July 11, 2010
With a few minor deviations, like having paid rent for July already, I’ve pulled together what should pretty accurately reflect my financial month of June. I keep wondering if I should continue to post these reports. They were always meant to keep me accountable and make it really easy to keep track of whether or not I’m making progress, but there’s the niggling thought that perhaps it comes off as bragging after you reach a certain point.
The seemingly “steady” creep up is just the aftereffects of the great push, also known as: $5K/5K challenge. Not a penny was from regular earnings, almost every cent of that is being spent on regular expenses.
There’s something that I’ll soon, in the spirit of full financial disclosure, share with you in a future post that has radically affected my finances recently.
In the meantime, however, there are things that have to change about the picture you see above.
One, there haven’t been any contributions in my retirement accounts since I started this job. That’s because, dear friends, I’ve been a slacker in the last two months and couldn’t decide what to do about that blasted 401(k) issue. I hate passing on free money vs. I’m not convinced the match (total of 4% to my 5%, I misread the literature before) is worth the extra fees.
Two, I’ve been paying all my parents’ expenses since leaving, but I keep wondering if there’s a way I can squeeze out a little more to give them a small cash allowance as well. Although they have my credit cards, I know there’s something disheartening about never having real money on hand. That may not be possible though, because point three is…
I’d like to have at least $1,000 saved just for their dental expenses. The moving fund is in ok shape, not enough for deposits, a move, and all that yet, but I also need another $1,000 for their dental. Their coverage is, frankly, crap.
I was going to keep going but this is going to turn into a wish list if I do. Best to stick with these for now.
April 30, 2010
This month was an amazing turnaround from last month’s bleed-out, and honestly come by, I swear!
I’ve been working my tail off, and it paid off. The positive cashflow was nearly equal parts reimbursements, delayed invoices and missing unemployment checks showing up, freelance income, and day job income.
Cashflow in the month of April opened like a nasty joke with a negative balance of 7668.50, and closed with only a negative balance of less than $600.
I can’t really expect such dramatic progress month to month from here on out, of course, but I have to breathe a small sigh of relief that I’ve made up a lot of ground since the car. I now only owe $1730 on that debt. Soon as that’s out of the way, I can make up ground on all the other savings targets set up for the rest of this year. Exciting!
Now, I’m just happy it’s Friday, it’s payday and I can get some *rest*. Purely thrilled!
April 1, 2010
Time to face the music …..
Most notably, I’ve dropped out of the six-figure club in a big way.
1. The car: $8250. I don’t count it in the asset column because it’s a depreciating possession. True, I could actually sell it for more than I bought it for (verified by the fact that another car buying friend’s market research) but I don’t intend to turn around and sell it and have to buy yet another vehicle. I have the cash, but for the sake of full disclosure, I’m including the upcoming insurance in this total because I pay for the full term in advance.
2. Moving expenses: around $2000. Again, I included all the currently due and upcoming charges on my credit card now. No creating a false sense of security for me, thank you. Never mind that they’re reimbursable, until the money is in my account it doesn’t count.
3. I have multiple outstanding invoices for around $1500. Again, I don’t count those as cash in pocket until it’s actually in my pocket.
I’ve made a few changes in my accounts
Since the Tax account was cleaned out for the car, I’ve changed it to Pin Money for now. Essentially, miscellaneous.
Moving Money might permanently change to School Money, but we’ll see if I can get any financial aid when I restart classes again. I’m taking a quarter off to concentrate on work. That money might be donated to insurance and maintenance.
I’ve been ignoring losses and gains in the TradeKing account but there’s no good reason to – after all, I track the gains and losses in the retirement accounts.
Cash flow looks like blood flow
My transaction log shows that I’ve spent about $11,000 this month against an income of $2,700. No debt (except to myself) was created so that was all saved money rushing out the door. Painful.
Finally ….
I could really use a paycheck by the time I’ve paid off the credit cards. They don’t come due this month, I’ve just got them tallied in because the charges are posted to the account; the cushion will hold a little longer. By the time charges are due, I’ll have a couple checks under my belt. And then we’ll see how the new dual-household/single income budget works. (“DHSI” as the new acronymic moniker? Not cute at all.)
March 2, 2010
February was a tumultuous financial month, and I’m surprised that there was still some minimal progress made in the net worth growth. If anything I
semi-hinted at yesterday pans out, March will be equally tempestuous with lots of outflow and scurrying to create income to cover it. Which means: blog fodder!
Until then, my vow of Don’t Jinx Yourself pretty much means I’m keeping mum on a lot of fronts.
Taxes are filed — our accountant rose to the occasion and saved me from having to deal with my family’s financial complications. I always mean well but tax time is that time of the year I writhe in agony over dissecting my financial life, entangled with my family’s, and how that means I have to untangle their finances. It’s the one time I let my emotions get the better of me and ostrich myself with regards to money matters.
[By “rose to the occasion” I mean the family accountant called my dad with some tax suggestions before I asked the questions, and won himself my business for another year. I’m filing Head of Household again so that buys me a couple extra thousand in standard deductions and exemptions.]
Between the much reduced income stream, unemployment income (taxes were withheld), HOH filing and having prepaid a lot more in taxes than necessary, my federal effective tax rate is 10.7% and I’m expecting a rather large refund of nearly $1500. Combined with the less-large state refund, I’m going to have a nice lump sum in the Taxes nest egg. That’ll become my Car nest egg. I’ve whined on Twitter about hating shopping for a used car, and the next worse thing to that is having to finance a car.
Of course the PF wisdom is to always avoid a refund but at the end of 2008, I was more concerned about having to pay taxes (which is why I saved cash for it) and paying penalties to boot (hence the extra withholding). It wasn’t worth adjusting partway through the year once we found out that I wasn’t going to be employed post Q3 2009.
This month could have been a lot worse.
February 1, 2010
Shooo-eee, I can certainly spend when I’ve a mind to. Some blame to be placed on school and textbooks, and some on household expenses. I won’t go through the litany here because it just sounds like a bunch of hooey excuses. I’ve already got a few returns in mind (gifts never given), and a mental note says that quite a few of those expenses would have come out of the gift fund. If I still had one for the year.
This, by the by, is what comes of relying on the stock market for NW gains.
To make matters appear worse, I’m going to add another layer of transparency here. According to my spending tracking via the new spreadsheets, I only managed to stay out of the red with regards to cash flow thanks to the last minute arrival of some irregular income checks. It’s not fair to label that as a problem area yet, I knew that I’d be paying some (major) debits of last month out of this month’s cash flow. I didn’t anticipate some of the interruptions in the unemployment income.
Am continuing to bear down on the job search harder, looking out for more freelance opps, while doing justice to my schoolwork. And if the blog becomes an avenue for income, that’d be a-ok by me!
December 31, 2009
From December 2008 to December 2009, after the layoff and continuing unemployment, I’ve recorded a 47% total increase. The progress was distributed pretty well across the board: retirement accounts (aka untouchable money), emergency cash to alleviate recessionary anxiety. The relatively low increase in the short term cash isn’t a surprise; that money is saved in advance for spending throughout the year – I still haven’t decided if I’m going to change how that money is represented in the net worthing. Ultimately, I like seeing that I’ve kept a fairly even keel in terms of pursuing all my goals.
I’d forgotten that I established my cash expense account earlier in 2008. That reminds me that this process of building a solid financial foundation has been slow and steady, and not the work of a few weeks or months. It’s hard to say when the most progress was made, I guess that depends on how you measure progress? Straight numbers? Debt reduction? Asset building? These are all parts of the same puzzle.
These snapshots tend to reflect only what I saved, and not the income and spending. The first half of 2009 I was on a mission to reduce monthly costs down to the $2200 range. We had obstacles along the way like the truck payment until we sold it, getting the family car out of hock and then losing it in an accident. We also had happy expenses like marrying off a friend, planning baby showers, taking care of people, and bought some stock.
Oh yes, then I separated from my job! (Didn’t lose it, I know exactly where it went.) Went on a mess of trips: NYC, San Diego, Miami, Hawaii. Good grief, I’d lost track of everywhere I went in the latter half of 2009.
What I’m saying here is that I spent a whole lot. And you can’t expect me to keep track of all that! I kid, I kid. I’m just too tired to pull together a real spending report, but I’m going to say that it was in the range of $30-40,000. I think what I’m going to do for 2010 is tailor Excel spreadsheets to track spending my way. I just haven’t been terribly happy with all the templates out there.
In blogging, and no small thanks to Twitter, I’ve become much more at home here in my corner of the PF blogosphere this year, and appreciate the community and friendships – deeper than I would have ever have imagined to blossom from a purely online relationship. The Internet’s been an integral part of my life since childhood(ish) but I couldn’t have predicted the candor and wisdom to be found here.
I’m grateful to you, my readers and friends, and wish you all a very Happy and safe New Year’s Eve (New Year to my international friends)!
December 30, 2009
How do you like the new Snapshot format? I’m rather awfully proud of it, it’s growing up to be a real adult being formatted in Excel.
As you can see, the damage is rather substantial this month. I spent another $1100 on classes for next quarter and $210 for Christmas gifts. The rest of the discrepancy was a glitch in the unemployment but it should be resolved in the next two weeks. Oh and I didn’t really add another $231 to the emergency fund, I just “stole” that from the tax fund temporarily. It’ll probably go back. Or not, I like seeing 15k in the ING account.
I’m still prepared for costs to go up in 2010, and I didn’t pick up that 2% CD.
