Posted on: July 8, 2009 by Matt
Many of you are probably familiar with the Food Network Show $40 A Day with Rachel Ray. If you are not – the basic premise is that Rachel Ray goes out on a trip to a city and tries to get through the day spending $40 for all of her meals. While I was out of town on business I figured I would see what I could do to stay around her benchmark and still eat relatively well for the 10 days I would be gone.
After returning home I promptly went through my spreadsheet of expenses to submit an expense report to my boss. All said and done I had about $565 out of pocket for the 10 days I was gone and another $1325 or so for the base trip expenses (airfare, rental car, hotel) that my boss picked up on the company card. The $565 I spent breaks down like this:
- $112.45 – Parking for the airport I was departing from or 10 days. I used an economy lot with shuttle service to the terminal which saved about $5 – $10 per day.
- $101.28 – Rental car taxes: I guess these were not covered by the reservation booking.
- $74.06 – Gas: One fill up for my car to get to the airport and two for the rental car.
- $23.50 – Parking in Denver: Parking in downtown Denver can run up to $20 per day. Most uncovered lots are in the $10 – $12 per day neighborhood. I generally parked a few blocks outside of downtown in a lot that ran $2.50 per day. I had to walk about 15 minutes to get to downtown but saved the company about $10 per day here as well.
- $253.26 – Food total: That was all of my meals for the 10 day trip plus coffee, snacks and anything else I ingested. That totals out to about $25 per day which is $15 per day less than my baseline. I did have a couple of dinners that spanned two nights but also treated coworkers to coffee as well as one coworker to lunch. This makes me wonder if maybe I should get a show similar to Rachel Ray’s and search out the cheap eats in a town for people that need to spend less than $40 a day. Of course I am not a fan of cameras and have no interest at all in the idea but it is an idea just the same…
So for the entire trip my total came to about $1890 which is $110 less than the $2,000 I set as my goal to stay under. I am not sure what my boss had in mind for a baseline for expenses or what other coworkers have spent while out of town on business but think I did a fairly decent job of keeping costs low. How about you? Do you have a standard amount that you spend while out of town on business?
Posted on: June 15, 2009 by Matt
For the past couple of months I have been looking to find a piece of software that would allow me to manage my money in one central location. I looked at Mint.com but was disappointed to discover that they do not offer services for my bank. I also had used Microsoft Money in the past but it looks like Microsoft will be discontinuing Money later this month. The copy of Money I have is from 2005 and is on my desktop computer that now lives in my girlfriend’s office. I do not spend a lot of time working in her space and therefore (due to the OEM license) do not have a copy on my laptop. I began to search for alternatives by looking down the Quicken product line and discovered the free option of Quicken Online.
I created an account and figured I would give it the quickest test I could think of: trying to add my checking account. My checking account is at a small local bank and the folks over at Mint.com do not have my bank as an option for adding the account. Despite submitting a request to add the bank nothing has happend over the past couple of months that I have tried. Considering my previous luck I did not expect that Quicken Online would have access to my bank but when I started to set the account up I was pleasantly surprised to see my bank listed!
I went through the process and set up all of my accounts without issue and began to dig into the product a little bit. Overall the product is very similar to the offering from Mint.com but appears to have less in the way of sponsored services / ads. The interface is clean and intuitive and offers most features that you need to manage your finances on a basic level (exactly what I was looking for). The service offers the ability to view all transactions for all accounts lumped together or for individual accounts only, trends for spending, income and savings and a “goals” section to plan a budget. Additionally – the Quicken service offers the ability to manually add items like bills to your accounts which appeared to be missing from Mint.com’s offering.
Overall – I am fairly impressed by the quality of the “free” service offered by Quicken. They have access to all the information that I need to have rolled up in one place and the ability to view that data in several different ways. For me it seems like the most cost effective and robust choice available and I will probably use this as my new personal finance software (for now anyway). The ability to have access in multiple locations and the broad range of features (including SMS alerts) will be enough to hold me as a customer for a while.
Posted on: June 4, 2009 by Matt
A couple of months ago I pulled most of my cash out of savings and applied it to my credit card debt. While this eliminated the debt it put me back in the position that many Americans today are stuck in: not having an emergency fund. I could always fall back on my credit card in an emergency but I really feel much more comfortable having a little bit of money in savings in case something comes up. One of my goals is to reestablish my starter emergency fund and while thinking about it last night I thought that I would invite any readers trying to get their emergency funds up and running to join me!
The challenge is pretty informal and is geared to help hold me accountable to rebuilding my emergency fund and to help anyone else out there that would like the additional encouragement! To take part feel free to leave a comment, contact me here, or even send me an email to: matt at myfinancialrecovery dot net. Just drop me a line somewhere along the way with a goal you would like to reach by the end of the year. Then send over an update at the end of each month from June – December and I will post updates monthly of my progress and will also post your progress in the process.
My goal is to build back up to the $1,000 starter fund recommended by Dave Ramsey in The Total Money Makeover by the end of the year. My current status is that I have $108 in my online savings account that I have had set aside as an emergency fund. In order to reach my goal of getting it back up to $1,000 I do not want to drastically impact our family budget in any given month. In fact - I would like to reach the goal without any noticeable impact on the family. Here is my plan so far to accomplish my goal:
- Communicate with my girlfriend about where we are at financially: Setting money aside will effect both of us and I find life is a lot better when we are both on the same page. Usually checking in once every week or two works fairly well for us on financial matters.
- Pay attention to my spending: Identify areas that I buy things for myself that I could go without and make a few sacrifices.
- Make small weekly transfers to savings: In stead of trying to make a big monthly payment work on making small weekly ones – $25 per week seems much more manageable than $100 in one shot.
- Keep an eye open for any extra opportunities to save a little bit extra.
- Discuss budgeting based on my base salary with my girlfriend and put a couple months of commissions into the bank.
Based on the math I would have (including June) 7 months to reach this goal and would need to save about $125 per month to do so. At the same time I intend to continue paying off my current debts by making at least minimum payments. I also have one other variable coming up in August when I send my last payment to an ex-girlfriend for the car she lent me money for – which will free up another $400 per month. Overall the goal should be easily attainable based on my current income and expenses and I should have it completed by the end of summer or so.
So now the question is – does anyone else out there want to join me in starting, rebuilding or increasing their emergency fund?
Tags: Banking, Budget, Cash, Expenses, Goals, Personal Finance, Planning, Relationships, Savings Filed Under: Budget, Goals, Planning, Savings
Posted on: June 3, 2009 by Matt
Early last month I was pretty excited to report that I had paid off my credit card balance to Capital One. So I thought I would give everyone a quick update on where I am at this month: the card is still paid off.
The plan that my girlfriend proposed involved paying off the credit card balance and working to curb spending to keep the balance low. The result for me was a pretty empty checking account and we figured that we would use the card for expenses but would keep a closer eye on spending. So far it has worked out. Since my initial pay off of the large balance I have seen two statements.
The second statement was about half of the first for amount due so it appears that we have been gradually easing up on credit card use and easing back onto the checking account and debit card. I did have a couple of decent months at work which lead to higher commissions so the balances were paid in full and so far I have not made any transactions on my new statement period (which began in the middle of last month).
All said and done – the little plan my girlfriend put forward has worked pretty well. The process looks like this:
- Pay off the entire balance – do not worry about the low checking account balance.
- Use the card and stick to your budget for essentials.
- Keep tabs on spending, use the card sparingly.
- Pay the card off in full again – this time with a lower balance leaving more in the bank.
- Repeat
In addition – the plan plays to my emotional well being as well as I generally do not like having to pay with my credit card. The emotional reaction is enough that I will often forgo additional comfort items for myself (do I really need to go out for a coffee?) and stick with the basics.
Posted on: May 14, 2009 by Matt
A lot of people writing about personal finance seem to have quite a bit to say about investing and investment strategy. However – I do not invest much at all. The total of my investments is the roll over IRA I have from a 401K plan I had with an old employer. Why do I not invest? Do I not understand the importance? Well – mostly because I am trying to eliminate my debt prior to putting money away for retirement. I do plan to invest in the long run but right now it does not fit all that well into my budget.
That said - I still do have the one IRA account that I normally do not pay much attention to. When my statement came in the mail earlier this week I noticed that it still had an old address on it (since we moved) and figured I should open it up and give them a call to update the address. I had not checked the balance on the account since transferring it over to a new institution (I moved it to a local firm with somebody that I know from high school). So I was pleased this month when I discovered a 10% increase in the plan value.
I know these numbers go up and down frequently but was still rather impressed given the current economic state. When I spoke with my financial advisor he noted that he has been seeing some action lately that makes him hopeful we are on the way to recovery. He also believes that people who stayed in through the economic downturn or are just buying in now should see some pretty good results if the trends continue.
I for one have had enough with the crazy econcomic news and am looking forward to a positive change. I hope that my advisor is correct and we do start to see a turn around!
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