Someone put me in charge of the budget. The same someone has been handing me receipts for 5 months, expecting something to happen to them. Something did – I shoved them in a drawer and locked shut their mathy menace.
Apparently, someone wanted statistics.
Let’s just say that at the start of a Monopoly game, I’m considering dog vs boot vs nostalgic automobile – not playing banker. So this was an interesting job assignation. Budgetary health. Metrics, matrices, mathmagician-ing. Shoot me.
A messy slush-pile of money here/money there would be fine if this was DIY for sport – but we do need to know where we stand. Stealth de-creasing-of-receipts aside, it was a team effort to get our budget in order the other night. A project not without its perks:
- We’ve now accounted for every penny spent, line by line
- We’ve become that smug pair with the reliable spreadsheet
- We get the desk drawer back – the receipts are scanned & shredded
- We have a great template and budget plan for next time
Even better - in the course of receipt-examining, I found out that there’s such a thing as brass nipples and that there’s a brand new pair now fitted somewhere in our kitchen. (I believe they’re of a plumbing derivative?) Thank god I wasn’t party to that shopping trip:
Pardon me, orange apron, as you were of such help in previous trips when I needed strippers and coloured caulk – could you point me to the brass nipples? The shinier, the better.
To act a little more my age, I put on a collared shirt, buttoned up all the buttons and played Freakanomics. Where has our money gone over the past few months – and will we ever see it again?
“What’s it doing in Atlantic City, Lucas?” “Recirculating.”
A few pertinent stats
Too early to get excited about stocking up on drywall knives and sanding blocks? Probably. But maybe we’ll end up saving a tiny slice of costs when we repeat the process in the future. Everything staying with the apartment – appliances, flooring, etc. – is considered “one-time use”.
If painting marks one of the easiest, most visible improvements you can make to a place – it’s certainly amongst the cheapest. But getting to the painting stage….{shudder}. 7% marks what painting equipment only – paint, rollers, painters’ tape – cost us so far.
Our invisible tragedy – an unlevel floor. We sunk (heh) hundreds into self-levelling compound, that no one will ever see. I’d rather have the money back than the flat-floor karma. One day, somewhere, I hope to become a sleazy and very scheming slumlord. Bumpy floors for the renting wretches, keeping the riches for myself. I’m owed.
For awhile, it seemed like we were bankrupting ourselves on such trifles as our asbestos-free lungs and the future of mankind. I was imagining it all. This is what we’ve spent on the safety stuff: goggles, breathing masks, a smoke detector, and the province’s mandated ‘environmental fee’ per can of paint. Not a lot – as it turns out.
Room by room?
Further proof – kitchens cost more. Most of this went to our sweet & shiny appliances, whereas I lazily assigned all of the laminate floor cost to the living room column. Happy to see we spent more where it mattered – more or less scrimping on the bedroom’s key necessities.
Which renovation costs go where?
I stopped halfway through my manic spreadsheeting to ask – hang on, what’s considered visible improvement and what’s not? Drywall tape adds to the lovely smoothness of it all… so which piece of pie? Decision: it’s only a visible addition if it’s plausible someone (a normal person, not a sick DIY head-case) would walk in and say “ooh, _____!”
“Ooh, drywall tape!”
Not likely. Decision made. (Paolo vetoed my hopeful inclusion of “working smoke alarm”, so I’ve retaliated by donating the brass nipples to Obvious Improvement).
I don’t think there’s much point putting specific numbers to things -
A) Canadian sales tax is wretched
B) you, of nobler stock, probably avoid Home Depot’s 5-cent bag fees each trip.
We’ll never undertake an identical remodel or choose the very same materials – but maybe my pie charts (which I just typed as ‘pig charts’ – excellent) will shed some Blues Clues on the big picture nonsense. I’ll tell you this much: that nightmare trip to the city dump cost me $11.
With an ugly bathroom, half a kitchen, lighting and all the fun stuff left to go – I’m pretty happy to still have 40% of our skinny budget left in my jammy little hand.
Hey, you want a s'more? Some more of what?
I’d been wanting to make little graphics of our expenditures and now I’m totally inspired – love your pie charts! Ha, but I’m also a spreadsheet afficionado, so maybe I’m weird.
I, too, was given the odious task of creating and managing the budget so I totally know what you’re talking about with the desk drawer filled with receipts! I hate that drawer. 
I’ve been using iWork Numbers of late (I seem to remember you’re a Mac person too?) – which I far prefer to Excel.
Now that the hard part is done (the earnest procrastination), it’s going to be so easy to keep it updated. No surprise that bookkeeping is the last thing you feel like doing in the middle of a project (Though I’m surprised that they even made it into the drawer, given that it was under a 12′ square of poly for 2 months).
Let me know when your nerdy charts are polished & published – I’ll look forward to some spreadsheet-envy.
Excellent job on the budget.
I must, as well, sit down and do the ‘budget’ on how much I need to move and how much I have left to pay if I move this year instead of next. Doesn’t sound appealing to me either! Perhaps tonight though I’ll put back on my accounting hat and get it done. Inspiration via la ugly baby.
Thanks! If you move far enough, doesn’t it become a tax write-off? Or is that only if you move for work reasons? Re. ‘get it done’-spiration, it definitely helped sitting down with 2 laptops & doing it together. Also – need I say it – gin and gummy worms, though not together.
Only counts if you move for work-related reasons. Boo.
Ah really? Lame.
That’s some very interesting stuff… also, “mathy menace” has been added to my vocabulary.
Glad to hear it – use with appropriate venom.
Visible vs. invisible DIY…. I think drywall tape should go in the visible camp because if you DIDN’T retape it, people might look at the wall and be like “That’s UGGGGLY.” But with new tape and mud, that’s less likely. I think of an invisible improvement more like installing a whole house humidifier, or installing a more energy efficient AC/Heating unit, or maybe installing insulation behind the walls.
This is an interesting metric, though. Because I think most flippers would tell you focus almost all your dollars on the visible improvements. Upgrading things for energy efficiency is a much harder sell to people.
I love your pig charts and your brass nipples! Good thing that doesn’t sound creepy.
Not a single bit creepy. Pig nipples and brass charts, though…. that’s different territory.
LOVE this post! LOVE! I am a numbers girl and I enjoy chopping up numbers into different categories. This is why I deal with money shuffling around these parts and seeing how we spend our cash.
Did you factor in silverfish extermination?? Squashing is free though, so maybe not?
You’ll be excited to hear that I plan on using your oven cleaning technique tomorrow to get the grease from the free range chicken we roasted on Christmas off of the oven walls so it doesn’t keep setting off the smoke alarm every time we use it. I’ll report back.
Thanks Claire! (Will you do my taxes for me!?) The silverfish extermination should feature on a cost/benefit, time/money sort of horrible scatterplot! (Or one of those busy busy Excel charts I don’t really know how to use).
How did the oven cleaning go!?
Errr…. I got lazy and forgot to do it. Of course I’ll remind myself the next time smoke comes pouring out as that damned bird continues to burn off in there. I never knew free range foul was so fatty! Perhaps it should go on the list for tonight.
Haha! Hadn’t heard about the difference in fat birds vs skinny birds – imagine the former ends up tastier, though!
I liked this post if only because Lucas from Empire Records showed up in it. Ah, high school.
Also, I need to get on with the scanning, shredding, and spreadsheeting. Which would be a great way to procrastinate on my own drywall taping adventure.
Watching Empire Records would be an even better way….