September is shaping up to be a great month in our household income wise so we should be able to do a lot of good with our money. We get paid biweekly on Weds so we're looking at 3 paydays in September and a bonus in the middle of the month to boost our income even more. I usually do our budgets per pay period and any bills that are due within the pay period get paid. We have a few things we need to pickup online so those will be budgeted into this pay period's budget.

Here's how it looks right now:

09/02 - 09/15
Income: $4741

Electric: $242
The Maids: $140
Netflix: $12
Equifax: $7

Cash: $500
This covers food, clothing, entertainment, medical copays and any other discretionary expenses we have during the two weeks. We do this stuff in cash only because it works really well for us.

Son's birthday: $150
His 16th birthday was on August 25th and we need to deposit $100 to his checking account (was a gift from us.) We also are going to purchase him a dock for the car for his Ipod for $50.

Amazon: $10
This is for a replacement Tassimo filter.

HVAC Filters: $69
This buys us two replacement HVAC filters. I vac'd out the one we had in there but it is so bad I'm going to have to replace it. It's been in there for almost a year now so it's time.

So far we've spent a total of $1130 and that leaves us with $3611 to use as we see fit.

What's really crazy is the only thing we actually HAVE to pay on this list is the electric bill. The rest of the list (other than the cash...which we could cut down in half) is wants. Now that we're debt free we feel we can open up the discretionary spending a bit more but we're still retaining 75 percent of this biweekly income. That's not a bad thing.

We still have some long term goals to work on as well. My wife's wedding ring is still at the jewelers and I believe it'll take $2700 to pick it up now that it's been repaired. FYI to everyone make sure you have a proper rider for jewelry on your homeowner's insurance policy. We only had a small reimbursement and we now have the rider but you have to get it appraised and get it on your insurance properly. Check with your agent as to what you need to do to do it right.

We also need to pay off our son's Spain Trip which I mentioned in an earlier post. That'll be exciting to see that gone.

We're also going to be funding Roth 401k's (15-20 percent of net income with a 25 percent match to a traditional 401k by the company), saving for cash flowing college (we start paying the piper in Fall 2010) and accelerating our mortgage payoff (increasing the amount to principal) so it's not like that money doesn't have anywhere to go. We have a long haul ahead of us but we're excited at the prospects of being able to knock all of this stuff out.