2010 Goals

The last day of 2009. Overall it's been a good one. We're all healthy and happy and we'll overcome the obstacles currently in our way.

I wrote down some goals for 2010, had Chuck review and approve them, tweaked them a bit and now, here they are!

1. Keep emergency fund above $6000. It's currently just under $6400 and I'll be adding to it throughout the year. When I'm on maternity leave this spring/summer we'll have to dip into it some but I'm hoping that at the end of the year we're about even to where we are now.
2. Stay under our budget each month this year. This will become even more important now that we're on a single income. There's not a lot of room for error now.
3. Save all Chuck's unemployment benefits for tuition money. It's looking like he'll go back to school this year (either spring semester or fall semester) and we'll use that money for tuition. I just need to make sure it gets transferred and not sucked into our regular budget.
4. Always have at least $250 in short term savings. This is our slush fund in case we run low in our checking account.
   
5. Save at least $100 each month into our emergency fund. Even with the reduced income, I still want to make this a priority. We should be able to do it. We'll just have to be disciplined about our discretionary spending and keep that under budget.
6. All extra money (snowflakes) goes to the emergency fund. This could be craigslist sales, blog ad income, survey payments, etc. All of it goes to the emergency fund. We have to grow that balance if we can.
7. Money going to other savings accounts (basement, short term, Christmas, etc.) must be done only after the $100 goes into the emergency fund each month. This will ensure that the emergency fund always stays as the number one priority.
   
8. Our list of want items must only be purchased with money from our regular monthly budget or our short term savings account. These are wants. Not needs. And so if we purchase them, we have to purchase them with money that is not emergency fund money and only if we have the cash available. I don't want us slipping back into bad habits and using credit cards or using emergency savings.
9. And finally, post at least 15 times each month here on this ol' blog. My average posting throughout the year is probably closer to 10/month. There's so much going on right now though with Chuck's job search and school search, our strict budget, the new baby and it's inevitable expenses, etc. that I'll need to share with you guys for your support (thank you!) and so you can help keep us accountable.

That's quite the list, huh? We'll have challenges this year but we should be fine and if we achieve these goals then I know we will be. What are your 2010 goals?

2009 Goals Review

With 2009 coming to an end, it's time to review how Chuck and I did against the goals we set for this year. Our goals were:

1. Pay off HELOC by June 30, 2009
2. Grow emergency fund to $8K by December 31, 2009
3. Lower mortgage principal balance by $6K this year

And how did we do?

1. We paid off our HELOC on 5/22/09. It was a month ahead of schedule and it was a huge relief to us.
   
2. Our emergency fund is currently just under $6400. We're shy of our $8000 goal. Boo! If I hadn't had to take that 10% pay cut May - December (resulting in over $3500 in lost income) then we would have made this goal. Or if Chuck hadn't lost his job and we could have put more into savings in December. Or if we hadn't purchased a new vehicle and made car payments instead of emergency fund deposits. Lots of things went into us not making this goal. I'm very happy to have as much saved as we do. It's comforting to know it's there. We'll be doing our best to grow it as much as we can given our current budget limitations.
3. We lowered our mortgage principal by over $6500 this year! That's thanks to all those overpayments throughout the year. With Chuck's job loss we're going back to paying the minimum due each month. Doing that alone, we should pay over $4500 to the principal again this year.

Overall, not too bad. Leave a comment to your 2009 goals recap so we can all see how you did!

Next post? Our 2010 goals!

Christmas Actuals

With Christmas over, I've updated our Christmas budget with actuals. How did we do?


Not too bad actually! We came in $22.80 under budget. And we stuck pretty close to our spending limits for everybody. I'll call it a success. The money has been moved from our Christmas savings account to our checking account. And those gifts purchased on credit cards have been paid in full as well. The $100 Chuck and I didn't spend on each other has been moved to the short term savings account along with my grandmother's gift. A couple more months and we should have enough saved up for that gift to ourselves. That doesn't stop us from looking around online at the various LCD HDTV options out there right now. Window shopping if you will!

The December month end report (coming up in a few days) will have the new Christmas savings balance which we'll use as a head start on next year's festivities. Are you planning now for Christmas 2010? Don't let it sneak up on you!

Auto Insurance Review

After Chuck was laid off I was retooling the budget and looking to cut expenses where I could. One of the things I did was call our auto insurance company and ask about a deductible increase. Currently we have $500 deductibles on our car and truck. I was hoping that by raising those to $1000 that we could shave some money off the monthly payments. Turns out we could, but not as much as I was hoping. Our truck insurance would change from $379/6 months to $365/6 months. Essentially we would save ~$2.30/month. And our car insurance would change from $341/6 months to $310/6 months. We'd save just over $5/month with that change.

Chuck and I decided to keep our deductible the same. If something did happen and we had to file a claim, it would take a long time to recoup that $500 difference in deductibles with the small decrease in monthly payments.

One of my remaining tasks is to call other insurance companies to get quotes from them for our auto and home insurance to see if switching will save us anything substantial.

Merry Christmas Indeed!

Merry Christmas everyone! I know this is a day late but, well, things have been busy! We just finished hosting Christmas with Chuck's family today. That was supposed to have been Christmas Eve but with the snow storm menacing the Midwest, we pushed it back to today.

Our gifts all went over well. Anya loves her Leapster. Jamison loves all his new Legos. Chuck and I didn't even really care there was nothing under the tree for us to open. It was just so fun to watch the kids open their piles of presents!

We were spoiled rotten by my dad though. What's new, right? I've probably told you this before but my sister and I have a rule: never say you want something around my dad because if you do, you're going to get it. This Christmas was no exception. At Thanksgiving we were reading through the sales to see if there was anything we wanted to brave the Black Friday sales for. There really wasn't (although that was when we got the Leapster - the Star Wars special edition one) but my sister and I made the mistake of noting that Target had a Garmin GPS on sale for a pretty good price and how we both wanted a GPS. Yeah, you know where this is going.

Dad and his fiancee went out and bought three Garmin 1300T GPS devices. One is for them, one for my sister and her husband and one for Chuck and I. They also bought a power cord, a carrying case and the dashboard mount for us. Spoiled! And since a GPS was #3 on our want list, we can now cross that off! I thought of a few more items to add to the list this past week but of course now I can't remember any of them! That's OK. I'll think of them soon enough and we're still working on saving money for #1 - the TV - anyway!

Also in the category of spoiled, my very generous dad also gave me a $50 bill yesterday. Why? Because he overheard me say that we were going to get Anya the docking station for her Leapster so it didn't eat through the rechargeable batteries too fast. Yeah, he wants us to buy that for her with his money. I thanked and thanked and thanked him and told him he was doing too much and gave him a big hug and accepted the money. There was now way he was going to let me not accept it anyway. I am a very, very lucky woman to have such a great dad.

Chuck just got back from putting Anya to bed. He told her she was a very lucky little girl (to have received such nice gifts) and she replied "Yeah, I'm happy." Even she knows show lucky our little family is.

We have one more family Christmas celebration to go. My mom is on vacation in Florida right now (actually down there scoping out retirement communities) and we'll celebrate with her when she gets back. One more spoiling for all of us coming up!

Bonus Money

I couldn't figure out last week why we received two direct deposits from the good unemployment benefits people. One was for the $244 we were expecting. The other was for $25. I kept meaning to ask Chuck about it but with end of year craziness at work and then at home Christmas preparation craziness I never got around to it. Instead I transferred the whole $269 into our new INGDirect account and promptly forgot.

And then today when he applied for his second check I saw the printed confirmation page and on it, it said this:

"You may receive an additional $25.00 Economic Stimulus payment for each week you receive a regular unemployment benefit payment or a federally-funded extended benefit payment."

Huh. Well, isn't that nice? I guess we'll just add it to the INGDirect account and thank the federal government for that little extra boost.

Christmas Budget

I don't think I ever shared with you our final Christmas budget. Seeing as it's less than a week until Christmas, I'd better get to it! Here it is:


So far we are under budget on just about every person. We still need to buy a gift for Chuck's parents and his grandfather, our godson and my mother's husband. I'm on vacation/furlough until the 11th of January so we should have plenty of time in the next couple days to finish up the last of the shopping.

And with the reduced spending limits this Christmas season Chuck and I have been really thoughtful with what we're spending. I think we're getting people some really great gifts that they're really going to like (Used PS3 games for $20 from newegg.com? Perfect for my brother and brother-in-law!). Yay!

I'll post final numbers once all the gift buying is complete. Shouldn't be long now!

Homemade Advent Calendar

Last year in a fit of crafting fun, I created a home made advent calendar for us to go along with the traditional Christian one we have. We now have 25 envelopes for 25 days. Each day the kids open an envelope, pull out a slip of paper with an activity and we do that together as a family. It's also a nice visual reminder of how many days are left until Christmas so when they ask I tell them to simply count the remaining unopened envelopes and that's how many days are left.

Anyway, to make the calendar I purchased 25 different sheets of Christmas themed papers and made 25 ~3"x5" envelopes. Then I used red and white card stock to make numbers 1-25 and glued them onto the envelopes. They turned out adorable if I do say so myself. Take a look! (And find the upside down envelope - it adds whimsy and charm, right?!?)



This year, needing to be more frugal and watch our spending closely, I very carefully selected which activities to put in each envelope and searched out free activities for us to do in our area. Here is our list for this year:

1 - Christmas caroling with our church
2 - Make home made Christmas cards for the Grandparents
3 - Make a paper chain for Christmas tree
4 - Go to town tree lighting ceremony
5 - Visit Great Grandma
6 - Make a batch of Christmas cookies
7 - Go to Christmas party at church
8 - Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn
9 - Make paper snowflakes
10 - Tell the kids Christmas stories from our childhoods
11 - Go sledding
12 - Visit the Macy's 8th Floor display
13 - Children's Christmas program at church
14 - Hot chocolate with marshmallows!
15 - Read 3 Christmas books
16 - Make a list of 10 things you are thankful for
17 - Make Christmas presents for grandparents
18 - Sing Christmas carols
19 - Go to Holidazzle parade
20 - Take a drive and look at Christmas lights
21 - Family game night!
22 - Bake Christmas cookies
23 - Dance to Christmas music
24 - Fancy dress for Christmas Eve dinner!
25 - Traditional Swedish Pancake breakfast while listening to Christmas music

The kids are enjoying opening the envelopes each day. And while some days have been hit and miss with the activities, they certainly like the "make Christmas cookies" days!

First Unemployment Check

Chuck applied for his first unemployment check yesterday. Approximately $244 will be direct deposited into our checking account tomorrow. And as soon as it's posted I'll be moving it out and into a newly created subaccount at INGDirect labeled Unemployment Benefits. Chuck will continue to receive these benefits while he finishes his resume, searches for a job and investigates school options. The maximum benefit amount he'll receive is $7436 minus taxes. His actual benefit amount for this week was $286 but he chose to have 15% taxes removed off the top so his actual take home maximum benefit will be $6320. Hopefully this will help us with taxes the next two years to have that money set aside for us automatically. It is our intention, as I've said before, to save all his unemployment benefits for potential tuition and to live on my income alone.

Taylor in Texas made a comment on my last post about feeling uneasy about us buying a television (and maybe other things on our want list). Maybe I haven't made this clear but while we are going to have to cut back on our spending, we are going to be just fine on my income alone. I project that we'll still be able to save around $150 per month ($100 for the emergency fund and $50 for the short term savings fund) if we stick to our slightly lowered spending limits (groceries unchanged, lowered discretionary, gas, household and restaurant budgets). It will take diligence to make sure we stick to those lowered numbers but they're not impossible.

I'm very grateful to be able to live on one income alone. And thanks to having a budget and paying off the credit cards and student loans and HELOC, we can do that. And now I have to go update our budget with our weekend spending.

Want Item #1 - 37" LCD HDTV

So, our first item on our "Want List" is a 37" LCD HDTV. In checking out some of the sales right now we can find 37" LCD HDTVs for $350-$500 right now. I've heard around Super Bowl time is another good time to find deals on TVs. Right now we have $283 to spend. This comes from:

• $100 - Christmas money from my grandmother - Chuck and I were able to reduce our Christmas budget to around $650 this year and we had over $750 in our Christmas savings budget. So we decided that instead of using the money from Grandma to supplement our Christmas budget, we'd save it for this purchase.
• $100 - The budget Chuck and I had set for ourselves for Christmas - Chuck and I had agreed to $50 budgets for each other for Christmas. Instead of spending that money, we're going to save it and apply it to our TV purchase.
• $83 from short term savings - Right now the account stands at $283 but $50 will be added to it this month. Since we decided to always have $250 in this account to tide us over in case of cash flow problems, that leaves us $83 to put towards the TV.

If we keep adding $50 to the short term savings account each month then in January we'd have $338, in February $383, in March $438, etc. This means in the March-May time frame we'll have enough to purchase that new TV we want. I expect that any budget "extra" we have at the end of each month will be put in the emergency fund, as will any other snowflakes we receive. After all, our emergency fund is not fully funded yet so that has to take #1 priority.

Final Paychecks

Friday Chuck received his final paycheck. It was a bit less than I was hoping but it will certainly help the budget for this month. He also received payment for the PTO time he had when he was laid off. His PTO check as for $945. I also received a $35 refund from our mechanic as he charged us for a tire rotation and balancing that he ended up not having time to do. Saturday I transferred that $980 to our emergency fund. Our emergency fund is now over $6000. Whew! I like seeing that balance rise. I'm hoping to put a little each month into the account to keep it growing. Hopefully Murphy stays away for a while so we don't need to use any of it.

Our Week In Review

Sorry for the long absence. It's been a very busy week. I was in Seattle working for most of it. Long days are not conducive to blogging. And the couple days that I've been back have been busy too, both with end of year work and with playing with the kids. I missed them and they missed me too. There has been a lot of snuggling time.

Financially speaking, we had a pretty low spend week. We bought a few Christmas presents and some groceries but other than that, the spending has been almost non-existent. So our budget for the month is doing pretty well so far.

Murphy decided to strike us one more time for good measure. We have two TV's in our house and the one upstairs decided to die on Monday night. Black screen of death. Well, I guess we had three TV's in the house. We had a smaller one in the basement that we used when we were down there exercising. It wasn't hooked up to a satellite or cable so we used it for DVDs only. Chuck moved that one upstairs but now we're without a TV in the basement. I know, cry for us, right? Obviously this is a want, not a need. But it did push Chuck and I to create a list of wants and prioritize them. Now, as we build up money in the short term savings account, we can purchase some of these items. What are they:

1. 37" LCD HDTV - We currently don't have an LCD or an HDTV in the house - this will allow us to upgrade!
2. Twin sized boys bedding - qty. 2 - We found out on Friday that we're having a boy! We have twin sized bunk beds and the crib which will change into a full sized bed. It's our plan long term to have the boys share a room with the bunk beds and for Anya to have her own room with the full size bed. Jamison will need to transition from the toddler bed (that the crib also changed into) into a twin size bed before the next baby comes. Since the boys will eventually share those beds, we decided that we're going to hunt for bedding we like and then buy two sets for the boys, one for Jamison now and one for the baby later.
3. Hand held GPS like the Garmin 225 or something. There's some really good deals on them now during all the Christmas sales. But this has been priorized #3 so it will be a while before we purchase one.
4. iPod Touch - This one is a pure want for me. I've wanted one for a while but can't justify spending this much money on myself. So it goes on the list.
5. Triathlon bike for Chuck - He's been drooling over tri bikes on ebay this whole summer. When I showed him the list to get his agreement on the prioritzation he joked that his tri bike should be before my iPod Touch. I teased him back that he has a road bike whereas I don't have anything like the Touch (no smart phones in our house). At the end, he agreed to leave it as #5.
6. Cedar chest - I have some special clothing from when the kids were infants like their going home from the hospital outfits and other special things that right now have no home. Plus Chuck and I have remarked how nice it would be to have a bench or something like it at the foot of our bed. So, it is my goal to eventually have a nice cedar chest to put there. This is at the very bottom of the priority list so it will most likely be several years yet before we get down this far. And I'm sure other items will creep into the list above this. That's OK. I like at least having a list.

And that's our list. We'll have to see what else gets put on there and where it gets prioritized.

Generous Indeed

Yesterday my dad came over for a visit while his fiancee was making Christmas cookies at their house with her sisters. And in doing so he brought an ice cream treat for the kids (actually a whole box of them) which they loved of course. He also brought a $100 gift card to our local grocery store. My dad is very generous indeed. Once again I reiterate how lucky I am to have him.

You know, there have been times when I haven't told my dad something just because I don't want him to do something like this. It's not that I don't appreciate his kindness, it's that I don't want to take advantage of it. I know he doesn't feel like we're taking advantage of him. But when he just gives and gives I start to feel like we are!

We'll use the $100 for groceries for this week (well Chuck will as I'm in Seattle most of the week for work) and we'll save money in our grocery budget. And I'll thank my Dad repeatedly for all that he has done and continues to do for us.

A Very Generous Offer

Sunday we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. My dad and his fiancée reiterated how proud they were of us for having our financial act together, for being able to survive on one income. They also told us again, for the third or fourth time, that if we ever need help that we can come to them. They’ll help us out however they can and we need them to. My dad and his fiancée are just great people. Very generous. >We are so lucky to have them.

After brunch Chuck and my dad’s fiancée were up in the kitchen while the rest of us were down in the family room. While chatting, my dad’s fiancée told Chuck that she has $5000 that Chuck can use for tuition if he wants. And we can “pay it back whenever we can…or not at all.” What a generous offer! We have no plans to take her up on that – I don’t like borrowing money from family – but it’s very nice to know that it’s there as a back-up if we need it. Would you rather take out a student loan or would you rather borrow money, interest free, from family? Of course for us, best case is we save Chuck’s unemployment benefits and any money from a part time job he’s able to find and we use that to pay for tuition. No loans required hopefully.

We need to start work on Chuck’s resume as we will be job hunting for another part time position (nights and weekends). And Chuck needs to start looking into some schools too. It’s the time right now to register for next semester if there are any general classes he needs to take. And he needs to start thinking about getting into a program for next fall. There’s still much to think through. Anyone know of any good resume websites? Free?

November Budget Report

November is officially in the books. We came out $5.32 ahead for the month. Usually I transfer any "extra" to the emergency fund but that small amount I think I'll just keep in the checking account. Here are the nitty gritty details of how we did:


It's a good thing Chuck was able to bring home a bit more than I had budgeted so even though we went over our budgets in gas, groceries (Thanksgiving prep) and restaurants, we were able to stay in the black. We won't have that luxury any more. My paychecks vary by maybe a penny (salaried) so we're going to have to actually stick to our budget from now on!

Speaking of future budgets you can see I've included projected budgets for December, January and February above too. December will see a decrease in our income as Chuck will only be paid for one week of work instead of four. That amount is very close to the 10% pay cut from my paycheck so December and February are similar budget-wise. January is a bit higher because it's a three paycheck month for me but one of those is only half a paycheck due to the one week furlough I'm taking in early January. I'm still planning on saving most of my "extra half" paycheck that month though. So I guess here starts our adventure of being a one paycheck family. Time to tighten things up.