By: Revanche

A Day of Reckoning (2007)

December 29, 2007

Egads, but this year flew by! This Ducky’s fiscal travels were all over the map this year. I covered the balance tranfer/App-o-Rama adventure, the lending money debacle, the frantic savings race, and the monthly bills marathon. So let’s take a look and see what kind of shape 2007 turned out to be.

Originally, I decided these were my goals:

1. Mini e-fund: 3200 (01/07-04/07)
2. House fund: 6400 (05/07-12/07)
3. Roth: 4000 (1/07-12/07)
4. Car: 2640 (01/07-12/07)

= 1353/month
= 16,240/year

while budgeting 28,320 for bills and rent and increasing the pre-tax 403(b) contribution to 500/month.


What really happened:

At the time of last year’s goal-making, I didn’t make any special note of the regular emergency fund, because it was full. These are the major highlights:

  • February: I had the emergency trip to Vietnam. Cost: ~ $4200
  • (Feb) Made the biggest financial mistake I’ve made to date, and lent BroDucky $20k. I received $4k back midyear, and haven’t seen a dime more since then. He also stopped his car and insurance payments which were $700/mo. Total Cost: $16,000 + $4200 = $20,200. I had to foot the rest of the auto-related bills and the $16k. [*ow*]
  • In July, I got the word that a major raise was coming my way. Only the first 5% kicked in at that time, as well as a small quarterly bonus and cell phone stipend, the rest of it came in a lump sum later on.
  • October: all OT ceased and my income went down to an absolute base amount. Again, ow. That costs, on average, $600/month. Cost: ~$1800
  • Received the fat supplementary-income bonus check, split it up into taxes/savings/spending deposits. Did the same with my Christmas bonus. Plus: $16,500; setting aside $4465 for taxes.

I sure wish that I had a Day of Reckoning for 2006 for comparison’s sake. There was so much upheaval, though, that it’s going to take way too much time to figure it all out manually. Instead, I will create the starting point for whatever information I can access now, similar to the monthly snapshots, and that’ll be my baseline for next year.


2006 2007
Cash $15,000 $14,800
Retirement Investments: Roth $0 $3,601
Retirement Investments: 401(k) $0 $2,217
Retirement Investments: 403(b) $4,238 $12,245
Wamu: Rollover IRA $1,385 $1,497
Investments and Loans $17,630 $17,630
Total $38,253 $52,190

What the table doesn’t tell you

Cash Savings (not income meant for bills): Unexpected Expenses – $28,600

I saved enough to nearly refill the emergency fund and to cover the lost $16,000. Originally I was going to use the rest of the e-fund, but saved really diligently to try and cover as much as possible out of this year’s income instead. I’ll be paying the saved $16k back out in a month, so the year-end cash total I’ll be keeping is a shade less than I started out with this year. *one last sigh for lost savings*

Retirement Investments:
Vanguard rescued this disorganized PF idiot by providing year-end balance comparisons. They don’t break out the contributions versus earnings, but I guess that doesn’t matter.
A huge driver for the increase in retirement savings is the fact that I received a great deal of untaxed bonus money to supplement the shortfall of income. Saving that much pretax money also saved me approximately $2000 worth of owed taxes.

2 Responses to “A Day of Reckoning (2007)”

  1. You are serious my inspiration šŸ™‚ I can’t wait to start posting #s like that once I get out of debt!!!

    You really handled this year like a pro… wow.. *amazed* even with BroDucky’s behaviour

  2. ~FB~ You know, I wasn’t actually too impressed until I took into account the Unexpected Expenses throughout the year.

    If I can make it through this stuff, you can definitely clear your debt soon!

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