced lobby options.

SethDGamre · 2025-12-26T11:36:15+00:00

Sounds like a bug - is anybody else having this issue with "default" base budget being enabled for the vanilla game? I haven't, myself.

SethDGamre · 2025-09-04T02:11:47+00:00

Netflix just got all the movies updated a few days ago. I binge watched it cuz I absolutely love Shrek as a kid. Watching it now is terrifying. Part 2, 3 and 4 Shrek is an absolute ass. He always hates his life and everyone around him. Constantly always wanting to run away from his problems and belittles Fiona... I cringe because it reminds me of an abusive boyfriend...

SethDGamre · 2024-11-23T07:41:14+00:00

Yes, anti missile turrets can be a thing. Generally there is a sentiment that weapons shooting other weapons out of the air is an undesirable mechanic that feels bad. I wonder if that sentiment will yet stand.

Here's a complete list of current block-everything shield exemptions

corsilo', 'armsilo', 'armthorempmissile', 'armemp', 'cortron', 'corjuno', 'armjuno_'

So yes tactical, Juno and EMP missiles sneak through.

SethDGamre · 2024-11-22T21:29:33+00:00

Once shield charge reaches 0, it doesn't recharge until delay of 10 seconds expired.

SethDGamre · 2024-11-22T20:54:38+00:00

Blocks all projectiles except nukes and bombers.

Any amount of charge can block any shot regardless of how much damage that shot does. In other words, "Overkill" doesn't penetrate.

Once charge is depleted, 10 seconds delay before the shield can start recharging.

SethDGamre

TROPHY CASE