My husband likes to make fun of me. He thinks it's a little strange that I carry this excel spreadsheet with me everywhere I go on my USB keychain. I think it's a little strange that he is content to go through life without the slightest idea of what our finances are. On occasion I bring up the spreadsheet on my laptop at home and indulge in my fantasies and have him watch. "See - look what would happen if we put all our excess money on this loan?! Or or if we pay down the house!? Look at that!" "Right..yeah..great." On occasion, when I feel like we've made great strides with reducing debt, I break out into song and sing The Circle of Life from Lion King (of course replacing "circle" with "spreadsheet" whenever I can).

Yep. I guess you could say I'm a little bit crazy.

Since I am a state employee, I know what all of my pay increases are based on our current contract, and in one tab of my spreadsheet, I've listed all the increases and on what date they occur. I've guesstimated the increases for my husband as well. I deduct taxes and retirement contributions and figure out our current and future net income.

Another tab is filled with all of my expenses. A column for necessities and another for supposed "necessities". My husband is a smoker, so unfortunately I have to budget for his vices. I tried enticing him to smoke by saying he could keep all the money he didn't spend on cigarettes for 6 months and buy himself something but so far that hasn't panned out. Moving on..

A third tab includes a breakdown of future paydates with allocation of moneys. We pay all the monthly bills and the mortgage and the rest plunk on debt.

A fourth tab shows all debt incurred since I graduated college (3 years ago) and what we've paid off so far.

A fifth charts (or should I say charted) daily exercise. Sadly that has not been updated in a while.

A 6th and 7th tab even breaksdown... dare I say it? Maybe not. Perhaps I'll divulge another day.

As you can see this has become a rather unhealthy obsession. Since I've started these spreadsheets around a year ago I've becomed much more disciplined and organized and motivated.