Ok DCUM personal finance geniuses, help me figure this out....

[Anonymous]

We live in a 1400 sq ft house that we bought before kids. We now have two, 9 and 11. We need more space. Our mortgage is $2100, which is easy for us (HHI approx. $280K). We have law school debt and a special needs child, which is why we haven't moved thus far (and because we bought at the height of the market so we won't profit very much at all). But the time has come, and without going into it, it is related to our special needs child and how difficult it has become with so little space for everyone. We are not taking a mansion, we just need a bit more space, a driveway or a garage, and a guest room. In any event, my DH and I have been trying to figure out how we would swing a higher mortgage (to get what we need we would have to increase our mortgage by at least $1600).

We track our finances fastidiously in Mint. All of our accounts are linked, and every month we categorize everything we spend. All of our income is also tracked. Budgeting is difficult on Mint, and generally because my DH has a solo law practice and income is unpredictable. His annual income is relatively predictable (has increased about 20% consistently for 4 years), but month to month is not - he may make $2k one month, and $19k the next. As a result, we tend to rack up credit card debt, and then pay it completely down, and rack it up again.

As we started to talk about this, I thought "we can never move. We already live beyond our means. We have $18K in credit card debt right now!" But, we looked at Mint today, and every way we calculated our income to spending trend, we are on average $1300 in the black each month. In other words, I looked at our net income v. net spending since we started using Mint (2013) and it's $40K more in income, I looked at this year, last year, past 6 months - same thing. Average $1300 more in income per month than spending per month. So it looks like it isn't true that we actually spend what we make. But I don't understand how we carry a credit card balance. I am missing something. And it might be very obvious. Help me out!

If we do have $1300 a month, I am confident we can reduce our spending enough to afford a higher mortgage. We are happy with the saving we are doing for retirement and 401K.

[Anonymous]

How much law school debt is left? Is the end in sight for those loans?

Can you buckle down for a few months and build up a "slush fund" to get you through the lean times, instead of relying on credit cards for that purpose? How much emergency fund/cash do you have? Are you saving for retirement?

[Anonymous]

If you have $1300/month, you should have about $15k at the end of the year. Do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live in a 1400 sq ft house that we bought before kids. We now have two, 9 and 11. We need more space. Our mortgage is $2100, which is easy for us (HHI approx. $280K). We have law school debt and a special needs child, which is why we haven't moved thus far (and because we bought at the height of the market so we won't profit very much at all). But the time has come, and without going into it, it is related to our special needs child and how difficult it has become with so little space for everyone. We are not taking a mansion, we just need a bit more space, a driveway or a garage, and a guest room. In any event, my DH and I have been trying to figure out how we would swing a higher mortgage (to get what we need we would have to increase our mortgage by at least $1600).

We track our finances fastidiously in Mint. All of our accounts are linked, and every month we categorize everything we spend. All of our income is also tracked. Budgeting is difficult on Mint, and generally because my DH has a solo law practice and income is unpredictable. His annual income is relatively predictable (has increased about 20% consistently for 4 years), but month to month is not - he may make $2k one month, and $19k the next. As a result, we tend to rack up credit card debt, and then pay it completely down, and rack it up again.

As we started to talk about this, I thought "we can never move. We already live beyond our means. We have $18K in credit card debt right now!" But, we looked at Mint today, and every way we calculated our income to spending trend, we are on average $1300 in the black each month. In other words, I looked at our net income v. net spending since we started using Mint (2013) and it's $40K more in income, I looked at this year, last year, past 6 months - same thing. Average $1300 more in income per month than spending per month. So it looks like it isn't true that we actually spend what we make. But I don't understand how we carry a credit card balance. I am missing something. And it might be very obvious. Help me out!

If we do have $1300 a month, I am confident we can reduce our spending enough to afford a higher mortgage. We are happy with the saving we are doing for retirement and 401K.

Are you saying you spend $1300 less than you make a month but you still don't have the cash reserves to pay off your *current* CC balance? You literally have zero cash reserves right now, despite this obvious disparity in earnings vs. spending?

1) Your math is off.

2) You can't afford a more expensive house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much law school debt is left? Is the end in sight for those loans?

Can you buckle down for a few months and build up a "slush fund" to get you through the lean times, instead of relying on credit cards for that purpose? How much emergency fund/cash do you have? Are you saving for retirement?

Op here: I'm actually not looking for personal finance advice, I'm looking for folks to help me figure out what I'm missing. How does Mint reflect that we are in the black, when we have credit card debt? I'm not trying to be rude, but we really *have* to move, even if it wouldn't be ideal given our situation. I'm just trying to feel better about and figure out how it's possible that we have $1300 average excess but we still have a credit card debt we incurred in the last year. It's sort of a more mechanical question.

To answer the questions, yep, our plan is to pay down that debt quick and build up a slush fund for cash flow purposes. We don't have an entirely hefty emergency fund but retirement is good.

[Anonymous]

Are you not tracking the law school debt payments? Retirement savings? Taxes? If you don't actually have cash left over, something is missing.

[Anonymous]

OP again.

Yep, that's what I'm saying - we *don't* have $15000. I'm looking for someone familiar with Mint who can tell me what I'm missing. It's not my "math" that is off, it's something about Mint I must be missing. It tracks all of our income, it tracks all of our spending, and the data is showing that we have $1300 in net income left over average, per month.

[Anonymous]

Something isn’t linked to the mint account. You are missing expenses somewhere. Or you are overstating your income going in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you not tracking the law school debt payments? Retirement savings? Taxes? If you don't actually have cash left over, something is missing.

Yes, we track law school debt payments. My retirement savings comes right out of my paycheck, so it is reflected in net income. My husbands is tracked as an expense category. Taxes come right out of my paycheck, he pays his and it's tracked as IRS. That's the conundrum!

[Anonymous]

Your husband is siphoning funds. Gambling? Mistress?

[Anonymous]

You need to reconcile Mint to your bank statement(s) - cash in, cash out. You are missing something each month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Something isn’t linked to the mint account. You are missing expenses somewhere. Or you are overstating your income going in.

That's the thing! Everything is linked. My paycheck goes in automatically and is tracked as income, my husband's too - every client check he gets is tracked. I can't figure it out! The only thing I do know is that Mint tracks credit card payments as "transfer" and not an expense category. But I still don't think that explains it, does it? For example, let's say we make $20K one month, and we have $16K in "spending" and a $2k credit card payment that is reflected as a "transfer." We are "spending" that $2k, but that still doesn't explain how income continues to track as more than spending when we don't have cash. I mean, most months we do have cash that rolls over into the next, but we aren't accumulating at all.

Someone who uses Mint, please weight in! I'm getting this data from income v. spending trends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your husband is siphoning funds. Gambling? Mistress?

Maybe! I can't even figure out how that would explain it, either!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Something isn’t linked to the mint account. You are missing expenses somewhere. Or you are overstating your income going in.

That's the thing! Everything is linked. My paycheck goes in automatically and is tracked as income, my husband's too - every client check he gets is tracked. I can't figure it out! The only thing I do know is that Mint tracks credit card payments as "transfer" and not an expense category. But I still don't think that explains it, does it? For example, let's say we make $20K one month, and we have $16K in "spending" and a $2k credit card payment that is reflected as a "transfer." We are "spending" that $2k, but that still doesn't explain how income continues to track as more than spending when we don't have cash. I mean, most months we do have cash that rolls over into the next, but we aren't accumulating at all.

Someone who uses Mint, please weight in! I'm getting this data from income v. spending trends.

So are you just rolling over the same 1,400 every month (thinking literally the exact same dollars). What goes in, then comes out and the same beginning 1,490 is there at the end?

[Anonymous]

Whatever the issue is with Mint, the proof is in the pudding. You spend more than you make. When you figure out why Mint isn't tracking correctly, the correction will reflect why you're in the red - it doesn't change the fact that you are in the red.