April is going to be a good month. By then we should have our tax refund and our emergency fund should be five digits for the first time ever. And, in April my raise is going to be reflected on my paychecks.
Did you hear that? I'm getting a raise! On March 31st!
I found out today at my performance review. I am getting a 3.75% merit increase and a 2.36% adjustment for a total of a 6.11% raise. I think that's pretty good! It's a bigger raise than I've received in the recent past. I'm excited to be receiving one at all in this economy but to then receive one so big is just a big, huge bonus!
This raise will give me about $5000 more in income (gross) each year and raise my salary even closer to the six digit range. I am one lucky, lucky gal. Or I just work really hard, am really smart and really respected at my job. One of those. Maybe a bit of each. Heh.
Anyway, I've of course already started plugging numbers in to spreadsheets. I'm guessing this will mean about a $300/month boost in income. That's a pretty big number! We're going to stick it all in our emergency fund of course. We're not going to raise our discretionary amounts at all (well, maybe the gas one but that's due to the rise in gas prices, not a change in our driving habits).
This additional income should help us achieve our goal of a complete emergency fund by the end of the year. maybe even in November according to my calculations. I am so excited for that I could cry. Just think - next year we could focus on paying down our mortgage, saving for the basement finishing project, take a big vacation, fully funding Roth IRAs for us - it would be completely up to us what to do with our extra income each month. I'm so excited!
Month End Preview
I updated our budget last night as I do almost every Monday. We're actually doing pretty well! Our gas, groceries and household budgets are pretty much all spent. We shouldn't need groceries for the rest of the week. Gas will be close but probably doable. Household doesn't have any more required purchases for this month. Our discretionary budget has about $20 left in it. We have a couple small purchases we'll probably make this month so we should come in about right at the limit.
Our only other discretionary spending category is restaurants. We usually blow this budget, sometimes in the first week of the month! But not this month. This month we've spent less than $10 on eating out! We don't have any plans to eat out this week (maybe we will just for fun since we have the budget money!) so we'll either be really under budget here or we'll use it to balance out the other categories, should they go over.
Overall, our spending is going really well this month! That's a good thing because we had a lot of extra expenses this month. A detailed report will be published as usual next week.
Our only other discretionary spending category is restaurants. We usually blow this budget, sometimes in the first week of the month! But not this month. This month we've spent less than $10 on eating out! We don't have any plans to eat out this week (maybe we will just for fun since we have the budget money!) so we'll either be really under budget here or we'll use it to balance out the other categories, should they go over.
Overall, our spending is going really well this month! That's a good thing because we had a lot of extra expenses this month. A detailed report will be published as usual next week.
2010 TaxesUpdate
Yesterday I sat down for three hours, gathered all our tax documents, fired up TurboTax online, entered in all our information, gasped, sighed, called C over for a quick talk, then relaxed, saved and signed out.
I didn't submit them yet.
After all that, why did I relax and sign out? Well, you all know that I was scared to do our 2010 taxes because we rolled over C's old company 401(k) into a Roth IRA and was expecting a big tax bill this year. I estimated we'd owe somewhere in the vicinity of $5000. While, yes, we have money sitting in our emergency fund to pay a large tax bill like that, it would hurt to have to take that much out. I was not looking forward to that. And when I input all our information, sure enough, our tax bill came to $4180 between federal and state. Ouch!
However, if you did a rollover in 2010, there is an option such that you can postpone some of your tax liability to 2012. When I clicked that nifty little button in TurboTax, it completely changed the amount we owe for taxes. In fact, we now no longer owe any taxes but will be getting a $2381 REFUND. Did you hear that? A refund. That completely blew my mind. I must have checked and unchecked that button a half dozen times and just stared at the changing numbers. That's when I called C over and told him about our options. He, of course, was in favor of the refund option. We'll save 100% of that refund in our emergency fund to cover any tax bill we might incur for 2011 due to this postponement.
After all that I saved everything and logged out. I wanted to sit down with C and review everything I had input to make sure everything was correct and I wasn't missing anything. We didn't have time to do that yesterday so I figured we'd get back to it maybe next weekend.
Then last night I was checking my e-mail and found one from Mrs. Accountability. She was informing me that I'd won a giveaway on her blog - for an H&R Block Home Premium 2010 code! Well, isn't that awesome! I'm so excited! Next weekend I'm going to input all our same information in H&R Block, compare numbers to TurboTax and if they line up, I'll submit our taxes and wait for the refund to come through!
How are your taxes coming? Are you scared to do yours too? Are they already done and filed?
I didn't submit them yet.
After all that, why did I relax and sign out? Well, you all know that I was scared to do our 2010 taxes because we rolled over C's old company 401(k) into a Roth IRA and was expecting a big tax bill this year. I estimated we'd owe somewhere in the vicinity of $5000. While, yes, we have money sitting in our emergency fund to pay a large tax bill like that, it would hurt to have to take that much out. I was not looking forward to that. And when I input all our information, sure enough, our tax bill came to $4180 between federal and state. Ouch!
However, if you did a rollover in 2010, there is an option such that you can postpone some of your tax liability to 2012. When I clicked that nifty little button in TurboTax, it completely changed the amount we owe for taxes. In fact, we now no longer owe any taxes but will be getting a $2381 REFUND. Did you hear that? A refund. That completely blew my mind. I must have checked and unchecked that button a half dozen times and just stared at the changing numbers. That's when I called C over and told him about our options. He, of course, was in favor of the refund option. We'll save 100% of that refund in our emergency fund to cover any tax bill we might incur for 2011 due to this postponement.
After all that I saved everything and logged out. I wanted to sit down with C and review everything I had input to make sure everything was correct and I wasn't missing anything. We didn't have time to do that yesterday so I figured we'd get back to it maybe next weekend.
Then last night I was checking my e-mail and found one from Mrs. Accountability. She was informing me that I'd won a giveaway on her blog - for an H&R Block Home Premium 2010 code! Well, isn't that awesome! I'm so excited! Next weekend I'm going to input all our same information in H&R Block, compare numbers to TurboTax and if they line up, I'll submit our taxes and wait for the refund to come through!
How are your taxes coming? Are you scared to do yours too? Are they already done and filed?
30 years - 11 months
Last week on my mortgage post, Makky's Mom asked how many years we have left on our mortgage. I couldn't give her an answer! Strictly speaking we are 5.5 years in to a 30 year mortgage so we have roughly 24.5 years left. However, more often than not, we've made extra principal payments to our mortgage every month. In fact I sat down last weekend, pulled out every mortgage statement from the last five years, fired up Excel and made some calculations. Our extra principal payments have been anywhere from just over $3/month (to make our payment a round number) to over $200/month (when we had an ESCROW adjustment and we kept with the same higher payment amount). We stopped making extra principal payments when C was laid off 15 months ago and have just started again with last month's payment.
I wanted to know how all those extra payments had helped us. I assumed that we would continue to make the extra payments until our interest rate resets in October this year. I assumed that rate reset would bring us back up to where we had been previously (5.125%) and I assumed we would continue that rate for the rest of our mortgage either through refinance or something else. Those are a lot of assumptions but I think they're pretty close to what will happen.
Anyway, after all those assumptions and calculations I found out that we've so far taken 11 months off our mortgage. So instead of 24.5 years left to pay, we have 23.5 years left to pay. Sweet! We'll continue to make extra payments as long as we can, even if it is just rounding up to whole numbers like we've done in the past.
I wanted to know how all those extra payments had helped us. I assumed that we would continue to make the extra payments until our interest rate resets in October this year. I assumed that rate reset would bring us back up to where we had been previously (5.125%) and I assumed we would continue that rate for the rest of our mortgage either through refinance or something else. Those are a lot of assumptions but I think they're pretty close to what will happen.
Anyway, after all those assumptions and calculations I found out that we've so far taken 11 months off our mortgage. So instead of 24.5 years left to pay, we have 23.5 years left to pay. Sweet! We'll continue to make extra payments as long as we can, even if it is just rounding up to whole numbers like we've done in the past.
$96.29 < $100.00
So far this month I have collected $96.29 in snowflakes. That's good! Really good! The last $10 came from an INGDirect referral. My brother opened an account and he got the $25 bonus and I got the $10 bonus. Did I tell you that back in December I helped my brother set up a budget? He wants to start being responsible with his money so he can save for a downpayment on a house. He's 25 and I'm so excited for him. He's debt free and has a lot of extra income each month. I hope he can now focus some of that into savings. (Oh, and if anyone else wants to open an account, just e-mail me and I'll get you a referral code so we can both profit!)
Anyway, back to my snowflakes. My monthly goal is $100 in snowflakes so I'm really close to making it this month! I have a few items posted on Craigslist but there hasn't been any bites on them. I think tonight I'm going to post a few more items that I have piled in the "sell" pile.
So far the snowflakes have come from lots of different places:
$50 credit card reward check
$11.14 half.com sale
$10 craigslist sale
$6.15 Jan budget extra
$9 surveys
$10 INGDirect referral
I've got a week and a half to make an additional $4. I can do this!
Anyway, back to my snowflakes. My monthly goal is $100 in snowflakes so I'm really close to making it this month! I have a few items posted on Craigslist but there hasn't been any bites on them. I think tonight I'm going to post a few more items that I have piled in the "sell" pile.
So far the snowflakes have come from lots of different places:
$50 credit card reward check
$11.14 half.com sale
$10 craigslist sale
$6.15 Jan budget extra
$9 surveys
$10 INGDirect referral
I've got a week and a half to make an additional $4. I can do this!
New Camera!
On Tuesday I purchased a new camera for myself. Wasn't I just saying that we need to watch our spending this month? That we have a lot of one-time expenses and we needed to hold our wallets tight?
Don't worry - I didn't just go out and frivolously spend our budget money. I promise!
C and I were given $100 gift cards to Best Buy and Target for Christmas. We spent the Best Buy gift card on an iPod Touch (which we're loving BTW) but we held on to the Target card until we knew what we wanted. Then Monday night my point and shoot camera broke while I was taking pictures of L. Each time I would turn it on or off the lens would move in and out and make an awful glass on glass grinding noise. Then I would get a lens error message. Yikes! It's done this before and we've been able to fix it but I wasn't sure we'd be able to this time. So I went to Target.com and found a great deal on the Canon PowerShot line of cameras. I already have a Canon at home (the one that broke after 5+ years of love and abuse) so this would be an upgrade to mine. And I was excited to see that the "last years model" is now on a "temporary price cut" which means it's being clearanced to make way for the new model. It was priced at only $109.99! I think that's a pretty great price for a digital camera. So I ordered one up and it should be delivered today (thanks to living in Minnesota where Target is headquartered and has some big warehouses)! It came to only $115 with tax and shipping and then my 5% Target Red Card discount.
I'm using the $100 gift card for the purchase and taking the other $15 out of our short term savings account. And now I can cross this item off our want list!
Don't worry - I didn't just go out and frivolously spend our budget money. I promise!
C and I were given $100 gift cards to Best Buy and Target for Christmas. We spent the Best Buy gift card on an iPod Touch (which we're loving BTW) but we held on to the Target card until we knew what we wanted. Then Monday night my point and shoot camera broke while I was taking pictures of L. Each time I would turn it on or off the lens would move in and out and make an awful glass on glass grinding noise. Then I would get a lens error message. Yikes! It's done this before and we've been able to fix it but I wasn't sure we'd be able to this time. So I went to Target.com and found a great deal on the Canon PowerShot line of cameras. I already have a Canon at home (the one that broke after 5+ years of love and abuse) so this would be an upgrade to mine. And I was excited to see that the "last years model" is now on a "temporary price cut" which means it's being clearanced to make way for the new model. It was priced at only $109.99! I think that's a pretty great price for a digital camera. So I ordered one up and it should be delivered today (thanks to living in Minnesota where Target is headquartered and has some big warehouses)! It came to only $115 with tax and shipping and then my 5% Target Red Card discount.
I'm using the $100 gift card for the purchase and taking the other $15 out of our short term savings account. And now I can cross this item off our want list!
February Spending Challenge
At the beginning of the month, I input some known expenses in our discretionary budget even though we haven’t actually incurred them yet. I highlighted them in yellow so I knew they hadn’t occurred but it helped me plan our month and know how much money we still had to spend. The only problem was all those known expenses added up to more than our $350 total budget! In order to bring that budget back down to green and give us a bit of breathing room for spending this month I moved four known expenses into our “Extra Expenses” section of our budget. The expenses I moved were two $25 co-pays for L’s 9 month and J’s 4 year well child check-ups. I also moved the annual motorcycle registration fees for our two motorcycles. It’s $16.25 each and I moved that down to the “Extra Expenses” section too. We still have a fair amount of expenses in our discretionary including a birthday gift, two baby shower gifts for cousins of ours, the $46 spent at Old Navy and a duathlon registration fee (My first race of the summer is now scheduled for May!). We’re going to have to tighten our wallets for the rest of the month so we don’t go over. It will take some diligence on my part to keep the budget updated and keep C in the loop on our spending. Who doesn’t love a good challenge though, right?
More Health Expenses
Saturday we received an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) in the mail from our medical insurance provider. L had been at the doctor three times in January for colds and croup. We wanted to make sure they were nothing but colds and croup and not ear infections, pneumonia, bronchitis, etc. At one of those doctors visits the doctor heard a slight wheezing and sent us home with a nebulizer. Saturday’s EOB told us that we would be on the hook for about $200 in fees related to the nebulizer and the nebulizer treatment L received at the doctor that day. I’m very grateful that my child is healthy. However, I’m not looking forward to a $200 bill coming my way!
Principal Reduction
I’m doing as my husband wishes. Now if only I said that every day, huh! When I paid the mortgage this month, instead of sending them our newly reduced minimum payment, I kept our payment up at what we were sending them which means I sent an extra $50+ dollars in principal to the mortgage this month. Not only will paying down the principal faster help us to no longer be underwater on our home loan, allowing us to refinance to a fixed rate loan but it will also shave years off our current loan if we keep making these extra principal payments. Also, in the just generally good category is that we now owe just a bit less on our loan.
Making an Extra Buck
I listed a few items on Craigslist and already have a sale. It’s a modest sale of only $10 but it’s a big item that I can’t wait to be rid of! We’ve had an old steel desk sitting in our garage for years – since we moved into our current house 5 years ago! We’ve tried to sell it and give it away at three different garage sales with no success. I’ve listed it previously on Craigslist with no success. This time though I scored! I’ll be happy to take $10 for it but I’ll be even happier to de-clutter it from our garage!
$100 in Snowflakes Needed
One of my goals for this year is to bring in at least $100 in snowflakes each month. We didn't have any problems with this goal in January when we received that $500 escrow refund check! I'm now trying to figure out how to reach this goal in February. I briefly thought about holding all other snowflakes from January until February and then count them. We did receive both a $50 credit card reward check and a $26 side income check so we would have had a good start on the $100. But, that felt like cheating a little bit. And I want to really challenge us to find new and more ways to bring in extra money.
So far this month, I already have about $17 in snowflakes. I have 2 survey payments of $3 each pending. And I made a half.com sale of an old textbook too. That will net about $11 after the commission is taken out. So, we're 17% of the way there. I expect another credit card reward check this month so maybe another $50 for that and then we're 67% of the way to our goal. In order to make up the difference I'm going to list some items on Craigslist. There are definitely items around our house that we don't need anymore. Other than that, I'll keep brainstorming ways to bring in more money.
So far this month, I already have about $17 in snowflakes. I have 2 survey payments of $3 each pending. And I made a half.com sale of an old textbook too. That will net about $11 after the commission is taken out. So, we're 17% of the way there. I expect another credit card reward check this month so maybe another $50 for that and then we're 67% of the way to our goal. In order to make up the difference I'm going to list some items on Craigslist. There are definitely items around our house that we don't need anymore. Other than that, I'll keep brainstorming ways to bring in more money.
January 2011 Budget Report
We did it! We finally did it! We stayed under budget this month! Look!
We brought in less income than I had planned. That's because there was a one time per year deduction of $25 taken out of my check plus C had a student complete his tutoring program and it took a couple weeks for him to be backfilled with a new student so his paychecks were a bit lighter than usual.
Our regular bills were also a bit less than I had expected. That's not a bad thing!
We saved almost $1000 this month into our various savings accounts!! $949 is a great number!
And finally our discretionary spending...we stayed under budget here too! Gas, restaurants and discretionary were over but groceries and budget were under.
Overall we had a $6.15 surplus. I'll add that as a snowflake to the emergency fund in February.
We brought in less income than I had planned. That's because there was a one time per year deduction of $25 taken out of my check plus C had a student complete his tutoring program and it took a couple weeks for him to be backfilled with a new student so his paychecks were a bit lighter than usual.
Our regular bills were also a bit less than I had expected. That's not a bad thing!
We saved almost $1000 this month into our various savings accounts!! $949 is a great number!
And finally our discretionary spending...we stayed under budget here too! Gas, restaurants and discretionary were over but groceries and budget were under.
Overall we had a $6.15 surplus. I'll add that as a snowflake to the emergency fund in February.
January 2011 Month End
January was a good month for us. We saved a bunch of money. We stayed under budget. And we did some fun things. Now, if we could just stay out of the doctor's office! Those co-pays really add up! Anyway, here is how our January ended:
Debts:
Truck Loan: $24,642.80 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!
Savings:
Emergency Fund: $8,788.33 (+1,188.67) - Wow! A big increase here! Half of this was from the budget and the other half was snowflakes. Thank you escrow refund check!
Short Term Savings: $245.63 (+25.58) - We used some money from here to help purchase our iPod Touch. The rest of the money for the Touch came from Christmas gifts. I'm not sure yet what we'll use this account for next.
Travel Fund: $260.21 (+75.23) - We'd like to take a family vacation to the Black Hills area of South Dakota this summer. We'll need to save up some more money to make that happen!
Christmas Savings: $148.37 (-388.98) - I transferred out what was needed for Christmas this year and then added back in $75 for the January budget contribution. It's a good start to Christmas 2011!
Basement Finishing Fund: $129.61 (+0.12) - We're not contributing any money to this account this year so we can focus on our emergency fund (and our travel, Christmas, tuition and Roth IRA accounts).
Tuition Fund: $10,464.69 (+59.71) - We plan on adding $50 per month to this account. We'd like to avoid student loans if possible when we send C back to school later this year.
NetWorth:
I was thinking of adding our networth to this monthly report now that I'm tracking it.
Assets:
Savings: $23.4k (INGDirect plus 529's)
Retirement: $238.9k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $247.9k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)
Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $247.5k
Networth = 23.4k + 238.9k + 247.8k - 247.5k = $262.6k (That's an increase of $18.6k since December 1st - two months)
Yep, I'd say we had a pretty good January. February is going to be a challenge but we can do it!
Debts:
Truck Loan: $24,642.80 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!
Savings:
Emergency Fund: $8,788.33 (+1,188.67) - Wow! A big increase here! Half of this was from the budget and the other half was snowflakes. Thank you escrow refund check!
Short Term Savings: $245.63 (+25.58) - We used some money from here to help purchase our iPod Touch. The rest of the money for the Touch came from Christmas gifts. I'm not sure yet what we'll use this account for next.
Travel Fund: $260.21 (+75.23) - We'd like to take a family vacation to the Black Hills area of South Dakota this summer. We'll need to save up some more money to make that happen!
Christmas Savings: $148.37 (-388.98) - I transferred out what was needed for Christmas this year and then added back in $75 for the January budget contribution. It's a good start to Christmas 2011!
Basement Finishing Fund: $129.61 (+0.12) - We're not contributing any money to this account this year so we can focus on our emergency fund (and our travel, Christmas, tuition and Roth IRA accounts).
Tuition Fund: $10,464.69 (+59.71) - We plan on adding $50 per month to this account. We'd like to avoid student loans if possible when we send C back to school later this year.
NetWorth:
I was thinking of adding our networth to this monthly report now that I'm tracking it.
Assets:
Savings: $23.4k (INGDirect plus 529's)
Retirement: $238.9k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $247.9k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)
Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $247.5k
Networth = 23.4k + 238.9k + 247.8k - 247.5k = $262.6k (That's an increase of $18.6k since December 1st - two months)
Yep, I'd say we had a pretty good January. February is going to be a challenge but we can do it!
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