Money....aaahhh!!

I've never been very good with money, even though I am in control of tracking the family finances. When Sarge and I were new in the military and living away from home for the first time we had a tendency to over-draw the account. Not such a big deal when it was just the three of us (Sarge, Bean and I), but now that we have added two kids it's a bigger deal. Put that together with our impending separation from the Air Force, and I am suddenly motivated to work on my ability to deal with the finances.

So this is my new plan: pay cash for everything other than bills. The car payment, Bean's tuition, phone bill and the like will still be payed with checks. Some of our bills are automatically taken out of the account, and I have set our credit cards up for e-pay. Everything else will be payed for in cash, and when the cash is gone we won't spend anymore money (except for baby formula or diapers). I'm going to leave a few hundred more than needed for bills in the checking account and work very hard to keep that money in the account.

Hopefully, this plan will enable us to save some money and pay off the credit cards without putting anything else on them. We have one points-earning card from USAA that we're planning to keep after it's payed off and continue to make small purchases on. I figure that, as long as we make small purchases and pay them off in the grace period, any points we earn are like free money, especially since the point count to cash back awards and gift certificates. The other card is one put out by the military and will no longer be available to us after Sarge's separation anyway, so we don't even have to worry about cancelling it.