In Light of the Last Post

Having reviewed our goals that we set in January and realizing that we're not going to reach many of them we have decided to change a few of them. Check out the side bar for the new updates!

-M

Yearly Goals

Yearly Goals Mid Year Check-in

Now that 2009 is half way over, I'd like to reexamine our goals we set out to accomplish. I wanted to get this done earlier in the month but things came up as they tend to do with my blog writings. Let's start with savings.

Emergency Fund: I'd like to say that we're going to accomplish this goal the end of August like we set out but we're not going to be able to. I am going to be emptying this account out in a few weeks to pay some bills. We have semiannual bills that need to be paid this month. Unfortunately, we did not anticipate S to be out of work for so long and the money needs to come from some where. This is what emergency funds are for anyway. Ho Hum! We will need to start rebuilding this next month but not at the rate we were before. -FAIL

Travel Fund: Again due to S being out of work, saving for this goal is on a hiatus. -FAIL

M's Retirement: This is the only goal that is on target. We will be increasing the contributions by 1% in October. - On track

S's Retirement: He is currently not working and does not have an account right now. Only time will tell with this goal. - ???

O's College Savings: We are on track with this goal but are going to lower our transfer amount for the next couple of months to rebuild the emergency fund. - On track

S & M Net Worth: We are not getting any where close to our goal here, we are about $10,000 short. I am only hoping we make it back to where we were in January at this point. We may be able to get back on track and accomplish some of our longer term goals but our goal for this year is a big fat FAIL

Now on to debt.
S's Credit Card: We are on track with this and should be able to have it paid off by the end of October. - On track

M's Student Loans: We are currently on track with this goal as well. We made a decision a few months back to send slightly more than the minimum payment so it is helping us to reach this goal. - On track

S's Student Loans: Nothing to report - In Deferment

Medical Bills - PAID IN FULL

Overall, we are not going to make very many of our savings goals but are going to hit all of our debt goals. While it is a bit upsetting that we are so far from our savings goals knowing we will hit and rid ourselves of credit card debt makes the savings goals not feel as far away.

-M

Money and Marriage

As we all know, S and I were married this past March. As newlyweds, we have come to realize we have a lot of issues that we did not talk through before we got married, which is a whole different post for a whole different day. This has caused us to reexamine how we deal with money and also how we discuss financial matters. We have similar spending styles but that's about where the similarities end regarding financial matters.

Before we were married, neither of us spend more than we can afford but we did this differently. I had a reoccurring bills account which I put a set amount into each month for bills that happen irregularly. I also tracked every purchase I made in budgeting software and balanced all of my accounts each month, not only the checkbook. S didn't do any this. He would spent as he saw fit and then use a whole paycheck to pay the car insurance when it came due or for Christmas presents. He never checked his statements against his checkbook registry because he never had a checkbook registry. He never missed a payment or a holiday so this must have worked for him for for me it would have been disastrous.

Now, that we're married we've both had to make changes in this area. To make things work as smoothly as possible, we each have maintained our own accounts. I use my checking account to pay the bills because I can't handle yet another account on top of our numerous savings accounts. I use mostly cash for my fun money as it keeps my spending in check and does not allow for me to accidentally use money set aside for bills. He uses his checking account for all of his purchases other than bills such as gas and fun money. I handle paying all of the bills but he is clued in on what is due when and knows how to use my budgeting software if necessary. This is an area where he doesn't mind giving up control and I thank him for this. I'm a bit of a control freak and if I didn't physically pay the bills I'd worry constantly that they were not getting paid.

As we become more accustom to marriage and settled into our own apartment this may change. We have some pretty extensive financial goals we would like to accomplish in a short period of time and once we do this our money management system may change. For now, this system is working for us and we are comfortable with it.

-M

Happy Fourth of July Weekend!

I'm a day late as usual but wanted to say Happy 4th Weekend!

Yesterday, all three of us went to the park. I was stung by a bee and my foot is a nice shade of purple. O on the other hand love the park and had a great time! We had a cookout with my parents-in-law. We made a Key Lime Pie as well. Yummy!

Today, O and I made pancakes while S took a nap. Now, O is napping. When O wakes up we're going to go to a different park. Hopefully, it will have fewer bees, my feet will be thankful.

-M

Changes

We are renovating so if things look screwy please come back soon and they will be back to normal.

-M

Updated - 7/3
The changes are complete. They are not only to the layout of the site but also to the content. I'm going to focus the content on a more personal/family level. I'll still include our monthly financial report as well as a budgeting check-in mid-month but I want to include stories from our life.

State of the Finances

As we all know it is the second of the month and so it is time for an update!

All in all, June was a decent month. We had a few major expenses such as car insurance but were able to split the payment in two so we need to make a payment on that this month as well.

Savings: We were able to make some contributions to these accounts. I would like to have seen a bigger improvement here but with our budgeting skills lacking we spent money we shouldn't have. Onward and upward from here.

Emergency Fund: An increase of 39.24 - we added $38 to make it a cool $1000 and then added a little in interest

Travel Fund: An increase of .25 - not somewhere to put money when we have bigger bills to take care of

Retirement: I'm not going to track these accounts very closely as I'd rather not keep too close of an eye on them since they are long term investments. I'll just say that I opened the account but this first automatic payment did not come out yet so the balance is still $0.

O's Savings: In June she celebrated her first birthday! She was given some monetary gifts which were added to her savings account which brings the total up by $90 or almost doubling her account in one month. She will not be seeing such an increase in savings for a while.

Our Net Worth: While it is not back to where it was in January and we are probably not going to make our short term goal we are making some progress. Right now, my hopes are to have the net worth back to where it was in January by the end of the year. As of the end of June it stands at -$25,299.25 or an increase of almost $300. July will be better than this. I expected our net worth to go down with the major bills paid in June so I'm pleasantly surprise.

Debt: We did not do so well in this category in June. We had a slight increase in credit card debt. We should have a bit of extra money this month which will be thrown at the credit card. I want it gone as soon as possible.

S's Credit Card: The total for this is $1640 or an increase of $90. I can't account for this but it won't happen again.

M's Student Loan: This total for this is $15,325. This is a decrease of $123. I am paying a bit more than the minimum payment to make it a nice round number. I don't expect this bill to be paid off any time soon so each month we just keep chipping away at it.

As the previous months, S's Student Loans are still in deferment as he's still in school. The first payment will be due in December.

Here's to the hopes I have better things to report come August!

-M

Tentative Budget for July

Well, we really aren't working with much money right now. We will need to dip into our Emergency Fund this month as S is out of work much longer than we thought he'd be and do not have enough to cover our car insurance. I can continue to cover all of the rest of the bills plus pay extra to his credit card as well as put a little in savings but did not save for car insurance accordingly. So, I'm going to take the money out of the E-fund so we do not have to hold it on our credit cards and replenish the E-fund as quickly as possible.

On to the budget:
Income - $1280

Reoccurring Bills (car insurance, gifts, car maintenance, etc.) - $330
M's Student Loan - $200
S's Credit Card - $255
E-fund - $25
O's Savings - $25
Travel Savings - $25
Baby Expenses - $100 (diapers, milk, etc.)
Gasoline - $140
Retirement - $50 (I know this should be more, its just slightly under 4% of my income)
Fun Money - $40
O's Gym Class - $90

So, there you have it. Our meager budget for July. I know we do not have any housing expenses right now as we are very lucky to have these paid for us but will in the near future need to start paying them ourselves and then will need to revamp the budget. At that time we will have more income and revamping the budget shouldn't take too much work.

Wish us luck!

-M

Happy Birthday to ME!

Today is my birthday. As a birthday present to myself I blew our June budget. Ok, I'm kidding about it being a present to myself but our June budget is pretty much toast. This also happened in May! Last week, my budgeting software crashed and we lost all of our information. This all could have been avoided if I backed it up as I should have but I didn't. I'm in the process of setting everything back up and recommiting to our budget. I will be back in posting action soon as well as tracking our spending.

-M

Editor Note: I forgot to mention that I opened my Roth IRA yesterday!

101 Things in 1001 Days

I certainly have not been keeping this updated as I should. I haven't even been working on it as I should and probably should start saving up my dollars to donate at the end. Let's start from the top and go through if the goals are achievable or not.

I'll start by saying that all of the travel that I included is not going to be possible. Yes I know I have almost three years to do it all but even in three years it will not be possible. Cape Cod, Graceland, Mark Twain House, Dude Ranch, Country Music, Football Hall of Fame, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Liberty Bell are probably not places that I'm going to see in the next two years and six months. Everything else, should be doable. As far as travel abroad, I doubt we'll go any where besides Germany. So, Italy and France sight seeing will not get done.

Then we move into the time consuming activities. We do have an idea of when we're going to be moving to our own apartment, keep an eye out in the next six to nine months for an update on this. Pay off debt well that wasn't very specific. It does not say credit card debt it says debt so by that I assume I meant all debt and that is entirely impossible. Together, S and I, have a large sum of student loan debts as you can see from the side bar. We will not be able to pay these off in the few short years we have until this goal session is finished. I have to say that I have been doing very well with cards on holidays. We have a few friends with birthdays coming up so we need to get those cards in the mail by the end of the week. As far as the reunion party, that will have to wait. It probably will not happen in the next two and a half years.

We created a budget. We have been unsuccessful at using the budget well, we'll keep trying and by the end of the year we hope to have a good handle on this. Along with failing at budgeting, I have failed at keeping my fun money spending down to $50. Next month, this will be my number one goal, money wise. We are going to need to use half of our emergency fund savings this month but will continue to build toward our $10,000 goal starting next month.

I have been baking at least once a month so far. This is an activity I really like to do and plan to continue to do it. I also have been making larger breakfasts now that O can eat grown up food and S is home. We have not gone to church yet and so we have made no progress toward getting O baptized. We need to seriously start working on both of these things because O is now a year old. I can proudly say that we have been putting forth an effort to read a story to O each day. I tried to read a book to her each morning and S reads to her in the afternoon. Most days she gets two or three books. Her attention span isn't very long and it is difficult to get her to sit and listen to the stories. Most often we are reading to her when she is playing with something else.

S and I had a discussion about end of life paper work last week. He doesn't see the importance of having it now. I stressed that it is important and want to get working on it. This will take more convincing I'm sure but we should see progress in this area soon. The retirement account... I am going to open an IRA on June 22. It will be the day I turn 24. I'll post about that once it happens.

Oh, health and fitness, how I long for you and yet do not put forth enough effort. I am not training for any runs right now. I don't think I'll be taking dance lessions any time soon but hopefully I'll be able to squeeze something in. We tried a new burger place not that long ago. I need to update that on the side bar. I am making progress there. I have not bought soda in the past few months. I am only drinking free soda and soda when dining out. I got an amazing cookbook for Christmas two years ago. I have been adding recipes to this cookbook as it is three ring style when I try something I like. I think that counts. I am not putting forth enough effort to lose weight at this time. I have been tracking what I'm eating and will be choosing better food starting in the morning. I have not been working out. This will be a fail because I have lacked doing it for so many months already. I will need to start implementing an exercise routine though. I will update on this later as well. Even though the exercise isn't going as planned, I have been drinking my water most days. Celebrate my little accomplishment.

I'm going to end my update here. I know that's not all 101 goals. I will do another major update next month with the second half of the goal list. As you can see, overall I have not made much progress on any of these goals. I need to seriously start deciding which I need to focus my energy on first and do so.

-M

State of the Finances

Here it is June already! We have three birthdays and Father's Day this month.

Savings:
Emergency Fund: Last month we had $586 in there and this month we have $962. That is an increase of $376. We are working on getting to $1000 to start and eventually $10,000. I know the sidebar says $1,500 by August and we're not going to hit that goal. We're going to stop putting so much in after we reach $1,000 because I want to focus on S's credit card.

Travel Fund - We are focusing on S's credit card and the emergency fund right now. We only transfered $5 into this account this month.

I still haven't called about my retirement account. I will do this during June! I won't be able to put much into it at first but hope to be able to work up to 15% quickly.

O's Savings - We opened the account with $100.50 from her piggy bank. We are putting 75% of her birthday money into the account this month. We will use the other 25% to buy some toys. While she wouldn't know if we put it all in the account considering her age, we want to use this formula each year with her so we decided to start now.

Net worth - $25,585

Debts:
We didn't acquire any more debt this month! WOOHOO!

S's credit card - We were able to put $650 toward it this month to get the balance down to $1,550. I am expecting it to take three more months to pay off completely. It is tempting to use our emergency fund to pay it off this month but won't do it in case we have an actual emergency. It is far better to have the fund to rebuild than to have more credit card debt.

The medical bills are paid off as of Monday! The check has been cashed and we are all clear of medical bills. I'm counting this as being paid in May though because I mailed the check out in May.

We are paying my student loan bills on time each month. While the balance isn't going down very quickly it is moving down. We paid off $110 this month. We have decided to pay an extra $18 per month to make the payment a nice round number. It doesn't seem like $18 would make much of a difference but using this calculator we figured out we'd have my loans paid off 9 months earlier than if we paid the minimum payments. While 9 months isn't all that significant in a ten year repayment plan it is something to look forward to. S's student loans are in deferment until December '09.

Til next time,
-M