Let’s have a little fun today shall we? Have you ever thought about money? I’m not talking about things like saving, paying doubt debt, investing, etc. No, I’m talking about tangible money. I personally am fascinated by it.

Think about it.  A $100 bill is worth ten times more than a $10 bill. Why? Simply because someone decided to print the number 100 on one piece of paper, and number 10 on the other. Money has virtually no intrinsic value. It’s only purpose is to serve as a medium for the exchanging of goods. (side note: did you know a penny costs 1.67 cents to make? how crazy is that!)

In fact money is so worthless that it’s quickly becoming an endangered species. If you’re like me then you get paid via direct deposit. Every two weeks my bank account increases as my employer transfers invisible cash in to my bank account. I can then head to Target and buy a plunger (you know for plunging things) with my debit card. Nowhere in that process did I see a single dollar. It’s this crazy magical accounting system that just kind of is.

So since we can all agree money is pretty much worthless, I figured we could get a little creative today and create some hypothetical currencies. I personally like the burrito factor. If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s a little rundown from a previous post…

I can get a California burrito for $5 at the local taco stand. Not only is that sucker scrumtrulescent, but it also fills me up. Now, whenever I go out to eat and look at the menu, I run the burrito factor through my mental calculator. It looks a little something like this… “Okay, this salad is gonna cost me $12.50, which is the same price as 2.5 California burritos. Plus the salad is probably only going to fill me up 50%. So that means this salad is gonna cost the equivalent of 5 California burritos to get full. Death to salad!”

So reader, what’s your currency?

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Let’s get right to the point today shall we? I go out of my way to ensure my personal finances are significantly more complicated than they should be. In fact, I’d even go as far as to say that I sleep better at night because of it. No, I haven’t lost all my marbles, I just hate the idea of automating my finances.

I know I’m probably in the minority here, seeing that numerous personal finance blogs preach the wonders of automating your finances. I won’t try to convince you my way is better (even though it is), but allow me to at least explain myself further. First, I’ll list off all of the regular recurring payments I have each month.

1. Rent- $1,175 (all utilities are rolled in to this one payment, including cable/internet)
2. Cell Phone- $60
3. Car/Renters Insurance- $180
4. Credit Card(s) – Varies depending on balance (usually around $1,500)
5. Charitable Contributions – 10% of gross income
6. Storage unit – $65 (storing our baby grand piano)

I may be forgetting one or two other bills, but for the most part I think that about covers it. I could theoretically set up an automatic withdrawal from my checking for each of these bills, allowing the companies access to my checking account. As the bill comes due, the company would pull the money from my checking account.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that totally freaks me out. Getting married and sharing a checking account with Girl Ninja was scary enough, I couldn’t imagine giving a bunch of random strangers access to my account as well.

I’ve read horror stories about people who thought they set up a $200/monthly payment and were shocked to find out $2,000 was withdrawn instead.

Or how about the person that had their car payment scheduled for the 8th of every month. Well it just so happened that on the night their account was to be debited, their bank was beefing up security protocols and restricted all customers accounts for a few hours. As a result, the payment never processed. But because it’s suppose to be automatic, you never think to check and make sure everything went smoothly. Thirty days later you are dealing with an angry Toyota representative hounding you for being one month past due.

No thanks. Automatic payments don’t sound worth it to me. To be perfectly honest, I actually enjoy manually paying my bills. It reminds me how much money comes in and out of our account each month, but more importantly it makes me want to continually shop around and make sure I’m getting the best deal possible. It essentially keeps me intimately involved in our personal finances. And I need not remind you, making love with money is my favorite kind of romance.

Do you automate your finances? Why or why not?

We had our first snow of the year on Friday night and it was pretty epic. It was a light dusting over certain neighborhoods in the greater Seattle area that last about three hours. Although there was no SNOWpocolypse, Girl Ninja and I got a much-needed reminder that we no longer live in San Diego; 70 degree winters are a thing of the past.

As we navigated the snowy streets in her Toyota Corolla S, we started talking about what our next car would be. That conversation snowballed (pun intended) in to internet shopping for a 2011 4wd Acura MDX. Which then turned in to a visit to a local dealership. Which ultimately left us $40,000 poorer

April November Fools suckers, you didn’t really think we’d go buy a new car without discussing it on PDITF first, did you?

While a new-to-us car is still a ways off, we did have a pretty serious conversation about when and how we want to go about making the switch. My guess is Girl Ninja’s 2005 Corolla S would fetch about $7,000-$8,000 on Craigslist. My (two door) 2007 Scion tC, should sell for around $9,000-$11,000. We know our next vehicle will be an all-wheel-drive SUV, priced somewhere around $15,000. An SUV gives us the ability to navigate the snowy roads (have I ever told you I LOVE skiing, which requires driving through the mountains?) with ease, but more importantly we’ll be able to fit some car-seats and strollers in the back when Baby Ninja(s) come in to play.

Since I like to analyze, over-analyze, and reanalyze everything that goes on involving our finances, I’ve laid out the facts of our situation as I see them:

• My car has 36,000 miles on it. Should drive another decade (at least). But is not family friendly since it’s a coupe (it can seat five though).

• Girl Ninja’s car runs like a champ but has 89,000 miles on it. If this is the car we are going to sell, we want to get rid of it before it breaks 100,000 miles, since that is a psychological barrier for a lot of buyers. If we keep this car, it should drive another 2-3 years with no significant issues, after that point maintenance will start becoming a financial factor.

• It doesn’t really snow that much in Seattle. Probably three to five days each winter, it snows hard enough that driving is pretty dangerous. Girl Ninja is a teacher so if it snows that hard, school will be cancelled. And the government wont let me drive in sketchy conditions so we shouldn’t have to worry about not being able to get to work in the event of a blizzard.

• Since I have a company vehicle, we don’t necessarily need our own personal cars. In fact, I haven’t driven my car now in over a week (this is why it only has 36K miles on it even though it’s five years old).

• I really like Honda Pilots and Toyota Highlanders, Girl Ninja likes Volvos and Acuras. While GN’s tastes are likely outside of our $15,000 budget, we should be able to find a 2004 Highlander (or similar Pilot) with 80,000 miles on it for around $12 – $16k. We will not buy another car until one of ours has sold. Using the cash from the sale, we’d be out-of-pocket about $5K – $8K to cover the difference.

• We don’t plan on having kids for another ten years. Oh wait, that’s just me. Girl Ninja says we are waiting one to two more years

• We will not drive a minivan. EVER.

::::END FACTS::::

I really am at a loss as to what the heck we should do. I know we don’t need an SUV anytime soon, so I’m not going to pretend like we do. People have kids and drive in the snow with regular sedans all the time. That said, we work hard, save hard, and we want an SUV. We just don’t know how to go about acquiring one.

Before we can move forward with the process, we first have to decide which of our two cars to sell. My car will last longer, her car has four doors. They both have some serious pros and cons. (side note: we will drive whichever car we keep until it explodes)

My plan at this point is as follows:

When the time comes to sell, I will put both of our cars on Craigslist and the car that fetches a better VALUE (not necessarily which one brings in the most money) will be the car we sell. If we don’t get any serious offers, we just keep posting them until we do. Since we don’t need an SUV, we are in no rush to give our cars away for below market value.

As I mentioned earlier, we can easily be a one car family. After we sold one of our cars, we wouldn’t rush in to buying our next one. I could literally spend months browsing Craigslist, newspapers, auctions, etc waiting for a “great” deal. When we finally find an SUV that meets all of our criteria, we buy it and live happily ever after. This is a pretty good plan isn’t it?

Do we sell my car because it has two doors? Do we sell Girl Ninja’s car because it has more miles? What’s the most miles you’d allow on a used car you were considering purchasing (GN’s limit is 40K, my limit is closer to 100K)? What else do I need to be (or not need to be) thinking about?

AHHHH!!!! Planning stresses me out

Quicken gives me a nice little breakdown, via a pie chart, of where my money goes each month. According to this chart, rent is typically our largest expense each month. That’s not too surprising, considering it is probably your biggest expense each month as well (except for the lucky few who either paid off their mortgage or live with their parents). Today, I’m gonna spend some time looking in to our housing expense.

Girl Ninja and I take home about $6,000 each month from our 9 – 5′s. Our rent is set at $975/month through April 2012. That means 16.25% of our net pay goes towards rent. That’s pretty darn good if I do say so myself. But, as I’ve mentioned before, Girl Ninja does not always plan to work. Since we wont always have her income to rely on, we like to pretend that it doesn’t exist. If we take our rent payment and only look at it in relationship to my income, our obligation hovers around 25% of my take home pay. Yuck, definitely not as sexy as sub 20%.

Ya see, it’s one thing to think about your rent or mortgage payment as a dollar value, but a whole other thing to think about it as a percentage. I’m not bothered by the $975/month payment, but realizing that payment takes up one-quarter of my take home pay makes my heart sad . Think of all the other things I could do with that money. I could max out my 401K, donate to a bunch more charities, or buy that miniature pony I’ve always wanted….

If I was looking to buy a house (which I’m not), we would likely be qualified for a mortgage payment that would equal 28% of our gross pay, around $2,300/month. If we took advantage of that loan, we’d be….ummm…. STUPID! That would work out to 57% of my take home pay. Wowzer, I hate the sound of that. Could we make it work? Probably, but at what cost? Retirement contributions, vacationing, and dining out would be a thing of the past.

Although I don’t preach a specific percentage of income that should go towards housing, I personally would start getting pretty uncomfortable once it started breaching 35% of my net pay. I like keeping my costs down, and housing is one of the easiest places to save (or spend) some mad coin.

Questions for all of my beautiful (and ugly) readers….

1. Is housing your single largest expense?
2. What percentage of your net income do you put towards your housing? (include everything but utilities)
   
3. What’s the maximum percentage of your net pay you’d consider putting towards housing?
4. After housing, what’s your next biggest income eater? (Ours is charity)

I was talking with a friend the other day about common everyday topics ( things like: sports, money, unicorns, etc), when we transitioned in to talking about home ownership. I told my friend Girl Ninja and I were planning to save pretty aggressively so we could have up to $100,000 to use for a down payment. I then said something like “Once we buy a house, I will finally relax be more free-spirited.” Haha, yea right!

While I was punching Sallie Mae in the face, I thought becoming debt free would release me from frugality. But then came a wedding and a honeymoon, and a move so I focused on saving up for those expenses. In this season of life, I’m all about saving for a huge down payment.

But, and this is a big but, I’m officially coming to terms with the fact that there will always be something. Once Girl Ninja and I finally do buy our first place, I’m sure we will find something else to save for. A remodel, a new car, or that spaceship I’ve always wanted….

Although this epiphany could be depressing, it was a much welcome reminder that I will never have it all together.  A reminder that I shouldn’t put off having fun today, so that I can have fun tomorrow. A reminder, that I sometimes lose sight of what’s important.

I obsess over a stupid goal (in this case saving up to buy a house), and allow that goal to distract me from a huge part of the personal finance puzzle…. Enjoying our money. Life would suck if all we ever did was save and spend, save and spend. Every now and again, living outside the budget is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Last time I checked, GN and I both like to have fun. So, while we will continue to work towards our goal of home ownership, we will also make a point to enjoy our journey through that process. I’ve currently promised her a “big” vacation every year we don’t have a kid. We are looking in to Mexico, Hawaii, and Brazil this summer

What is your current top financial goal? Do you allow it to distract you from contentment, like I do, sometimes? Where is the balance between healthy focus and super awkward awkwardness?