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six months later

July 27th, 2010 at 08:35 pm

Wow, can't believe six months have passed since my last entry. I still have money on the mind (like many people). DH can expect 10 furlough days this year and sees his retirement investments dropping like a stone. He hopes to retire at 62 and my goal is to help him do that. My deferred comp accounts don't fluctuate much, but I expect that my job will furlough people soon. I need to hang in at least six more years (26 years) and then hope to find a job that pays for my insurance. That is, of course, if all goes well. The news is full of stories about people who thought they'd planned and then are hit with a medical or family emergency that wipes out the cushion they believed would help them get by.

Six months ago, I was complaining about our leaky roof. We're finishing up with the repairs to the car decking (wooden ceiling) and will have a check for the new roof in the mail to the roofing company this afternoon! The rains can come... although our part of the country is experiencing summer, finally.

My money plan is to start my financial year from 7/25/10 and to track our spending patterns for a year. Our rough budget is:

*insurance-(car, house and medical co-pay): $250/month
*car payment (low interest) - 355.00
*house payment- (including 500 principle pay): 2280.00
*house bills- (water/sewer/garbage,electric,phones,cable):600.00
*food: 300.00
*spending-300= 150x2
*gas- 150= 75.00x2
*travel- 377.92
*propane- 125

The remainder of any check will go to the "E" fund. A large part of the fund was used to pay for the roof which makes us both nervous--more reason to start saving!




1/4/10

January 5th, 2010 at 02:15 am

Back to work in 2010. This is a landmark year because my finances have changed so much.

12/2/09

December 3rd, 2009 at 02:43 am

Spent $17.00 for dry cleaning. DH and I sat down tonight and budgeted money for the month--big change from 10 years ago when we weren't married and had no idea what the other was spending. I was the one with all the secrets because I was ashamed of my reckless spending and ridulous amount of debt.

We have a trip out of town from Friday through Tuesday. We'll be with 4 other friends- sharing meals and trying to figure out bills. Agh...hate that part of traveling with others. Some of us will be walking in a Santa walk and on Sunday I'll be running in the morning in a big run. Everything for the trip has been paid, again, a big change from the past.

11/30/09

December 1st, 2009 at 02:31 am

Hey, didn't spend anything today. I packed food for all day (chicken casserole and fruit) and managed to keep myself from thinking about spending money at the mall or the grocery store and was able to find something more useful to accomplish. Tried to get caught up at work and cleared files off my desk.Tonight, DH made dinner out of the freezer with enough left for lunches. Hope to have another day of using up food from the pantry, filling up my coffee cup from home and avoiding traffic from christmas shoppers. We have about 600.00 in major bills (insurance, propane, phone) to take care of this month. It is so nice to not be worried about where the money will come from. The next step will be to continue to add to our emergency fund.