Managing Finances

One thing the foreign service definitely makes more difficult is managing finances. Before we joined up, I downloaded all credit card and bank statements every month and made beautiful spreadsheets showing where we spent our money. I could estimate a good budget at the beginning of the year and adjust as necessary. Not a penny pincher, I did take a bit of pride in being able to put aside savings, while taking some fun vacations and purchasing a few nice things.

I kept control of it when I was in grad school - and when home after Wm was born. But then we joined the foreign service. The income cut combined with starting day care payments made the reality too painful to look at on a spreadsheet, especially when I compared all the fun things we used to spend money on, but couldn't anymore. Not wanting to resent our new jobs - or new baby - I just stopped tallying.

Then we moved to India. While we then had more wiggle room in our "fun" budget, I found the challenges of accounting more difficult in a highly cash-based society. My spreadsheets were heavily geared toward downloading income and expenses from websites. I didn't feel like making the effort to write down all the cash expenditures, so tracking it didn't seem worthwhile. I realized tonight that my beautiful spreadsheets are languishing on our old laptop - I hadn't even bothered to migrate them!

From January - March 2011, I encountered another obstacle: Home Leave. This has become synonymous with deferred purchasing, in my opinion. A bike for Wm. A new non-stick saute pan. A wardrobe update. Gifts for friends and family. Setting up temporary shop in our temporary apartment. Things we lived perfectly well without in India, but which make life more comfortable when available in the US. As one friend put it, we were trying our hardest to keep the US economy going!

Now we're just getting settled enough in Manila that I've attempted to start tracking again, easing myself in with tracking credit card purchases. The surprising result? We spend a lot on groceries. I'm not sure if the former is because of prices at the store we shop at most frequently, or if it's just simply because food is expensive here. Now that I'm aware, I'll have to price compare a bit more.

Thankfully, both India and the Philippines have had pretty stable FX rates. That would really make things complicated!

(And this is just the expense side of the deal. Income can fluctuate quite a bit when COLA or post differential changes.)