October 3, 2008
The long-awaited quarterly check has arrived and I am positively stoked.
I am so close to having six months of living expenses in the Emergency Fund!! As soon as I have at least $1000 in the mini E-fund, my plan is to [finally] close the real E-fund to all non-critical withdrawals.
All the bills for September have been paid and I still have $1300 in the Expenses fund. With the deposit from the quarterly, I have enough for October’s expenses on October 2nd. All paychecks earned in October will continue to add an allotted amount to the Exp. Fund, but I won’t be waiting on them to pay the bills. Holy cow, I could pay the entire month’s bills on October 1st. I won’t, of course, that’s not the point of the cushion. The point is that I could if I needed to. Whew!
So I discovered a few things wrong with my math. The quarterly is for the past three months of work [July 1st-Sept 30th], so plotting the total expenses against income through the end of December means I come up short, ie: depleting most of the expense fund by year’s end.
What I need to do is fund the supplemental portion ahead of the next three months. In other words, instead of taking July-Sept money, and only setting aside three months’ worth of income to make up shortfalls from July-Sept, I should set aside enough for July through December. Then, I’ll be covered and still have the cushion in place through the end of December. Then the last quarterly check of the year [Sept through Dec] funds the various accounts that I’d previously planned for this check: Savings, Insurance, Car Maintenance, Travel, Moving, etc. That means I’ll be funding it for 2009, at the end of 2008! This makes much more sense.
All OT can now go towards other sub-expense funds instead of just savings and expenses. I expect an insurance bill in November and I don’t quite have enough for that yet, so OT will fund savings and insurance for the next month and a half.
Also, I’d goofed on the October paychecks, so I have to rewrite the plans for 4 paychecks in the next two months, not three. And actually, now that I’ve fixed the above problem, that third paycheck can come at any time, it’s no big deal.
It’s very strange budgeting on a hybrid [half regular-half supplementary] income. The supplemental is scheduled and the amount is set, so it shouldn’t be difficult, but I haven’t done it so very well since this started. Might I now be starting to get the hang of it?
Perhaps I’ll even get my September snapshot in order now that I’ve reconfigured the economic landscape …
July 2, 2008
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $1,452
Roth IRA: $3,688
401(a): $4,085
403(b): $16,095
Total: $25,320
<-3%>
|
| Emergency Savings |
Catastrophe: 17,037
Problem Cushion: $1,382
|
| Short Term Goals |
Car Maintenance: $1,298
Car Insurance: $1,375
Travel/Con: $700
Taxes: $3,465
Moving: $5
Total: $6,868
|
| Long Term Goals |
House Downpayment: $43
|
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630
Personal Loan: $5,000
Savings Bond: $357 (current accrued value)
Total: $17,997
|
| Total Assets |
Non-Liquid: $25,320
Semi-Liquid: $17,997
Liquid: $18,419
Expense Acct: $373
Goals Savings: $6,868
Total: $64,164
|
| Debt and Liabilities |
Truck: $4,683
Citi: $1,547
Chase: $838
Rent: $1,360
Total: $8,428
|
| Net Worth |
$60,544
|
— Up 7% —
Once again, it seems like the numbers are inflated; the “increased” net worth is due to the recent influx of cash. It’ll settle out soon enough, once the bills are paid off and the “extra” cash goes where it needs to go.
June ended far too soon, with too much left to do. I am happy that I have a bit more in my cushion, though. With the gas prices getting higher every day, I’ve had to readjust my expectations for monthly expenses, and adjust the emergency fund target upward accordingly. Of course, I will continue on my crusade to reduce expenses, but I prefer to plan for the worse (6 months of unemployment at current spending levels) and hope for the best (landing a better, higher-paying job, reducing expenses).
I’ve taken another feature off our landline, bringing that bill down to $30/month, but I want to speak with Tmobile tonight about their new version of a landline service. If that pans out and doesn’t affect my internet service ($14.99/month), I’ll switch from Verizon ($30/month) to T-mobile ($10/month, $50 start-up fee). At that rate, it’ll take 3 months before I start saving $20/month on phone services.
Oh! I added another $10 to my Down Payment account. Current total: $43.00. š
And I gave my Moving account a free $5 from my checking account cushion to start. It’s a drop in the bucket, but at least there’s a drop now. That should encourage more drops.
June 30, 2008
My Shell gas cards came in the mail! Yay! I also got more points deposited into the Thank You account, so I might be redeeming for another $50. I was going to try and squeeze one out of my MyPoints account, but I’m not earning points fast enough there: I’m short about 2000 points. That’s a lot of clicking!
So is my new Verizon bill. š I’m thinking of canceling call waiting and the inside wire maintenance. The inside wire maintenance is a monthly fee that’s meant to serve a phone maintenance insurance. With it, they won’t charge you a service fee if you have problems with the phone, and they have to send a technician out. Without it, I think the service fee is $25/visit, though I can’t find the link to verify that charge anymore. Labor would also be charged. Ok, I’m a little iffy on canceling this service right now, but I’m definitely canceling the call waiting.
In iPhone news, they replaced the phone AND the SIM card. That meant I had to reactivate service, reset everything again, and that also meant that officially, my 2-year contract with AT&T started anew. Argh! Even though I’m only 4 months in, I don’t want to be tied to AT&T any longer than I have to. On the bright side, the phone appears to be, mostly, working better than it was before. I’ll know better in about a week. For the record, my complaints were not unfounded: they ran an incident record retrieval on the phone, and there were 35 dropped calls in the last two weeks. That doesn’t count the number of times that the calls were dropped and the phone shut off completely.
Wish me luck!
June 26, 2008
Boston Gal’s posting of this WSJ article about folks who are cutting back on their retirement savings made me feel guilty.
I know that I had a perfectly good reason for doing it, but it still stings that not only did I cut down, massively, on contributions, my account keeps dropping like a rock and doesn’t even reflect the amount of contributions I’ve been making since the beginning of the year. At this rate, I’ll never crack $25,000! [I’m not talking about overall, just between the 401(a) and 403(b).]
Ok, that’s not guilt I’m feeling, I’m just disheartened.
The important things to remember:
1. The reduction is temporary. It does not affect my match because I’m maxing out the 401(a) which is the only account that is matched.
2. Finances have to be flexible to accommodate when life happens. Obstacles are inevitable, and stubbornly stashing hefty amounts in my retirement fund while cash flow suffers does not make sense.
3. I’m simultaneously working on reducing all expenses so as to narrow the gap between expenses and income. This reinforces the temporariness of this solution. I’d like to see the gap closed in a matter of months, but it’ll take some more mathing, when I have time.
June 24, 2008
Yikes, it’s already nearly the end of June! Two weeks ago, I realized that June had well and truly started, and if I was going to visit Portland and Phoenix this summer, I’d better get my tuckus in gear!
I missed my chance to make the Portland trip this month, and the Phoenix trip in August, so I thought to cram them both into August. Then I was informed that I was attending a wedding in August with BF. Hmm….. August will be insane if I go on a trip every weekend. Yes, the opposite of relaxing. Also, there’s a sporting event to be attended in October, also for BF. Portland will have to happen in August, Phoenix will probably get pushed to September, I believe. Work is claiming one of my weekends in August, so there’s just more than enough going on that month.
So there’s a lot of travel juggling going on. My travel budget this year is a wee one, so I have to be very creative in mixing award flights, gift cards, and real cash money.
The wedding flight ran $149, just within the $150 budget I’d allowed. I wanted to buy it immediately, and use the $100 GC for the October flight. But I didn’t take my own advice because I wanted to consult with BF about dates and times before I purchased the tickets. He’s still out of town, but I just guessed and purchased the tickets before they went up more than the $15 they already had. *tsk* Yeah, the price went up. No, I’m never going to learn.
I might as well get that SW gift card now so I have the GC and discount code ready at hand when I have to purchase the October flight.
There’s a quiet voice inside me whisper-screaming: Hey!! Skip one of those trips and use the money to pay bills! BILLS!!!
I’m ignoring that voice. I’m ignoring it.
The temptation to skip it all and leave the money in the travel fund “just in case” is overwhelming, but I just don’t see how I can renege after promising over and over that I’d visit these friends for the last few years. The PF blogger in me keeps saying that I’m going to use up ALL of my travel money by October and then what’ll I do? Things at work are still chaotic and I’ve got no plans for replenishing this fund. But that’s what the e-fund is for, Chicken Little. The sky’s not going to fall down if I go and have a nice weekend with childhood friends, and it very well might if I go back on my word!
Terrorism isn’t the reason I’m going, though. If I don’t do it this year, I might never. If I talk myself out of a promise this year, I very well may do so again next year. There’s never going to be a perfect time, at least not for the next ten years because I imagine the perfect time is something like, I have 5 months’s worth of vacation time, $100,000 in the bank for nothing but pleasure, etc. Not. Going. To. Happen.
As it is? I have nearly 180 hours of vacation time. I could be out on sick and then vacation leave for two months.
I’m going to play, dangit.
June 23, 2008
I don’t know if this is common, but I’m always MUCH slower to replace items that I’ve foolishly misplaced or lost. It’s a combination punishment/hope that it’ll turn up reaction.
I’ve been without my iPhone earphones with microphone set for about a week and a half now because I still can’t believe I was dumb enough to misplace them – I used them everyday! It’s sooo much more convenient than holding the big fat iPhone to my head, and I can much more easily multitask with them. Alas, they still haven’t turned up, so I finally decided that, despite the recent expenses, I need to spend five dollars and get another set.
Unfortunately, Meritline’s not having quite as good a sale on them as when I last looked, so now I’m going to have to wait even longer. Just so long as I get them before July 1st, when our new cell phone laws go into effect.
June 22, 2008
The timing belt for the family sedan broke last week:
$40, tow
$150, repair
Truck Registration, due June 30th:
$240
Sedan Registration, due August 20th:
$150
Pfoooo! As if gas prices weren’t bad enough, the cars themselves have to get in on the act. That’s going to make a hefty dent into the car maintenance fund, thank goodness I actually have it set up, though. I can’t even imagine pulling my hair out trying to make these bills fit into an already strained budget.