1st Quarter Check In

We're a quarter of the way through 2009. This is crazy. I thought this would be a good time to look at my annual goals and see what I still need to do.

Things I'm making good progress on. Things I've thought about but scheduled for later. Things I'm not doing well on.

Pay off my car by May. Possible, but not very likely. End of June should happen though.
Buy Gameboy a new car before his current car dies. No luck. Also why my car won't be paid off next month.
Work Roth IRA's into our 80/20 plan. Kinda. 8% of my 80% goes towards my Roth IRA. I want something a little more concrete for both of us- see below.
Also convince Gameboy that we should both be doing Roths. Haven't started this one yet. Wanted to get my car paid off first.
Get to know one of my neighbors. It's still snowing. I'll work on this once it's nice outside.
Give more. I've donated more than I usually do at this time of the year. I've also found an organization I think I want to volunteer with regularly.
Figure out a better work life balance. Getting there. I only check my work email from home twice a day (once before, once after). I also have a better feel for when things are going to get crazy.
Reduce the knitting stash. Umm... this would involve not buying more yarn. Which I haven't been doing. I blame all the new babies that need hats from baby yarn, that's most of the yarn purchases. I have found a use for 3-4 foot pieces of yarn that I got from freecycle a while back.
Join/serve on a nonprofit board. This will be a summer/fall activity.
Move 10 minutes each day. This can be strength, aerobics, yoga, whatever. Until my around birthday I was great. He got sick, I got sick, work deadline, helping dad move, his car situation. Not good reasons to ignore my health. I started up again yesterday.
Grow my own food (well some of it) this summer. Seedlings started! Materials for a raised bed mostly purchased. If nothing else there will be veggies this summer.

I'll update networth once all of my transfers go through.

December Goals

• Only buy breakfast 3 times, excluding our coffee shop staff meetings.
• Earn $150 in extra income
• Attempt a dry run on our taxes
• Invest the money I've been saving for my Roth IRA
• Figure out giving (some holiday, but mainly for the difference between my paycheck at the old/new jobs)
• Make it to 5 more yoga classes at work
• Spend no more than $250 on groceries

Updated: I forgot a very important one- Working on finding a work home balance. After working from home and because this job is pretty flexible I find myself goofing off a lot during the day and making up for it at home. I need to work this out.

September Wrap-up, October Goals

I hope that September was the last in a series of crazy and expensive months. We seem to be settling into the financials associated with the house (though unpacking is still going strong), adjusting to being a 3 person household, I’m getting used to the new job, and the wedding stuff is all taken care of.

My net worth continues to increase, though at a much slower rate. I’m hoping that by my next birthday (February) the hard work of 2008 will result in a positive net worth. All of the sidebars are also slowly making their way across- except for my student loan which is on auto-pilot. The last goal I wrote about was staying sane, which I like to think I’ve accomplished. :)

For the past few days I’ve been thinking about where I’d like to go financially during October. In no particular order:

• Get my Roth funds above 60%. I’d hoped to have this funded by the end of the year and without some crazy action I’m not sure if it will happen.
• Decide where I want to invest my 2008 Roth money. My last Roth is with Vanguard, who I like, but am not necessarily married to. I’m also trying to decide on what type of fund, specifically if I should go with a socially responsible fund.
• Only eat lunch out 3 times (not including lunch meetings).
• Keep grocery spending under $300.
• Be mindful about house purchases- waiting until we can afford to buy outside of regular maintenance.
• Go 400 miles on one tank of gas.

May Updates/June Goals

In mid May we changed how we manage our finances. This has had a significant effect on my usual month end numbers. Most of our bills come in during the 3rd and 15th. So with the at the end of the month I would have the surplus to distribute to the savings accounts. We started this new system mid May and won't be making allocations until the end of June. It will be interesting because in addition to changing how we do things May and June have: the balance of medical bills we've been working with our insurance to take care of (they didn't), our 6 month car insurance renewal, purchase of wedding dress/rings, new wheels and two rims on Gameboy's car because somehow he damaged them.

Another issue presenting itself is figuring out how to look what is 'mine.' So far the numbers on the progress bar and in my net worth only come from my salary/my accounts. For our household combining things is more equitable and it will (after the next 2-3 months) be much better for our accounts. I just don't know how to account for my net worth when a large portion of our money is in a joint account.*

Here are the numbers.

May:

		Goals		Actual
Groceries		$175		$209.85
Eating Out		$40		$35.12
Snowflakes		$500		$1,033.35
Roth IRA		$200		$288.64

June:

		Goals
Groceries		$150
Eating Out		$60
Snowflakes		$400
Roth IRA		$253.46

*Any suggestions are welcome.

The New Budget

Now that our incomes are somewhat stabilized we’ve put together a new budget. His job has a base + commission and I have work + alternative income, so we decided to do a percent based budget. This way the constant fluctuations will not mean coming up with a new formula each month.

80% of all income goes into a shared checking account. From this account all household bills and rent will be paid. Starting in July we’ll be ‘paying’ what our approx mortgage (based on our target price) into the emergency fund. At the end of each month we’ll sit down and decide exactly where the surplus should go. We’re still going to keep the household expenses as low as possible, so we’ll have a nice surplus at the end of the month.

The big caveat is retirement funding for me. My job doesn’t match in the first year, so instead of a 403(b) I’m saving for a Roth. 10% of my base salary will pull from the joint account and go to my Roth savings account.*

The remaining 20% is ours to do what we please with. This includes all personal spending and date nights. I don’t know what Gameboy will do with his,** but mine will fund occasional nights out, business lunches, travel savings, snowflake account/debt, and some yarn, once the fast is over.*** I think I’m going to do 10% fun, 10% savings/debt reduction.

The budget started with our last paychecks and will cover all of the June bills. Our auto insurance (we do 6 months at a time) is up for renewal in June, which will eat up a lot, if not all of our surplus. But starting in July we should have a good amount at the end of the month for the emergency fund and debt reduction.

*I haven’t decided if I want to stick with the fund I have now or move to another one. While I decide the money is hanging out in an ING sub account.

**Though I can make some good guesses. Most will likely go to eating out and games/game paraphernalia- I call him Gameboy for a reason.

*** 145 days and going! The end may be near though because I need some more cotton for dishcloths.

May Goals

I was all ready to write about how we're doing so far this month when I realized I never actually posted my May goals. I mapped them out earlier this month when I was all sick.

The Goals
Groceries: $175
Eating out: $40
Snowflakes: $500
Roth IRA: $200

So far I'm on track. Groceries for the month have come to $77.66. That includes today's hangover run. We rarely drink and almost never drink together (so we have a designated driver). Gameboy over did it so this morning included a Target run of feel better foods. I'm pretty confident that we'll stay under $175, if not $150 for the month.

The snowflakes are growing and should exceed $500 by the end of the month. If I have time to get things together tonight I may be able to hit the $500 mark early next week.

How's your month so far?

77.66

March Goal Review

Each month I'm trying to get a little better at saving money and paying things off. For the month I exceeded one goal, shifted two others, and failed on a fourth. It's not perfect, but I'll take it.

Groceries- 235.01. Another way of putting it would be significantly ($85.01) over budget. When I set the goal a made a few assumptions about my travel schedule for the month that had an opposite impact. Instead of spending less because I wasn't home for over a week I spent more because I didn't have time to plan grocery visits like I usually do. I gave myself an extra $25 for this month and am going to do my best to get grocery planning and shopping done around my trips.

Emergency fund- The goal was to get it up to $2000 by June. I got a nice sized check for my contract work and decided to throw it all at the emergency fund. I've since upped the emergency fund goal to $3000. The goal will be the end of the year.

Car loan- I wanted to do an additional $25/mth. Half way through the month I changed my direction on the car and student loans so TFS got an extra $425. From here on out this loan will be the beneficiary of my snowflakes.

Student loans- Since I've decided to shift towards paying off the car this goal is on hold. Before the change I paid 179.37 towards these loans.

April Goals

The trip this week was a bit crazy. It included an allergic reaction, a 4 am discussion with the front desk, being lost in a town the size of a postage stamp, and driving home in a snow storm. I have a general idea on what happened in March but haven't actually crunched the numbers. Instead I present the April Goals:

• $400 in snowflakes
• $175 for groceries
• maintaining our newly revised cleaning schedule
• contributing $100/pay period to my IRA account

The first three are pretty much self explanatory. So far this year I haven't been saving for retirement. Even though I'm working to pay down debt I think it's important to save for retirement. After going through 5 pay periods and three months of paying the bills I feel like I have a handle on where things are going. $100 a pay period isn't a lot, but will likely be scaled up once a few things with Gameboy get stabilized.

I've also decided that the snowflakes should go towards my car payments instead of the student loans. In the near future I'll post more in depth about this. The general idea I can pay off the car loan sooner and interest on my car loan isn't tax deductible.

The final change for April is a snowflake account. We have a few things going on and are saving up the money instead of making overpayments. Once everything is worked out the snowflake account will all get put towards the car. So instead of measuring what I paid off I'll be measuring the snowflakes I collect.

Goal Reevaluation

Student loans- Originally the plan was an additional 3000 in principal. The problem has been the amount of time I spend figuring out interest paid, especially since my payment date gets pushed back with every payment I make.

New Goal- $5979 by 12/31/08 (29% accomplished)

This will be a little less than paying 3000 in principal but something I can attain with more ease.
Emergency fund- I had a number in my mind at the beginning but failed to write it down.

New Goal- $2000 by 6/30/08 (55% accomplished)

Car Loan- This wasn’t in the original goal for the year but the tanking interest rates have me wanting to speed up the payment timeline.

Goal- An extra $25/month

Wedding fund- This one has taken back seat at the moment. I can only handle so much at once.

The funds will come from my salary and extra income. I'm still working on the March budget so I don't have exact details yet.

The Plan

To achieve the goals of the year I have a few different things I plan to do. The first is to increase the amount of money I make. I started doing most of these things while I was in school last year and have decided to continue even though I have a full time job now. The short list includes mystery shopping, babysitting, online surveys, and consulting work. These are the things that work best for me based on my skills and available time. On any given day I do at least one of these things to keep additional funds flowing in. Obviously some of these are more lucrative than others. In the next week I’ll start outlining each of these types of work.

The second half of the plan includes saving and snowflaking. I plan on using my mystery shopping and survey earnings to snowflake my student loan debt. Babysitting and consulting money will go towards the down payment and wedding funds.

The final part of the plan is reducing our spending. I know that when I head into the grocery store with a plan I do a lot better. I’m also working on making our apartment more energy efficient to cut the electric bills. The final thing is avoiding the places that seem to pull the money from my pockets.

More to come later

Balancing it all

Lately I feel like I have one too many balls in the air. New job, contract work, babysitting, wedding planning, the end of my student loan grace period, and the first steps of buying a new house are all up in the air. I am grateful for the first three, without them I couldn’t come close to attacking the rest of the list. The key for me will be figuring out how to find the balance between the different jobs and the best way to divert those funds to all of the expenses.

Some goals for the year are saving for:

• saving for our wedding
• creating the rest of an emergency fund (1/6th of the way there)
• saving a down payment for our first home
• paying at least an extra $3000 of the principal on my student loans

Hopefully that isn't more than I can handle.

Update: Doing the calculations on each payment are getting to be too much. I'm going to go for an extra $3000 in payments instead.