Caoineag's Personal Finance Blog

Woohoo! This is going to be fun! As some of you may know, my dh is finally debt free so its my turn. So, my ticker is going to be dropping every couple of weeks rather drastically.

Oh, and I don't know where I would put this but my dh and I devouted pet owners. Two days ago, a slightly overweight beagle came bounding up to me and waited for me to open the door of my building. Since I figured the owner was probably nearby, I let the beagle in and went looking for the owner. No luck. So I dropped mystuff off at my apartment and started knocking on doors.

I figured she must have jumped from someone's balcony (a common enough problem for some owners there) so I went to the doors of people I knew owned pets. I figured they would recognize the animal.

Hmmm...so now I am worried. No owner outside, no owner home inside and no tags on the dog.

So someone suggests Dumb Friends League, they can check for microchips. We race over there in my friend's car before it can close and let them know what happened. I figure someone in our community lost him but we have locked buildings so I can't go knocking. The dog has a microchip and just on the off chance that she had visited there before, the lady checked the system.

Low and behold, she is in the system, they call the owner and let her know that I am willing to bring her dog to her if she would like me to (which saves the owner $45).

I get on the phone with her, get her phone number and head back. It seems she adopted the dog from the shelter and the dog had been placed in the shelter because she kept running away from her previous owners.

They had been out walking and the owner had been adjusting the leash when dear doggy ran off and refused to come back. She had gone looking but dear doggy refused to come within arms reach. The owner was shocked that I had been able to get the dog but I am one of those people that dogs follow everywhere so I had never had an issue getting the dog to go with me even without a leash.

The owner was thrilled to have her runaway back (especially since the next day had been projected for -1) so she gave me a $25 visa gift card.

I was just thrilled that I didn't have to make a "donation" of $20 to drop the animal off AND I had gotten the animal back home.

Any pet owner knows that night would have been rough on the owner.

That said, I should make sure to budget a donation for The Dumb Friends League just because I love the organization.

This post is due to a forum post about making tortillas from scratch. I feel like an idiot because I should have realized they would be easy to make from scratch.

Its amazing how many premade things we just accept in our diet because we don't realize that its just as easy to make them. Its also really important to me because we need to be cooking everything from scratch if we are to go organic this next month. It will help keep costs down which I still suspect will go up some.

Ah well, that is what I love about this place. It helps me catch those things I still take for granted.

Thanks everyone!

So as some of you may have guessed, I change my mind alot.

My dh and I decided we are going to pay off the credit cards before buying a house. We hate to gamble on renewing our rental contract and it probably won't save us money in the long run if the rental company jacks up the price like we suspect they will BUT, we will both be happier to have the debt gone.

This means the last credit card will be gone in October if not sooner. The only reason we are doing it this way is because my dh got a promotion which gives us the ability to consider this option. It came with a big pay increase and the ability to accumulate bonuses as well.

Depending on how things go, there is still the potential of getting into a house before our current lease expires, we just won't count on that.

I will qualify this post by reminding everyone that I came from a very poor family that somehow managed to do well with what they had. I will also remind everyone that budgeting wise, DH and I didn't do poorly until we moved away after college so our current mess was a momentary blip of insanity.

Has anyone looked at various sites about what percentage to save of their income? I nearly popped a gasket when I saw some of them recommending saving the same amount I currently save (which I consider low because I am paying off credit cards)!!

Now I have always known I was oblivious and out of touch but when a savings blogger who thinks he is extremely frugal suggests that 50/20/30 goal(musthaves/ savings/wants and this was the most extreme I could find) is difficult to obtain even for him, I begin to wonder how long I have been in the deepfreeze.

Did I miss something? I understand there are times in people's lives where they can't always save alot but that is why you save when you can. I currently live on 45% of my income and that includes an allowance. Everything else is debt payments and savings. My dh does the same.

I can see why it was a struggle for someone like my father to live on a poverty level income and save (which he still did) but why is 10% the most common advice I see? Don't people want to retire eventually?

I realize that a great majority of you figured this out sooner but for me its a new concept. I see myself as a spender (because in my family I was the spender by comparison) and the concept that I could be considered an extreme saver in the near future is beyond my imagination.

Rant over, I feel better now

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I am thinking of joining one that will provide eggs and any meat I could want (they are a heritage poultry farm but they have alliances with beef and buffalo farms as well).

Obviously this won't save me money over buying the processed stuff but it may be cheaper than the stuff from organic stores. Even if its a little more, its definitely better for all involved.

I will be doing Farmer's Markets this year as well but have to wait till May for those.

Its only been recently that all our groceries have been conventional and I only did that to get our budget under control. Now that the budget is where it should be, its time to see if I can integrate local, chemical free foods without blowing our budget.

Now if I could just find someone to deliver milk...

I have only done it a couple of times but its annoying when you are trying to pay down debt.

I paid one of my credit cards 2 days too early so now I am also coughing up a min payment for the card in addition to what I already paid on it. Not a huge deal, but annoying. Especially annoying is the fact that if I hadn't checked something else on the website I would have never known.

Of course, the other money issue annoying me at the moment is an uncashed check. I was refunding my firm the unused portion of petty cash for my business trip and its now 2 months later and they still haven't cashed it. Guess I am going to have to ask if they lost it.

Woohoo! My bonus being added to my debt money was a very nice addition. I am debating how much to make dh pitch in on stuff. I may just let him splurge for a little bit since he paid off his 20k. He's earned it. Sides, he is picking up the tax bill this year so that is a big one off my list. I think I will just make him pay for any travelling we want to do.

Oh, here is the latest version of my budget if anyone is interested.

Savings $25
Roth IRA $150
Water and Sewer $45 (actual range is $35-45)
Cellular phone for 2 $84
CC1 $100 (balance 3403)
Electricity $100 (actual range $80-100)
Cable internet $62
CC2 $150 (balance 6326)
CC3 $800 (balance 7053)
Groceries $250
Allowance $150
Netflix $10
Student Loan $194
Bus Pass $60 (my work pays for one of them)

CC4 has been paid off. Normally I would snowball but in this case, my big monster has the worst apr by far at 10.99%.

Now I just have to pretend that I am a patient person.

So my dh got his promotion he was hoping for along with a pay raise and chances for bonuses. So a couple of changes to his budget.

A bonuses will go to the downpayment fund

$1000 per month to the downpayment fund

$250 to his allowance and any expenses that crop up (so the majority of this to the downpayment fund as well).

All in all, this will definitely make our goal of getting a house next February more achievable.

So I thought I wasn't going to get a bonus this year so we worked with what we had instead. Aka, I don't need this bonus at all. Not a good thing...

I know a couple of ways of using the bonus that are responsible, such as putting it in savings for future travel, making an extra payment on the debt and adding it to the house downpayment pot.

But I got to say, my friend (shop til you drop type) and even my husband (who feels guilty for agreeing to buy me so little this Christmas *rolls eyes*) are encouraging me to spend at least part of it on me.

Now you see why I take money away from myself before I ever see it. *Sigh*

I give myself an allowance monthly, I don't need this money to splurge on myself. I have plenty in the budget for splurges so that they spread out. I think I may go with my original plan to put it on debt. After all, that will save us money in the long run...

Don't you just hate temptation?

If I am in the mood for shopping (always online since I hate stores) I can put things in my amazon wishlist without actually spending money. Then, I forget about them or wait for them to go cheaper (the latter is especially useful for new video games since paying full price is ridiculous).

Later on, I will go through the list and get rid of the things that were really just a whim (usually takes me 2 months to give something the boot) and I have no buyer's regret because I didn't buy it and I don't feel pressured to buy something because I know the list will remember it for me if I really do want it later.

I get to enjoy shopping online without spending and then later on pat myself on the back when I delete things from the list.

I know some people couldn't do it this way because it would lead them to buy more stuff but I am quite content to window shop without spending so it works for me.

I read a lot of blogs that have no spend days. For me, almost everyday is a no spend day. Its easier to count the spend days. Not that this means I don't spend any money, it just means I usually do it in batches, lol.

However, the batches have been getting smaller. This weekend we went to a play (my christmas present) and we spent $35, which included lunch and dinner. We used to spend twice that on just supper so definite improvement there.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Ever get yourself to that spot where you don't need to do anything more but wait for time to finish a job? *Sigh* I am at that point with our finances. Everything is on auto-pilot and doing well and now I just need to wait...

But I hate waiting, I prefer to tinker. My grocery budget is where I want it, I have an allowance which is perfectly adequate, the bills are as low as I am capable of getting them and my husband is debt-free and saving up a down payment for a house.

All I need to do is wait. Blah, how annoying. I know I should be glad to be at this point but I like working on problems or projects.

So Chuck Roasts for $1.49/lb at my local Safeway store.

So how many of you knew that if you buy a cheap roast and cut it in half before you cook it you get a really tender, thick steak?

We tried it the other day because I think someone else mentioned it and wow. So much better than those tough little charcoal steaks.

We now cut it up before throwing it in the freezer and its better quality steak than what we were eating before for at least half the price. Yummy!

As of this past Friday my husband is debt free. So that would be the first half of the debt eliminated (yes, you read that correctly, half). Starting this month, he will begin to fill up the house downpayment fund and next month he will start receiving an allowance to do with as he wants!

This is actually a month ahead of schedule thanks to overtime.

So now all that is left is mine, no pressure there...

He got to the store first after work and so started to pick up things. I was amazed to discover that he had not only stuck to the list but had also compared prices per unit. When I commented on it, he told me that well yeah, he had picked some tricks up by osmosis from me! Lol.
I guess I didn't realize that I talked about that stuff that much or that he was watching that closely the few times he joins me in grocery shopping.

I guess this means that we both have the basics down, now if only I could figure out how to avoid my occasional spendy moods.... I only get them once every couple of months but boy are they bad, they more than make up for months of being good.

I have to be careful not to look at laptop computers. I really really want one and have wanted one for awhile now. But my debts come first. They have to because otherwise I will never pay them off. I am currently living within my means but I need to start living below my means if I want to pay off my mistakes and start aggressively saving for retirement.

Even looking is dangerous, I start getting really interested and thinking how I could afford it and that is when I realize that I am still finding big projects to spend money on.

Right now my best motivation is wanting to buy a house next winter. It works even better than the debt because the amount it would cost for the laptop could be saved up in just two months, but that would put me two months behind on saving for a house and I want the house more. I don't want to have to sign another year lease for an apartment because I bought a laptop.

It does worry me about getting a house though. It would be so easy to find big projects for my house and it would be so easy to make excuses for why we need it. I already know that I will have to budget so that we have a limit to what we can spend on the house each month.

No worries though, my desire for a laptop hasn't resulted in me buying one for the last two years, it won't for another two. I have a plan and I intend to stick with it. After all, I can hit only $2000 in credit card debt by the time we buy next winter which means being debt free two months after. I won't give that up for anything.

I have yet again upped my monthly retirement contribution by $50. Its my reward for getting my expenses under control and a way of making sure I don't spend that money frivously. After all, I spend what I have so if its not in my pocket, I can't spend it.

I was debating whether to put it towards debt or retirement but the problem there lies in the fact that I tried that last year and made no progress on my debt. So I figured this way I would know I made progress of some sort. Though I must admit, the little debt ticker is useful in that I can see when I have stalled or failed completely.

I have also received a $10 Panera Gift Card from Mypoints.com. I am very happy about that. I have a feeling that any eating out we do this month will occur in the last week. My business trip cured me of wanting to eat out,lol.

So I have survived my 4 flights in 8 days (one set for seeing family for Thanksgiving, one set for a business conference). Still will need a couple of days to regain my energy, especially since I spent all of Saturday doing chores and going to the company Christmas party.

Speaking of which, I have discovered that my friend is a very bad window shopper. Had I realized how much, I wouldn't have had her come with me but she claimed that she had things she needed...

It probably didn't help that she saw us buy things that weren't on our list. They were things we had been planning on buying for awhile and we have it built into our budget to afford them at our convenience but she didn't necessarily know that. Course, I can't blame myself for the fact that the night before she had put herself $78 into the hole by overdrawing her checking account.

Its sort of like watching a train wreck. Maybe the crash she has embarked on this month will help wake her up. She already knows that her next paycheck will be eaten up completely by the car payment and other bills. Yuck.

So I finally updated my ticker. The problem being that for some reason I ended up spending money on one of my credit cards so I wasn't actually making progress. Now I am going to have to look at the last two months and figure out what I messed up in my budget so it doesn't happen again.

Oh now I see it, out to eat and helping my friend out longer than I thought I would have to. Well, the out to eat is to expected, we just switched from $250 per month to $100 per month and I never do well during the initial transition and the other is over. So my budget should be fine now.

On a positive note, this month I have done extremely well and next month is when all of my husband's cards and one of mine get paid off. I am definitely going to enjoy that.

So for those of you curious, here is what my new budget is going to look like:

Savings $25
IRA $100 (still debating taking this to $200 prior to paying off next cc)
Utility $50
Phone $84
CC#2 $700 (CC#1 will be gone in one week)
Electric $90
Cable $62
CC#3 $150
CC#4 $200
Groceries $250
Entertainment/Travel $100
Lunch/spend money $100
DVD rental $10
Student Loan $194
Bus Pass $54 (or whatever the price rises to since it should be going up in Jan)

Husband's will be:
Rent $700
Eating Out $100
Down payment savings $800 + bonuses and extra pay periods

So this weekend, I called up my friend to see how her new job is going since this was her first week and she told me she had to call me back because she was in the middle of signing paperwork for leasing a brand new car. What!!??!!

This girl had been at my house the weekend before to learn whether she had enough to pay rent because of the transition but she is going to lease a new car?! My dh and I look at each other and just shake our heads and promise ourselves no more money will be given to her to help her out. We aren't paying for her mistakes.

The news gets a little better later on, she got turned down for the lease because her credit is only 620 and now she is across the street trying to buy a new car. She's upset that she has to buy one because then "she will have to mess with selling it while it still has a loan."

1. Why can't she keep the car until it's paid off. (I never got a real answer to this one)

2. Why can't she save up a down payment so she doesn't have to worry about being upside down in the loan when she sells. Answer: she wants it now because all of a sudden she just can't wait for a car. Okay...

The good news is she kept the payments at $200, the bad news is its a 6 year loan and she will pay $4,400 over the life of the loan for the privilege of financing. She also thinks she will only keep it for 3 or 4 years. Given her driving history, we figure she will total it in 2...

She has no EF, the credit cards are maxed, she just started this job a week ago but she couldn't wait two months to get her feet under her.

Sadly, for her, this is making progress and she will be able to afford the car payment. The question is, how many other things will she decide she can afford until she can't afford anything?

So, given that my cupboards were bare, I went a little nuts getting groceries. I spent $133 and got $210 worth of groceries for my trouble. Its nice to have food in the freezer again and in the pantry. Got to say though, even with my husband to help, those groceries were a pain to get home. Its the one time I miss having a car.

Currently looking like we will spend about $220 on groceries this month. Definitely not bad and a far cry from the $600 per month I use to spend. In fact, for the previous two months I averaged $250. Woohoo. I think I am finally getting our food budget under control.

So
fix my clothing budget, check
fix my food budget, check
fix my out to eat budget, check
fix my miscellaneous budget, needs work

My miscellaneous budget this year to date was atrocious. I definitely need to work on that. I think I have a plan that should help but we shall see...

Oh yes, I remember doing this with my mother. What fun we had going to three different grocery stores to get all the loss leaders. Tis that time of year.

I was a little surprised that the only store without a card system had the worst prices. I had always been told that getting rid of card sales resulted in cheaper prices but obviously not. They only had 2 decent items.

So that drops me to only two stores. My normal store and one that I will only shop loss leaders at because their off brand is nasty so only name brand stuff from them.

Now, unfortunately, my normal store is tricky. They like to mark up prices to put things on sale. But they have enough real deals and a good off brand that I just avoid the false sales and call it good.

I need to restock and so I am actually thrilled with the sales. I have an empty freezer and my pantry isn't far behind. I think I will be buying an extra turkey, I really can't beat $0.32/lb for meat.

Well, I wish everyone luck and patience because I am pretty sure its going to be scary out there. The sales in my area began yesterday and today is payday for a lot of people in my area (15th and 30th are paydays, not sure why everyone is that way but it really is most people).

Let the madness begin! So how many of you aren't going out again until Jan 2?

Hmmm...not pretty. I just added up all of my expenses and I am not impressed.

So for 2007, on my end of things I have only been paying $140 per month on credit cards which covers only interests...So yea, I am not digging deeper, but I am not making progress either and now I can see why. No wonder people resort to cutting the cards up.

*Sigh* Two steps forward, one step back. At least my dh will be debt free as of January.

The good news is that eating out is no longer my budget killer...the bad news is that my toys now are the budget killer.

The good news in that is that I no longer have any toys I want..the bad news is that I am sure something else will come along to destroy my next budget. Grrr.

Okay, enough self-pity. This is what I will do. As of Jan, I will make sure the budget will have room for entertainment, clothing and "miscellaneous" expenses by using this year's expenses as an example. I have seen where I can downsize and will accordingly do so.

So we decided that husband gets a new laptop (well sort of, new to us for $100 bought from his work) and I get Pride and Prejudice theatre tickets. We are happy and won't be getting anything else for ourselves. Now we just need to buy for his family. I can't believe the holidays are already upon us.

We will be making Thanksgiving dinner for my friend who will be taking care of our puppy while we are gone for Thanksgiving. Funny part is, that is still cheaper than paying for the vets to board him.

Boy, I should start paying attention to things that promise me money. I just received $2.00 today in my paypal account from Esearch.com. It was only when they mentioned for what survey that I remembered it. Well that's nice at least. Not that I know what I am going to do with $2.00 in my paypal account, lol. I will probably wait till I get another payment and then cash it into my account.

So I noticed with one of my one survey companies, surveyspot that their question section kept mentioning my account but I didn't have access to a member's area. So, looked a little farther down this time and realized that they did have a link to a member's area and that you had to request them to cut you a check (this little thing only took me two months to figure out *sigh*.)

So now I have a $37 check for my first round of surveys coming to me. I figure I will use survey money to supplement my out to eat budget since I really love eating out but its way too expensive.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but I tend to wear out clothes. I wear them until the hems shred, the fabric stretches beyond recognition and holes appear everywhere. I hate clothes shopping so I keep trying to find brands that hold up over time and I have got to say, they all fall apart equally fast. It doesn't matter if the item cost $2 or $100, I have had both disintegrate equally fast.

So, obviously I am going back to cheaper clothing to avoid the break down issue becoming a money drain issue but I really do hate clothes shopping so frequently. Anyone have any brands that they think will hold up so I don't have to replace them constantly? Keep in mind I have a professional job so my clothes need to be somewhat nice but nothing to spiffy. I am a pretty casual girl.

Well, any suggestions?

In a little over a year, my credit card debt will drop to $3k. Yes, you heard me right I am going to pay off over $14k in the next year (which sadly is what we paid off in cc debt last year and no we didn't accumulate any new on his side of the equation or mine. We really did start out with that much debt.)

Originally the plan was to pay off only 2 cards, pay min. payments on the last 2 and save the remaining amount of money for a downpayment. However, with more money coming in, we can now afford to have me focus on aggressively paying off my remaining credit cards and leave my dh to save the down payment.

Definitely feeling better about our progress.

I don't know about you guys, but I am incredibly impatient. On December 1 I will get to pay off my first credit card of 4. The next one drops in April. Its going to be such a relief to have those gone. And my dh's last credit card will be gone in December.

Its going to be so nice seeing that down payment for a house start growing in January.

So my dh has agreed that we will use my bonus, whatever it is, for Christmas. We are also going to limit the price tag on gifts in our house to $20 so we can have multiple things under the tree. I expect that dh will fudge a little but at least this way I know he won't buy me a $200 item.

Personally I think I have gotten enough toys lately that I should not be allowed to get Christmas gifts but then my dh wouldn't have any fun (or even listen to limits because he would just go spend what he wanted on me).

I actually think the $20 limit will be fun because we will have to figure out ways of getting lots of stuff for each other without spending lots of money on each item.