Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The thing that REALLY impresses me is that people have other financial goals then getting out of debt. I have a complete focus on getting out of credit card debt right now. I don’t want to be a slave for those banks any more. It was a painful lesson to learn in my mid life years. I am resolved to try and teach my daughter better habits. The thing that really impresses me though is the focus on having a good retirement. On relaxing and working towards other things - owning property or investing in a retirement fund. Saving for the possibility that you can’t work. They have become my future goals. I no longer just want to be debt free I also want my savings to grow. I want to have 3, make that 6 months of living expenses in a CD or mutual fund that we'd have access to easily. I want to pay off my mortgage early. I want to retire comfortably. I want to be able to make a down payment on my a retirement home if I needed to. In short I have learned so much about "common sense" goals by reading the pf blogs I do. I am so grateful to all those who share their lives with the rest of us. Thanks. Let’s make 08 great together :-)

Some links...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119836036944047243.html?mod=money_page_left_hs

Finance Gets Personal By SHELLY BANJO
December 23, 2007


Look for money owed to you on www.missingmoney.com

http://www.bripblap.com/2007/spend-less-than-you-earn-the-wrong-way-to-think/

Things to earn you more money. I need to add this to my 101 things b/c I know I have some small amounts of money being held for me in PA. I will establish this as one of my goals for my work from home day. There are a couple of higher priorities like sign on to FAFSA web site get a pin # work on financial aid etc

Persistence at a goal pays you its own reward.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Update on Credit Card

I posted earlier about a charge being made to my account. It has been credited and I do not owe anything on that card. Persistence and follow up reap huge rewards. No stupid tax!

The Emergency fund saved college dreams

$500 for college from savings,How the emerg fund saved her college dreams

I posted earlier about spending the money in my emergency account before the tax refund comes in. Then, I listened to the Dave Ramsey show. He stated how foolish that idea was. Even if you know you can pay back the emerg fund it is foolish to take money out of there for the Holidays. The fund is for an event that is unexpected. Emerg fund is for surprises not Christmas. Hmmm, okay, I will accept he makes sense even if I don't buy it... I will not take any money out. Over this weekend I am SO glad I did not take money out of there for gifts. I have TWO reasons

1) On Friday we were out at a school function and the Check engine light came on in my car. I was highly stressed nut I knew I had back up in my savings account and it would be okay. My fiancee took the car to auto zone and looked at the codes. He determined thankfully the car is okay and the light may have come on due to the rapid change in the weather. It was resolved to "Keep an eye" on it but the car could be driven. BIG SIGH of relief! No money out of pocket but boy was it wise to have not spent it on gifts.

2) On Saturday my daughter was accepted to college! They needed a check for $500.00 to confirm her reservation in the class of 2012. Total relief. I was able to pay for the deposit with cash. No credit card fees needed. So my refund will be re-allocated. When I get it I will replace the $500.00 from the emerg fund. Just to be clear, It was important to have your room reservation in as early as you possibly can. I could have waited for the refund to come in and then paid the deposit but she would be MUCH lower on the housing cue and it was important to her, and so to me, to have as much of our first choice for housing as we possibly could. I will put $700.00 towards Christmas gifts and I will pay $500.00 to paying off debt. It is less to paying off my debt, however I save big time by not increasing my deb load. The emerg fund has saved my daughters dreams. She is so excited! She sings as she goes from room to room it was totally worth it. If I had to I would spend it again and again to make her that happy.

As an aside we also had a teachable moment. I was able to have a quick conversation about the value of money and the idea that if you take care of your money it will take care of you. Its good to plant debt & financial wisdom seeds now. I will have more conversations with her in the future. For today we talked about choices I make about spending money and the value of having an emergency fund. It was good for me to be able to plan that seed in her mind for the future.

I am not a financial professional. If you are looking for financial advise you should seek it elsewhere. If you would like to join me on the journey, walk with me for a while and be my friend......

Mad Money Mondays

I get so much done when I work from home. there are fewer distractions and I am able to focus in a better way. However a good part of my job involves helping people and that is hard to do from home. I think that is why I get so frustrated with customer service and how people do their jobs. I do believe in service excellence and I try every day to make someone elses life easier and better. So when I have to ARGUE - which I hate to do - to get what I need. I have to wonder is this what a corporation views as service excellence?

Down to 2 1 tax folders to scan into my computer. As I do my regular work I strive to eliminate the DIS-organization that has held me back from becoming financially free. If you don't know where your stuff is how can you move forward. I have 2 TONS of paper in my office and I think it was weighing me down. Right now I am focused on saving only what I need to move forward in my life. That includes making sure Old tax returns are findable by date. I am sure we will be applying to FASA and for student loans next year. Oh yes... My daughter has been accepted to college! I am sooo proud of her. Now I just have to pay for it. I have a few plans. We'll see what happens.

And now down to 1 scanning folder. Man it feels good to get rid of the financial paperwork that weighs you down! It is a little time consuming today though and I needed to turn my attention to other things. More scanning later.

I am not a financial professional. If you are looking for financial advise you should seek it elsewhere. If you would like to join me on the journey, walk with me for a while and be my friend......

Money transfers and clutter

Today I realized that I had stopped seeing the mess. My office has been lifted of a massive amount of clutter. I have been sitting on a project of Christmas Ornaments for an entire year. Of course when I wanted to decorate our Christmas tree I had to get on the ball. And I did. I collected all the ornaments we have and photographed them. This does two things. I actually over the years have acquired many beautiful collectible ornaments. My aunt also sends my daughter an ornament or seven every year so needless to say our collection if added up together could be worth quite a bit. How would we know what we have if we needed to .... A database. I have written one in PHP for a class project. I am going to convert it to house all the ornament photos. I am actually looking forward to that part. It was opening each and every box. Photographing them and then hanging them on the tree that was super time consuming. *** Gold Star moment *** I have completed the task! I am really happy about that. The tree looks awesome and I have an empty desk. Well almost. I have 3 tax folders left to scan but today is a work at home day :-).


Trying to track every $ I have become happier now that My finances are organized. It is total satisfaction to know I am not missing something. I have created quite a few to do lists and One of my favorite links to help me rewind Questions to trigger to dos on your list (http://www.orgcoach.net/pdf/ram_dump.pdf). I have never in my life had so much time to work on it. And I always am waiting for the other shoe to drop. It will but because I have taken the time to start the organization process. I am really proud of myself. My next goal with organization is to work with my daughter on her finances. I do not want her to fall into the places I have gone.

I have cut every expense I can - except lunches. That is going to be one of my goals for 2008.

I am excited. I should be getting a IRS refund of ~ $1700 dollars. I am going to use $700 on Christmas and $1000 towards the debt. I wont have to touch my savings/emerg fund for Christmas much at all. The only question is how fast can I get the refund? And I am sure I will be getting a nice refund next year too. I maxed out my deductions. Before you tisk tisk me it was because too many things in my life were changing. Moving to another state getting a new job with a higher salary. I just could not guess how much I was going to owe. Plus my daughter turns 18 this year so I was not sure what the implications would be of that.

Bills one bite at a time. I still feel discouraged despite all my progress financially that it takes so long to pay off cards. I moved my $ around to help with interest rates - It feels awful to not be able to pay the balance in full. But when you are looking at such large amounts interest rates really add up and it matters a lot. SO... I have shuffled the balances around a bit. I will have paid one credit card at 29.9% in full. A 3.9% interest rate till the balance is paid is making the money go further and pay off the debt faster. It is still a big hole and I am a bit overwhelmed. I rant he rough numbers and by transferring the balance I will save $3000.00 this year. WOW. I cant wait to send $1000 to pay off a chunk of it. Ahhh and I should tell you the wonderfulness of requesting the balance transfer online without having to talk to a judgmental person. So Awesome. I don't love talking to customer service. There is too much service lacking and they view their job as saying no. Making a logical transfer to which I had been sent an offer in the mail sooo easy. Always leave them wanting more. I want better customer service from someone who takes such a large proportion of my salary. The borrower is the servant to the lender to be sure. This just serves to reaffirm my goals to get out of debt.


I will probably use savings to tide me over and replace it when the refund comes. Big sigh of relief that I have over $700 in my savings to cover the lag AND I can afford gifts without increasing the debt. Good news. This is the proof that the plan is working.


I am not a financial professional. If you are looking for financial advise you should seek it elsewhere. If you would like to join me on the journey, walk with me for a while and be my friend......

Pricing battles save money

Battling for the correct pricing...

Why is guarding your wealth so much work? How much does it cost us if you don't? Over the weekend I did a lot of Christmas Shopping. One of the things I had promised to follow up on was to complete my daughters gift from last year and get her the matching pieces to a suitcase we bought this summer. There was some confusion when I made the purchase for her about the right sizes. I was thinking she needed two large suitcases But my fiancee felt she needed the set of graduated bags. He of course was right(as usual). She will need an occasional weekend bag for traveling and not always the super huge size. Well... So The suitcases were on sale. It was a very good price. Not really for Christmas but at the right time to buy. So I went ahead to this store's online web site and made a purchase. BUT I forgot to enter the online purchase code. So I called Customer service to let them know. I had called to soon. They could not see my order yet. Okay, I'll call back later. Today I called again. Now my order has shipped. The lady on the phone said she put the info in on my account but I don't have confidence that she was telling the truth. So I will have to follow up this afternoon and call again to verify the shipping charges were credited. $30.00 is not a lot of money but its MY money.

I also saved myself $129.99 last Monday. Sometimes I forget that there is satisfaction in what you don't spend. I was charged for privacy protection on one of my credit cards. Seeing a charge on a card which had $ 0.00 balance at first caused me to feel waves of panic. I had paid for this service before. I thought it would be worse to pay for it then to fight it. (Before I started reading pf blogs I would have paid the charges and hoped to close the account. Now I know better.) Man was it hard to break out the sword and shield. I hate confrontation. But I did it. I called the credit card company... the wait for customer service is 10 minutes. ...UGH... Wonderful daughter bring me your cell phone. I called the privacy guard phone number. (While on hold with the credit card company)
I don't want this service please.
But all the wonderful benefits. Blah blah blah
No I don't want this service please.
But we have so much to offer.. blah blah blah
I do not want your service thank you.
Okay the cancellation number is xxxxx

All the while I am STILL on hold with the credit card bank. Now you see why I paid this card off first. 10 minutes to talk to a real live person! AGH. That and a 29% interest rate. so I have defended my money. I saved myself $129.99 in fees I did not want. All it took was two phone calls. Now please know that I do believe there is a good service to be had in privacy protection. I just cant afford that service right now while I dig myself out of debt. And $129.99 Really??? I don't think so.

I also saved $30.00 at the grocery store. seems like a lot right??? I think so too. There were a few items that were on sale that typically are not on sale. Couscous & stash tea. So I did spend over my weekly food budget by $35 but I think the savings helped to make it worth it. I love cous cous. and I saved $6.50 on that item alone.


I am not a financial professional. If you are looking for financial advise you should seek it elsewhere. If you would like to join me on the journey, walk with me for a while and be my friend......

Monday, December 03, 2007

Progress

I have scanned in 4 years of Tax returns. I feel so much better about that.

Today I paid my bills. Painful. The happy news was that I had a surplus for the month of November. One of the main reasons was that My wonderful mother sent me $500.00 for the college weekend trips. AND my awesome fiancee paid for quite a bit of our travels to NC & Mass. I sat down and used the where did my money go spreadsheet. I am working up to budgeting. Well thats not true. I have a budget but I find my extraordinary expenses keep popping up their weary heads.

The college trip expenses were 215.17 + hotels
Sr year expenses were 273.46 for this month.

Where was that money to come from? I need a better plan...

11/19/07

I did it. I got rid of all 19 magazines. Its one of those very small things that matters to only me. But its about having a clean and workable space. I need to have some more peace in my life. I want to be free of the emotional debt. Then I will be free of the actual debt as well. One day at a time.

Did I mention that I took a credit card out of my wallet? I did only debit card goes with me. I am trying very hard to live on cash only. In some ways it is harder then I though. In others Awesome fiancee is picking up some slack. He treated us to dinner out during our last college exploration trip. It helps a lot because the other expense in addition to traveling was $350 for the eye do

Next focus. Financial documents on top of my desk.

There are two things at play here. One Eliminate clutter. This will save me money when we move next summer. I will not have to pay to store the magazines. (We are planning to move into a smaller space to save money.) Second to get rid of that which emotionally weighs you down.

Get smart about space & place...

I am consolidating my papers down to 3 total file drawers.

Streamline your system....

I pay bills online.
I dont like automatic payments because if your timing is a little off you can end up paying bank fees. I always sit down the weekend before the first of the month and look ahead to figure out how short I will be and stratagize how to juggle the bills for the upcoming month.

I have started using an excel spreadsheet looking at my spending every month and For the first time I brought my lunch 4/5 days last week.

I dont know what to do with all the medical information. It feels like I should record it somehow and it should be organized in some way but I cant begin to know what would be helpful. I have not seen any blogs about that. What would matter to a doctors office or hospital. How important is a full medical history. Do you need origional paperwork or is a scanned copy of stuff okay?

HMO vs PPO

Big decision. Here is what is going into my planning...

Cost

Ease of use

Potential health issues in my future

State retirement

1361.17 2006 contribution
2162.10 2005 contribution
1935.55 2004 contribution
----------
5458.82 total contributions

there is currently 6k in there. I am so glad I have some record of my contributions. I thought there was so much more interest. But If 5500 is mine I can roll it into another fund and be on my merry way

Happy days