2011 Goals

In 2010 I set monthly goals. I've been recapping them the entire year too and will finish it off with a December Goals Review next week. These goals have helped me stay on track through C's lay off and then the birth of our third child. For 2011, I want to have some monthly goals plus a big picture goal.

Here are my goals for 2011:

1. Stay under budget each and every month. Income >= Expenses. Always.
2. All Snowflakes must go to emergency fund until it is fully funded at $20,000.
3. Make an extra $100 minimum each month.
4. Complete emergency fund.

Whoa. OK. Let's talk through these.

1. Stay under budget. Straightforward. At the end of the month, we have to be in the black (or green on my spreadsheet) and not the red. Bring in more money then we spend. Simple.
2. This is the same goal as we had for 2010. All snowflakes (extra income above my salary and C's tutoring income) must go to the emergency fund until it is fully funded. This could be credit card rewards checks, blog ad revenue, half.com sales, survey payments, etc.
   
3. I'd really like to see us find some alternate income streams beyond our regular jobs. C has started a hobby that we're hoping he can make a little money from. I'm going to continue to take surveys here and there for cash along with finding as many other ways as I can to generate a little side income. If anybody has any ideas here, let me know!
4. And the big one. Complete our emergency fund. This won't be easy as I don't have enough money in our budget for 2011 to do it alone. And even if we bring in at least $100/month in snowflakes that still won't be enough. We'd be close with budget and snowflakes though at almost $18,000 according to my calculations. So, if we can find a way to bring in just a couple thousand more and send it to the emergency fund, then we could have it complete in 2011. (If we suspended putting money into the travel fund, Roth IRA and Tuition savings accounts we could probably get it done but I'd like to fund those accounts too. I'm challenging us here to find an additional $2000 on top of all of that if we can.)

What are your 2011 goals. Leave a link in the comments!

2010 Christmas Budget

Now that Christmas is over and the spending and returning has stopped, I've reconciled our Christmas budget with our actual spending. We didn't do too badly. See:


We ended with $65 left in our budget. You'll see that we have yet to buy a gift for our godchild. As soon as we know when we will see him, then we will buy him a gift. I'm hoping we can see him this weekend if the weather doesn't turn nasty here in Minnesota. As it is right now the western half of the state is having a blizzard. Anyway, I'm completely satisfied with our spending. I went over budget on C by $28 on purpose. Scandalous! But I knew we were in good shape with our budget so I bought a $25 gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings and slipped it in his stocking. Now we have some money to go on a date, eat some wings, have a beer and play some trivia together - without the disruption of kids. I'll be setting up the transfer from the Christmas savings to our checking so the credit card bills can be paid in full. I already have a plan for Christmas 2011.

How did your budget go and are you already planning for Christmas 2011?

Spoiled Again

We were completely spoiled again for Christmas. It seems so luxurious to have new clothes, toys, books and jewelry. That's probably because it is. Heh.

The kids have been swamped with new toys. Our house is overrun. I think we're going to buy some bins to put sets in so pieces don't get separated (think Little People in one bin, Tinker Toys in another, Legos in a third, Squinkies in a fourth, Barbies in a fifth, etc.). That way we can have one bin out at a time, get it picked up and no pieces get lost, a minimal mess is made, and Mama's sanity is restored! Ha!

The kids also each received $50 savings bonds from my Dad and his fiancée. What a nice gift!

C and I received very nice gifts from all our family. We also received some gift cards from my dad and sister and $100 from my grandmother. We've been discussing what to spend our gift cards on. So far, here is the collection we have amassed:

$80 for Buffalo Wild Wings - I see some date nights in our future (to go have some wings and a beer and play trivia against each other).
$50 - McDonald's - The kids will love this!
$100 - Best Buy
$100 - Target
$50 - Ann Taylor Loft - Yay! Clothes for me!

The biggest discussion was the two $100 gift cards. Here is our opportunity to purchase some items off our want list! We've also been coveting smart phones for a very long time but we just aren't willing at this time to increase our cell phone plan in order to get one (or two). The additional monthly cost of a data plan is not worth it to us. However, we could get everything we want in a smart phone without the phone part if we got an iPod Touch. I've mentioned here before wanting one. Now C and I both want one! Best Buy has Touch's on sale this week. We've decided to use the $100 Best Buy gift card and the $100 from my grandmother and buy one today with only a little bit more needed out of pocket. We're going to get the 8GB model and play with it for a while to see if we like it. If we do, we'll go back and get a second one at Target with our other $100 gift card (and some of our own money). That time we'll decided if another 8GB model will suffice or if we should jump to the 32GB model. Either way, I'm excited to get one finally!

Christmas Guest

My brother decided at the last minute to fly home from Texas for Christmas. The only problem was my dad's guest room was being used by my stepbrother and his wife who had driven home from Tennessee. My sister doesn't have a guest room and all we have is a daybed set up in our unfinished basement by our exercise equipment. Guess that's good enough. A bed is a bed after all! My brother was here staying with me from last Thursday until just this morning. It was so great to spend so much time with him! It was an unexpected visit though and therefore not budgeted. It shouldn't impact us too much. He used our car to visit friends one night so there was a little bit extra gas burned. And we fed him of course so I guess there is more grocery money used. But I'd gladly give all that and more to have that much time with him.

I'm going to try and sit down today or tomorrow to finalize our Christmas budget and spending and then the December budget as a whole. I'm really hoping we've stayed under budget this month. I haven't updated the budget since early last week and then we were still green.

We had a fantastic Christmas and were able to see each and every family member. The kids were spoiled as usual and I'm excited to wear and use my gifts too. I hope you had a good Christmas! I have over 100 new posts to read in my Google Reader so I guess I'll take these few quiet minutes this afternoon and hopefully read about your Christmas!

Merry Christmas

I wish you each a joyful day filled with family and love.

2011 Savings Priorities

C and I sat down and I showed him my 2011 budget spreadsheet. I had him look over the savings section with me so we could prioritize our money for 2011. We have our regular bills, our discretionary spending and then all the extras (car insurance, taxes, birthday gifts, etc.). But what about the rest? Right now we have a bunch of different savings accounts:

1. Emergency Fund
2. Basement Savings
3. Christmas Savings
4. Short Term Savings
5. Travel Fund
6. Roth IRA Savings
7. Tuition Fund
8. L, J, A Kids Savings
9. L, J, A 529 Savings

That's a lot of accounts and ways in which we could spread our money! I think we've decided on a few things.

#8&9 - The kids' savings accounts will stay the same for now. Each child receives $1/year of age/month (so A who is 6 receives $6/month) deposited into an INGDirect subaccount. Any birthday/Christmas/etc. money they receive is also deposited here. It's a little nest egg for them for their first car, college expenses, etc. We also put away $25 per child per month into 529 accounts. I'd like to save more for college for them. We won't be upping these monthly contributions though until our emergency fund is fully funded. OK, this takes care of 8 and 9. I seem to be working my way up the list.

#7 - We have about $10.4k in the account right now and will need a few thousand more over the next couple years to get C an A.S. degree in nursing. So, we'd like to contribute a nominal amount to this account each month so we can pay for this degree with cash. We've decided $50/month will go into this account out of our regular budget.

#6 - Now that we've moved C's 401k from his old employer into a newly created Roth IRA account, we'd like to start contributing some retirements savings again for C. We've decided to put $50/month into his Roth IRA. That's about 7.5% of his average take home pay right now. We'll increase this substantially I think after the emergency fund is fully funded.

#5 - I really want to take the kids on a family vacation again next summer but we don't have much in our travel fund right now. To make the vacation happen, I'm going to start putting $75/month into our travel fund next year.

#4 - There are still a number of items on our want list. And I think we could start adding to it again! So, we're going to continue to put $50 into our short term savings each month so we can purchase some more bigger ticket items for ourselves.

#3 - I haven't posted about our Christmas spending this year. I'll make a note to do that soon! But, it's never too soon to think about next year! A budget of about $900 is about right for our family. That breaks down to $75/month starting in January.

#2 - We dream of finishing our basement but it's just not in the financial cards right now. We're going to stop contributing to this account in 2011 so we can instead put that money into our emergency fund. It will be hard for me to watch this account stay stagnant, but the money is better utilized elsewhere.

#1 - And the biggest chunk of money each month will go to the emergency fund. This will range from $0 (in April when we expect a large tax bill due to the Roth IRA conversion - I think our emergency fund will take a hit to cover it) to over $2k (when I get a third paycheck). It will average in the $700 range. We'd really like to get our emergency fund fully funded so we can put more money into the other accounts listed above. For now though, we'll focus all extra money here in an effort to grow it as fast as possible.

Some days I wonder if we're not scattering our money in too many directions. But then I look and don't know which of these would get cut in an attempt to focus. The basement fund is about as much chopping as I want to do right now.

Prayer of Thanks

I've been so busy and at the same time unmotivated this past week or two - not a very good combination. Moms can be so incredibly busy and stressed this time of year. I think the stress is showing for me as I'm losing my voice. Everything else is fine but my throat has a constant tickle and my daughter is asking me why I'm talking funny. The baby is giving me weird faces when I sing lullabies.

Last Thursday after C had left for work I bundled up all three kids and went to Target. We needed to pick up teacher gifts for the next day. The kids each picked out a nice book for their teacher, we paid and I hustled us back out to the truck.

A couple hours later after C returned home from work, I was getting ready to leave. My friends have a monthly wine night where we gather at a local restaurant that serves wine and we share a bottle while we chat and reconnect. I usually arrive late, waiting for C to get home from work before I can go and as usual I was trying to rush out. Except I couldn't find my wallet. Anywhere. The last place I remember having it? Target. Did I put it in the bag? In the truck? In the cart? I couldn't remember but the bag had been completely unpacked and the truck was empty. I called the store and nobody had turned it in. Mind racing, I figured it was either still in the cart in the parking lot or someone had walked off with it. I got in the truck and raced down the street (Target is 1 mile from my house - a blessing and a curse!) and drove directly to the cart corral where I had left it. The cart was still there (it was one of those big ones with extra seats for older kids) but it had been moved to the other side of the corral, probably to remove all the regular carts and bring them back inside. I drove up, got out and looked. It was still there. My red wallet was still sitting in the red cart, probably unseen by all who had been near it due to the color.

I said a prayer of thanks then got in the truck and drove to meet my friends.

$14,000

C went to another information session last Friday for another nursing program. The cost for this one? Less than $14,000. Now that is more like it. This is a two year program for an A.S.D. (Associate in Science Degree) in Nursing. With this type of program under his belt he could take the national exam and become an RN (registered nurse). I think this is exactly what we want! That $14,000 doesn't include books, lab fees or parking but it's still a program that we could certainly afford even without any financial aid. And it has me breathing a sigh of relief that we just might be able to make this work without going into debt!

There are a few prerequisites C would have to take and have complete before he could apply to the program. We were thinking that C could take the prereqs next summer and fall then apply for admission for Fall 2012. This might work out better for our family anyway because when he started school full time in the fall of 2012, J would be starting kindergarten. That way we'd only hopefully have to find daycare for L.

Anyway, we may look into a couple more schools but this program seems to fit all our criteria (and it was the program our labor nurse used and recommended to us). Next we'd need to figure out what exactly the prereqs are that C has to take, when those classes are offered and get him registered for those when the time comes. I'm king of excited to see him take these next steps! Starting salary for an RN in Minnesota with an associates degree is roughly in the mid $60k's. That's almost twice what C was making before he was laid off and he could potentially be an RN nights and weekends so we could still minimize our childcare needs until all three kids are in school. I know that's way in the future but I'm a planner and this plan sounds great!

November 2010 NetWorth

Do any of you calculate your networth? How often do you do it? Annually? Quarterly? Monthly? Daily? OK, that last one was a joke. But do you do it? I haven't done it for a couple years now. I guess with the economic meltdown I put my head in the sand a bit and just focused on the nitty gritty details of day to day spending. But now that my 401k is rebounding and our savings are going up, I think I'm going to calculate our networth on a monthly basis. I like to track and graph things - this might be fun! If it's going up, of course. Heh.

Anyway, on December 1st, when I did a snapshot of all our savings accounts in order to do the month end round up, I also took a snapshot of my 401k, my pension, C's stock holdings at his old company and his newly created Roth IRA accounts at Vanguard. I also checked Zillow.com to get an estimate on our house worth (using it to check houses near us and their recent sale prices) and Kelley Blue Book to check what our truck, car and two motorcycles are worth. They are assets after all!

Right now, our networth is roughly $244k! Not too shabby!

This is made up of:
Assets:
Savings: $21k (INGDirect plus 529's)
Retirement: $224k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $248k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)

Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $249k

I think it will be interesting to see how this number fluctuates, and hopefully rises, in the future. Plus, I have to remember that when I get frustrated that we aren't making progress fast enough (for me) with our emergency fund that overall? We're doing just fine. Where are you at? Hopefully your number is positive!

Money Money Money

When I was in college and Christmas shopping with my mom one time, I saw her check register while she was paying for a purchase. Her recently balanced check register showed she had more than $7000 in her checking account. That number seemed unreal to me. How could anyone have that much money in their checking account?!?

Through most of my twenties and early thirties, before I cleaned up our finances, our checking never had more than $1000 in it. Whenever we got paid I would immediately pay bills and then we would spend whatever else was in it. We never (or very rarely) overdrafted but there was never a large amount in our accounts.

It was only recently, when I started using our credit cards for everyday purchases and then paying them off in full each month that we started to have large checking account balances. Monday night when I sat down to do my weekly budget update, bill paying, financial health check-up, I noticed our checking account had over $4000 in it. And that was after paying our $1500 mortgage, $440 truck payment, and various other beginning of the month bills. I was taken aback by that large amount. It just seems like we have so much money in our account now! I proceeded to set up payments for our credit cards for the balances due from the last month along with some other bills and when I calculated it out, we were still going to have over $900 left in our account. I know some would be tempted to move some of that money over to savings but not me. I know that money will be needed for bills in the future. We have been going over our monthly budget lately after all. But no longer are the days when our checking account gets close to zero. It's kind of fun to see that much money in our account! And it's also amazing to me just how much money goes in and goes out each month.

L asked a question on my budget post about what do I do if we're in the red on our budget. I responded that I generally don't do anything and this is why. Our checking account doesn't need the additional money. I leave it in savings instead. If in the future the cash flow doesn't work out and our account is running a little low, I'll transfer some money back. For now I just work to keep our spending in check and don't worry if we're a little over. (And I also reconcile our spending on the credit cards and in our budget to the penny so I know exactly where every cent is going!)

2010 Goals Review: November Edition

Monthly Goal Checklist:

1. Keep emergency fund above $6000. Done! We were even able to add to it this month. Thank goodness!
   
2. Stay under budget each month this year. Argh! No...again! I don't want to talk about it. Well, I already did talk about it but I don't want to talk about it again. I'll just strive to make December better.
   
3. Save all C’s unemployment benefits for tuition money. We did and we broke that 5 digit barrier! Awesome!
   
4. Always have at least $250 in short term savings. I did not put the budgeted $50 in to this account this month since we couldn't keep our spending within budget. We must learn better impulse control!
   
5. Save at least $100 each month into our emergency fund. Yay! We made this one plus a little extra!
   
6. All extra money (snowflakes) goes to the emergency fund. They did - all $37 of them ($25 credit card reward check and $12 in survey payments).
   
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 is a regular habit for us now.
   
8. Our list of want items must only be purchased with money from our regular monthly budget or our short term savings account. No want items for us this month!
   
9. And finally, post at least 15 times each month here on this ol’ blog. Fail again. The past few months have been down. I don't have high hopes for December either with baby showers, Christmas and one busy life! I'll try though - more posting means I'm paying attention to our finances - which is a very important thing!
   

It wasn't a terrible month but we could have done better. Here's to making December a great month!

November 2010 Budget Report

After a busy weekend hosting my first of two baby shower's for my sister, I'm finally back to continue with my month end reports. Here is our budget from November.




Yeah - in the red again. This time by about $50. Boo! And we could have done so well too! We brought in an additional $145 in income! It would have been great to snowflake that to savings. Instead we spent it plus some! Where did it all go? Let's break it down:

Internet/Phone/Cable: Our 12 month intro rate expired and they are now charging us for HBO and Starz. I've asked C to call and cancel the subscription to both of those. OK to have when free but we really don't need them on top of Netflix. Hopefully this will drop that back down to previous levels.

Gas: Last month we were artificially low in the gas category because both vehicles were very low on fuel at the end of the month and were filled at the beginning of this month. An additional two refills put us over the top this month. The average of last month and this month though is $222 so our $225 budget is right on target.

Groceries: Over by $22. Going in to November, I wasn't planning on hosting Thanksgiving for anybody. About a week before Thanksgiving though that changed and we hosted C's family at our house on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. There was additional groceries to buy for that event which put us over budget. I guess we had a bit of room in our budget here because we certainly spent more than $22 on the food for our portion of the dinner!

Household: We were $55 over budget here. I can't remember anything in particular, like a big ticket item, that we needed this month. I guess we just need to keep an eye on this. It's so easy to go to Target though and throw things in the cart that you "need" at the time!

Restaurants: Over by $29. Here I blame C. (Hi Honey! Love you! Heh.) The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I was working from home. C announced he was going shopping and asked what he could spend. I told him $0. I wasn't really kidding. He went shopping anyway with J and they had some fun daddy/son time together. And he spent $30 on some new knives (see discretionary budget) and $35 on lunch out for the two of them (bringing home leftovers of course). That right there put us over budget! I teased him of course (as I'm doing now) but it really is those impulse purchases that get us sometimes.

Discretionary: Speaking of impulse purchases...we are $86 over budget in this category. Along with those $30 knives, there was a $63 expenditure at Once Upon A Child. We went there looking for snowboots for J and came out with 12 pieces of clothing for the kids and no boots! Then there were other things this month like the $60 baby gate, Office Max for more printer paper, etc that added up and pushed us over budget. I'm doing enough shopping this month for Christmas that it should tide over my urge to spend money and I'm hoping I can keep us under budget in this category and others this month.

I want to end the year on a good note so I'll be working extra hard to keep our spending in check. How did your month go?

November 2010 Month End

I've been missing in action for the past week. Thanksgiving happened (twice) and then I've been super busy getting ready to throw my sister two baby showers. And then there is of course the normal family stuff. Super busy! Excuses, I know. But it's true. Anyway, here is how our November ended:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $25,522.90 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. Not much else to say about this one.

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $7,047.61 (+379.71) - We were able to break into the 7000 range this month! That makes me excited. Even with the medical bills coming up in December I expect to make a sizable contribute to the emergency fund again. Thank goodness for three paycheck months!

Short Term Savings: $170.05 (+0.01) - We were over budget again this month (see next post) so I didn't put any money in this account. Can't save for fun stuff if we can't stay within budget!

Travel Fund: $159.81 (+0.14) - No savings went here this month due to paying some medical bills.

Christmas Savings: $536.85 (+0.48) - I had $100 in the budget this account in November. Instead of sending it to the savings account though we started Christmas shopping early so I added the spending to that budget category. Our Christmas budget will bleed this account dry this month. I'll detail out our Christmas budget in the next couple days. I'm still tweaking it a bit.

Basement Finishing Fund: $104.38 (+0.09) - No money went here this month thanks to those medical bills. I will be so excited to be done with those in January! Now, if we can keep everyone healthy and injury free, that would be even better!

Tuition Fund: $10,000.42 (+507.71) - We broke 5 figures! We just barely broke into it but break we did. How cool is that! I'm waiting for more payments to clear our account and then I'll transfer those here. This account should see another nice gain this month.

All accounts saw increases, even if those increases were interest only. I'll take it and work to increase our savings in all accounts in December.