Our budget for January is trashed! Between the busted washer pipe and wire problems, to buying a bunch of photo props for Claire’s shoot, to just impulsively buying way to much fast food and junk, we really screwed up this month. February will have to be the new January, and we will either sink or swim, so let’s hope we get it right this time. We didn’t get to put anything into the Emergency Fund, except for my last paycheck from K-Mart, which was about $76. Our home improvement fund was emptied, and we stole from the thrift and medical savings to help with the cost of the wiring. We went up to the outlet mall in Lodi and spent money we didn’t really have on a few shirts and Christmas dresses for the girls, since they were having a huge clearance sale. This month was just a mess. Luke also spent some money, getting a Maxxum 9, the best film camera Minolta ever made. It's a professional grade camera, and it came with 2 lenses Luke can use on his digital camera as well. So, on we are into February. Hopefully by the end of February, we will have something rock solid in place.
Accounts as of 1/31/09
Emergency Fund: $229.53/$1000
Thrift Savings: $0.00
Medical Savings: $0.00
Home Improvement Savings: $0.00
The minimum on the WAMU card dropped this month, so the new minimum will be $35. We needed that little extra, we had too many runs to Drug Mart this pay period. The price of convenience I guess. I didn’t pay any extra to any of the cards. I decided the best place to put extra cash for now is in the Emergency Fund, until we get to that $1000.
On another note, our snowball has been re-ordered. I'll need to redo the chart and post it, but we got a good promotion on one of Luke's empty credit cards, so we are doing a balance transfer, to get rid of my Bank of America card. It looks like one of the highest interest cards we have a balance on is Luke's WAMU, and it is also one of the cards with the smallest balance. That will now be the first credit card we pay off.
Luke has a bunch of e-Bay auctions going on this week. He is trying to raise money to buy a 100-400 APO lense for his camera, along with a 2x teleconverter. He is hoping to hit a few more air shows this year, and these 2 items will really help him achieve the close-up shots he wants to pull off.
We should be filing our taxes shortly, but all money we get back will go into savings for our upcoming shuttle vacation. I will post lots of details about that vacation plan at another time. Right now I need to get the motivation and make Luke sit down and help with pictures so I can update this blog with all the other life happenings that have been going on. He is working from his brother's today, but hopefully late tonight we can get some things posted.
There are also some new pictures on the photo blog. Claire's newborn photo shoot, and some of Lexi for her upcoming 3rd birthday next month!!
Showing posts with label snowball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snowball. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Debt Snowball and Emergency Fund
As for the budget, I really want to follow Dave Ramsey’s baby steps for the Total Money Makeover. Baby step #1 is a $1000 emergency fund, and baby step #2 is debt snowball. Right now we have $152.12 in there (since the car broke and we spent $300 on springs and lower ball joints and a tire). I also have another $50 to put towards it right now from Christmas. I hate paying a little above minimums and that is it on the credit cards, but we would need to do that for another 2 months to get us to our $1000, depending on what my paychecks look like. I will post the table of our debt snowball, but I’m not sure if we will put that much to our first credit card in line, or if we will do the minimum and put the money towards our E-fund. I have to think about it and talk it over and crunch numbers, so we will see. FYI, we keep our Emergency Fund in a Capital One Money Market account. It gets better rates than a normal savings account through our local bank, but the money is still liquid enough that we can access it instantly if we need the funds. It has a debit card and a checkbook, and we can do online transfers that will take a few days to clear.
We have 5 credit cards in our debt snowball, and I have them listed in the order we hope to pay them off in (higher interest rates first). We are also going to start paying Luke’s dad $200/month starting in January for the land loan he gave us (4 ½ years ago)! We also have $50/month for home improvement, $50/month for medical savings, and hopefully $20/month for thrift (which will be a savings for this coming summer’s yard sales). Then we have our usual bills, mortgages and a car payment. I’d like to try and follow the budget as closely as possible for a month or two before I post every amount of expense we have, but I’m sure I will post the entire budget sometime in 2009, to show our progress and help inspire others. As it stands right now with the current figures, it seems as though it should take us around 2 years to pay off these 5 credit cards.
My plan for now is to post our debt snowball table at the beginning of the month to show our goal, and then at the end of the month, repost it with the actual totals to see if we met our goal…or hopefully exceeded it!
| Credit Card | Minimum Payment | Projected Payment | Actual Payment | Balance as of 12/31/2008 |
| Holly’s BoA | $110.00 | $300.00 | $- | $4,176.20 |
| Luke’s BoA | $80.00 | $80.00 | $- | $4,798.05 |
| Luke’s Chase | $180.00 | $180.00 | $- | $8,493.16 |
| Luke’s WAMU | $65.00 | $65.00 | $- | $1,502.77 |
| Luke’s CC | $30.00 | $30.00 | $- | $1,114.74 |
| Total | $465.00 | $655.00 | $- | $20,084.92 |
| Time Table | Months | Years |
| Minimum | 43.19 | 3.60 |
| Projected | 30.66 | 2.56 |
| Actual | 0.00 | 0.00 |
Emergency Fund: $152.12/$1000
Monday, December 22, 2008
The weekend before Christmas and I'm sick
Well I’ve decided to hold off on any large projects until after the holidays. There are just so many places we have to go this week. The plan is my dad’s house on Christmas Eve, before I have to go to work (because retail stinks and I work on Christmas Eve), then Christmas Day we will spend at Luke’s brother’s house with the Cowgar side of the family, then the day after Christmas we will go down to Wilmot and do Christmas with my mom.
This past weekend was quite busy. I’ve been feeling sick for the past few days, and spent Saturday morning dry heaving for nearly 2 hours. I was supposed to work 7am-12pm, and that just didn’t happen. Sunday morning I felt sick as well, and the same goes for this morning. On top of that my grandparents came up from West Virginia Saturday and spent the late afternoon and evening here with the girls before heading up to my uncle’s house. Sunday we had our niece Samantha’s birthday party, and left there early to make it to my uncle’s for Christmas on my mom’s side of the family. Lexi has been feeling a bit sick lately, and Lilly missed her nap Sunday since we were out, so they were absolutely terrible half the day. Lexi seems to be having attachment issues since I’ve gone back to work. She constantly needs me, and can’t seem to do anything herself. On top of that, she has been having horrible whining episodes that no kind of consequence seems to fix. I honestly don’t think that this gig with K-Mart is going to last very long. We are having these issues with Lexi, and I’ve been there for a month and a half and missed 3 days. Two days I was really sick, and the other one, the strut spring broke on the car and flattened our driver side tire. On top of that, we are waiting for Luke’s brother’s wife to have their fourth baby. She was due on Saturday, and the baby still hasn’t come yet. I’ve already written a note to HR that I will be calling off that day if I am scheduled to work. That should be the last day I would miss, unless some unforeseen disaster happens (like the car).
The weather has been freezing the past two days. The wind has been blowing, keeping the temperature with wind chill at below zero! Needless to say, the electric heaters in the house aren’t keeping the house warm anymore. Old house equals drafty, and this wind is sucking our heat away. This makes it hard to do anything in the house except sit here cuddled up and shivering. Good new is that it is supposed to warm up. No snow for Christmas, but at that this point I don’t care.
I think after the holidays are over, I will keep myself in line by maybe posting a picture of one of the rooms in the house. That room will be my project room, for me to reorganize and declutter. I’m not sure of a timeline for each room. I guess it depends on my schedule with work and with babysitting. I’ll figure it out. I also will post a picture of a home improvement picture, and keep the blog updated on our progress. We only have $50 each month set aside to go towards home improvement, so projects will take a bit longer to complete, but we will get there.
I am also going to keep myself in check with a monthly debt snowball. I want to find a format that I will post with the stats of what we hope to do that month, and then show how much we were able to put towards the snowball. We will have a set amount from just Luke’s income, but extras from babysitting and K-Mart will hopefully be thrown into that snowball as well. I think I will maybe work on the debt snowball chart, and post that later, maybe with a couple pictures from the weekend.
This past weekend was quite busy. I’ve been feeling sick for the past few days, and spent Saturday morning dry heaving for nearly 2 hours. I was supposed to work 7am-12pm, and that just didn’t happen. Sunday morning I felt sick as well, and the same goes for this morning. On top of that my grandparents came up from West Virginia Saturday and spent the late afternoon and evening here with the girls before heading up to my uncle’s house. Sunday we had our niece Samantha’s birthday party, and left there early to make it to my uncle’s for Christmas on my mom’s side of the family. Lexi has been feeling a bit sick lately, and Lilly missed her nap Sunday since we were out, so they were absolutely terrible half the day. Lexi seems to be having attachment issues since I’ve gone back to work. She constantly needs me, and can’t seem to do anything herself. On top of that, she has been having horrible whining episodes that no kind of consequence seems to fix. I honestly don’t think that this gig with K-Mart is going to last very long. We are having these issues with Lexi, and I’ve been there for a month and a half and missed 3 days. Two days I was really sick, and the other one, the strut spring broke on the car and flattened our driver side tire. On top of that, we are waiting for Luke’s brother’s wife to have their fourth baby. She was due on Saturday, and the baby still hasn’t come yet. I’ve already written a note to HR that I will be calling off that day if I am scheduled to work. That should be the last day I would miss, unless some unforeseen disaster happens (like the car).
The weather has been freezing the past two days. The wind has been blowing, keeping the temperature with wind chill at below zero! Needless to say, the electric heaters in the house aren’t keeping the house warm anymore. Old house equals drafty, and this wind is sucking our heat away. This makes it hard to do anything in the house except sit here cuddled up and shivering. Good new is that it is supposed to warm up. No snow for Christmas, but at that this point I don’t care.
I think after the holidays are over, I will keep myself in line by maybe posting a picture of one of the rooms in the house. That room will be my project room, for me to reorganize and declutter. I’m not sure of a timeline for each room. I guess it depends on my schedule with work and with babysitting. I’ll figure it out. I also will post a picture of a home improvement picture, and keep the blog updated on our progress. We only have $50 each month set aside to go towards home improvement, so projects will take a bit longer to complete, but we will get there.
I am also going to keep myself in check with a monthly debt snowball. I want to find a format that I will post with the stats of what we hope to do that month, and then show how much we were able to put towards the snowball. We will have a set amount from just Luke’s income, but extras from babysitting and K-Mart will hopefully be thrown into that snowball as well. I think I will maybe work on the debt snowball chart, and post that later, maybe with a couple pictures from the weekend.
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