Posted on: July 9, 2009 by Matt
Last month I decided to give myself the gift of a rebuilt emergency fund by setting up a public challenge to get it back to the base of $1,000 by the end of the year. My reasoning for the amount was that $1,000 is the recommended starter fund from Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, an attainable goal as well as an amount that makes me feel somewhat safe should something unexpected come up. When I kicked the challenge off I had $108 in my savings account, currently my progress has been a little slower than I had hoped for but is progressing just the same.
So for my current status I have $259 in my emergency fund account – an increase of $151. In addition I have also increased my health savings account from $0 to $99. So my total savings for the past month is about $250 but some of that went into savings for health care as I am planning to get a doctor’s visit in by the end of the year (it has been about 12 years since I have had a physical).
I am also hoping to jump start a couple of extra income steams by the end of the year in order to add to my savings and debt repayment plan. Currently I am working on:
- Blog income via ads and adsense.
- Writing EHow articles: 8 published so far and about $5 in earnings after one month. I have not devoted much time yet but am encouraged.
- Selling stuff on EBay: I have a handful of things that I could sell without really even noticing. Why not get rid of some clutter and make a few dollars?
In addition – my final car payment will be next month and that will free up an additional $400 per month for me to work into the budget. I am really excited about having another debt repaid and crossed off my list!
Posted on: June 18, 2009 by Matt
Back in the beginning of the year I posted on some of the things I am looking forward to in2009 and considering that we are now about half way through the year I figured I would post an update of where I stand. The past few months have been pretty interesting and quite a bit has happened so I will get right down to it.
- Getting back in shape: I have been going to the gym for 5 months or so now. Lately I have been getting up early in the morning and going to work out four or five days a week. My gym is closed on Sundays thorough the summer so I am really only missing one or two days per week that the gym is available. Since the gym closed for Sundays a couple weeks ago I have been working to get outside and do something on Sundays as well. Overall I now: get a pretty good amount of exercise, have quite smoking for over a year and do not drink. My diet is still a bit unhealthy and I tend to overeat and have a sweet tooth but I am making progress.
- No more car payments: Next month will be my final full payment followed by a half payment in August and that will be done. I am very much looking forward to not owing money to my ex-girlfriend any more and am looking even more forward to having the extra cash every month!
- Giving my site a new look: I have changed my theme twice and am thinking I will settle with this one for a little bit. So far so good I think.
- Paying off my credit card: I no longer carry a balance on my credit card from month to month! I am still getting to a point where I do not spend at all on it but my balance of nearly $2,000 that was carrying over and accruing interest fees is now gone!
- Rebuilding my savings account: I am getting there. I have my own little emergency fund challenge for 2009 running to give myself some public incentive and accountability to get my savings account back in shape. Right now I am up to $250 in the emergency fund and am aiming to reach $1,000 before the end of the year.
So far 2009 has been a pretty productive year and I am really looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up. I am hopeful that my personal financial situation will continue to improve. My girlfriend has also been taking some pretty impressive steps to improve her financial fitness as well and has impressed me with her ability to reach her goals as well. I think that right now she has more in savings than I do and was telling me the other day that now that she has the money in savings she does not want to touch it. Needless to say – I am proud of her and am awed by her ability to accomplish her goals.
Tags: Debt, Debt Reduction, Goals, Health, Personal Finance, Relationships, Savings Filed Under: Debt, Debt Reduction, Goals, Health, Planning, Relationships, Savings
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 10, 2009 by Matt
Every month my cell phone bill drops into my email. I log into my provider’s web site and pay the bill via the online payment options - rarely do I look at the details of the bill because the price falls in line with what I expect to pay. However last week my girlfriend reminded me that she needs a new cell phone (as I accidentally washed her old phone) and asked if we could look online to see what was available. When we looked we discovered that we were both eligible for free upgrades and opted to take advantage of the new phone offers. The deal resulted in each of us getting a new cell phone with free activation and free overnight shipping – the total was about $550 in free stuff with a two year commitment to the provider.
On Monday the new phones arrived and activated without issue. While I was in the process of getting the phones activated I decided to run through our plan and see what was offered and if there were other plans that might help us save a little money. The new phones are designed to make text messaging easier and we were hoping to use the feature to stay in touch better. The problem was that I thought we had to add text messaging to our plan in order to do so at an additional cost of $20 per month. However – while looking at the phone add-ons I noticed that my girlfriend’s phone appeared to have a text add-on as part of the family plan but neither of the other two phones included this add-on. I reviewed a bit further and noticed that she appears to have unlimited text messaging based on the usage details whereas my phone was showing $0.20 per message.
After calling customer service and telling them what I had discovered they were happy to add the family text add-on to the other phones in the plan as well as adjust the bill for any text charges for the past 2 months. So by simply running a basic audit of our plan and phones we were able to:
- Get an additional feature tied to all of our phones saving us $20 per month.
- Get $5 or so back in credit to the account for previous charges.
- Confirmed that we are getting the best rate for our usage requirements.
In order to keep up on making sure that we are still getting the most bang for our buck I will probably plan on running an annual audit of our cell phone plan.
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
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