Understanding our financial situation: Post #1

I'm trying to get better at understanding our financial situation. This desire has mostly come because there are times I feel like I am a burden. One way this presents is feeling like I am too much emotionally for anyone to handle, as I am very sensitive and instead of expressing all of my emotions I just freeze/shut them down as to not be "too much." I mean, my emotions feel too much for me much of the time, so I get it. I find them very exhausting too!

Another way this feeling of being a burden presents is my brain jumping to the conclusion that financially I am spending too much (sometimes true, but sometimes, not true) or that I am always doing something wrong with money anytime I purchase anything. I then try to budget, but when it feels confusing to understand because there are too many moving parts for my brain to manage (or, it's just hard to live within the limits of a budget), I say screw it and go back to this oscillation between "just try not to buy anything unless you really need it, and if you do really need it still feel very guilty about buying it" (This reinforces: You are a burden.) and "screw it, we're going to be fine in the long run financially so just get what you want/need and don't really think about the budget."

In an effort to live in reality when it comes to our financial situation, I wanted to document some of my process (and, hopefully, progress) when it comes to becoming more involved with our finances. I'm hoping that being more aware of our finances will help decrease the feelings that I am a burden when it comes to this one area of money.

Goal:

For this first month of paying attention, I'd like to check in around our fixed expenses and see what they actually end up being. I get overwhelmed easily, so having too many moving parts makes my head feel like it's going to explode and I easily give up (as in, having to pay attention to "fixed" expenses that actually vary in their amount *and* paying attention to super duper variable discretionary spending at the same time sounds like too much).

• Healthcare is variable right now because we're about to have a baby. For the last few months healthcare expense has varied from $25 to $1,000+ for birth day + prenatal care.

• Discretionary spending around baby stuff has also been a thing with the purchase of a used $400 Doona last month.

• Additionally, I wanted to note for myself that the $250/month that goes into my Roth IRA is where we have that contribution set right now, however $6,000/yr can be placed into my Roth. Other retirement contributions are towards my husband's 401K, but that contribution goes immediately into his 401K and is 4%/paycheck or $223/paycheck. On top of that his company does a 4% 401K match.

I used The Financial Diet's free budgeting template to get a grasp on fixed expenses and they should be around $8,720 (this is not including the healthcare expense). We'll see what the month of July 2022 ends up looking like in a couple weeks.