April 30, 2008
If I’d read this post yesterday, and known to fill out Form PD F 5374 yesterday, I could have sent PaDucky to the bank to purchase paper bonds for me. Instead, I banked on getting my Access card in the mail by today, which I miraculously did, and proceeded to input my password incorrectly at the website, and lock myself out of my brand new account.
Argh!
No savings bonds with a decent interest rate for Ms. Miniducky. Boo.
Called Treasury Direct and left them a message in a futile gesture, hoping that thye really would call me back tonight and that the recording “Please leave your information, the customer service representatives are all busy now but they will call you back.” wasn’t just a cruel cruel tease. Yay.
It wasn’t. Yay.
I missed the call. Boo.
I called back, and they actually picked up! Yay.
I managed to reset the account. Yay.
I started my transaction, and the confirmation page said, “We may have moved your purchase date to the following business day.
May 1, 2008.” Boo!
So, in the end, still nada.
And just to rub a little NaCL in that wound, it turns out you can only convert paper bonds when they send you an invitation to do so!
Boooo!
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $1,357
Roth IRA: $3,669
401(a): $3,742
403(b): $16,129
Total: $24,897
|
| Emergency Savings |
15,004
|
| Goal Oriented Savings |
Car Maintenance: $21
Savings for taxes: $4,800
Total: $4,821
|
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630
Personal Loan: $5,000
Total: $17,630
|
| Total Assets |
Non-Liquid: $24,897
Semi-Liquid: $17,630
Liquid: $19,825
Expense Acct: $3,691
Total: $66,043
|
| Debt and Liabilities |
Truck: $5,847
Citi: $2229
American Express: $153
Chase: $358
Rent: $1,360
Total: $9,589
|
| Net Worth |
$56,454
|
Most of my gains were due to retirement contributions during the two months between this and the last snapshot I put together. I’m surprised that I, at least, kept the amounts I contributed, considering the market’s performance. Still need to re-examine my allocations, using Moom‘s Madame X series as a guide.
I’ve paid my tax bill, which was offset by a state refund, so the cash situation is half settled. I haven’t received my rebate yet. At that point, I think I’ll decide what to do with the lump sum of tax savings money. It’s mainly going to be divvying it up between the other smaller savings/expense accounts that have been neglected until now: auto maintenance was drained, insurance is perpetually lonely, the intermediate emergency fund has been languishing, and a little has to be set aside for upcoming Con. If there’s anything left after those are taken care of, I’d love to open a vacation/fun fund. That’ll be a first!!
Oh, and I need a moving out fund. I vaguely envisioned funding that from paychecks and miscellaneous income through the rest of this year, since the other major savings goals may be set. Regardless of the source, I need to set an actual number for that.
April 19, 2008
I’ve applied for my Treasury Direct account, and encountered my first problem. They couldn’t verify my identity. It was all correctly filled out, so I don’t know what the problem really was, but luckily, we have a credit union on my work site, and I was able to walk over there and get a signature guarantee form filled out yesterday. That’s pretty awesome, considering I’m never home during business hours so couldn’t have gotten the bank to do it. And free! I love free help.
The signature guarantee’s on its way, via postal mail, which is a bit aggravating because I don’t know that they’ll send me whatever paperwork I need in time to buy my I bonds.
And now I keep staring at my email, peeking in the window, hoping that the nice folks over there send me an Access key to my brand spankin’ new Treasury Direct account right quick.
April 17, 2008
Well well, Treasury Direct, we meet again. And this time, you have something up your sleeve. You’ve got some I-bonds that I’d like to take a look at. Not only can I purchase up to $5000 worth of online I-bonds at a total interest rate of 4.68%, I only have to hold them for a year to get nearly as much interest as my once vaunted Emigrant Direct and IngDirect savings accounts yielded not so long ago. If the interest rate holds, I could even hold them for longer than a year. Actually, as a commenter on Jonathon’s post pointed out, the latter six months of the year will have a higher interest rate than the first six months, so I would plan to hold the bond an extra three months so that my penalty of three months’ interest is taken from the tail end, at a presumably lower rate. I don’t mind the maximum cap of $5000, either, because that’s fully one third of my emergency fund and I wouldn’t feel comfortable losing any more liquidity from the emergency fund than that. (Jonathon of MyMoneyBlog explains Series I savings bonds much better than I can.)
But wait, Treasury Direct has yet another ace up its sleeve! I can also convert my paper bonds into electronic bonds! I have a single Series EE bond hidden away in my room, the prize for a scholarship back in my junior year of high school before the Kiwanis figured out that a Series EE bond is worthless to a high school grad paying for college expenses since it takes 30 years to fully mature. It’s already been ten years (mein Gott!) but I still have another 20 years to hope I don’t lose the dang thing. Now, however, I needn’t hope any longer. I can convert that baby into an electronic bond, and monitor it online! The paper bond can become a bit of scrapbook fodder.
I’ll be back, I have to open a Treasure Direct account right now. If for nothing else, converting my single solitary Series EE bond will be totally worth it.
February 4, 2008
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $1,480
Roth IRA: $3,749
401(a): $2,572
403(b): $13,331
Total: $21,132
|
| Emergency Savings |
$14,819
|
| Goal Oriented Savings |
Car Maintenance: $646
Savings for taxes: $5,016
Total: $5,662
|
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630
Personal Loan: $5,000
Total: $17,630
|
| Total Assets |
Non-Liquid: $21,132
Semi-Liquid: $17,630
Liquid: $20,481
Total: $59,243
|
| Debt and Liabilities |
Truck: $7,002
Total: $7,002
|
At first glance, it suddenly looks like I’ve done remarkably well since the last snapshot at the end of 2007. As usual, there are quite a few things this doesn’t show.
First, I paid off the balance transfer, and that means I’ll be losing a source of passive income that was a steady $40ish/month. Of course, with the interest rate dropping like a rock, I wasn’t assured that same return through this year. I’ll consider doing another BT this year, because it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to post the kind of savings I’d need to put towards the real estate investment my friend and I had discussed.
Second, my spending has been well over my income for a few weeks. A few hotspots:
A) I overpaid the insurance premium in January because I still hadn’t received my revised premium statement by the billing due date. That’s an extra $300 I’m basically prepaying. It was on my credit card so I have the short grace period, but that’ll still have to come out of the checking account.
B) I forgot to reduce my retirement contributions in time for January’s paychecks. I’ve changed it for February from $500/check to $300, but I should have reduced it even more because I need the extra cash flow. And the contribution was taken out of my extra January paycheck too! Gah. I didn’t think that it would be.
C) Thanks to Ma’s accident in the sedan, it’s been out of commission for over a month. Haven’t been able to sell the truck, so another [-$400/month].
D) Best friend’s wedding last month did a doozy on the budget because I was just too stressed to clamp down as strongly on spending as usual. Eating out? Uh, sure! Buying new sunglasses? Yep! More food? Ok! Cold at night? Heater’s on! More stress eating? Let’s get another bagel sandwich!
Meantime, I’m trying to parse out how rent and all the other bills work out without tapping into the emergency fund until my supplemental income check comes in, whenever that’ll be.
January 25, 2008
My insurance ship has come in! The removal of BroDucky from the insurance has resulted in a massive savings of $680 for this policy term.
That means that not only I’m finally only paying approximately $100/month, per person, I’ve already paid half the premium in a single payment. If I keep this up, I can work my way towards only making two auto insurance payments per year.
Yippee!
November 5, 2007
Highlight: Being stopped on the way to the staging portable by the security guard. *pointing to the left* “The line to take the SATs starts over there.” I couldn’t even stop laughing long enough to answer him, I could only shake my head.
Student highlight: “Are you the teacher for this classroom? Cause it says ‘Mrs. C’ on the door. [So you’re trying to say I LOOK like a Mrs. C? I know that’s not true.] Are you a teacher at this school? No? Are you a college student? No? A high school student? No?” At this point, she paused very seriously as though considering how much lower she should go.
It wasn’t fun, did you know that the SAT now has TEN sections?, but it wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I feared. I managed to keep them under relative control, and had a script to read from so I didn’t freak out when I had to talk to them. I mostly talked at them. But I made it through ok, and this might actually be a worthwhile way of getting over my speaking jitters.
It did help that I only had one cheater-wannabe. My friend had one kid who was trying to use his cell phone during the test, and another who actually brought the SAT practice book for use during the test.
All in all, if we’re being paid approx. $98, we made about $10/hour after taxes since we left at 6:30 am and didn’t get out until 1 pm.