January:
cc1: 0
cc2: 5.47
cc3: 212
cc4: 4103.61
cc5: 5294.84
Loan 1: 4824.07
Loan 2: 12260.85
Loan 3: 13471.85
Total: 40172.69
February:
cc1,2,3: 0
cc4: 644.17
cc5: 6070
Loan 1: 4730.83
Loan 2: 11604.45
Loan 3: 12911.85
Total: 35961.30
Debt Paid: 4211.39
Total debt paid: 7911.44
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
January Income Statement
Revenue: In addition to our income from our jobs, we also discovered we had an $1800+ balance in our bank accounts. We had gift money as well.
Fixed Expenses: Power skyrocketed to $300. Comcast raised our cable bill. We hadn't canceled the server.
Debt Repayment: I now own my computer, phone and work clothes! We paid off credit cards 1 and 2 and a huge amount of the balance on 3. The rest of the cards and loans got minimal amounts.
Variable: My husband's car is the main expense here. He had to register it, and before doing that, had $700 of work done on it. We did put that on the credit card, but I am sorry that we did. I feel we are having Karmic retribution now (see previous post). Travel is our plane tickets for the wedding in May, which we paid cash for. Bank fees include finance charges and a late fee incurred while I juggled around our new payment schedules. My "doll" budget includes the money I spent from my discretionary jar, an order made this summer that was sent off backorder, and some eyes and faceups (in cash) for my BJDs. I believe the rest of these expenses, including our sinking fund, were discussed in the Jan cash jar post.
We had a net income of almost $2500. Overall, a win. While we would not have come out positive just based on our income, I increased debt repayment and some other expenses upon learning we had more money to work with (as can be seen if you look back at the original budget). So, as the income increased, so I increased the outgo. This gave us a great starting momentum.
Challenges
The January income statement is done, I just haven't gotten around to scanning it. I am still tweaking the March budget, too.
Some things have come up. This is what Dave Ramsey calls Murphy.
The good: I got a dog this weekend. Um. I know I said I wouldn't. But I knew I would know the right one when I saw him (on the internet). I had let some others pass me by, but this one I couldn't. I hate going to pet organizations ~ I always want to take them all home, so I guess it is good I stuck with just one. He is a rescue - he was surrendered to animal control. He is a silky terrier, registered with AKC with papers. Blows my mind. He is house broken (YAY!) but we are having some problems with him chasing the cat. I hope this will settle itself some soon. The cat is staying upstairs, and sometimes under the bed. We have him confined downstairs. I paid for his adoption and his things at Petsmart in cash, though. In future budgets, I will raise my pet allocation and I also will have to board him in May for a few days, so will have to account for that as well.
The rest:
My mother in law was diagnosed with lung cancer. She has to have surgery to remove part of her lung. She has never smoked and is the healthiest, most in shape person I know. My father in law is a disabled vet, who just went through an amputation. My husband has to go out there to take care of his father while his mother goes through surgery, and then possibly both of them. Luckily, his parents have since offered to pay for his flight, and he can work remotely, so that takes the financial strain off of an already stressful and emotional situation. From what I understand, her prognosis is good.
Our roof. We have a leak which really appears to be a lost flashing. The water comes in down one of those silver pipes that sticks out of the roof, then drips down and there is some water damage in the ceiling of the bedroom below. We have gotten a ton of rain in the last year, and that is how we came to notice it, though there was previous damage in that spot. We put a bucket in the attic and went on about our lives. Meanwhile, we had our gutters cleaned a couple months ago, and the guy alerted us that there is damage on the roof of our porch. There is a huge crater in the roof (we can see it from a window) and the wood underneath is rotting - all the way down to where you can see the rot on the ceiling of the porch. On the one hand, it is just the porch and I don't feel it is an emergency. On the other, it could be an indicaiton of further problems we can't see over the main house. You just never know with insurance companies, and I have never had to deal with them before so I didn't know what to do. Roofs are always the huge scary expense. It turns out that while our deductable for most things is $1000, like we thought, it is $3800 for hail or wind damage. That is how most people have been getting their roofs replaced. This is a HUGE additional amount of money. The insurance company is sending someone out to look at it. I guess what we do from there depends... If they will cover it and redo the whole roof, I have to find $3800 somewhere. If they don't cover or won't do the whole roof, we will just fix the porch, and I have no idea what that will cost at this point. I have chosen not to pay off cc4 this month ($500 extra payment) and to pull $1000 from our debt repayment the next couple months to help cover. We will pull the money out of savings and pay it back. This really throws a wrench into my payoff plan, though.
Dentist: My husband needs two crowns. Luckily, insurance is going to pay for 80%, but that still leaves around $500 for us. We will use the med card for some of it. I guess when my husband finds out when he will be out of town, he will schedule around that and we can go from there.
Some things have come up. This is what Dave Ramsey calls Murphy.
The good: I got a dog this weekend. Um. I know I said I wouldn't. But I knew I would know the right one when I saw him (on the internet). I had let some others pass me by, but this one I couldn't. I hate going to pet organizations ~ I always want to take them all home, so I guess it is good I stuck with just one. He is a rescue - he was surrendered to animal control. He is a silky terrier, registered with AKC with papers. Blows my mind. He is house broken (YAY!) but we are having some problems with him chasing the cat. I hope this will settle itself some soon. The cat is staying upstairs, and sometimes under the bed. We have him confined downstairs. I paid for his adoption and his things at Petsmart in cash, though. In future budgets, I will raise my pet allocation and I also will have to board him in May for a few days, so will have to account for that as well.
The rest:
My mother in law was diagnosed with lung cancer. She has to have surgery to remove part of her lung. She has never smoked and is the healthiest, most in shape person I know. My father in law is a disabled vet, who just went through an amputation. My husband has to go out there to take care of his father while his mother goes through surgery, and then possibly both of them. Luckily, his parents have since offered to pay for his flight, and he can work remotely, so that takes the financial strain off of an already stressful and emotional situation. From what I understand, her prognosis is good.
Our roof. We have a leak which really appears to be a lost flashing. The water comes in down one of those silver pipes that sticks out of the roof, then drips down and there is some water damage in the ceiling of the bedroom below. We have gotten a ton of rain in the last year, and that is how we came to notice it, though there was previous damage in that spot. We put a bucket in the attic and went on about our lives. Meanwhile, we had our gutters cleaned a couple months ago, and the guy alerted us that there is damage on the roof of our porch. There is a huge crater in the roof (we can see it from a window) and the wood underneath is rotting - all the way down to where you can see the rot on the ceiling of the porch. On the one hand, it is just the porch and I don't feel it is an emergency. On the other, it could be an indicaiton of further problems we can't see over the main house. You just never know with insurance companies, and I have never had to deal with them before so I didn't know what to do. Roofs are always the huge scary expense. It turns out that while our deductable for most things is $1000, like we thought, it is $3800 for hail or wind damage. That is how most people have been getting their roofs replaced. This is a HUGE additional amount of money. The insurance company is sending someone out to look at it. I guess what we do from there depends... If they will cover it and redo the whole roof, I have to find $3800 somewhere. If they don't cover or won't do the whole roof, we will just fix the porch, and I have no idea what that will cost at this point. I have chosen not to pay off cc4 this month ($500 extra payment) and to pull $1000 from our debt repayment the next couple months to help cover. We will pull the money out of savings and pay it back. This really throws a wrench into my payoff plan, though.
Dentist: My husband needs two crowns. Luckily, insurance is going to pay for 80%, but that still leaves around $500 for us. We will use the med card for some of it. I guess when my husband finds out when he will be out of town, he will schedule around that and we can go from there.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
February budget, a little belated
My husband finally got my computer working. He says it was a bad stick of ram which corrupted the hard drive and os. So he took out the ram and we had to order a recovery disk, because apparently computers don't come with them anymore. We had to wait for that to arrive, then install it and I have spent the last couple of days trying to set my computer back up how it was, less some ram. In the end, a $20 fix.
The budget:
Income - My mother gave me money to pay for my holiday gift, and when I opened it, there was quite a bit extra in there. A nice surprise. It goes straight to the credit cards, and puts me quite a bit closer to my April 11 goal. Another $200 from birthday money for my husband (which he has STILL not deposited).
Fixed Expenses - Our power bill jumped up to almost $300 in January, which blew me away. I knew it was going to go up, but really. So I budgeted the same amount for February. We cut our cable back a level so my guess for that is $75. At the time I made this budget, my husband had still not canceled the server service, so I was anticipating another month for that (as it turns out, we were already paid through March).
Debt Repayment - We paid off credit cards 1 and 2 in January (YAY!) and only had $212 left on credit card 3, so will pay that off. That brings us to cc4 which will get the anticipated $1500 plus the $2000 from mom. That brings it to within $600 of being paid off. Minimum payments to cc5 and the loans.
Variable Expenses - We had some expected expenses this month, so I reduced our grocery money from $500 to $400 since we had so much left over in January. (My husband: Is this like the government where I have to use the money even if I don't need to or I lose my budget?) We have a convention we go to every year, and if we bought tickets by Feb 15 (we did - paid with debit) it was $140 for both of us. Price goes up every month afterward. My husband talks about going back to school - his job will reimburse him. But he tends to be pretty lazy about getting things done - like actually applying on time. I think that cost him his admission last year. He told me when we were going over the budget to put in his admission fees, so I did. He has still not applied as far as I know. It's on him. I am not going to hound him like I am his mom. If he wants it enough, he will get off the computer games and do it. The money is there.
Monday, February 8, 2010
And now a word from our sponsors...
Well, so while I wait for my computer to get running again (I can only scan PDFs at work) and wait for the January numbers to come in, I thought I would use this time to comment on another life decision we have going on. While this blog is primarily financial, it is also not read by anyone I know. (In fact, I don't think it is read by anyone but me). And I want to take advantage of that fact by writing about other things I want to keep private from those I know at this time. Many important things could happen over the course of turning my life around financially, and I would hate to have an incomplete story.
Part of the motivation for doing this is to open up the possibility of having a baby. I could never see before how we could afford a baby, as daycare is likely to eat most of my salary, and we can't live without my salary. I have very mixed feelings about having a baby. I like my life and I am terrified by the whole idea. I don't feel ready - or even old enough. But the truth is, I am getting to a point where if we are going to do this, it needs to get done. Especially if it could take time or we need to consider alternatives. That can add years (not to mention money). I don't want to miss my opportunity to have a child because of fear or not getting our act together. And there is a definite point where I will pull the plug because we are too old.
Here is my plan of the moment. I have been off my birth control for a month. I am highly irregular, so I am going to start doing all the charting and everything to see if I can find a pattern. I don't intend to start trying until at least we have credit cards paid off. At this point, that could be as early as May. But in interest of researching my body (and hopefully losing some weight) I may still wait til later in the summer. Then I figure we enter a period of "not trying not preventing" and see what happens. I honestly don't think that is going to do it, but you never know. Once we are completely debt free (hopefully by my 35th bday in April 2011) we start really putting the effort into it. Of course, that puts me past that crucial age.
This is all just my thinking and planning. It is not sanctioned by a doctor (Who has been telling me to get pregnant for three years now) or anyone else. The one book I have read is pretty depressing - our chances are really really slim based on weight and age.
Part of the motivation for doing this is to open up the possibility of having a baby. I could never see before how we could afford a baby, as daycare is likely to eat most of my salary, and we can't live without my salary. I have very mixed feelings about having a baby. I like my life and I am terrified by the whole idea. I don't feel ready - or even old enough. But the truth is, I am getting to a point where if we are going to do this, it needs to get done. Especially if it could take time or we need to consider alternatives. That can add years (not to mention money). I don't want to miss my opportunity to have a child because of fear or not getting our act together. And there is a definite point where I will pull the plug because we are too old.
Here is my plan of the moment. I have been off my birth control for a month. I am highly irregular, so I am going to start doing all the charting and everything to see if I can find a pattern. I don't intend to start trying until at least we have credit cards paid off. At this point, that could be as early as May. But in interest of researching my body (and hopefully losing some weight) I may still wait til later in the summer. Then I figure we enter a period of "not trying not preventing" and see what happens. I honestly don't think that is going to do it, but you never know. Once we are completely debt free (hopefully by my 35th bday in April 2011) we start really putting the effort into it. Of course, that puts me past that crucial age.
This is all just my thinking and planning. It is not sanctioned by a doctor (Who has been telling me to get pregnant for three years now) or anyone else. The one book I have read is pretty depressing - our chances are really really slim based on weight and age.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Where's the budget?
Well, it's written and saved on my work computer, and we are living it.
However, my home computer decided to die now that it is paid off. I don't think we got the coverage on it. My husband has been half heartedly messing with it, but I am at least temporarily without computer. Which means no scans. If work settles down, it is possible I can scan it there, but it has been crazy busy.
However, my home computer decided to die now that it is paid off. I don't think we got the coverage on it. My husband has been half heartedly messing with it, but I am at least temporarily without computer. Which means no scans. If work settles down, it is possible I can scan it there, but it has been crazy busy.
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