<prompt> Human: Backstory: My wife and I are both 24. Im a PhD student, making 28kyear. After being unemployed for the first half of 2016, my wife is now employed as an elementary school teacher, making 34kyear. We got married right before the start of 2016. We live in a very low cost-of-living area, so we dont have huge rent expenses.Ill admit it; Ive always been a bit of a numbers geek. So, at the beginning of 2016 my wife and I decided to pay for everything via credit card, so we I can track our expenses. I break everything down into categories each month, and I calculate our average expenses per category. I know there are some programs out there that will do this automatically, but I wanted to do it myself because 1 I found that it really didnt take much time, and 2 I wanted to be able to separate expenses into categories manually example: being able to separate buying 50 of groceries and 25 of school supplies in one run to the grocery store.I wont go through category-by-category since Im sure most people dont care, so Ill go through some of the highlightslowlights: Before my wife started getting paid, we were about 1000month in the hole. Luckily, I had about 30k saved up via working in high schoolcollege, summer internships, etc., so this wasnt a huge issue. By the end of July, we were about 3k in the red for the year. It wouldve been much worse, but we got a 4k tax refund, which helped immensely. Despite being 3k in the hole at the end of July, we were back to breaking even for the year by the end of September. By the end of December, we were able to save 3500 for the year. Its less than Id like to save, but its better than nothing I guess! We spend way more on eating out than I realized! We spent about 3800 on eating out in 2016. A significant portion of this was due to the fact that we go do trivia with our friends every other week; once we both eat and have 1-2 drinks each, were looking at a 40 tab. Also, once my wife started her job we started spending more on fast food she was too busydrained to want to cook anything together. This is one area were trying to improve on. Teachers really end up paying for their classrooms out of their own pocket! Before she started her job, we were spending about 40month on school supplies books, pens, paper, etc.. Since she started teaching, were up to about 200-250month in expenses between the two of us, mostly spent on supplies for her classroom. Adopting a dog is more expensive than youd think. We adopted a dog from a local rescue in January. Between adoption fees, vet visits, toys, food, and supplies, we spent 850 in the first month alone. She also ended up getting sick a few months later, resulting in several hundred dollars in vet visits and medication. Now that shes all better, we still spend 75month on average for food, toys, vet visits, heartworm prevention, and getting her nails trimmed. Not really expenses related, but moving our money to a high-yield savings account was definitely worth it! Were now getting about 16month in interest, compared to the 0.48month we were getting before. Also not expenses-related, but once my wife signed the paperwork for her job, Iwe opened a Roth IRA! Theres about 6500 in contributions in there right now, and the account balance is at 7150 or so.Anyway, I just wanted to share that I found tracking our expenses manually to be very useful, and that it didnt take much time at all 2-3 minutes every night. I highly recommend it!Assistant: Can you DIY that nail trimming? I can for one of my pups, but the other wont let me. We used to just keep his short by walking him outside on the sidewalk but hes too old for that to work now.Human: Weve tried, with minimal success. Shes really skittish about having her paws touched. Plus she has black nails, so I have no idea how far to trim them down. Im willing to pay a bit extra every month to have her nails trimmed by someone who knows what theyre doing.  <response>: I definitely recommend trying a dremel. My dog is terrified of nail clippers, and I can never tell how much to cut off. With the dremel, he just lays there and lets me do it, and I can inspect the nails every few seconds so I can stop before I hit the quick. 