Self Made Pickles

I’m in a pickle, I loaned out $400 a week ago.  When I was loaning out the money, I thought, “well, I’ll be over budget but I’ll just use my cc to make up for the difference”.  Dang it!  Old habits die hard.  So I will try my best to stay under budget spending as little as possible.  Currently my cc balances are $867, my checking acct balance is $1,117, which leaves me with $250 for the rest of the month.   Maya’s birthday is on the 28^th.  I guess I’ll just have her party on April 1^st.  $250 isn’t bad but when I factor in gas and groceries it leaves very little breathing room.  It’ll be hard but I can do it.  When I get that $400 back, I can put half of into my efund and half into my vacation fund. 

Coupon Monster

The coupon monster is once again tempting me to go shopping.  I have $20 off coupon for Gap, Old Navy, or BR.  And a 15% off coupon for BR that expires today, and a $20 off $100 from Gap that expires at the end of the month.  I almost went shopping today.  And I deserve it, dammit.  I’ve been studying so hard this week.  The BR coupon expires today and there is this $130 dress that I so am in love with and with those coupons I could save so much money and get it now for like $100.  I was dressed and ready to go shopping.  The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I had to go to work.  I called in to work so I could sleep a few extra hours, but I did not want to use sick leave to go shopping.  Thank goodness for that small work ethic.  Whoo, crisis diverted.  Atleast for now.  I am gonna wait to go shopping until later in the month next month.  Apparently, they wait until the middle of the month to send out coupons.

Emergerncy Funds and Financial Peace

I’m in the boring stage on my road to financial freedom.  The bad debt is paid off and I’ve started the long process of bulking up my emergency fund.  Yesterday, as I was talking to my sister I was reminded why having an emergency fund is so important.   My sister is two years younger than me.  She has a husband, four kids, and operates a home daycare.  Like millions of others, her household operates from paycheck to paycheck with no savings.  She gets the bulk of her pay from DHS and this week they made a booboo and did not give her the correct amount of money.  I’m not sure what she was supposed to get but she only received $17. 

I found out about her situation because my mom was complaining because my sisters was coming to my mom’s house for food.  My mom survives off $600 per month from social security.  I can’t imagine owning a daycare and not having enough money to buy food for the kids.  I can’t imagine not having enough money to pay for gas.   Even when I was poor and in school I had credit cards to pay for food and gas if I needed it.  But she has bad credit and no chance for a credit card.

I talked to her about it and she told me she was scared.  She had filled out pay day loans but no one would loan her any money because of her credit.  Since I hadn’t paid my tithes from my IncomeTaxRefund, I gave her that money.  She was happy.  I was happy.  We’ve had the budget and emergency fund talk before but of course something always happens where she didn’t do what she was supposed to do.  I’ve been there.  I think this was her wake up call.   To help her on her way to financial freedom, I’m going to the book store to buy Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.  I haven’t read it but I’ve heard good things about it.   It uses biblical principles and she’s very religious so maybe that will help her relate money to the Bible.  Talking to her has made me even more motivated to bulk up my Efund. 

 

Suze Orman's Must Have Documents--Life Report Card

As of February 2008, I am bad debt free!  So I was feeling pretty good about myself and my finances as I was reading through Suze Orman’s free ebook “Women and Money”.  The first 50 to 60, were mostly padding as she talked about why she wrote a book specifically for woman and gave examples of some of the women in her life. Page 57 is where the ebook started to get interesting as she discussed the save yourself plan.  She breaks the save yourself plan into 5 months of to do lists.  Orman gives a pretty thorough to do list for each month and wraps up each individual month with what should have been accomplished.  It was pretty awesome and pretty simple, so even a person with the most minimum finance skills could understand what to do. 

Months one through three were geared towards finances and retirement.  Most personal finance (pf) blogs I read on a daily basis, have covered these topics, so I skimmed over the material feeling good about myself as she reaffirmed what I already knew.  Month 4: Must Have Documents, made me stop skimming and I started to pay attention.   Must Have Documents are not the usual topic of pf blogs.  I do believe Single Ma gave a short account of getting her will in order but that is all I’ve read on the subject.  I’m also clueless on Month 5: Protecting Your Family and Home where Orman discuses the home and life insurance.

All in all, I’m glad I took the time to download the ebook.  Given the chance I would have probably paid for it (if the library didn’t have it).  But any who, by the end of March I want to have set up my revocable living trust and will as detailed below, but I have my Professional Engineering Exam in 1 month and all my extra time is going towards studying for that test so I’ll probably take two months to complete.  Here is the action plan taken from “Women and Money”:

 

ACTION PLAN FOR MONTH FOUR

_ Create a revocable living trust.

_ Transfer all assets into the trust and appoint yourself

as the trustee so you retain all control over the trust.

_ Create a pour-over will.

_ Choose a guardian for your children who is truly prepared

and ready for the responsibility.

_ Choose an executor for your estate who is ready and

able to settle your affairs when you die.

_ Create an advance directive that spells out your health

care wishes.

_ Create a durable power of attorney for health care

that will allow your appointed agent to speak on your

behalf with doctors and family if you become too ill to

speak for yourself.

_ Designate beneficiaries for all of your assets held in

your will and trust.

_ Review your will, trust, and beneficiaries once a year.

 

Net Worth Statement: March 2008

 

Assets	February	March		Difference	% change
Checking+Savings	$3,300.00	$6,169.00		$2,869.00	86.94%
Home	$124,500.00	$124,500.00		$0.00	0.00%
Rental	$70,000.00	$70,000.00		$0.00	0.00%
401k	$3,816.82	$3,884.34		$67.52	1.77%
529	$119.00	$134.00		$15.00	12.61%
Roth	$25.00	$475.00		$450.00	1800.00%
Misc (Car, etc)	$7,000.00	$7,000.00		$0.00	0.00%
Total Assets	$208,760.82	$212,162.34		$3,401.52	1.63%
Liabilities	February	March		Difference	% change
CC	$3,055.00	$500.00		-$2,555.00	-83.63%
Home	$98,612.00	$98,512.00		-$100.00	-0.10%
Rental	$66,859.00	$66,859.00		$0.00	0.00%
HELOC	$9,463.00	$9,363.00		-$100.00	-1.06%
Student Loans	$54,605.49	$54,595.49		-$10.00	-0.02%
Total Liabilities	$232,594.49	$229,829.49		-$2,765.00	1.19%
Net Worth	-$23,833.67	-$17,667.15		$6,166.52	25.87%

 

This is my second net worth increase! 

Credit Cards: I no longer have any credit card debt.  I am marking February 2008 as the month I eliminated revolving cc debt and I will celebrate this month every year!  All cc’s in the future will be paid off in full by the closing date. 

Home:  My home value neither increased or decreased so I’m happy with that.

Roth:  The Biggest Mover. I started my Roth in February 2008 with $25.  Thanks to my tax refund and my monthly savings plan, I now have $475 in that sucka.  That feels pretty good.  I am on my way to a pretty decent retirement. 

Efund: From a previous post, I’ve decided to get serious about building my efund.  So, I’ve calculated that I’ll need approximately $18,000 to fully fund it.  I am going to use both my Roth and a savings account as my designated efund.  I am going to be funneling most of the money into my savings account though, just to be safe.  I am giving myself a goal of 5 years with a savings plan of $300 per month. 

 

Under or Over My Budget???

I know everyone is dying to find out how my budget went since I increased my miscellaneous spending.  Well here it is:

		Budget	Actual	Difference
Gasoline		175	135	40
Groceries		250	249	1
Fast Food		130	178	-48
Clothing/Shoes		133	115	18
General Merchandise		350	237	113
Misc Total				$124

 

I came under budget in everything except fast food.  Woohoo! It feels good not to have to juggle around my debt payments and savings in order to account for overspending from an unrealistic budget.  What am I going to do with that all that extra money?  Well, $25 is going into a savings account and $90 is going to pay for my tag. 

Now what helped?  I put off doing any shopping until two weeks into the month.  This included grocery shopping. 

Coming Soon: Net worth statement.  There was a big Increase from February to March!  I am ever so proud.