The Grass Is Greener

January 2012 Month End

2012-02-02T18:01:00.004-06:00

I haven't done a Month End report since May 2011! I was a total slacker the second half of last year. Wow. Anyway, I'm back with a renewed focus on blogging. I never stopped tracking our budget and every single penny we spent, I just lost motivation to track it all here. Not any more. I need you guys to keep me on the right path to rebuilding our savings while still enjoying ourselves. It's really all about balance, right? Anyway, here is how our debts and savings look now:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $19,362.20 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!

Furniture Loan: $1,935.00 (+$1935.00) - Ouch. Almost $2k in additional debt. It's at 0% for 12 months with the loan officially starting 30 days after we take receipt of the furniture which will be in the next couple weeks. We'll have to add a monthly line item to our budget in March or April to make sure we pay this loan off before the outrageous interest rate kicks in!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $750.52 (+750.12) - We took just about every penny out of this account for the move in December. Now we need to rebuild it as quickly as possible. I'm aiming for a $25k emergency fund which is six months of expenses for us. And I have a goal to have this fund at $5k or more by the end of this year. So far, I'm off to a good start!

Short Term Savings: $600.00 (+600.00) - This is going to be a theme but we took all the money out of here too to pay for the move. This account is now going to be our house savings where we can stash cash so we can buy items from our house want/need list. This account balance should fluctuate frequently this year.

Travel Fund: $179.21 (+100.08) - I have some travel plans this year (trip to El Paso to visit my brother, trip to Florida to visit my mom, vacation with in-laws maybe?) and if we're going to make that all happen, we need to be saving. Right now there is not enough money to go anywhere though. Boo!

Christmas Savings: $80.34 (+80.02) - We spent all of our savings in December, as intended. I'm saving $80/month this year to give us about $960 for Christmas spending this year. That should more than cover us and it feels so great to be able to spend without worry at Christmas time!

Basement Finishing Fund: $0.00 (+0.00) - There are way too many other priorities right now to put any money in this account. One day (probably in five years!) we'll finish our basement!

Tuition Fund: $0.00 (+0.00) - If you saw the budget you'll notice it said $346 in the tuition line item. Instead of savings, that money actually went to a spring class that C is currently taking. We need to be saving money here though so C can take a summer class and (hopefully) start his nursing program full time in the fall. I have $200 budgeted in February for this account. Pretty soon it won't be sitting at 0's!

Disclaimer: All savings above does not include money saved in kids' savings accounts or their 529's.

NetWorth:

Assets:
Savings: $6.1k (INGDirect subaccounts plus 529's - does not include money saved in kids' savings accounts)
Retirement: $250.1k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $336.5k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)

Liabilities:
Mortgage, Furniture & Truck Loans: $315.9k

Networth = 6.1k + 250.1k + 336.5k - 315.9k = $276.8k - Our networth is down about $10k from my last reported value. That's not too bad considering we wiped out our liquid savings. Thank goodness for continued 401(k), 529 and Roth IRA automated savings! It also doesn't hurt that we went from an underwater mortgage to something that is worth a bit more. It feels good to have equity again!

January 2012 Budget Report

2012-02-01T21:45:00.003-06:00

I haven't done a monthly budget report since April 2011. Wow. I hadn't realized it had been that long! For those interested, here is how we ended January:

We ended with $593.10 extra! That was all thanks to increased income, some really big snowflakes and staying under budget in almost every category! It was my goal to have at least $500 extra in our budget this month since we were over by about that much in our December budget. And we did! I looked at our December budget and that number was actually $514.17. So I left that much in our checking to act as a buffer (need to ensure cash flow is available to pay off our credit cards in full each month!) and transferred the remaining $78.93 to our emergency fund. It feels really good to be able to add little bits to that whenever I can! Now to keep up this momentum and make February great too...

Window Repaired, but...

2012-01-31T16:19:00.001-06:00

Last Friday we had our windshield replaced on our car. And we paid exactly the quoted, fair price. All good, right? Well...they broke our rearview mirror during the replacement. Murphy is chuckling over there in the corner right now. The mirror itself didn't break but the bracket holding the mirror to the windshield did. When something, like the mirror, is stuck and not budging, the window replacement guy is supposed to contact the car owner before they try to yank it off. The guy didn't do that even though he was replacing the glass at our house and C was right inside. Instead he tried to pry/pull/yank it off and ended up breaking it. C told him we'd try to find an inexpensive replacement at a salvage yard but if we couldn't that we'd be contacting them to fix it for us. C had them right "broke rearview mirror" on the receipt they gave us. I drove the car on Sunday when I was out shopping and it is so annoying to not have that mirror! I asked C if he'd duct tape it to the windshield for now until we get it fixed. It may not look nice but it will be functional at least!

I'm going to be working on the budget tonight and tomorrow so stay tuned for our budget report, month end report, goals review, etc in the next couple days!

I posted 18 times in January. That is the most of any month since February 2008! Are you sick of me yet? Ha!

Hello Murphy

2012-01-25T21:28:00.002-06:00

Thanks for not skewering us for that whole furniture thing. I'm not too worried about the added debt for several reasons like it's at 0%, we have money in the bank to pay it off entirely if we wanted or needed to and I'm very disciplined with our budget and am 100% confident we'll pay it off before the outrageous interest kicks in.

Anyway, today I am here to talk about Murphy. We haven't seen him around in a while (knock on wood!) but he showed up last weekend. Last year I dropped our insurance coverage on our older car (a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse with 170,000+ miles on it) down to liability only to save money on insurance. The car itself is only worth about $1750 so it made sense to drop the comprehensive and collision coverage. When I did that though we also lost our glass coverage. See where this is going? Saturday morning on my way home from a quick Target run (totally within budget - I swear!) I'm driving along when a sudden loud noise startles me. I look at my windshield and sure enough, it has cracked from the bottom right side almost all the way across to the left side. I didn't notice a chip down where the crack originated and I was alone on the road so there was not a rock from a passing vehicle or anything like that. It was totally unexpected. I called our insurance agent Monday morning and verified that we don't have glass coverage. Nope, we don't.

Today C called around to a few companies and found a pretty good estimate for us. The windshield is going to be replaced on Friday for $232. I think that's a pretty good deal and I'll be thankful to once again have a safe car to drive. We're hoping this car lasts us another 2+ years. C will graduate from school in May 2014 with his nursing license and we'd like to wait until then to replace the car. (Cross your fingers he gets in to the 2 year program starting this fall! His application is in but we may not hear until May 1st if he's been admitted or not!)

We have almost $800 left in our budget for this month thanks to some extra income from C and reduced spending in our discretionary categories for this month. We have gas in our vehicles and food in our pantry. We shouldn't need anything more for this month. We should be able to pay this bill and still keep around $500 in our checking account as our buffer. And that's after transferring the extra $400 to the emergency fund and $400 to the short term savings house fund. C and I will have to sacrifice the $100 each "fun money" that I was going to take out but that's OK. It feels good to have the cash on hand to repair the windshield.

Now please stay away Murphy. We need to have a few good months (years!) in front of us to rebuild some savings!

We Have Gone Crazy

2012-01-24T19:40:00.001-06:00

So, we may have lost our minds, just a little. It's time to confess. We opened a store branded credit card on Sunday and used it to purchase $1935 in living room furniture. We purchased two couches and a chair with that money. We have had a living room set picked out since last November and went to "visit" it on Saturday night with my mom and sister. Turns out they were having a 30% off sale plus 0% financing for a year. So we brought home the swatches of our chosen fabric Saturday night and mulled it over. And then Sunday we went shopping and bought a couple matching throw pillows at Target since we had the fabric swatches and then we went back to the store and ordered the furniture. I don't regret at all ordering this new furniture. Our current couch is old and you practically sink to the floor when you sit on it. That plus the fact that we don't even have enough seating in our living room for our family (couch plus chair = 4 spaces and we have 5 people in our family) but whenever we have guests over we end up pulling chairs from the breakfast table into the living room. And we have guests over regularly with family and friends routinely stopping by. I'm very glad to have new furniture.

I'm not very glad we went into debt to do it. But it is at 0% and we will be making monthly payments to pay it off before any interest is accrued. The financing starts 30 days after we take delivery of the furniture which will be 3-4 weeks from now so starting in March I'll have a budget line item of about $175 each month going to the furniture purchase. I'll add this debt to my sidebar later this week when I update all the numbers for the end of the month. Don't pile on too bad, OK? I know what we did goes against all the PF rules. We chose to do it anyway and will pay it off. I promise!

Hello Expected Check of Unexpected Size!

2012-01-22T20:37:00.005-06:00

Thanks for all your feedback on date nights! I think we'll start asking our family members a little more often to come watch the kids (Since they ask to babysit our kids for us I guess they don't mind it too much!) so we can get out once or twice a month for date nights. And the rest of the month we'll make more time for each other at home rather than me being on the computer upstairs while he's on the iPad on the couch downstairs (like we are right now!). (BTW - did I tell you guys that we won an iPad2 last fall? I can't remember if I did or not but we did and we love it, the end. Heh.)

Anyway, back to the post title...yesterday in the mail we received our escrow refund check. I knew this would be coming but wasn't sure how much it would be. I probably could have had an educated guess if I had looked at our last statement to see what our escrow balance was when we sold the old house but well, I guess I didn't think of that. Anyway, we received the check yesterday, like I said, and I was really surprised at the amount! It was $1003! Wow! We deposited it right away yesterday but aren't completely sure what we're going to do with it. If you'll remember our last unexpected check we decided at the end to spend some and leave the rest in our checking account to replenish our buffer. I offered up one idea: to split it. I asked C if maybe we should put $400 in our emergency fund, $400 in our house savings fund, $100 to him and $100 to me to spend on anything we want. C has wanted to get some new jeans to replace some old ones of his. I'd like a new winter coat (which should be on clearance about now!) and maybe some new jeans as well. We'd spend this $200 on ourselves to purchase some (near) necessities and then give our monthly budget a little breathing room. And the rest would go to savings. We haven't decided 100% on this plan but I'm confident a large portion of it will be transferred soon to our savings. Yay for big checks!

Budgeting for Date Night

2012-01-21T12:08:00.001-06:00

There have been a couple divorce and separation announcements this week from some prominent bloggers. I was shocked by both of them and, I'll admit, emotional about them too. I don't "know" these people, only read the words they've shared, and yet I had a physical reaction to their news. I come from a divorced family. My parents divorced my junior year of high school after almost twenty years of marriage. Their divorce had a profound effect on me and I'll admit that divorce is scary to me. Now, my marriage is pretty good. But like any marriage, we have to make time for each other if we're going to keep this good thing going. We've been terrible the past several years in having date nights. We have lots of free babysitting available to us via family members and yet we still don't make the time. I think it's because our budget is usually so tight that it's just easier for us to spend time together after the kids are in bed rather than leaving the house and paying for a dinner or movie out. And we definitely don't leave any room in the budget for date nights either. So, I'm looking for ideas. What do you do for date nights? Do you have any frugal ideas for us? Or should we slow down our savings a bit to budget in a bit more time to do things?

Medical Bill?

2012-01-20T20:03:00.001-06:00

Earlier this week we received a bill from our pediatrician for $129.00. The last time we were to the doctor with the kids was just before Christmas when A had a sore throat. Not wanting to go into Christmas with a possibly contagious child, we went in for a strep test (which was negative, thank goodness). We paid our $25 co-pay and I figured that'd be about the last we heard of that. And then a bill shows up. Before panicking (hey, I'm learning!) I calmly put the envelope in my purse and made a mental note to call the office the next day.

I did call the office the next day and talked with a billing specialist. It turns out for some unknown reason, our insurance company added an extra digit onto our member number after the bill was submitted to them and so they denied the claim because there was no such person in their system. Well, of course there wasn't when they had the number wrong! The billing specialist was going to re-submit and expected that it would go through without issue the second time. I'll keep an eye out for a second billing just in case. And at least I didn't stress too much about this one. I figured there was a mix up somewhere!

Spending Money on Wants!

2012-01-17T17:29:00.002-06:00

We’ve received several snowflakes this month. In addition to our $832.40 refund check mentioned earlier, we’ve also received $77.17 in credit card rewards, $11.21 refund from our natural gas company and $3.00 in survey payments. That gives us a total of $923.78 in snowflakes this month. I want to keep about half of that in our checking account to rebuild our buffer since we were over budget by about $500 in December. Yesterday I detailed out what money went to savings from our regular budget and I’m happy with those amounts for this month. But C and I have also spent some of our snowflake money this month. What did we buy?

1 – Master Bedroom bedding – This is a total want but we were directed by my mother to use our Christmas money from Grandma to purchase new bedding for ourselves. She wanted us to spend our Christmas gift money on something fun instead of something “for the house.” Grandma’s Christmas money was put into our December budget (where we went $500 over) so essentially it went to house stuff anyway. When we found bedding we liked, we decided to splurge and use the snowflake money to purchase it.

And then we placed a huge Amazon order. There have been a few items that we’ve wanted but have been putting off and we finally decided to place a big Amazon order to get them all. Our order total was $215.01 for a total of five items! Here’s what we bought:

1 - We purchased a wireless network card for our new “kid” computer. Just before my mom’s husband passed away last October he insisted that we take their desktop computer (Mom still has their laptop) and use it as a “kid” computer. So we took it (along with a free desk from my sister!) and set it up in the front room of our house. However, the computer doesn’t have a wireless network card so the kids have been unable to play their favorite games at nickjr and Disney and sprout.com. Now we can keep them off the main computer too.

2 – We purchased a new toner cartridge for our laserjet printer. The official HP toner cartridge for our HP LaserJet printer was $92. Instead, C found a compatible off brand cartridge for $18 and we added that to our cart. Since our old cartridge was basically unusable, this is more of a need than a want. I have tax documents I need to print off!

3 – We purchased a 3to1 HDMI switcher. Our current receiver only has 1 HDMI input but we have two components with HDMI outputs – our new blu-ray player we received for Christmas and our cable DVR box. Instead of purchasing a fancy new receiver (on our house list!), we purchased an inexpensive switcher instead. Right now we’re manually moving cables between the two boxes so it will be nice to not have to do that anymore.

4 – We purchased a new 1.5TB internal hard drive for our main home computer. Our other hard drives were close to capacity and our external hard drive used for back-ups quit working. Luckily we didn’t lose any information with the down hard drive but our computer is running really slowly right now with the hard drives near capacity. This new drive will serve as a back up and as additional capacity.

5 – We purchased a Trident Case for our iPad2. The kids have already dropped and cracked the screen on the iPad which C replaced in December for $45. Now we’ll have a tough case so if the kids drop it in the future, hopefully nothing bad will happen to it.

All of these items should have been planned into our normal monthly budgets discretionary line item. I feel a little guilty using snowflakes to pay for them but I guess not enough to not buy them. These six items total about $375 leaving us with about $548 left in snowflakes. We’re working hard to stay under budget this month in our discretionary spending categories and I think C is going to bring home more income than I had planned so I’m hoping that we can send some budget surplus to savings and keep the rest of the snowflakes in our checking. We can’t be the only ones who use snowflakes for wants instead of savings, right? You’ll forgive us just this once, right? RIGHT?

Savings for January

2012-01-16T20:26:00.003-06:00

Thursday night I set up our transfers from checking to savings for this month. This is how much our budget allowed us to transfer:

Emergency fund: $350
Basement Savings: $0
Christmas Savings: $80
Short term (house) Savings: $190
Travel Fund: $100
Tuition Fund: $0 (actually paid $346 for a spring course for C instead of sending money to savings)
Total: $720

And that doesn't include any snowflakes or the very large refund check we received. We've spent some of that check which I'll detail out tomorrow. I'm going to leave the rest of that check in our checking account to build back up our buffer since we were so over budget in December and ate through some of our buffer. That $720 represents about 12% of our take home this month. That's not too bad considering we also paid the large tuition bill. It also doesn't include the money sent to C's Roth IRA or the kids' 529 plans. I'm grateful that even with a bigger mortgage payment we're still able to send a decent chunk to savings each month!

Three Furnished Bedrooms For Almost $0

2012-01-15T21:05:00.003-06:00

OK, so did you all choke at our list in my previous post? I know. We want A LOT of stuff. Don't worry about us though. We have not lost our minds and will not be going into debt on a credit card or with a home equity loan to purchase anything on that list. That is a good 5-6 year list, mMaybe more since we'll probably save money to finish the basement before we replace our current appliances. After all, they are brand new and even though they are not our preferred style and don't have our preferred options, they are functional and new! Anyway, one of our wants is a new full size mattress and bedding for A. We've promised her that we will decorate her new room for her birthday this September. And since we kind of half to...well, it's a win-win!

Now, why do we HAVE to decorate her room? Well, we at least need to purchase a full size mattress and bedding to go with it. The painting of her walls and buying of other decorations is icing on the cake for her.

You see, when we were expecting A, 8 years ago now, my dad generously purchased our crib for us. We purchased a couple "almost" matching dressers from Target to go with the crib and that's how we furnished the nursery. A is still using those dressers and the crib was passed to J and now to L. The crib is a convertible one and will turn into a full size bed which we've promised to A since she is the oldest.

Then, when we had J and needed a bed for A, my dad generously gave us a bedroom set from his house - a twin bunk bed set with two dressers that my sister and I used growing up. Score! So, when L came along we put the bunk beds in one room and A and J shared and we put the crib in our third bedroom for L to use. Now that we've moved to a four bedroom house, we've split apart the bunk beds into separate twin beds that A and J are now using while L still uses the crib. By this fall though L will be two and a half and outgrowing the crib. So, A will get the full size bed. J will get the bunk beds. And L is going to be getting a twin-size daybed (with trundle) and a dresser that my mom is generously giving to us! This is going to be so perfect for us! Each of the boys will have a "spare" bed in their room for when cousins or friends want to stay over and A will have a "bigger" bed which can be used for the same.

And our total out of pocket for all this furniture will be the original 2 dressers we bought to go with the crib plus the full size mattress and bedding. All other beds came with mattresses. We are so fortunate to have such access to free furniture and generous family members! A is so excited to decorate her room. Her current idea is yellow walls with pink and blue flowers. But she changes her mind weekly. I wonder what we'll end up with this September!

House Want/Need List

2012-01-13T17:24:00.001-06:00

I've talked a few times about all the things we want for our new house. Some of them I would consider needs. Most of them I would consider wants. We're trying to be smart about how we go about getting all of these items. We are making sure we're putting more money each month towards our emergency fund than we are the house fund. We're using our short term savings account as our house fund right now since we'll be spending regularly from it. Our emergency fund, tuition fund and basement finishing fund are all also going to see deposits this year but they will have no (or very few hopefully!) withdrawals.

C and I sat down a few weeks ago and wrote down everything we want and then put them in seven buckets with the items in bucket #1 being our first priority items. Yesterday, because I wanted to give myself a heart attack, I put approximate dollar values next to each item and totaled it all up. I almost fainted. Yikes. For anyone interested, here is our prioritized list and my approximate cost for each item. (Anyone want to donate to the house fund?!? Ha!)

Bucket #1:
Cover for Window well - $300 (it's a 5 foot hole in the ground - we don't need any children or animals falling in there!)
Garage floor epoxy - $100
Gas grill (our old one is broken and trashed) - $400
Playset for kids - $1750
Landscaping rock - $150
Shelving for laundry room - $50
Trees - $750
Total: $3500

Bucket #2:
Couch, love seat, chair and end tables for living room - $2000
Receiver - $800
Landscaping shrubs - $500
Stamped concrete patio - $3000
Blinds for L's room - $175
Blinds for A's room - $175
Blinds for J's room - $175
Blinds for kids bathroom - $100
Blinds for loft - $175
Blinds for master bedroom - $175
Total: $7275

Bucket #3:
In-ceiling surround sound speakers (house is pre-wired) - $1000
Blinds for kitchen eating area "bump out" - $100
Blinds for front room - $300
Blinds for kitchen - $175
Blinds for living room - $450
Entertainment center - $300
Full size mattress and bedding for A - $400 (a separate post here!)
Garage shelving - $250
Gutters - $1500
Knobs and pulls for cabinets and drawers - $150
Rugs for master bathroom - $50
Garage door opener for third stall - $125
Total: $4800

Bucket #4:
Blinds for laundry room - $75
Ladder - $100
New light fixtures - $1200 (we're not fans of the standard ones the house came with)
Stone fire pit - $750
Storm/screen door - $200
New TV for living room - $1200
Total: $4725

Bucket #5:
Desk for front room - $500
Kitchen cabinet pull outs and organizers - $75
Desk for loft - $750
Lawn mower - $400 (using an old hand-me-down from in-laws for this first summer)
Shelving for master closet - $100
Total: $1825

Bucket #6:
Chest freezer - $300
Refrigerator, stove, microwave, dishwater - $5000 (we went with the standards that the house came with but are not fans of them - we want our double freestanding oven like we had in the old house and our french door, freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerator, and a quieter dishwasher)
Total: $5300

Bucket $7:
Snowblower - $500
Treadmill - $1000
Total: $1500

All together it's almost $29,000! Oh. Em. Gee. That's OK though. We'll work through our list methodically and maybe some of the items will drop off the list, some will be found for less money than estimated, etc. For now though we'll just focus on priority #1 and go from there.

Travel Daydreams

2012-01-11T18:21:00.001-06:00

It's usually about this time of year that I start daydreaming of travel. It's been unseasonably warm here in Minnesota this whole winter (it was in the 50's yesterday and we went to the park!) so I'm not feeling the need to flee the cold and snow and we've had lots of sunshine lately so it's not the gray winter skies fueling this either. I think it's my mom.

My mother is in Florida right now closing on her new house tomorrow. She's going to be moving there in April when she retires. She'll be home for a few weeks this summer and again at Christmas but with her being less than 45 minutes from Disney World...well, I've got travel on my brain. It would be so great if we could find a way to pay for five plane tickets plus spending money (accommodations and most meals for free - yay!) to go visit her there this summer after school lets out. I may have looked at travel sites yesterday to see what plane tickets would cost. It may have said around $350 - $400 per person. I may have just shut my browser because with our emergency fund so pitifully low there is no way I should be looking at travel sites.

I will be getting an annual bonus in March or April (a perk from my new management job) and although I'm not sure how much that will be, we could potentially use it for travel. Of course we should save it or possibly do the 50/50 thing and save half and spend half on house wants/needs. But what if I just want to travel? We've never taken our kids on a plane. We could potentially take a day trip to see the ocean! Disney! For my 7 year old daughter a Disney trip to see the princesses would be awesome. I'll keep daydreaming. And in the mean time I'll do what I can to make some side income each month (yay snowflakes!) to build our savings and maybe make our travel dreams come true.

Non-Traditional Wedding Gift

2012-01-10T18:07:00.003-06:00

On Sunday we attended the wedding of a cousin of mine. In lieu of gifts, she and her new husband requested that we give money to one of the three charities they chose. They had envelopes at the reception on a table with pamphlets from each of the charities and boxes where you could put the money filled envelopes. In talking with some of the other guests, some were confused by the idea. No wedding gift? Money to charity instead? I'd heard of this new wedding trend before but apparently they had not. They were questioning how this new couple was going to purchase all those new household needs since they were fresh out of college with at least one of them looking to go to graduate school in the fall. I figured that's there business and if they wanted me to give to charity, that's fine. After all, I made our check out directly to the charity anyway so yay, tax deduction!

There was one thing that bothered me about the whole thing though and that was their selection of charities. I understand these three charities are ones they are passionate about but with their fundamentalist christian views, it was hard for me to choose which of the three to give to. In reviewing the charities with C, he gave a firm "no" to one of them. In the end we gave to the one charity we felt most closely aligned with our belief system. I think I would have preferred if the couple had either broadened out their choices so everything wasn't so "in your face" about the religious aspect of it or I would have preferred that they had let us give to the charity of our choice in their name. I know a few guests just put cash in a card made out to the couple and said they can do with it what they please. What would you have done?

Hello Unexpected Check!

2012-01-09T17:54:00.002-06:00

On Saturday we received an unexpected check in the mail from our insurance company. It was for over $800 and we weren't sure if it was ours to keep. We were supposed to close on our old house on 12/9/11 and then right before closing it was delayed due to a financing issue with the buyers. They fixed all that and closing actually happened on 12/23/11. Because of that though our insurance company cancelled our policy and then re-instated it. So, we weren't sure if this large check was a result of the stop and starting of the policy or if it was actually ours to keep.

I called the insurance company today at lunch time and sure enough, it's ours to keep! It was a reimbursement for the 2012 premium that was paid from our escrow account. Whee! Now we have to figure out what to do with it. My first inclination is to put it all back into savings as one giant snowflake but C said maybe we should look at our want list for the house and spend some of it there. We're still discussing but right now I'm leaning towards 50% in emergency fund savings and 50% house stuff. I mean, we do have sheets in some of the windows still. It would be nice to buy a blind or two! Decisions, decisions!

I Want, I Want, I Want

2012-01-05T21:35:00.002-06:00

I want, I want, I want. That's all I can think about right now. I want blinds in all my windows instead of sheets hung on tension rods. I want new living room furniture. I want new bedding. I want a playset for the kids in spring. I want a nice stamped concrete patio off the patio doors this summer. I want additional shelving put in some of the closets. I want. I want. I want.

What I know though is that we were over budget by over $500 last month! Luckily we have enough "slush" in our checking account that we most likely won't have to forgo putting any money into savings this month in order to pay our credit cards in full this month (since we put all spending on credit cards in order to redeem the awards). It was sure a reality check tonight when I balanced December's budget to see how the numbers shook out. We did spend a big chunk of change getting some things for the house last month (water softener, water softener installation, blinds for two of the bathroom windows, etc.). And then with Christmas and the very large check we wrote for the closing of our old house...well, it all together put us over budget.

I'm determined to stay under budget this month in our discretionary categories. I'm determined to put the budgeted amounts into our various savings account. And I've decided to keep any snowflakes received and any budget extra for this month in our checking account instead of transferring those to savings. That will help replenish that "slush" in our checking account so that we never have to worry about bouncing anything. Next month I can send all snowflakes and budget extra to savings. This month I have to pay for past mistakes.

Volunteering

2012-01-04T21:32:00.001-06:00

I signed up to be a Junior Achievement volunteer in my daughter's first grade classroom this winter. I'll probably teach my first lesson in the next couple weeks. I've never volunteered in a classroom before but teaching first graders about wants vs needs and the basics of personal finance intrigued me. Have any of you been a JA volunteer? Any teachers or volunteers out there want to give me any tips?

Bigger House = Bigger Mortgage

2012-01-03T21:39:00.002-06:00

One thing we knew would happen when we purchased our new, bigger house was that our monthly mortgage payment would go up. Not only is our starting mortgage balance higher by about $25k over what our previous starting mortgage balance was but our interest rate is higher too! OK, so our previous interest rate was only 3.00% since it was a 5 year ARM that reset LOWER. Our new 30 year fixed interest rate is 3.934%. Now, that is a fantastic rate, I KNOW! But, it's still higher than 3.00%! So, combine those two items together and you get a bigger monthly mortgage payment. Add in taxes, insurance, PMI (we didn't have 20% to put down since we had to pay to get out of our other mortgage) and it all adds up to about $300 more per month that we're paying for our mortgage. Yippee...not. Anyway, this $300/month is a big chunk of change and it's hurting how much we're able to save each month. I still have us saving about $1500/month on average from our net pay in 2012, but that is spread between the emergency fund, house fund, tuition fund, Christmas savings, 529's, etc. That $300 would be really nice about now to go back towards the emergency fund!

Anyway, I have a question for you. Our new mortgage payment due each month is $1841.50. With our interest rate so low, I'm sure some people would tell me to NOT pay ahead on my mortgage each month. Instead, I should be socking every penny into the emergency fund until it's fully funded. In my head I know that makes sense but I just can't seem to do it. For January, our first payment, I sent in $1900. I just had to round it up! And by sending in that $58.50 in extra principal this month, according to my calculations, I saved us about $130 in interest over the life of the loan. That interest savings is peanuts compared to what we'll eventually pay in interest but I just can't NOT pay ahead on the mortgage. After the emergency fund is fully funded and C graduates from nursing school I'm sure we'll attack the mortgage at a more aggressive rate (after ensuring our retirement accounts are maxed out, etc.) but for now I just feel the need to round up, even if in leaner months I only round up to $1850. What would you do? Would you round up or pay the minimum?

2012 Goals

2012-01-02T21:35:00.002-06:00

With the start of the "Year of Accomplishment", I should, uh, maybe set some goals? What exactly do I want to accomplish this year anyway? I haven't thought too much of the specifics but with my 2012 budget open in front of me, that's probably a good place to start.

Emergency Fund:
Save $5000 in our emergency fund. Right now the balance is $0.40. I have just over $4000 budgeted to go to the emergency fund this year. I'm going to work to bring in snowflakes (credit card rewards, garage sale proceeds, e-bay/craigslist/half.com sales, etc.) to make up the difference. By the end of the year, I want us to be 20% funded (our emergency fund goal is $25k).

Tuition Fund:
Save $6000 in tuition fund and pay for all classes with cash, not loans. I just paid for C's spring course. He applies by Feb. 1st for the nursing program and if he's admitted, he'll start going to school full time in the fall. Saving $5650 (his spring course was almost $350) during the course of the year should allow us to pay for his fall semester in cash and have some left over for the spring semester. If we hit our emergency fund goal early, I'll probably stash extra cash here to ensure that spring semester is paid in full with cash too.

Travel:
Go on 2-3 family vacations paid for with cash. This could include weekend trips or longer depending upon available funds. I have $1000 in the 2012 budget earmarked for travel. That's not going to go far for a family of 5. But we've got some trips in mind that we'd like to take. Now I need to figure out how to fund them.

Christmas 2012:
Save $960 ($80/month) for Christmas 2012. I just need to make the monthly budget transfers and we should be set.

Budget:
Stay under budget each month. That's pretty self-explanatory, right? It's hard some months (OK, all months) but with a tight budget this year, we need to be diligent. Under budget every month will mean more snowflakes for the savings goals listed above too!

House:
Pay for all needs and wants on house list with cash. I have just shy of $3k budgeted this year for house related expenses (blinds, patio, lawnmower, landscaping, speakers, gutters, etc.). That money won't go far so we'll have to make it stretch. My father and stepmother were very generous in gifting us a $300 gift card to a local home improvement store for Christmas. We've decided to save it to buy landscape edging, rock and shrubs in the spring. That will help stretch the house money.

Personal:
My year of accomplishment is more than just personal finance. I don't talk much fitness here, but I'd like to run another half marathon this summer. Seeing as how I haven't worked out regularly since the birth of my son in April 2010, it's time to get my butt in gear! I may have to resort to the C25K program (how embarrassing that I've let my fitness slip this far!) but I will do this. I also promised my brother I'd travel to Texas, where he lives, to do a race with him in the spring if he finds one he wants to do. Must get moving...

And those are the goals I can think of right now that I want to accomplish this year. They're realistic, attainable and SMART. Now it's time to start doing. So far, so good. We had a no spend day today. Our first of 2012.

Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-01T20:37:00.003-06:00

It's been a very long time since my last update. I'm feeling the need to re-focus my efforts. Maybe it's the start of the new year. Maybe it's the fact that we're getting settled into our new house. Maybe it's because I just did a December month end review of our finances and took a look at our savings balances and realized we really need to get back on the saving bandwagon. Whatever the reason (or more likely all of the above mashed together!), I've got personal finance on the brain again. I feel like I'm starting over here. Fresh. New beginnings. But I also don't want to forget where we came from.

We've been credit card debt free for 3.5 years. We've been student loan debt free for over 2 years. Our 0% truck loan is under $20k. We have a monthly budget and we track every penny we spend and we've been doing this diligently for years now.

But, we are back to square one with the emergency fund. In fact, we cleaned out the emergency fund, the tuition fund and the basement finishing fund in December. We took every last penny out of them. Those were difficult transfers to make but in the end, we are so glad we did! We accepted an offer on our old house in September. We closed on our new house at the end of November and we closed on the old house at the end of December. And we had to bring a very large check to the closing of the old house since we were underwater on our mortgage and had to pay the realtor. But we feel it was worth it for us since we had the money in savings (and we raided a bit of C's Roth IRA but don't worry, we still have over $185k in retirement savings and that's not counting my pension) and our new house is perfect for our family for the next 30+ years. Of course, along with the excitement of a brand new house comes expenses - blinds for all the windows, a water softener, gutters, landscaping, etc. are all required along with other fun things we want like speakers for the pre-wired surround sound, a playset for the kids and new living room furniture.

I've updated the sidebar with our current savings balances. I've made our 2012 budget and now it's all about execution. I need to make sure our money earmarked for savings makes it into savings. I need to make sure we only spend the budgeted amount each month on house stuff. I need to make sure we stay on budget each month and not live beyond our means. This year will be challenging because we have so many wants! (I daydream about going crazy with the credit card and getting everything on the house list!) I'm hoping that with a renewed focus (and more regular posting schedule) that we can achieve everything we want and that you'll come along for the ride. Friends of ours are calling 2012 their "Year of Accomplishment" and I like that and hope to make 2012 my year of accomplishment too.

August Update

2011-08-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

Long time, no update. I think I lost my desire to blog about my financial life. Everything is fine. The house is still on the market. We're getting tons of showings but no offers yet.

Our emergency fund is now over $17,000. We're almost to our goal! Of course if we do sell our house and build a new one then we'll use a good chunk of that money for a down payment on the new one and closing costs and realtor fees on our current one.

The tuition fund is now around $5000. We took about $2k out to put down on the new house (100% refundable if we don't move forward with the house). And we had to take money out to, wait for it, pay for tuition! C starts fall semester classes on the 22nd.

Otherwise we're still budgeting, still saving like crazy and still making the most of our money.

Oh, and we bought smartphones and upgraded our phone plan to a data plan on Saturday. C's phone had about 2 hours of battery life in it and both of ours were about 3 years old. So, we splurged and upgraded. Our cell phone bill will double from about $65/month to ~$125/month. That ~$60/month increase is small compared to the amount of money we're saving each month (at least $2000 between 401k, emergency savings, tuition, 529's, Christmas, short term, etc.) so we're both OK with splurging on this want each month.

OK, and with that I'll probably go radio silent again for a while. School starts soon for both C and the kids, we have house stuff on our minds and we're in control of our finances. Life is good.

Random

2011-06-22T07:31:00.004-05:00

How about some random updates?

No offer yet from the second showing people. We've answered all the questions they gave us so I guess we wait and see now. We have another showing tonight too. We're still crossing our fingers!

I updated our budget Monday night. We're less than $2 over our restaurant budget for the month. Not too bad! We don't need to eat out before the end of the month so we should be able to keep it there. We're also under on gas, food and household so we should be able to end the month under budget. Our discretionary is over but that's because we've spent some money this month on the house. We bought a new curtain rod for the kids' room. And C finished the kitchen backsplash. I think it looks great.
I'll take money out of our short term savings account for those purchases. Overall it hasn't been too bad of a month. Can you believe it's almost the end of June already!

Walking and Moving

2011-06-20T17:55:00.002-05:00

Tonight I'm signing up for the Heart Walk. You're all right. It's $90 very well spent. Thank you for helping me get over my frugal ways for this important cause.

We have had five showings on our house since it went on the market Wednesday evening. We had a sixth showing that was actually a second showing! And that couple is interested! They have some questions which I am bringing forward to our homeowners association this evening. I'm hoping we can clear those hurdles and that they'll like the house enough to make an offer!

Everything else is good in our neck of the woods. We've tried to do free things while we have to be out of the house for all these showings. Only once did we spend money - Friday evening when we had a showing over dinner so we went out to eat. We introduced the kids to Japanese food and spent $50 at a local Japanese grill and sushi place. It was very tasty! That probably put us over our restaurant budget for the month though. I'll know for sure tonight when I update our budget.

Oh, one last thing about our house...every realtor has said we're priced at market value! That's great news. We listed at $219,900 and our mortgage balance is at $220,206. Hopefully we can move out of this house with only a little money out of our pockets!

On the Market

2011-06-15T15:52:00.001-05:00

Our house will officially be listed on the MLS system today. We decided to list it at $219,900. We're crossing our fingers that showings and ultimately an offer comes in soon!

I've been all house talk lately. We do have other things going on. The kids started their summer sports this week. It's so cute to watch them learn how to catch or learn the rules of soccer or run around the field with a football tucked under their arm.

A neighbor girl of ours is five years old and has had 6 open heart and lung surgeries due to a birth defect. She's scheduled for her next surgery this fall to replace a valve with a custom made one just for her. My daughter plays with this little girl daily and we've grown to love the family and their daughter. Coming up on the 26th is a Heart Walk and they've asked all their family and friends (including us) to join them. In order to attend, it will cost our family $80 in walk entrance fees or $90 if we sign A and J up for the kids fun run. That is expensive to us. I've been waffling about signing up. But then I think about this little girl and her enormous heart problems and I feel so incredibly grateful for my healthy children. I would give every physical possession of mine and all the money in the bank to keep them healthy. Is $90 too much to help with research to help other little kids like our neighbor? I'm leaning towards no.

6/14/11 House Update

2011-06-14T18:16:00.000-05:00

Anyone sick of house updates yet? It's really all that's going in our lives right now so I'm a bit one-track minded lately. (We did sign up for the Minneapolis Warrior Dash though. It's a 5K obstacle course race in July. Think running through mud, over hay bales, rappelling down hills and jumping through fire! It cost us almost $100 to sign us both up! Yikes! It will be fun to do together though!)

OK, back to the house. On Sunday we finalized our list of options that we wanted in the new house (Silestone counter tops, engineered hardwood floors, ceramic tile in all the baths and mud room, upgraded carpet, sprinkler system, nice railings instead of half walls on the stairs, bay window in breakfast nook, etc.) and everything totaled up to $329,030. We then submitted an offer to the builder of $300,000 and he took it! The new house is a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 3 car garage house in a new development with no association and is around 2500 square feet with another 1000 square feet of basement that we can finish in the future. That's the perfect size house for our family of five I think! And the price is exactly where we want it! And it has a nice shaded backyard perfect for a playground with room for a big patio and garden too! For comparison, almost six years ago when we built our current house we paid $274.5k and that was without appliances, paint, flooring on the main level and the upstairs bathrooms as we did all that ourselves with sweat equity. Our current house is 1700 square feet. We're getting so much more house and yard for only a bit more money! Our monthly mortgage payment should not increase very much. We're super excited.

Of course now the hurdle is selling our current house. If you remember a month or so ago we had a realtor come to our house and without doing any comps he told us he could sell the house at $199.9k. Our current mortgage on the house is $220.2k. We were disappointed with that number. We had a second realtor come out last week and he did a full market analysis and told us we should list our house at $209k but most of his comps were short sales or lender owned houses. That was a better number and something we were willing to take on money-wise.

Through all of this our neighbors have been debating on whether to join us in selling and maybe even moving with us to our new neighborhood! They have had 2 realtors come through their house and both of them have told them they should list their house much, much higher than what the realtors have told us. They have an identical floor plan to us but they have finished their basement. The basement should get them about $10-$15k more in price. So, last night we did some looking on MLS and do think we could put our house on the market for more. We've asked our realtor (the second one) to re-do the market analysis with higher priced comps. We see him tonight and we'll talk and agree on a listing price for our house then. I do not like realtors. Sure, you could sell my house at $199k or $209k. It's a bargain then more than likely! Can you sell it at $225k? It's probably going to take more work and it's only going to get you an additional $500 in commission but it's going to get us $15-20k more! If we're not happy with what he has to say this afternoon then I think we're prepared to find a new realtor.

Anyway, that's where it all stands. Contingent purchase agreement is in place on the new house. Our current house should be listed before the end of the week. And now here's to hoping that someone loves our house and wants to buy it quickly!

A sign?

2011-06-10T16:37:00.001-05:00

Monday night as I went to bed weighing the pros and cons of moving over and over in my mind, I prayed to God, asking for a sign. Should we take the leap and move? How is the money going to work? Am I putting my family at too much risk by taking most of our cash savings and spending it?

Tuesday night when I arrived home from work I went and retrieved the mail. In the mail was a letter from the Minnesota Department of Revenue. I immediately thought "Oh no, we're being audited!" That was not the case though. Our governor passed a bill earlier this year affecting our 2010 taxes and hey, look at that! We're getting a refund of $2149! We paid in over $2600 and our taxes owed were only ~$450. The check hasn't arrived yet. The letter said that would come separately.

Is this my sign? All that money is going directly to savings for now. It might just go to a new house though too.

New House Limbo

2011-06-09T16:25:00.001-05:00

I haven't blogged in a while. Things just got crazy there for a moment and they're not really slowing down. There were birthdays and end of school parties and picnics and of course just normal daily life with three small children. C started his first class, and boy is it a time suck! I never did a May budget report although I do have all the data for it. It just never got posted. I could still do that. And maybe I will.

But what's taking most of my brain power these days is housing. We're back in new house limbo. Do we move? Do we not move? After that initial moving bug got in our systems, we just haven't been able to shake it. So the house in our neighborhood didn't work out but then I was talking with a friend and she mentioned a new development near her that didn't have an association tied to it. Intriguing! I stopped by the model home on a whim and left with a packet of information, house plans and a map of the available lots. I brought them home and showed them to C and he was immediately interested.

Since then we've been pouring over details, creating spreadsheets full of numbers and dreaming of a potential brand new house. We had a realtor come over and do a full market analysis for us. There are only 6 other 2 story homes in our town and the two neighboring towns on the market right now at our price point. And at least 4 of those are short sales. He thinks we could raise the price on our house $10k over what the first realtor, who did not do any comparisons with other houses on the market, told us.

We've been e-mailing with the new house sales rep to go over pricing and options and asking all sorts of questions. We have another meeting with him on Saturday to go over a few more things and we might, we just might, make a contingent offer on Saturday for the new house. And then we may put our current house on the market in a week or so.

It's all very exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. (Where do we live if our current house sells but the new house isn't done yet?)

Yes, we would deplete our savings in order to make this happen. To some (most?) that would be a no go. To us, it's not off the table. We're considering it.

May 2011 Month End

2011-06-02T21:07:00.001-05:00

Good-bye May. You treated us fairly. It was a good month. Here's where the money stands:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $22,882.60 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $11,556.54 (+1,885.57) - Thank you raise! My raise is significantly helping us with our savings. In addition to that we had over $300 in snowflakes this month! C brought home more money this month than in the past couple and everything just went right for us. We had minimum extra expenses this month which also helped. June won't see as big a gain but anything in the 4 digit range is awesome!

Short Term Savings: $332.69 (-47.02) - We took some money out of this account this month to pay for some of the house stuff we're doing. Some of it went to new mulch for the 8 trees on our yard. Some of it went to the kitchen backsplash project. I love having a little bit of play money in this account to do or purchase some extras.

Travel Fund: $486.47 (+75.40) - Vacation is next month! We are supposed to be gone from Sunday through Saturday of the week of the 4th of July. Unfortunately C found out yesterday at his first class that he has a lab test the Wednesday of that week. It couldn't be more inconvenient, being smack dab in the middle of our vacation and all when we're going to be about a 9 hour car ride from home. We're unsure right now what we're going to do. (We had originally scheduled the vacation for this week assuming C would be taking a different class that would have ended in June. That didn't happen and he took a different class instead and now we have a conflict. Time to decide what to do!)

Christmas Savings: $449.42 (+75.37) - Christmas savings is right on track!

Basement Finishing Fund: $130.05 (+0.11) - Some day basement you will be finished!

Tuition Fund: $9,820.03 (-800.88) - And there went our first tuition payment! C also purchased books totaling almost $200. He's hoping to sell his book after the class is over. On Half.com he should be able to make almost all his money back. I am so grateful we have this tuition money saved so we can pay his tuition with cash instead of with credit! (OK, so we technically did pay with credit so we could get the cash back and then we paid the credit card with cash from this account. Details, details!)

NetWorth:

Assets:
Savings: $26.5k (INGDirect subaccounts plus 529's)
Retirement: $256.6k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $234.7k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)

Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $243.6k

Networth = 26.5k + 256.6k + 234.7k - 243.6k = $274.2k - Our network rebounded this month thanks to a boost in my pension amount. Our savings went up a little and our assets stayed about the same. Unfortunately, our 529, 401ks and Roth IRA accounts all actually went down a little this month even though we put money into them. That's unfortunate but the stock market is what it is. I'm grateful for any rise in our networth though. Our networth is higher now than I've ever seen it. We're on the right track!

Budget Updates

2011-05-26T17:07:00.001-05:00

We went over our grocery budget this month...by A LOT. We're about $150 over budget this month! Part of that was mother's day and C's birthday. We didn't eat out either time but we did buy steaks and have really nice dinners at home. The other reason our grocery budget has been creeping up (it was $75 over last month and right on target - a target that was $50 higher than usual - the month before that) is because the baby isn't a baby anymore and insists on eating real food, lots and lots of real food, instead of the free breastmilk I had been so lovingly supplying him for the majority of his lifetime. I'm still nursing but at a year old that is slowing down dramatically and the real food and whole milk has taken over as it should. And then of course are the two older children who also continue to grow up and get bigger and eat more even though I have not authorized this. Heh. I think the grocery budget needs to be permanently increased from $450/month to $550/month starting in June. After all, it's my birthday next month and father's day. I see at least one more steak dinner in our future! Feeding a family of five on $550/month seems about right to me. I don't think we're being particularly excessive with our grocery budget. Do you?

Also in June I'm going to increase our gas and restaurant budget, but only for the one month. You see, we'll be traveling to Iowa this weekend to visit our brand new nephew and we'll need additional money for gas and snacks/food on the way there and back! I'm so excited to meet the new precious bundle!

And in June I'm also going to start a new budget line item for charity. I'm going to set it at $50/month and C and I will pick out a different charity each month to support. I know we'll be supporting Heifer International, a cancer charity, a local food shelf and a local battered women's shelter. I'm also leaning towards another international charity or two focused on water and sustainable living and/or illiteracy and women's education.

Our budget this month (final numbers will be published next week) shows us saving over $1900 of the >$6000 we brought home (after taxes, healthcare and my 401k 8% contribution was taken out of our gross). Saving 1/3 of our take home income is great but maybe that means we have some room to increase some of our spending areas too. I think the grocery budget and charity line items are perfect places to adjust.

We Are Not Moving

2011-05-24T16:31:00.001-05:00

Well, we're not moving to that house in our neighborhood at least. The house in our neighborhood went on the market recently at $215k. It's a 5 bedroom, 3.25 bath, 3 car garage house and it would have been great for our family. Then we went inside the house and decided it was no longer great for our family. There was mold in the master bedroom closet, likely from where the roof of the garage met the house. Roof leak? No thank you! Then in the basement they had a water leak from the bathroom shower and the sheet rock and all the flooring would need to be replaced not to mention making sure the leak was taken care of. No thank you! Then, the house didn't have appliances so take on $4-10k for that. Then there was all the cosmetic work the house would (eventually) need like refinishing the trashed hardwood floors, painting every (written on) wall in the house, replacing all the disgustingly dirty carpets, replacing the horribly ugly track lighting and light fixtures, etc. Basically the house was so cheap because it needed so much work! We backed away but the house had 6 offers in the first 3 days we found out from our realtor. It will be a great house for someone, just not us.

We're still thinking of moving and are keeping an eye out (and have automated internet searches set up) for other houses in our neighborhood. And until the perfect house comes our way we'll continue saving money like crazy and also paying down our mortgage each month. We're currently paying about $550/month to our principal.

One nice thing we were told by a mortgage guy though is we could do basically anything we wanted because our credit scores are so high and our debt to income ratio is perfect and we're the perfect borrowers in their eyes. Aw! Thanks!

First Tuition Payment Made

2011-05-19T16:42:00.001-05:00

*I wrote this post over a week ago and just noticed today that it didn't post due to all the Blogger issues of last week. I'll share it with you now instead.*

C registered for his first class a week or so ago. This is the first class (of many) to getting him a nursing degree. He's taking a few prerequisites this summer and fall and then will apply in February for (hopeful) admittance for next fall (of 2012) for the two year nursing program. Not even a day after getting confirmation that he's registered we received the e-mail saying his tuition is due! He starts class on June 1st but tuition is due on May 13th. And because this is a science class with a lab, the tuition is a bit pricey since it's a higher number of credit hours. Monday night I paid his tuition with my credit card. Good-bye $663.24! Then I immediately set up the transfer from our tuition savings account for the same amount. Once that amount hits our checking account and the charge has cleared our credit card, I'll pay the credit card balance (and be thankful to get 1% cash back!).

C still has to buy his books for the class. He's estimating that could be as much as $400! We're hoping he can find some used books on Half.com and keep the cost closer to $300. Yikes. I think after the emergency fund is complete that we may have to bolster that tuition fund. The amount we have in there isn't going to go far at this rate!

Emergency Fund at 5 digits!

2011-05-10T16:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I set up a transfer from our checking account to our emergency fund for $1641.91. That amount is $1550 from our budget and $91.91 in snowflakes. With this large addition, our emergency fund finally hit the five digit mark! And not only that but we're now at $11.5k in our emergency fund! I am on a financial high right now!

Disclaimer: Murphy - this is not an invitation for you to come knocking on our door. Please stay away.

New Emergency Fund Goal

2011-05-09T18:30:00.006-05:00

I'm pretty sure we're going to be able to achieve our emergency fund goal before the end of the year. That is, if we don't move, of course. I'm so excited for that account to hit the $20k mark! Then we can decide what to do next - go crazy saving money to finish the basement? Put a bunch of money in savings to go on a vacation or two? Max out our retirement savings? Spend frivolously (or at least not quite as frugally as we are now)? The possibilities are endless. I'm trying to be "gazelle-intense" on our emergency fund right now so we can finish it as soon as possible. But I've also been thinking lately that maybe $20,000 isn't the right number. I made up a mock "emergency" budget today to see exactly how much money we'd need if we lost all employment income. Here is what it looked like:

As you can see, our total monthly budget is around $3600. Then I also calculated some of the big yearly expenses that we have. If I multiplied our monthly emergency budget by 6 and then added our extra yearly expenses I came up with about $23.5k that we should really have as our goal. I think we should round that number up to $25k just to cover anything that I'm not remembering right now and to cushion us just a little bit more.

I think we'll stay focused on our $20k goal and push to have that complete before the end of the year. Then I think we'll put $100 or $200 per month in emergency savings and put the rest of our monthly "extra" money elsewhere. We can keep doing this until we hit $25k in our emergency fund and maybe then we'll have to recalculate again to make sure $25k is the right number.

Toot! Toot!

2011-05-06T16:43:00.002-05:00

Not to toot my own horn but let me just toot my own horn for a second here...

As part of the mortgage pre-approval process our mortgage guy pulled our credit scores and shared them with us. They were pretty darn good! Look!

I haven't checked our scores or reports in over a year (bad me!) so this was a nice confirmation that we're on the right track. (And of course I got a small dig in at C that my scores are higher!) I should still pull our free report for this year just to make sure nothing funny is going on. I'll put that on my never ending to-do list!

House Projects are all the Rage!

2011-05-05T16:46:00.001-05:00

In an effort to get our house ready to sell (if we do), we’ve been doing some house projects. The first was to clean out our closets. We sent our first batch of items to goodwill last month. In all we sent 73 items out of the house in 4 garbage bags. It always feels good to purge the extras!

We’ve also been doing some improvements. We bought a drywall patch for a small hole in the baby’s room from where the glider leg went through the wall (thanks kids!). That was only a couple dollars. Then we also bought a drywall anchor screw to repair once and for all the toilet paper holder in the bathroom on the main level (thanks kids!) and then we bought a curtain rod and tie backs ($30) for the baby’s room. Previously he just had a shade in his room so now it looks more “finished” with curtains up. We already had the curtains, just needed the rod. So far, our expenses have been minimal. The most costly project that we’re undertaking is our kitchen backsplash. We found tile at Lowe’s that looks great with our countertops, cabinets and floors. We’ve bought 11 pieces of tile so far (that’s all Lowe’s had in stock on Sunday) for roughly $75. We’ll need 3-4 more pieces of tile plus grout before we can finish the project. All told, the project should cost us around $100 but I think it will make our kitchen look so much nice and more finished! We’ve wanted to do this anyway (it’s on our want list!) so regardless if we sell the house now or later, I’m glad we’re doing this project.

Up in the Air

2011-05-04T16:43:00.001-05:00

The house question is still up in the air. The house we’re interested in is not on the market yet. We’re still anxious to get inside and see what it looks like. But our excitement has been tempered a bit (a lot). We had a realtor come by a couple weeks ago and gave us the news that if we list our house, it should be for about $20k lower than what we currently owe on it. Ouch. That’s more cash that we’d have to bring to closing on our current house than we were hoping to have to bring. We were hoping the difference would only be $10k. But the realtor was willing to reduce his fee from 5% to 4% (listed on MLS) or even 3% (not listed on MLS) if we used him to buy the new house. Good news and bad news from that meeting.

Then we’ve been working with the mortgage guy from our credit union. I found out from him on Friday that we’d definitely qualify for an FHA loan which only required 3.5% down on the new house. Our income, credit scores and income to debt ratio are all excellent. We could even have mortgages on both houses and still have an acceptable income to debt ratio. Unfortunately, his underwriter won’t approve us for the new home loan with us being so underwater on our current house. He, like most other banks, is worried about us buying the new house and then walking away from the current house. We have absolutely zero intention of doing that but of course it’s still a risk he’d have to take on us. And right now, he’s unwilling to take that risk. He wants us to pay down our mortgage until we have 20% equity and then he’d approve us for the new mortgage. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. We don’t have $60k lying around just waiting to get applied to our current mortgage. The underwriter may be willing to compromise a bit, especially if our house was already on the market. So, we’re in a holding pattern there. Once again it was good news and bad news from that meeting.

So, we’re just keeping an eye on the new house. As soon as the for sale sign goes up we’ll get inside to look around. And in the mean time we’ll make small gains on our current mortgage through our monthly payments (~$550/month to principal right now) and we’ll keep saving as much money as we can each month through our normal income and through snowflakes. Right now we’re not going to increase our church contribution, Roth IRA contribution or charitable giving until the house question is answered.

"Fully Funded"

2011-05-03T16:40:00.000-05:00

Did you take a look at our April Month End report? If so, you may have noticed (but probably not) that if you add the emergency fund and the tuition account that you exceed $20k for the first time. That’s very exciting for me! When C was laid off we took that as our opportunity to send him back to school which he’ll be starting this summer. To that end, we saved all of his unemployment income in a new account nicknamed tuition. Normally, that income would have gone to our emergency fund. Essentially if the worst happened right now, we have our six month emergency fund ready to go. We’d just have to tap the tuition fund to make that happen. Yay! Of course our real goal is to fund the emergency fund on its own and then to keep it at the $20k minimum while also sending C to school and paying cash along the way for that.

April 2011 Budget Report

2011-05-02T21:16:00.005-05:00

April was another good month for us. We spent a lot of money but we brought home more income than we spent so I guess it's all OK!

I underestimated how much my raise would increase our income so we ended up bringing home almost $300 more than I anticipated. That's not a bad problem to have! I wish I could say all the difference went to savings but unfortunately we went over in a couple budget areas and that ate into the difference. We were over on gas by $25. Gas prices are really high right now (no shock to you!) and I hope we can stay within my increased budget of $300 in May. If not, I'll adjust it even higher for June. We were also over in groceries. I don't know if we're just buying more junk food (I doubt that accounts for all of the overage) or if we're seeing an uptick in grocery prices too or what but we were way over on groceries this month. We'll have to watch that in May so we don't blow the budget again! All other discretionary spending was pretty good!

We had a lot of one time expenses this month. L had his first birthday! I budgeted $150 for food for his party and his gifts and we came in at $125. Not bad! And I signed the kids up for spring and summer activities which ended up being a large expense. And then there were our splurge line items. The kids and I all received some new clothing this month. I thought for a while that I had overestimated what our income was going to be so I slashed C's splurge budget to $0 because he has a $50 Visa gift card that he received as a thank you from a client. That became his splurge money instead of budget money. He hasn't spent that money either! But, it's his to spend as he pleases in the future.

Overall we came in $216.19 under budget and I've already transferred that entire amount to our emergency fund!

April 2011 Month End

2011-05-01T21:23:00.002-05:00

I haven't tallied up the final budget details (watch for those tomorrow) but all the month end balances are available for our accounts. Here is where our debt and savings stand:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $23,322.65 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $9,670.97 (+349.26) - Most of this was again snowflakes. $241.51 to be exact. Not too bad! I expect to have another budget surplus to report tomorrow and as soon as I have the final number, that too will be added to savings. I expect we'll blow the $10k mark out of the water this month as it's the first full month of my raise. I even expect us to be over $11k by the end of May! It's so exciting!

Short Term Savings: $379.71 (+50.00) - This account is seeing nothing but growth lately. We'll change that! Today we bought most of the tile needed for us to tile out backsplash in our kitchen. The whole project should cost us around $100 and it's going to look so nice when it's done!

Travel Fund: $411.07 (+75.31) - The kids are already asking when we're going on vacation and is that tomorrow and why can't we go tomorrow? They're excited as are we and my in-laws who are coming with us. I can't wait to get away for a while...especially with two doting grandparents along to help with the kids! I may just get some free time! Woo-hoo!

Christmas Savings: $374.05 (+75.28) - Christmas could come today and we'd have enough money saved to make it a nice one. By December we'll have enough saved to spoil our children thoroughly. I love paying for Christmas with cash. It takes most of the stress out of the season so I can sit back and enjoy it.

Basement Finishing Fund: $129.94 (+0.11) - With the big gains in the emergency fund coming up, I'm hoping this account can come off the neglected list before the end of the year!

Tuition Fund: $10,620.91 (+58.66) - We're padding this account right now. C expects his first class to cost around $600 this summer plus books. Thank goodness we saved all that cash so we can sit back and pay for classes without stress or worry.

NetWorth:

Assets:
Savings: $25.3k (INGDirect subaccounts plus 529's)
Retirement: $253.5k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $235.5k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)

Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $244.6k

Networth = 25.3k + 253.5k + 235.5k - 244.6k = $269.7k - Our networth went down this month by about $4k. That's because I decreased our house value. I had been using a similar home in our neighborhood but that house sold in December of 2009. Since then home prices have dropped even further and our realtor gave us a market analysis lower than we were expecting. Our savings and retirement accounts saw nice gains and our mortgage and truck loans went down. Everything is headed in the right direction. Now only if home values would rise a little bit!

Overall we had a solid month. I'm pleased with our progress. Our 2011 is going well so far! (Crosses fingers that Murphy stays away!!)

We're Still Crazily Thinking of Moving

2011-04-21T16:49:00.001-05:00

We're still thinking of moving and we're researching everything we can in order to make informed decisions. I had some good comments on my first post about this. And we've learned a few things in the past week.

We've learned that the house was relinquished last August to a major national bank with a mortgage balance of $200,570.00 and will most likely go on the market for about that price.

We've learned that our options for a mortgage for the new house might be slim and that it may be hard to get a mortgage. We've learned no one is accepting contingency offers, especially on foreclosures. This means we'd have to buy the house outright and try to sell ours on the side. Can we handle both mortgage payments? Yes but that would significantly reduce what we could send to savings each month. Can we get a mortgage for another primary residence? Maybe. Would we have to drain most of our savings to do this? Likely. We've starting working with the mortgage guy at my company's credit union to get us pre-approved so when the house does go on the market we can move quickly if we decide to. We're still anxious to get inside and look around. C may or may not have peeked inside the front door and may or may not have seen nice looking hardwood floors. Heh.

We have a realtor coming to our house tomorrow to give us a market analysis. We want to know realistically what we could sell our house for and approximately how long he thinks it would take. We will ask him what he thinks about approaching the bank directly to see if we could make an offer on the house before it's listed.

It's all very exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. Future posts from me will include talking about hoarding money to help with down payments, realtor costs and the delta between our current mortgage and what our house could sell for and what we're spending to get our house ready to sell.

Hustling for Snowflakes

2011-04-20T19:51:00.001-05:00

C and I have been on a decluttering craze lately. We've cleaned out all the closets and pantry on the main level of our house. We've gone through our master closet and through most of the basement. We have 4 garbage bags full of items to donate and we have a whole pile of things listed on Craigslist and Half.com. I have a pile of clothing to try selling to the local consignment shop - my first time ever trying to sell something there!

And so far those Craiglist and Half.com sales have already netted me $88.61! I have another $20 Craigslist sale pending too.

We're having a virtual snow storm over here!

Every cent of these snowflakes are going to the emergency fund, of course. I'm trying to hoard as much cash as possible in case we do end of moving.

Extreme Couponers

2011-04-19T07:46:00.003-05:00

Last week my brother called me. He said he'd watched an episode of the new show "Extreme Couponers" and that it reminded him of me.

WHAT!

I wasn't sure if I should be offended by that or not. He did not intend for it to be a dig at me. He was just reminded that I don't really like paying retail for anything. Whenever we go shopping or out to dinner we usually have a coupon or know of a sale. If we buy anything online it's with a discount code or with swagbucks that we've earned. We always have coupons when we go grocery shopping. We use our Target Red Card for all purchases at Target so we get the immediate 5% discount and then we pay our balance in full each month. I think all this just makes good financial sense (and cents!)!

But we're not extreme about it. We don't hoard toiletries. We don't play the drug store game. We don't buy in bulk. We're kind of a happy medium I think.

What about you? Are you extreme in your money saving shopping habits? Or are you on the other side and don't use coupons, discount codes or credit cards for the rewards?

We Might Just Be Crazy

2011-04-13T21:05:00.001-05:00

So, there's this house in our neighborhood...

C and I might be crazy but we're contemplating trying to sell our house and buying a different one a block away.

I know.

The house is currently empty and was foreclosed on last August. The people moved out in February. We're waiting for the For Sale sign to go up so we can get inside to look around and see what they're asking for it.

We're pretty sure we're underwater on our house by about $6k.

But the new house has four bedrooms and a three car garage. And it's in our neighborhood still so close to all our friends and my sister (who is 1/2 block away). Our family of five could live very comfortably in this house for the next 20-25 years, only needing to move to downsize after L is off at college. It's on a nice corner lot.

We might just clean this place of ours up, do some small home maintenance projects and bring in a realtor to give us a market analysis. We might just try to get into that house to see what it's like on the inside. We might just try to make this happen if the numbers work out OK.

I feel crazy for even thinking about this but then I'm also excited.

If the house lists for what I think it might list for, then our mortgage payment probably wouldn't change by very much at all. We might even break even when you add in the additional taxes for that house but then subtract the majority of our current association dues. Oh yeah, the new house isn't in an association. We could put in that playground in the backyard that our kids want so desperately.

I'm just daydreaming tonight of what we might do. And I'm trying to clean, purge and sell as much as I can so I can hoard as much cash in savings as possible. Anyone want to buy some random crap from my closets?

Snowflakes Needed

2011-04-12T21:42:00.001-05:00

Even though I've already hit our $100/month snowflake goal for April, I want to bring in more snowflakes wherever possible! So far we have $104.68 in budget surplus from March and a $25 credit card reward check that are both going to savings. I just transferred $6.00 in survey payments from my paypal account to my bank account. Every little bit helps!

And last night in a fit of purging and hopefully money making, I listed 15 items on Craigslist. I have more items to list soon after I get a couple pictures snapped. I'm hoping I can clean out some closets and bring our emergency fund closer to that five digit number. We're getting so close to $10,000!

2011 Goals Review - Q1 Edition

2011-04-11T21:31:00.005-05:00

One quarter of 2011 is over already. Back in December, I made four goals for us for this year. They are:

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

And how are we doing so far?

January - March and I'm proud to say that we have been under budget each of the three months. Yay us! Our total surplus for the three months is $116.02 and every cent has been put into the emergency fund.
Speaking of emergency fund...we have indeed applied all snowflakes to the emergency fund this year. And our total snowflakes for January - March is $1114.45! That's a nice chunk of change that we've been able to tuck away in our emergency fund! So far in April, we have an additional $129.68 too!
I thought $100 per month was going to be difficult and was wondering if I was setting the bar too high when I made this goal for us. Our average snowflake total per month in 2010 was around $120 so I thought we should be able to do it. We made this goal in January and March but fell a few dollars short in February. I think we're doing OK though - our snowflake total divided by three tells me that we've averaged over $370/month in snowflakes so far! I don't think we'll be able to keep up that pace for the rest of the year but I'm sure going to try! And I'm going to make sure we meet that $100/month goal at the least.
Our emergency fund currently sits at $9321.71 as of the end of March. In order to meet our $20,000 goal by the end of the year, we're going to have to add $1186.48 to the emergency fund per month. That is a large sum of money! We won't make it this month so in order to meet this goal we're going to have to tuck away future money at an increased rate. Luckily I do have two three paycheck months coming up (the first in July) so the emergency fund should see large gains those months. In the mean time, we'll keep adding as much as we can from the budget and trying to collect as many snowflakes as possible.

All told, our Q1 has been pretty successful! It's time to keep this nice pace going for the rest of the year!

Running Shoes - check!

2011-04-06T18:46:00.001-05:00

As I said in an earlier post, C and I decided to put $225 in our April budget so we could both buy new running shoes. We each have hundreds of miles on our shoes and they both needed to be replaced badly. Quality running shoes can be expensive but to us they are worth it. I don't want either of us to have injuries to our knees or ankles or hips or anything else because of our footwear. C did a bunch of shopping and trying on of shoes. He must have tried on at least two dozen pairs of shoes before he settled on a pair of Mizuno's. I always run in ASICS and am partial to a particular kind of ASICS (the Nimbus). I tried on the updated version and yep, they still feel great on my feet. But neither of us wanted to pay the sticker price. My shoe alone is $125 retail!

C is a great online bargain shopper though and found Kelly's Running Warehouse online. They had great prices on our shoes of choice and he found a 10% off code! We got both of our shoes for $141.24! We were way under our $225 budget! I lowered our shoe budget to $142 and moved the difference to our emergency fund budget.

March 2011 Budget Report

2011-04-05T18:31:00.001-05:00

As I said yesterday, we ended the month in the black (or green if you look below). Yay us! That was all thanks to C bringing home about $110 more than I had anticipated. He received a bonus which is of course always appreciated! Without that income, we would have been about $7 over budget. I don't think that's too bad! Here's how it went:

Our discretionary spending was kind of all over the place. Some categories were under, some over. I don't really care as long as the bottom line is OK. We were almost $10 over in discretionary but made a couple dollars back in our cell phone bill budget line item. I'm not going to stress too much about it. $9.54 out of a $1425 budget is less than 1%. That's pretty good!

I've already moved the surplus to the emergency fund. We're inching closer to our goal there. If I can find some more snowflakes this month, it would be really cool to hit the halfway point with that account and get us into the five digit range too! Come on budget and snowflakes! Let's go!

March 2011 Month End

2011-04-04T21:14:00.003-05:00

I'm a few days late posting our March month end. Have no fear though - we ended the month in the black, not the red! Yay! Here's how it all went down:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $23,762.70 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $9,321.71 (+409.81) - Most of this increase was our tax return. The rest was snowflakes. Our budget didn't contribute anything this month because we paid our car, truck and motorcycle insurance in full this month. Thank goodness for tax returns and snowflakes!

Short Term Savings: $329.71 (+50.00) - We contributed out budgeted amount this month. I think we'll use this money to do some landscaping this spring. We want to add some stone edging around our shrubs as well as increase our garden square footage. Or we might use it to buy a new gas grill. Ours is on its last legs and we use it all the time in the spring, summer and fall!

Travel Fund: $335.76 (+0.28) - The budget didn't have any money to spare this month due to other bills that had to be paid. Next month we'll send some more money here.

Christmas Savings: $298.77 (+75.22) - Our Christmas budget is right on track. Woo-hoo!

Basement Finishing Fund: $129.83 (+0.11) - By the end of the year I hope to make a big deposit here. Until then I'll focus on the emergency fund and dream of my finished basement.

Tuition Fund: $10,562.25 (+38.91) - C paid his $20 admission fee and was formally accepted to school. He's working through some paperwork issues and then hopes to register for his first class in a couple weeks. I'm excited for him to start!

NetWorth:

Assets:
Savings: $24.5k (INGDirect subaccounts plus 529's)
Retirement: $246.8k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $247.8k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)

Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $245.6k

Networth = 24.5k + 246.8k + 247.8k - 245.6k = $273.5k We had a modest increase in our networth this month and for that we are grateful.

All our accounts are headed in the right direction - up! We'll mark this month as a success and now we're off to tackle April!

What to do with the extra?

2011-03-24T16:50:00.001-05:00

I told you yesterday about all the money I’m going to spend next month. I’m already collecting coupons and sales fliers to stretch my money as far as I can. C and I are looking beyond April though and are trying to figure out what to do with the extra income each month that I’ll be bringing home due to my promotion and raise.

Right now we’re thinking that we’ll up our church giving budget from $75 to $100 per month. And we’ll increase our Roth IRA savings for C from $50 to $100 per month. And we’ve discussed adding a $50 per month charity contribution line to our budget. C has a deep affection for Heifer International. I have other charities that pull at my heart strings like the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the local battered women’s shelter, the local food bank, March of Dimes and others. What we might do is make a list of charities we want to support and then rotate so each month our $50 goes to one of them.

The rest of the extra money each month will go to the emergency fund. It is still our goal to have that fully funded this year, hopefully in September or October if we can keep Murphy at bay.

Splurges!

2011-03-23T16:47:00.001-05:00

After Sharon commented on my promotion post that maybe we should splurge just a little on ourselves it got me thinking. Why don’t we?! I ran the idea past C and he was on board. So I started thinking about what we should splurge on. Then spring started here in Minnesota and suddenly my daughter has limited clothing to wear. And my wardrobe looks old and ratty since I was pregnant this time last year so it's been a while since my spring wardrobe has been updated. And running season is almost here and my running shoes are three years old and wore out. So I talked with C and we decided to splurge on some things for all of us.

I’m putting $225 in the April budget to purchase C and I new running shoes. I’m putting $150 in the budget to purchase new spring clothes, shoes and jackets for the kids. I’m putting $100 in the budget to purchase new spring clothes for myself. I’m putting $100 in the budget for C to spend on whatever he wants. That may be new clothes or a new bike jersey or food processor or anything else that he wants. I’m also going to sign up the kids for a bunch of summer activities. A is going to do soccer and t-ball. J is going to do an intro to sports class since he’s too young for soccer and t-ball yet.

I’m excited to spend some money on ourselves. These may not seem like big splurges. We’d probably spend this money anyway. But I would feel guilty spending so much so more than likely I’d buy a little bit each month and then scrimp on other things to stay within our overall discretionary budget. Now we don’t have to do that!

I think we might splurge in May too…by buying new tires for the car. OK, so that isn’t a splurge but the car does need new tires and in May we’ll definitely be able to cash flow it out of the budget money. It feels so good to know we can cash flow these expensive maintenance or one-time expenses. Our hard work is paying off!

March Budget Update

2011-03-22T16:32:00.001-05:00

I did my weekly budget update and review last night. If you remember, at the beginning of the month we took our dog to the vet and it cost us $160. I’m trying to absorb that into our regular discretionary budget since we have so many other expenses this month, mainly our car insurance payments. We’ve done pretty well so far cutting back on spending in order to make budget. Right now we’re $5 under budget in discretionary and I know of only one more expense this month so we should at least be close on that one. We’re a buck or two over budget on restaurants with one work lunch planned this week so we’ll be slightly over there. But our other budget categories gas and household are way under right now and should more than pick up the slack. If we stay diligent, we should be able to end the month in the black. Also helpful is C brought home about $100 more in income this month than I had estimated. I’m hoping we can snowflake most (all) of that to the emergency fund!

South Dakota Vacation

2011-03-19T19:41:00.004-05:00

We have the lodging portion of our summer vacation booked! I had mentioned to C a while ago that maybe South Dakota and the Black Hills area, including Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore might be a nice vacation for us this year. It's within reasonable driving distance from the Twin Cities where we live and the kids have never seen anything bigger than a big hill here in Minnesota. I'd like to show them an actual mountain! It will blow their minds! Anyway, my in-laws had shown interest in going with us and two weekends ago when we were staying with them at their timeshare in northern Minnesota we cruised around the internet looking at accommodations. The kids really want to go camping but I'm just not a camping sort of girl. I'm more of a 4-star hotel kind of girl. Heh. But we managed to find a two bedroom cabin at a campground for a reasonable price of $145/night. Splitting the cost of this with the in-laws will make it an even better deal for us. The kids can even camp (sleep) in the tent outside a night or two (with an adult with them of course). And a bonus for me is that the cabin has indoor plumbing and a kitchen. We can make breakfasts and some lunches and dinners at the cabin to save on money! I'm excited to get away for a week this summer. The kids are excited to swim in the pool, visit the dinosaur museum, see some mountains and buffaloes, etc. I'll also be really happy to have the two extra sets of hands for the week to help with the kids. The grandparents will love it and so will C and I. Maybe C and I can even get away for a quick date while we're on vacation!

As for the rest of the vacation budget, I haven't gone through the rest of the details yet but I'm thinking this will cost us around $1200. I'll have to make up a proper budget and I'll have to make sure I include things like gas to/from, dog-sitting, entrance fees to parks and attractions, food and a few souvenirs. I think that's a pretty reasonable vacation budget for a family of five!

2010 Taxes Complete

2011-03-14T21:40:00.002-05:00

Yesterday C and I finished up and submitted our taxes. We're not getting back as much as I originally thought. We're still getting a sizable refund from the federal government. But then we're going to turn around and give most of it to the state of Minnesota. It turns out while we can split the tax burden of the 401(k) rollover between this year and next year, that is only at the federal level. We have to pay all of the MN state taxes on that money this year. In total, we're getting back $347 which isn't too bad! All of that is going to the emergency fund. We're inching closer to the $10k mark on that account! We can't slow down now!

April is going to be a Really Good Month

2011-03-11T11:28:00.002-06:00

Last June, when L was six weeks old, I interviewed at work for a new position. I was told a few weeks later that I was chosen for the position but that I had to wait for the approval process to complete. That approval process took over eight months. I was notified last Friday that the approval was finally granted and my new job will take effect on April 4th. Oh, and I'll get a 15.76% raise on top of the 6.11% raise I just got. My new salary will be on the plus side of six digits. I'm also not an engineer anymore but a manager. It's exciting and anxiety producing all at the same time!

You know that I've been playing with spreadsheets ever since I found out about the big raise, right?

I've also been daydreaming about all the stuff we could buy...all the things on our want list that we could now have...all the clothes I could buy myself and the kids...the new tri bike for C that he's been wanting for years. I have thought in the past about closing up shop here. We're in control of our finances now and making good choices and working towards our goals. It was all good. I think I need this blog now more than ever to help keep my head on straight! I can feel the lifestyle inflation happening right before my eyes! I can't promise that we won't increase some of our budget categories (maybe the restaurant one?) just a touch but for the most part we are going to stay the course. Our emergency fund is still our number one priority.

But, this raise does give us a number of possibilities. We could theoretically have our emergency fund in place in August (August!) if we pour every cent of raise into it. That excites me to no end!

C is going to be starting school hopefully in June. This raise would allow him to quit his job and only have to worry about school. Our budget could handle it. My monthly take home will increase more than what C currently brings home. We could still save more than we are now and have him home. The mind boggles.

Another perk of the new job? I'm now in the corporate bonus structure. An "average" year according to my new boss could result in an $8k-$12k pre-tax bonus in March of every year. I am still dumbstruck by the numbers. (Don't worry - I won't be banking on a bonus of any kind and will treat any bonus as a REALLY BIG snowflake!)

There are decisions C and I will have to make in the future. For now, I'm going to focus on doing my new job the best I can and socking away as much of that raise each month as I can.

LIBOR Rate, Part 2

2011-03-10T20:36:00.001-06:00

It's about time to start watching that LIBOR rate again. Remember, last year our 5 year ARM reset for the first time. We went from a 5.125% rate down to a 3.375% rate. We've been enjoying a lower mortgage payment for the past six months. And even though we've been paying less each month, more of that payment has gone to principal than in the past. I've really enjoyed watching our mortgage balance fall faster!

We're paying a bit extra on our mortgage right now in an effort to reduce our mortgage balance to a point where we're no longer underwater and could refinance to a fixed rate mortgage. Fixed rate mortgages are in the upper 4%'s right now and if they start to climb, I want to try and get us refinanced. Until then though, I'm going to start keeping an eye on the LIBOR rate. I'm really hoping it stays low so we can have a nice, low interest rate for the next year of our mortgage.

I checked today and the LIBOR rate was 0.7855. Adding that to 2.25 and I get 3.0355. Rounding that to the nearest 0.125 and it would be 3.00%. That would be awesome! Our interest rate could potentially drop even lower! I'll keep watching both the mortgage rates and the LIBOR rate for the next few months (middle of July is the LIBOR rate that matters) and my fingers will stay crossed that this works out for us again!

Pets and Vacations are Expensive

2011-03-09T20:20:00.004-06:00

We're back from our long weekend. We had a great time and the kids have gills now from all the swimming they did!

But it was not without expenses of course. The kennel costs came to $64.66 for two days. I splurged and signed our dog up for some "doggie daycare" for the full day we were gone so he wasn't just shut in his kennel all day. He could get some play time with the other dogs this way. That was an extra $8. And I bought him a bone at the kennel, another $1.99 gone.

And the vet bill was $160. We've been spoiled in the past because my mother-in-law worked at a vet clinic so we never paid more than $30 for a yearly vet visit and shots. Now that she works at a hospital, we had to go to "pay retail" instead. Ouch! Pets are expensive! Our dog is healthy though and vaccinated for another year. Hopefully we won't have to make another vet visit until this time next year.

As promised, this weekend away was pretty inexpensive for us. Our lodging and meals were provided for us. *spoiled* I did splurge and buy J a sweatshirt from the resort we were staying at. That was $30. He had outgrown his last one and desperately wanted a new one. And it took one full tank of gas to get there and home and thanks to the high gas prices that was about an extra $60. Yikes! I'm not going to complain too much though. Vacations are expensive and I feel really lucky that we were able to get away for so cheap!

March Budget Concerns

2011-03-03T16:46:00.002-06:00

I had always expected March to be a low emergency fund contribution month. Instead of paying our car and truck insurance monthly, I was going to switch to paying it semi-annually starting this month. One of our motorcycles also had its insurance due this month. The insurance totals almost $600 for all three vehicles and that was a chunk that we could have sent to the emergency fund but which we’re going to cash flow instead to insurance. This frees up about $95 from our monthly budget that used to go to insurance. This is a good thing in the long run but it hurts this month!

In addition to that we’re taking a quick weekend getaway this weekend. We’re heading to Northern Minnesota with my in-laws to their timeshare. We won’t have to pay for lodging or food as my in-laws will provide that. But we will have to pay for the gas to get up there which at today’s higher prices is going to hurt. I’ve increased our gas budget to account for this.

And then there’s the dog. He’s going to the vet tomorrow to get his shots up to date and then he’s going to the kennel for two nights. Instead of adding these expenses to our bottom line I’m trying to absorb them into our already established budget categories. The vet expenses will go into the discretionary budget. We’ll have to watch our other spending this month if the vet turns out to be expensive. The kennel costs are going to come out of our travel fund. Instead of $75 going into the travel savings this month it will be $75-kennel costs. We should still be able to save something there.

I’m excited to go away for a couple days. The kids will love the indoor pool and waterslide. They’ll love the frozen lake available for ice skating. And they’ll love the extra grandparent time…as will I as it means I’ll be on Mom-duty less!

As for the emergency fund, I’ll have to work those snowflakes this month so the emergency fund can see an increase. So far I have $58.19 in snowflakes. $50 of that is another credit card reward check that should be in the mail. $5.19 is the February budget surplus and $3 is a pending survey payment. Time to go add some more items to Craigslist and Half.com!

February 2011 Budget Report

2011-03-02T20:47:00.003-06:00

And here are the nitty gritty details of our February Budget:

We did it again! We are under budget by about $80. If you'll notice though, the $75 preschool registration fee hasn't been charged yet. I gave them our registration but they haven't charged our credit card yet. I'm going to charge the Feb budget when that charge comes through so I'm going to leave this money in our account. Basically, I'm going to end this budget at $5.19 and snowflake that to the emergency fund.

Our income was a little less than planned due to fluctuations in C's work hours. We were over in gas thanks to the increase in gas prices! And we were a bit over in discretionary. No biggie really since we were way under in restaurants! I don't know if we've ever had a month that low!

I'm proud of us. That's two months in a row under budget. Now to make it 3/3 in 2011!

February 2011 Month End

2011-03-01T20:13:00.008-06:00

February seemed to go really fast! I guess that's a good thing because we had a lot of special expenses which didn't leave a lot of fun money for us. That should turn around a little bit in March. I'm envisioning a couple new pieces of spring clothing for the kids and I. We'll see if I can squeeze that in or not!

Debts:

Truck Loan: $24,202.75 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $8,911.90 (+123.57) - I wasn't able to bring in that last $4 needed to make my $100 monthly snowflake goal. But I'm very happy I was able to bring in at least that much extra because snowflakes made up most of our emergency fund contribution this month! We had a lot of one-time expenses in February which you'll see tomorrow in my budget report. At least we were still able to save something!

Short Term Savings: $279.71 (+34.08) - I put in $50 as usual into this account but then took out $15 to pay for the new camera. I'm still happy to see this account growing!

Travel Fund: $335.48 (+75.27) - It's exciting to add to this account each month. We're going to take a vacation this summer! Our first in two years!

Christmas Savings: $223.55 (+75.18) - We are well on our way to having Christmas money saved again.

Basement Finishing Fund: $129.72 (+0.11) - The only account that is stagnant right now is this one. If we can get our emergency fund complete this year though then this account will see big gains next year! Let the daydreaming begin!

Tuition Fund: $10,523.34 (+58.65) - C is going to an info session/tour Thursday night for the school he has chosen. Hopefully he can turn in his application then too and start signing up for spring/summer courses soon! It's very reassuring to know that we have this money saved!

NetWorth:

Assets:
Savings: $23.9k (INGDirect plus 529's)
Retirement: $244.8k (my 401k, my pension lump sum, C's company stock, C's Roth IRA)
House & Vehicles: $248.2k (house, truck, car, two motorcycles)

Liabilities:
Mortgage & Truck Loans: $246.6k

Networth = 23.9k + 244.8k + 248.2k - 246.6k = $270.3k = A nice increase in one month of $7.7k!

We had a very successful February I do think. All savings accounts went up even with a lot of expenses. I love being in control of our finances!

April is going to be a Good Month

2011-02-24T16:39:00.000-06:00

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

2011-02-22T11:44:00.001-06:00

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.

2010 TaxesUpdate

2011-02-20T18:04:00.005-06:00

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?

30 years - 11 months

2011-02-18T11:51:00.001-06:00

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.

$96.29 < $100.00

2011-02-16T11:52:00.000-06:00

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!

New Camera!

2011-02-10T16:53:00.001-06:00

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!

February Spending Challenge

2011-02-09T12:18:00.001-06:00

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

2011-02-08T16:17:00.000-06:00

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

2011-02-05T08:22:00.000-06:00

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

2011-02-04T11:51:00.000-06:00

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

2011-02-03T11:58:00.003-06:00

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.

January 2011 Budget Report

2011-02-02T20:54:00.005-06:00

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.

January 2011 Month End

2011-02-01T20:50:00.003-06:00

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!

Upping Church Budget

2011-01-30T09:53:00.000-06:00

Our church is facing a budget shortfall this year. As the economy is hit hard, so is church giving. Makes sense I guess. Last year we were giving $50/month to our church so this year I upped that to $60/month. But then when we saw the church budget and how much we were short and all the really great things that potentially would be cut, and, well, we took a look at our budget and adjusted our giving. We decided to up it to $75/month. Not only is this a 50% increase over our 2010 giving, but it is also more in line with our values. I mean really, we're putting $75/month away for both Christmas gifts and vacations. Why shouldn't we be giving at least that much to our church too? That means less will be going to the emergency fund each month but I'm OK with that. It's not like we're spending the money frivolously. We love our church and all the good things it does for our community.

Deals and Bargains

2011-01-29T09:44:00.003-06:00

Thursday night we loaded up the kids and went to the local mall. It was picture time! L turned 9 months old yesterday and J turns 4 next weekend and I always do professional pictures at their birthdays (and 6, 9 and 18 months too). Our first stop was the childrens hair place so A could get her hair cut. We haven't had it professionally cut in over a year and she wanted a few inches cut off. That was not the most frugal thing to do as the cut with tip was $20 but since we do it so rarely, I'm OK spending that money.

The rest of the night found us scoring some great deals and finding some great bargains though!

We went to Target to get the pictures taken. I had a coupon for a free 8x10, no sitting fees and all other pictures for $3.99/sheet. I ended up with at least 12 sheets of 5x7s, 2 8x10s and 2 sheets of wallets. I got all that for $17! It helped that last time we were in for pictures (in October when we had A's 6 year, L's 6 months and Christmas pictures taken) we received a $50 off your next order coupon and you could combine it with other offers like the coupon I had above. Talk about a great deal! And now all the grandparents and aunts and uncles will have updated pictures as will our frames at home and my desk. Love it!

Next as we were walking through the mall to get to the entrance that we parked at C remarked how Old Navy was having a 40% off sale and clearance items sale. Well, of course we had to swing in there and see if we could score any bargains. And we did! We bought 9 pieces of clothing for only $46! We got 2 winter coats (one for A and one for L for next winter), 1 sweater for A, 2 button down dress shirts for C to wear to work, 1 fleece pullover for J, 1 long sleeved thermal shirt for J and 2 Vikings long sleeved t-shirts for J and L for next fall. I couldn't believe we walked out of the store with this giant bag of clothes and only spent $46. Now that is a great bargain!

Scared of 2010 Taxes

2011-01-27T15:10:00.002-06:00

Is anyone else scared to do their 2010 taxes? I'm terrified! I've estimated our tax bill at $5000. I don't want to know what the real number is! Good-bye emergency fund! Why is our bill going to be so high?

We converted C's 401(k) from his old job to a Roth IRA late last year. We now have to pay taxes on that money.

C's part time job is not taking any taxes out of his paycheck. We now have to pay taxes on that. He didn't bring home a huge amount of money but still - no federal or state taxes were taken out.

Things working in our favor? C's unemployment income did have taxes taken out, both federal and state. In fact, they took out a decent chunk. Hopefully that will help offset.

I took 4 weeks off without pay last year to supplement my maternity leave. My income was lower last year and so my tax bill for income taxes will also be lower.

And finally we had our third child last year. Hopefully there are a couple tax deductions for three dependents that will help us out.

I'm in no way a tax expert so I don't know how all these factors will play together but I have been stalling on downloading some of our tax forms. I just need a bit of time to play ostrich.

Amazon Deal

2011-01-26T21:50:00.002-06:00

Did any of you take advantage of the Living Social Amazon.com deal a couple days ago? You could purchase a $20 gift card for $10! I purchased one and we've already spent it! We used it to purchase some birthday gifts for J. He turns 4 at the beginning of February.

I'm also a member of Groupon. I've purchased I think 3 deals from Groupon including the Gap deal a few months ago. This was the first Living Social deal I've purchased.

Some people worry that subscribing to these sites will cause them to spend more money. That might be true for some people but I've found that I'm able to ignore deals that I'm not interested in or when the budget is tight. Instead, I've purchased only the select deals that I know I could use and that I have the budget money to spend.

Oh, and I love getting a good deal!

Over the Restaurant Budget

2011-01-18T11:59:00.000-06:00

This weekend we went out to dinner…and went over our restaurant budget. OK, so the one meal didn’t entirely consume our budget, but it nearly did! With tip, it was $65 and our entire budget is $75. Last week I went out to lunch with a few work friends (a rare treat!) and spent $6. A couple weeks ago when we went to the mall (remember my $2.70 outfit?) we treated the kids to ice cream and spent $8. Together that equates to about $79, or a tad overbudget. I’ve told C no more eating out this month!

We have absolutely no regrets in spending that $65 though. It was C’s Mom’s birthday yesterday and the dinner out was a family birthday dinner to celebrate. C’s Mom was in a very bad head-on collision car accident a week ago that totaled her car. We’re just lucky she’s here with us today! (Thank you air bags and seat belts!) We’ll just be good little responsible budgeters the rest of the month.

Making an Expensive Hobby Frugal

2011-01-17T11:58:00.001-06:00

C loves to downhill ski. Unfortunately, that can be an expensive hobby! Between proper gear and lift tickets, it’s just too much for our budget. C has skis and boots from when he was in high school that no longer fit him and we haven’t put money towards getting him new gear. But a couple weeks ago, his brother asked him if he’d go skiing with him. We borrowed some snow pants from my dad, who has several extra pair because he has snowmobiles. We borrowed skis, boots and poles from a sister-in-law who bought new gear last winter and lucky us, her old gear fits C! C’s Mom had a bring-a-friend discount lift pass to the local ski hill. It made for a very frugal day of skiing! (Even more frugal is that I had a baby shower to go to that day so my in-laws watched the older two kids while C and his brother skied. It’s very nice that the ski hill is minutes from their house!)

C was surprised on Friday when his brother called telling him he bought C some new Columbia ski pants at the outlet mall. The ski pants were originally marked $130 and he got them for under $40! I guess he liked going skiing with C. With the other borrowed gear and the new ski pants, maybe we can work a lift ticket or two into our budget for the remaining months of winter. I know C really enjoyed going too.

Partial 401(k) Match Restoration

2011-01-11T11:54:00.000-06:00

That was the title of the e-mail I received yesterday at work. Maybe you remember in July 2009 when my 100% match was reduced to 50%? That was a sad day. I have been putting away 8% of my income since I started at my company almost 13 years ago and I had been receiving a 100% match that entire time. Putting away essentially 16% of my income had created a nice nest egg for my retirement. I was so depressed when they changed the match to 50% instead, especially since I was in the middle of a 10% pay cut at the time. The 10% was restored in December 2009 and now they are partially restoring the match.

Instead of a 50% match, I'm going to be getting a 62.5% match. That means instead of 4%, I'll get a 5% match. Add that to my 8% and I'll now be putting away 13% of my income each month into my 401(k). That's better and I'll certainly take it but I can only hope that they eventually go back to the 100% match!

Another piece of good news in the e-mail was that the match is being applied retroactively back to July 1st, 2010! I expect a nice big bump in my 401(k) this month! Now that I'm tracking our networth monthly, I'm paying a lot more attention to my 401(k) balance. Last month alone it increased over $9k (both from earnings and my investments into it)! I'm hoping for another big gain this month.

One interesting tidbit in the e-mail is that almost 25% of 401(k) participants at my company have a loan against their account! Since that is most certainly not the point of a 401(k), they will no longer allow any loans against 401(k) accounts starting July 1, 2011. Interesting, huh? Have you ever taken a loan out against your 401(k)?

And one last thing. They are now going to be offering a Roth 401(k) plan too. I might have to look into that to see if it is something I should switch to, split my money between both, stay where I am, etc.

Bargain Shopping

2011-01-04T16:57:00.001-06:00

My wonderful sister gave me a $50 gift card to Ann Taylor LOFT for Christmas. Last Wednesday C and I loaded up the kids and went shopping and I was able to spend my gift card on new clothes for me. We timed it perfectly because the store was having a 50% off the entire store sale! I was able to get a very nice pair of black dress pants regularly priced at $79.50 plus a beautiful cranberry colored sweater regularly priced at $44.50. Along with the 50% off I also had an additional 15% off coupon if you used a gift card to pay. So, my $124 purchase came to $52.70 which was then paid for with my gift card and $2.70 from our discretionary budget. Today I'm wore my new outfit to work along with a new necklace I received for Christmas and I was feeling pretty good!

December 2010 Budget Report

2011-01-03T12:39:00.001-06:00

It's time to come clean. Just how did we do on our December budget?

Well? Good and Bad. Here it is:

The good:

C got a bonus at work and brought home more than expected. Go C!
We were under budget in discretionary, the money set aside for my sister's two baby showers and the money set aside to buy me some new clothes.
We were under budget overall! That's the first time that's happened in quite a while!

The bad:

We were over budget is almost all spending categories. Shame on us! I blame this partially on my brother's impromptu visit. There was an extra gas fill on the car plus a few more groceries than normal purchased. The rest though is all on us.
The money set aside for the clothes for me is going to hit the budget in January instead of December. Instead of a separate line item for this, I'm going to absorb it into our discretionary budget and keep a close eye on us to make sure we don't go over!
One of my sister's showers was postponed until January because of a blizzard here in Minnesota the day it was supposed to be held. As such, I'm going to carry over the $182 balance into January to cover the extra groceries and other miscellaneous items needed for that. This should more than cover it though and whatever is left will be transferred to the emergency fund.

At last! A month that ended on the right side of zero! I'll be paying close attention so we can make this a habit in January!

Happy New Year to Us!

2011-01-02T12:07:00.000-06:00

New Year Eve, on our way out the door to a friend's house, C grabbed the mail. In there was a letter from our mortgage company. C figured it was the mortgage statement for the month but I knew we already had that so I opened it before we left. It was our annual escrow analysis. This usually brings bad news and an increased mortgage payment to make up for a deficit. Not this year!

This year it brought great news! Our monthly mortgage payment is being reduced by $52.66 for the next year (starting with the February payment) and we received a $500 escrow refund check! Nice!

C thinks we should keep our mortgage payment the same each month and basically snowflake that $52 to our mortgage. I'd like to add it to the emergency fund instead. C wants to refinance as early as possible and paying down the mortgage faster will help us do that. I want to do that too but I also really want the emergency fund complete so we can focus our money elsewhere. We have a whole month to decide but either way we win!

December 2010 Month End

2011-01-01T19:48:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year! I hope your new year has started better than ours! C is down with some food poisoning or stomach flu or something. And the baby has croup along with a really runny nose. And of course the baby hates having his nose wiped. It's been a day filled with pajamas, cuddling and a bit of housework. Hopefully 2011 gets better after this! On to the topic at hand, our December month end report. Here's how we did:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $25,082.85 (-$440.05) - Regular payment made. No extra payments will be made here with a 0% loan!

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $7,599.66 (+552.05) - We were able to make a large deposit to the emergency fund this month. Most of that came from the budget but I also brought in over $120 in snowflakes too! Every little bit helps us reach our goal!

Short Term Savings: $220.05 (+50.00) - Regular contribution made. Last year I instituted a $250 minimum for this account so that if we overdrafted our checking account, we'd have this money linked to it so that we could immediately transfer over money. Now that we're using our credit cards for daily purchases instead of our check card, we no longer run our balance close to zero. Because of that, C and I have decided to lift the $250 minimum rule. We are now free to spend this money as we wish. It's great when you get to make the rules with your money!

Travel Fund: $184.98 (+25.17) - I added a bit to this account this month. I really want to take a vacation this summer with the kids so I'm going to try and add to this account each month.

Christmas Savings: $537.35 (+0.50) - I set up the transfer today to take out $464 that we spent on Christmas presents. That will leave us with a surplus in this account. I plan on adding $75/month to this account to prepare us for Christmas 2011. I hope you have Christmas savings plans in place too!

Basement Finishing Fund: $129.49 (+25.11) - I added a bit of money to this account too. We've decided not to add anymore to this account until after the emergency fund is complete so this balance will see only interest deposits for a while.

Tuition Fund: $10,404.98 (+404.56) - This account saw another solid increase. C has used up his unemployment benefits (and we haven't been able to find a job that replaces the hours and pay that he was making before so for now he continues to tutor a couple students on a part time basis) so this account will stop growing so rapidly. In order to make sure we have enough funds for his nursing schooling though we do plan on adding $75 from our monthly budget to this account.

And that was our December. It was a very solid month! I hope this momentum carries over into the new year!

2011 Goals

2010-12-31T12:04:00.001-06:00

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:

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

Whoa. OK. Let's talk through these.

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.
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.
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!
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

2010-12-30T20:57:00.003-06:00

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

2010-12-29T10:37:00.005-06:00

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

2010-12-28T14:51:00.002-06:00

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

2010-12-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

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

2011 Savings Priorities

2010-12-21T16:47:00.000-06:00

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

2010-12-19T16:36:00.002-06:00

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

2010-12-14T16:20:00.000-06:00

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

2010-12-11T14:38:00.001-06:00

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

2010-12-10T16:42:00.001-06:00

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

2010-12-06T21:40:00.000-06:00

Monthly Goal Checklist:

Keep emergency fund above $6000. Done! We were even able to add to it this month. Thank goodness!
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.
Save all C’s unemployment benefits for tuition money. We did and we broke that 5 digit barrier! Awesome!
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!
Save at least $100 each month into our emergency fund. Yay! We made this one plus a little extra!
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).
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.
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!
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

2010-12-06T09:15:00.004-06:00

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

2010-12-02T11:54:00.000-06:00

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.

$76,000

2010-11-23T07:29:00.003-06:00

C had an appointment with a nursing school last Thursday to talk about their program. It was an informative chat and when C arrived home that night the first thing I asked him was, of course, how much does the program cost. It's a four year BSN (Bachelor's of Science in Nursing) program and it costs $76,000. And then I laughed. Yikes! The school took a copy of C's transcript (he has degrees in biology and chemistry already) and reviewed that over the weekend. He found out yesterday he could receive credit for about eleven classes, shaving off about half a year. It would still be a very expensive program for him. And it would be mostly day classes so we'd have to pay for daycare on top of that. That program has fallen to the bottom of the pile I think.

But C is searching for other programs. I hope he is able to speak with more schools in December. I think most likely he'll attend a two year program to get an A.S. degree, take the national test and become an RN. Then he can get out in the work force and get some experience. Then, when the kids are all in school (even the baby) he can go back and do an accelerated RN to BSN or PA (Physician's Assistant) program if he wants to and depending on what his chosen career path requires. I have a feeling though that the money saved in our tuition account is only going to be a fraction of what we need. We'll definitely be searching for scholarships and grants so we can avoid loans. And we'll keep saving all that we can into the tuition fund to get us as prepared as possible.

Less Whining, More Gratitude

2010-11-20T09:44:00.002-06:00

How about this post is less whining and more gratitude. No more boo-hooing about lack of progress and being frustrated and gnashing of teeth.

Today I'm going to tell you a story about how lucky I am. How grateful I am for my Dad and his generosity. Again. Is this getting old? Telling you about my Dad? He really is the greatest man. He will do anything for his kids and his kids would do anything for him. I can not say enough good things about him.

Anyway, last Saturday night my sister and I and our husbands and our dad went out to dinner. My sister and I had groupons (pay $25 - get $60 worth of food) for a fancier restaurant in town. In order to use the groupons together, we had to have five people at our table so we invited Dad with and told him dinner was on us. Yeah. We should know better by now. He swiped the check when the server brought it. We should have told the server when we sat down to give us the check. There was no use talking him out of it either. He said we'd already "paid our share" with the groupons and he was picking up the rest. We had a very nice meal out and it didn't cost us another cent. Very nice! (My aunt and uncle were watching our three children for us. I should tell you about them some day. We've never paid for childcare because we have family that will watch our children for free. That's another thing I am so grateful for!)

As we were leaving the restaurant and saying our good-byes Dad handed me $100. He does this every few months, hands me some cash. I asked him why, what was it for? And he said to just buy some things we want. It's hard to put into words how my heart swells when I talk about my Dad. He doesn't have to do these nice things for me and my family. He does them because he wants to.

I've spent that $100. I spent most of it on two new pairs of boots for me, one brown and one black. I wear boots all the time in the fall and winter and mine had been destroyed by my car and years of use. They both needed replacing. I gave the rest of the money to the kids for their monthly allowance. And Monday night we went shopping at Target where they each spent some of their spending money on a small toy (A bought a Star Wars figure and J bought a can of play-doh).

That is today's tale of gratitude. I was able to buy myself a couple pairs of new shoes and have a nice dinner out all because of my dad's generosity. I can't wait to pay this forward and do the same for my own children when they are adults.

Treading Water

2010-11-19T11:41:00.001-06:00

I've been growing increasingly frustrated with our lack of progress in building our emergency fund. And it's been messing with my head. Here is a quick plot of our emergency fund balances for this year:

As you can see, we're approximately right back where we started the year and November and December will have gains, but not enormous ones (around $400 each month).

I know I should be grateful that we have an emergency fund at all and that it has helped us this year when we needed it. I know that some of the reasons for no gain are out of our control. We couldn't help C getting laid off last year and having to take a lower paying and reduced hour job. We couldn't help the 1 week furlough I had to take in January of this year. We couldn't have anticipated C having a kidney stone attack and needing surgery and then having bill after bill roll on in.

And we used the money for a good reason too - me taking four weeks of unpaid maternity leave to stretch my leave to the full 12 weeks allowed under FMLA.

It's now time (well, after the last of those medical bills get paid) to hit our emergency fund hard and to try and build it as quickly as we can. Last Friday C and I sat down for a financial discussion. I told him of my frustrations and that I'd like to find some ways to increase our income. To make financial gains, there are really two ways to do it - decrease spending and increase income. I feel like we have a fairly lean budget already. We don't spend a lot of money on "fun" items each month. C and I don't have blow money or allowances. C rarely buys anything for himself. The first thing C thought of though is how we could cut more from the budget. We currently have internet and cable TV plus cell phones and a landline. He's going to investigate getting rid of the landline (this makes me nervous with small children in the house and the potential need to have them call 911) and the cable TV. We could use our cell phones for phone service and our Netflix subscription plus the internet (Hulu, station websites, etc.) to view our favorite TV shows. We'll see what changes there.

I told C though that while cutting more from the budget is good (we'd probably save around $80/month by doing so), I'd like to challenge us to bring in more income too. Are there any hobbies, interests, or other pursuits we could do to bring in more with the purpose of saving that money away in our emergency fund? We already put all snowflakes there but how could we make those snowflakes bigger? We brainstormed a few ideas for each of us.

We'll see what we are able to do but I might set some 2011 goals that include a minimum I'd like to see us bring in extra each month above our regular jobs. Have any ideas for things we could do?

Another Medical Bill

2010-11-18T11:37:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week we received in the mail another Explanation of Benefits (EOB) from our insurance company. Ugh. This one was for $1200! I did a bit of research last night and this is the bill from the hospital for C's kidney stone surgery - the room, labs, radiology, supplies, etc. All other bills we've received to date have been for anesthesiologist, surgeon, etc.

After checking our insurance and the EOB, the charges are real and calculated correctly. For emergency room visits, we have a $150 co-pay and then we're covered 100%. For in-patient or out-patient procedures we have a $500 deductible and then we're covered at 80%. This $1200 bill is our 20% that we owe. *sigh*

I haven't received any actual bills yet for this EOB but I suspect they'll be arriving in the mail in the next couple weeks. December is a three paycheck month for me and I was really looking forward to putting a large amount in savings. Instead, it looks like I'll be using a large portion of my third paycheck to pay medical bills.

C doesn't get sick very often but when he does, it's a biggie! I jokingly told him last night that the next time he gets sick, he has to go to the ER and get it taken care of! It's less expensive for us that way!