The Grass Is Greener

October Budget Recap

2009-11-05T20:46:00.002-06:00

It's time to fess up. Come clean. Show you how we really did this month. Here is our October budget and actuals:

First - the good news. We brought in an additional $244 this month. That is all thanks to Chuck working some extra hours. And at the end of the month we had $17 left over. That's good too!

Now, the bad. Our spending was too high this month. Thank goodness Chuck brought home extra money our we would have gone red this month! Our household, restaurant and discretionary budgets were all over this month.

Why? Well, the restaurant one is our own spur-of-the-moment-let's-go-out foolishness. We didn't have to and knew we were close to our budget but went anyway. And then in the last days of the month I was craving LeeAnn Chin (like for two weeks) and finally gave in at lunch one day. Poof! Over budget.

Our household budget is over because we just bought too much miscellaneous crap at Target this month. I don't even know what it all was (besides medicines for the kids and Halloween costumes - that I remember) but I'm sure we "needed" it at the time. We did buy diapers twice this month so there went $36. (Sending subliminal messages to Jamison to potty train...)

Our discretionary is a catch all this month for things like cash from the ATM, childrens clothing (Jamison's 2T pants are all too short so he now has four new pairs of 3T pants), stamps, new rugs for the house that aren't disintegrating, outstanding checks from months past that were finally cashed, and a Christmas present for a family in need from church, etc.. That last one should technically come from the Christmas budget and not the regular monthly budget but we had room to absorb it this month so we did.

We still managed to save quite a bit this month and for that I am grateful. We'll work hard to stay under budget this month as the extra hours from Chuck's job aren't guaranteed to come through for us again!

And that $17.33 extra has already been transferred to the emergency fund. Every little bit helps!

October 2009 Month End

2009-11-02T20:45:00.001-06:00

It is time again for a month end report. I actually like doing these. I like seeing the numbers in black and white of what we've been able to save this month. And I like seeing that truck balance finally go down! Here's how our October shaped up:

Debts:

Truck Loan: $31,243.55 (- $440.05) - First payment of $440.05 is in the books. I just scheduled our next payment to go out tomorrow. The first and second of 72. Only 70 to go! We're still very happy with our vehicle and intend to keep it the next 10+ years, just like we did the Blazer we traded in. I do need to think about creating a new vehicle fund though. Our 10 year old car (a 2001 bought in September 2000) has 138,000 miles on it and most likely won't make it the next six years while we're paying off the truck. Right now I want to focus on the emergency fund but when that is fully funded Chuck and I will have to discuss saving money for the basement (a want) versus saving money for a replacement vehicle for the car (a need as it is our commuting car while the truck stays home with the children and has the car seats in it).

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $5,440.53 (+508.47) - A little more progress this month. I'm happy we could put away as much as we could. I also had to pay Chuck's $492 appendectomy bill this month. I would have rather put that money in savings but am still grateful we have good insurance and didn't have to pay the $15,000 original bill!

Short Term Savings: $233.88 (+50.00) - We're almost to our new minimum in this account ($250). After that Chuck and I will have to think about what we want to splurge on next. I have a couple of ideas but they are also Christmas gift ideas for Chuck so I can't tell you about them!

Travel Fund: $173.76 (+50.16) - I so want to add more money to this account each month! There are so many trips we want to take in the next few years and at the rate we're saving we won't have cash for them. But for now I'll keep my focus on the emergency fund, at least until my 10% pay reduction is restored (word on the street is end of November but I haven't seen an official communication yet).

Christmas Savings: $683.89 (+300.42) - I'm pretty happy I put some money in this account this month. This should be close to what we need for Christmas this year. I haven't put together the official Christmas budget yet. I'm going to put $100 in this account in November and December and then that should definitely cover us. The official Christmas budget, once created and discussed with Chuck, will be posted in the next week or so. (Secretly I wish this too could have gone in the emergency fund - just think...5440 + 492 + 300 = 6232 - such a nice big number!)

Basement Finishing Fund: $400.81 (+100.41) - Monthly contribution made here. Not much else to report. We don't plan on starting any work on the basement for probably at least 12 months so this account will be able to grow and accumulate interest in the mean time. When we are ready we'll do the work in stages and pay cash as we go. At least that's the plan right now.

And there you have it - October in a nutshell. As a side note, we saved 15.1% of our take-home income this month. That doesn't include the 8% I contribute to my 401k or the 4% Chuck contributes to his. Nor does it include the extra $226 we sent to the mortgage (3.5% of our take-home income this month (a three paycheck month for Chuck) or 4% of a "regular" month's take home pay). I'd say we're doing OK on the savings. I always wish it could be more but that's because I'm impatient and want to meet my goals and move on to the next ones!

New Credit Card

2009-10-29T20:08:00.002-05:00

I applied for a new credit card yesterday. I know what you're thinking...why does someone with four credit cards already (all paid in full, only one - the Discover - used monthly and then paid in full every month) need another credit card?

For work.

I'm traveling to Seattle (my first time West of the Rockies!) in December and my company issues corporate American Express credit cards for anyone traveling. It's easier to book travel and reconcile expense reports that way. This will be my second business trip (my first in a very long time) but my first time with a corporate card.

I'm unsure how this will affect my personal credit score. I did have to give my social security number when filling out the application. I assume it will start showing up on my credit report as a new line of credit in my name? I guess I'll find out. Now I just have to remember to keep each and every receipt so I can be reimbursed for all charges and not be liable for them myself!

401k Rebound!

2009-10-27T19:53:00.002-05:00

I was so excited today when I received my 3rd quarter 401k statement. In this economy, why in the world was I excited? Because my 401k has rebounded to its pre-collapse levels! Well, almost. I'm sure it will surpass it's highest amount shortly. And if that isn't exciting then I don't know what is! In order to really see how far I've come, I pulled my statements from the last few years. Here are my past balances:

09/2007: $101K
12/2007: $104K
03/2008: $98K
06/2008: $95K
09/2008: $84K
12/2008: $70K
03/2009: $65K
06/2009: $81K
09/2009: $97K

Less than $10K from my all time statement high value!

Plus, on October 19th my account was rebalanced (done every 3 months) and I was sent a statement just a couple days later. My balance on that date? Over $101K.

I'm back in the six figures!

That, right there, is definite cause for celebration!

More good news? Chuck's 401k has risen to $45K - it's highest balance ever that I remember seeing (past statements not dug out of the file cabinet to corroborate that claim though).

Woo-hoo!

Lending Club Update - Month 1

2009-10-25T19:55:00.002-05:00

My first payment due for the loan I funded was received on time. Month 1 success! I only invested $25.00 which is the minimum. And although the note I funded is at a 12.18% interest rate it's going to be a while before I can withdraw that $25 from the account, especially when the monthly repayment is $0.83. This is clearly not the place to put your emergency fund. Of my $25 investment, I now have access to $0.82 (-$0.01 in service fees). But if you have extra money I can see how this would entice some people to invest in order to get higher interest (although not guaranteed) returns.

For me, for now, I'll leave my $25.00 there (I have to!) and I won't add any more to it. I need to focus right now on building the emergency fund first in a high interest savings account where I have access to the full amount whenever I need it. That has to come before anything else right now.

Creature of Habit Saves $480

2009-10-22T08:13:00.001-05:00

I am a creature of habit. I don’t like change. So when DirecTV no longer aired the Versus network I shrugged my shoulders, said “oh well” and moved on. Chuck however was none too pleased. He loves that channel for its bicycle racing coverage. He’s become an avid cyclist and enjoys watching all the bike races around the world. Favorite cyclist? Lance Armstrong of course. Although we both also like Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie and others.

Why isn’t DirecTV showing Versus anymore? Because Comcast owns the channel and wants to charge DirecTV too much to renew its contract so DirecTV said no thank you and shut its customers off from the channel.

As consumers we, of course, can respond to this. I would have done nothing (see above). Chuck was contacted by Comcast and decided to make a switch. I’ve asked him several times if he thinks this is a good idea. See resistance to change. He’s on board though and therefore so am I. We’re switching our landline, high speed internet and satellite/cable tv. Overall we’ll be saving about $40/month with this change for the first year. After the first year is over and the intro rates reset we’ll be paying close to what we are now. In essence we’ll be saving close to $500 and getting Versus back. Chuck is pleased.

I hope we don’t have any problems with Comcast or their customer service. Both Qwest (our current landline and high speed internet provider) and DirecTV have not given us any problems.

Macy's Gift Card Arrived

2009-10-19T20:51:00.002-05:00

I received my Macy's $25 gift card in the mail today. That was quick! The MyPoints website said it would take 2-6 weeks to receive my gift card. That took about two weeks. Can't complain about that!

I'm so excited to go shopping and get some non-hideous maternity clothes to wear. I realized when I was going through my tote of clothing retrieved from storage that a lot of my clothes are short sleeved. That's not going to get me through a Minnesota winter! And most of my long sleeve shirts are faded and pilling sweaters. That's not going to work either! I'm hoping I can borrow dress pants and jeans from my friend who had the baby in September and then invest in a couple long sleeve shirts/sweaters to get me through.

All that will wait until November though. Even with the gift card there is no extra room in the discretionary budget this month for clothing for me. I'll have to work that in to the November budget. I'm 12 weeks now so I think I have a couple more weeks before I absolutely have to wear maternity gear. It helps that I lost almost 20 pounds this year so some of my before pants have become my now pants. A couple more weeks though and I may have to retire even them.

Ultrasound last Friday showed one healthy baby. Can't ask for more than that!

2009 Goals Revisited

2009-10-11T19:52:00.002-05:00

Now that 3/4 of the year is over, I think it's about time I reviewed our 2009 goals set last December to see how we're doing. Our goals are:

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

How are we doing?

We paid our HELOC off in May 2009. One month earlier than scheduled. Yay us!
Our emergency fund is at $4,932.06 right now plus $300.40 in the basement fund (back up emergency fund if needed). That's not quite $8,000. We do have three more months this year yet to add to that amount but I don't think I'm going to make the $8,000 goal. I intend to add about $600 this month to the two accounts which will bring us to almost $6,000. I just don't think we'll be able to add $2,000 in the last two months of the year. I'll do my best though to come as close as I can. If only Chuck didn't need that emergency surgery that cost us $500. And if only I didn't have to take that 10% pay cut from May - November. That alone cut $440/month from our budget - that alone took over $3000 from our take home pay this year. Ouch! Hey, maybe we're doing all right with this goal considering that last bit of information. With that $3,000 that I was expecting to have when I made this goal last December we would have been able to make the $8,000 goal. Not too shabby after all! Now, to see how close we can come anyway...
Right now we've lowered our mortgage principal by $4992 this year looking at the January - September statements. There are 3 months left to count for this year so when all is said and done, we will have lowered our mortgage principal by over $6,700! That's because we've been paying over $200 extra to our mortgage each month this whole year. Yay us!

Two of three goals met. And we'll be close on that third I hope. Maybe I can look around and find some stuff to sell to help us get closer. Either way, I'm proud of our progress this year!

First MyPoints Reward

2009-10-08T21:31:00.002-05:00

I decided yesterday it was time to redeem some of my MyPoints points. I had almost 3400. It was a bit of a whim but I went looking to see if they had any gift cards for stores that carry maternity clothes. Yes, I have clothes from my last two pregnancies but well, having been worn twice in some cases, they are really worn out. And of course some of them I can't stand to see again. I do have a friend who just had a baby in September that I can borrow some clothes from however although we're the same height I have longer legs and she a longer torso plus she started out about 25 pounds heavier than I did. I'm not sure her clothes will work for me.

And I don't want to spend much if any money on maternity clothes. Call me cheap but this is my last pregnancy (99% sure about that one) so I don't want to spend money on clothes I won't get any use out of again. Sure, I'll get use out of them for six months or thereabouts so it's not like any money spent would be completely wasted.

Anyway, I decided on a $25 gift card to Macy's. They did have Motherhood Maternity gift card but that would have "cost" me an additional 200 points for the same dollar amount. And Motherhood and Macy's carry the exact same clothing so Macy's won out. I'll be excited to go spend it when it arrives in the mail!

And maybe then I'll actually have some professional work clothes I can wear to work again without having to hide in my lab coat every day!

September Actuals

2009-10-06T20:20:00.004-05:00

I haven't posted an actual budget of ours in ages, maybe never. But I'm thinking I might start doing this, if only to keep myself accountable. It's easy to go over budget in one category or another when there's money in the checking account. It's easy to spend that money and not think about the long term or short term goals we've set for ourselves. It's also easy to see where all our money went when I take a look at the monthly budget. I can't believe how many one-time or periodic expenses show up in this month. Here's how we did:

We ended up with $316.27 "extra" at the end of the month. Usually I sweep any extra into our emergency fund but with our beginning of the month cash flow problems, I'm just going to leave this in our checking account as a buffer. We did pretty well this month! Our discretionary spending was way down. We usually blow this budget. It's kind of a catch all for expenses - oil changes, clothes, doctor co-pays, stamps and any other miscellaneous shopping.

I'll post another report in early November so we can see how we did for October. So far, the household budget has already spent $80 of it's $175 budget! We needed diapers and wipes (and other non-necessary items!) though and that's where that money goes. Everything else is going according to plan so far!

September 2009 Month End

2009-10-01T20:58:00.002-05:00

End of the third quarter. 75% complete. This year has flown by! And it's time to take stock of another month end. We did pretty well this month, coming in under our total budget by a couple hundred dollars. I'll break that down for you in another post. Let's do the ol' month end report first, OK?

Debts:

Truck Loan: $31.683.60 (+/- $0.00) - Nothing yet. Our first payment is due October 6th and that check is in the mail. That'll take a big chunk of our monthly budget.

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $4,932.06 (+232.74) - Up is good. We saved some this month and that is good. I always have hopes for more but September is just an expensive month for us. I'm hoping to save a bit more than this in October, even with Chuck's doctor bills due.

Short Term Savings: $183.88 (+50.00) - This account is inching its way up again. We'll get it to $250 and grow it from there. $250 is the new minimum amount we'll have in this account just in case we get hit by the ol' math problems again and bare bones our checking account. I'm also leaving the budget surplus from this month in the checking account too so we should have an "unseen" cushion in there as well.

Travel Fund: $123.60 (+50.10) - Another bump up for the travel fund. We won't be doing much traveling in the short term and we don't have our emergency fund fully funded yet so this account will continue to see modest increases each month.

Christmas Savings: $383.47 (+50.37) - Finally a little bit of action for this long ignored account. I'm budgeting to put $300 in to this account in October so we should have Christmas pretty much saved for with that addition. I'll probably put $100/month into it in November and December and that will take care of it. Another Christmas with cash. Gotta love that!

Basement Finishing Fund: $300.40 (+100.27) - This account is growing nicely too. I think of this as my back up emergency fund for now until the emergency fund is fully funded since if we had to drain the emergency fund then this is where I'd come next if more cash was needed. After we're done with the emergency fund I'll truly think of this as basement money.

Another month in the books. Pretty good all around.

And now for some exciting news!! Chuck and I are expecting our third baby May 2nd, 2010! I just had my first doctor appointment this week and was able to hear the heartbeat. We're pretty excited. Of course this has financial ramifications as well so watch for posts in the future on that!

Hopefully, that is all

2009-09-29T20:46:00.002-05:00

I received our Explanation of Benefits (EOB) from our insurance company yesterday for the $492 doctor bill we received in the mail last Friday. I'm now confident this will be our only bill arriving. The EOB showed charges for the hospital, ER, surgeon, anesthesiologist and lab work. I think that covers everything.

I'm feeling very lucky to have such good insurance.

We paid a total of $7.98 for Jamison's broken arm.

We're paying $492 for an appendectomy.

I don't believe that's too bad, really.

We have $15 co-pays at clinic visits and $150 ER co-pays (included in the $492 for this emergency).

We pay $352/month for our family coverage. I'm very grateful to have decent health insurance for my family. I wish every person/family could have affordable, decent health insurance too.

3% A.K.A. Thank God for good insurance

2009-09-28T08:02:00.002-05:00

We received our first appendectomy doctor bill on Friday. It was short and to the point. We owe $492. OK then. There were only five lines on the bill. Original amount, insurance discount, insurance payment, insurance discount and another insurance payment and then our total at the end. The original amount? Over $15,000. We are paying just over 3% of the total bill. Thank God we have good insurance.

I'm going to call today if I have time and ask for an itemized bill. I have no problem paying the bill, I just want to know if I should expect more of them to arrive in the mailbox. This bill is from the hospital, does that include the $150 ER co-pay? How about the surgeon? Is this just the overnight hospital stay and all the good drugs Chuck received? I'm hoping by getting an itemized bill I can see if I should expect more or not.

Chuck's surgeon joked with Chuck that he wished appendices grew back. That they were quick, easy, big money for him. I can see why now!

As it is, I'm hoping to cash flow this bill in October and to not have to touch our savings. October is a three paycheck month for Chuck so we should have another $750 or so coming in. I was hoping to put a good chunk of that in our Christmas savings and maybe I still can put some there. I guess that depends if more doctor bills are coming or not.

Naughty, Naughty

2009-09-23T21:49:00.002-05:00

I was bad today. I went out to lunch with co-workers. $11.89 spent. This is bad because our restaurant budget was gone for the month. $125 budget. $125.75 spent. Plus now $11.89. And I knew this when I said OK to the lunch today. So why did I go? Because a co-worker is being let go tomorrow. He knows it's coming and today was his good-bye lunch. Another casualty of the recession and being the poorest performer in our group. I feel bad for him. His divorce is final on Friday and he loses his job tomorrow. I haven't always been his biggest fan at work for personal and professional reasons but he's always tried his hardest. So I went to his lunch today. I can absorb the extra into our budget this month. I know we're under budget in several categories.

Have you ever made a conscious decision to go over budget in one category or another? Did you feel guilty about it later? Because I have to admit that I don't.

Embarrassing and Frustrating

2009-09-21T20:44:00.002-05:00

A really embarrassing and frustrating thing happened last week - I overdrafted our checking account. I even knew we were going to be cutting it close so I moved some money from our attached savings account (our short term savings account) to cover what I thought was going through. I miscalculated by about $75 and didn't have enough left in the short term account to cover that. I was charged a $35 overdraft fee for the one bounced transaction and I deserved it. I've learned two things from this experience:

Always have "extra" money in the short term savings account. I know we have an emergency fund but that is at INGDirect and our regular checking is at Wells Fargo. It takes 3-4 days to transfer money between accounts. I need to have money in the short term savings that I can transfer over instantly. Chuck and I have agreed to keep $250 in there at all times. If you'll remember from my August month end update, we only had $83.87 in there at that time. $50/month is automatically transferred. We're going to keep doing this until there is $250 in there and then keep growing it from there. If there's anything we want to splurge on with this money it has to be inexpensive enough that $250 is still left in the account. That will give us a nice cushion I think.
And the big one is we need to manage our cash flow better. We didn't overdraft our account because our spending was out of control. We're at or under budget in every category. It's just that at the beginning of the month we have a lot of cash go out and this month there was even extra leaving our pockets with Anya's birthday. We spent $75 on her present and $130 on her party. Then there was the $172 preschool tuition check, the $115 association fee, the $1965 mortgage payment, the $48 natural gas bill, the $74 phone/internet bill, the $100 trip to the grocery store, etc. That's a huge chunk of our monthly budget right there in the first seven days. And starting in October with our first truck payment of $440.05 due on the 6th of the month? Well, cash flow is going to become even more important. It's my goal to come in under budget this month and then instead of transferring that money to savings, I'm going to keep it in our checking so we have the extra cash available at the beginning of October to handle the large cash outflow again.

I know we can do this. We bring in enough money each month. I just need to be more careful with how we manage it.

Score!

2009-09-18T08:43:00.002-05:00

My workplace is doing some fall cleaning right now and the paper recycling bins are overflowing. This morning as I walked by one I noticed a textbook sitting on top of the pile of papers. I grabbed it and walked back to my desk. I logged in to half.com and checked the ISBN #. And then I listed the book for $15. It's in brand new condition (no highlighting, scrapes, scuffs) and that's the second lowest price listed for a like new condition book (the lowest is $12.50 and after that it's $18.00 and up over $20.00. Wouldn't it be cool to get a "free" $15? I hope the book sells. If it does that money will go straight to the emergency fund, along with all other snowflakes I receive.

I know I've been slow in updating here. Life has been busy (I've been working some late nights after the kids are in bed which is usually my blogging time). That should ease up now and I should be able to post more. Thanks for sticking around!

Restaurant Budget Busted

2009-09-14T19:38:00.002-05:00

Within just a few days in September, Chuck and I had spent most of our dining out budget. And a couple days after that, we busted it. OK, so we busted it by $0.75 but over is over. Here we were one week into the month and our $125 monthly restaurant budget was already at $125.75. Yikes!

Luckily, or smartly, however you look at it, because I've been keeping a closer eye on the budget recently, I recognized this area of the budget was now off-limits, informed Chuck and together we've cut off all dining out. It's not the middle of the month and we're holding steady.

Only two more weeks to go and then we can think of delivered pizzas, a quick bite to eat while on the road or even a date night. Ah, date night. Eating in a restaurant without children is a nice treat. Which is exactly why we're in the position we are now. The kids were at the in-laws for a couple days to let Chuck heal from his appendectomy. And when the kids are away, the parents will play! We ate out every day they were gone! But now we're going to be good little budgeters and stick it out for the rest of September.

Half the month is over, do you have any budget categories on the brink?

Birthday Gifts Under Budget

2009-09-09T20:57:00.002-05:00

Anya's 5th birthday was Monday. We celebrated with a small family party. We're also going roller skating with a couple little friends on Saturday. I had line items in the budget for presents, food for Monday and the skating party. Today I'm going to tell you all how we did on the presents. I gave myself (uh, I mean us, heh) a budget of $75.00. And this is how I did:

Clothes: (3 shirts, 1 skirt from Children's Place) $28.48
Fun Socks and Hello Kitty tote bag: $3.06 from dollar bins at Target
Tinkerbell 1GB MP3 player: $32.17 (She's loving singing along with her songs and it's a riot to watch her dance while listening to her music. The best though is when she shouts at you because she has her earphones on.)
Two My Little Ponies: $10.77

Total damage: $74.48

I did it! I stayed under budget! It helped that the saleswoman at Children's Place gave me 15% off my purchase. How nice of her! I love Children's Place. Cute clothes at great prices.

Next up - groceries for Monday's family party. Budget? $75.00 Did we do it when we served steaks, hamburgers and ribs? Time to dig out the receipt and categorize what was party food and what was regular grocery shopping...

New Truck Insurance Payment

2009-09-08T19:04:00.001-05:00

Late last week I found out how much our insurance for the truck is going to increase. We had been paying $41.78/month for our 1999 Blazer. That was with 50/100/50 coverage. Yes, we pay monthly instead of quarterly or every six months. I know we’re throwing a couple dollars away every month on administrative fees for this convenience. At this time I’m too lazy to change that. Whoops. (I promise to look into this as we do this for 3 of our 4 vehicles – truck, car, my motorcycle – so we are paying more in administrative fees than I would like.)

Anyway, I checked online and our new monthly payment is going to be $43.30 and that is with 100/300/100 coverage. I’ve increased our coverage 2-3x, have a brand new vehicle and my monthly payment only increased by $1.52. Not too bad!

This will make a minimal dent on our monthly budget. The truck payment on the other hand...

August 2009 Month End

2009-09-02T21:02:00.005-05:00

Summer is over! Can you believe it? The Minnesota State Fair is going on right now. That's our annual right of passage into the school year and autumn. This summer has gone so fast. At least we were able to enjoy it with our vacation and several local outings. And now it's time to fess up! Just how did we do in the month of August??

Debts:

Truck Loan: $31.683.60 (+31,683.60) - Yikes! That's a big number. We are still very happy with our purchase though. It was exactly the vehicle we wanted and we believe we received a fair price. Plus, you can't beat 0% financing! Well, except with a cash payment which we would not have had for years. We'll be paying the minimum due on this account due to the 0% interest and still put all money available into savings. Our first payment for the truck isn't due until October 6th so there is not a line item in the September budget for a truck payment. This balance will stay the same for the upcoming month.

Savings:

Emergency Fund: $4,699.32 (+477.99) - I was hoping to add more to the emergency fund last month. I'd like that number to be $750 minimum each month. I have to realize that's not going to be possible every month and just continue to do the best I can. I also think we've been spending more than necessary lately. If we can curb some of our spending then we could add more to savings. I'll be keeping a close eye on the budget to see where we can cut back. Unfortunately, September is always an expensive month for us and this one is no different. There's preschool to pay for now with a double payment due this month and ECFE class tuition plus Anya's birthday and the list keeps going. My goal this month is to get this account over $5000.00.

Short Term Savings: $133.88 (+50.01) - Standard contribution this month. We still have our eye on an iPod Touch. It turns out Chuck's brother has one he's no longer using and was thinking of selling on Craigslist. It's the 16Gb model. I told him to tell us how much he wants for it and we'll buy it from him. He hasn't given us a number yet so for now we leave this money alone.

Travel Fund: $73.50 (+50.05) - I bumped the contribution from $20 to $50. That's still not a lot of money but then again our emergency fund is not yet fully funded. We should be focusing there anyway. I think I'll leave this as is for now.

Christmas Savings: $333.10 (+0.39) - Yeah, this account didn't see any action this month. I do have a small amount scheduled for this account for September. I'm also counting on Chuck's third paycheck in October to boost this account. We will pay for Christmas with cash this year. That is still going to happen.

Basement Finishing Fund: $200.13 (+100.13) - I've made this a standing $100 contribution in the monthly budget. I'm a little torn about this though. If I added this to the emergency fund instead then I'd be that much closer to my $750 monthly goal. However, if there were to be an emergency where we needed to pull from savings, this money is certainly fair game. And it's all at ING so it would be easy to move between accounts if necessary. For now I'll stick the money here so we can feel like we're making at least a little progress on getting the basement finished.

And there you have it, our financial life in a nutshell. One thing I've noticed lately is that while we usually have money left over each month in our budget, I'm not doing a very good job with my individual budget categories. I'm green (under) in some and red (over) in others. I'm going to take a look this month and may report our ending budget in the next month end report. Maybe having to publicize the numbers will make me stick to them a little better to make sure every category is green. It would be nice to be able to sweep a big pot of "extra" money into the emergency fund!

Recovering

2009-09-01T20:19:00.002-05:00

Chuck is doing well. Thank you for the nice comments. The kids have been visiting grandma and grandpa the past couple days so Chuck's been home alone during the day. This is good for his healing but man, is he bored! This means in the evenings when I'm home from work he wants to do things and talk and stuff. It's not really conducive to me blogging like I usually do in the evenings after the kids are in bed. I have some things to update you on too! Like August month end, Lending Club investment, Anya's birthday presents and coming in under our birthday gift budget. But that will have to wait. Now I have to go spend more time with my husband. Awful, huh? :)

Emergency

2009-08-27T18:29:00.002-05:00

I was going to tell you tonight about the profile I chose as my first Lending Club investment. Instead, Chuck called me and asked me to come home early from work because he wasn't feeling well. Six hours later and I'm sitting here in the waiting room at the hospital while he has his appendix removed.

I think this classifies as an emergency.

Yikes!

I'm doing OK. He's doing OK, especially with the good drugs they gave him.

And it's so nice to know that financially we'll be OK too. Sure we may not be able to put much if anything into the emergency fund next month if this hospital adventure bills come in a timely manner. But that's OK, that is what that money is for.

Right now all I'm worried about is Chuck. That he comes out of surgery OK. That his recovery is quick and with little pain. That he's back to normal before too long.

Frugal Family Weekend

2009-08-25T18:25:00.001-05:00

We went to Iowa this weekend to visit family and celebrate our nephew’s baptism. And we had a very frugal weekend! All told we spent $20 on a gift, $20 on food and $33 on gas for the trip. Lodging was free (air mattresses at their house) and most meals were courtesy of Chuck’s parents or sister. We only purchased $20 of food on the road.

Usually when we go out of town the dog stays at Chuck’s parent’s house but since we were all celebrating together, they weren’t home either. That upped the cost of the weekend and was not a charge I had budgeted for, an oversight on my part. Tonight I’ll be updating our August budget and will get a better feel for where we are this month. I suspect this may have put us over in the discretionary category. Whoops! We’ll have to be more careful in September.

Debt - It's Back

2009-08-24T20:36:00.005-05:00

Guess what? We cashed in our clunker on Saturday. Yep, I know I said back in June that we were going to pass on the Cash for Clunker program and wait until next spring to replace our vehicle. I did not want to go through another summer with non-working AC in our truck. Well, we decided to take the plunge and just do it. Here's why:

'09 vehicles are on sale because dealers are trying to make room for the '10 models so we got a good price on our vehicle.
We received the $3500 credit.
I had $815 in rewards on my GM credit card that we were able to take off the top of the vehicle price.
We got 0% financing for 72 months.

What did we get? A Chevrolet Traverse. We wanted a vehicle with a third row seat but didn't want to go the minivan route. We've been researching the Acadia's and Traverse's and Highlanders off and on for quite some time. The Traverse is $8-$10K less than the Acadia and Highlander so that's why we went with it. We are very happy with our purchase. The kids love having air conditioning again.

The total price with taxes, title and license we will be paying is $31,683.60 which comes out to $440.05 a month for the next six years. I know some of you are appalled by that total. It is an expensive vehicle. But we are happy with the purchase and are enjoying our new vehicle.

We plan on paying the minimum due at this time until our emergency fund is fully funded. Then I think we'll still save money for the basement so we can get that project done. Then, we'll start paying ahead on the truck so we can hopefully pay it off early. There is no penalty for paying the loan off early but it is at 0%. I'm thinking after the emergency fund and the basement maybe we'll just start saving as much money as we can so we can replace the 9 year old car without having to get another auto loan. We'll figure that out after the emergency fund and basement though.

So, we're officially back in debt.

Another Weekend Getaway

2009-08-20T20:53:00.002-05:00

Yep, we're going away again this weekend. Last weekend it was just me. This weekend it's the whole family. My nephew is being baptized down in Iowa Sunday morning so we're all heading out Saturday morning and will be arriving home Sunday evening. It's going to be a nice weekend surrounded by family. We wouldn't miss it.

It should also be fairly frugal. We need to bring a dessert and I think I'll just make something with ingredients already on hand. And we're staying with family so there won't be any lodging charges. There may be a quick meal or two on the road but the restaurant budget has more than enough money in it to cover that provided we don't eat out the rest of August. I think that's doable. And I increased the auto gas budget this month in anticipation of the trip so we should be covered there as well.

And there we go! Another quick weekend trip - within budget - and with cash. Gotta love that!