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May 25, 2010, at 6:00 am If you're new to BFS, please subscribe to my RSS feed. It shows me a vote of support and keeps me motivated to keep your attention. If you have any questions or comments for me, please contact me and I'll get back to you asap. Thanks for visiting! Since hubby’s last grad school payment is ready to go and I severely overestimated our property taxes for 2009, we needed to revamp our monthly budget. We want to pay off our car loan ASAP, so this is our new budget until December 2010:
- Mortgage – $900.00
- Car Debt – $650.00
- Roth IRA – $300.00
- Opportunity Fund - $120.00
- Car Payment - $330.00
- Car Insurance – $115.00
- Gasoline – $200.00
- Electricity – $200.00
- Water – $30.00
- AT&T U-Verse & DSL- $100.00
- Sprint – $85.00
- Groceries – $300.00
- Fast Food / Restaurants – $200.00
- Medical – $100.00
- Misc. Bills – $100.00
- Joint Entertainment – $100.00
- Hubby’s Fun Money – $125.00
- My Fun Money – $125.00
- Housekeeper - $100.00
- Lawn Services – $50.00
- Netflix – $20.00
- Pet Account – $100.00
- Car and Home Account – $200.00
- Vacation Accountt – $250.00
- Property Tax & Insurance Account – $0.00
- Emergency Fund (currently has $10,000) – $0.00
- Cash – $200.00
- Total = $5000
That comes to $60,000 a year and we make $78,000 jointly. Taxes, the pension, the 401k, and our benefits account for the other $18,000.
Unplanned expenses are taken from the appropriate target accounts. Extra money from our hobby jobs is either put towards debt or split between the Emergency Fund (50%), the Vacation Account (25%), and our two individual Fun Money Accounts (12.5% each).
As always, I am still donating my time and both of us donate our own fun money to the charities we love to support.
That’s it – our new budget for quick car loan annihilation!
What do you think? How has your budget been faring?
May 24, 2010, at 6:00 am
I’ve been keeping something from you. I was either not going to tell you at all or wait until it is a non-issue, but why have a personal finance blog and not be completely honest about personal finance, right?
We spent $6000 in April 2009 on a really nice bedroom set of furniture and a Tempurpedic mattress. I’ve mentioned this before, but I did not mention that we financed the whole thing for 15 months at 0% interest.
Normally, that would not matter to me since we would already have had the cash, put it aside, and made interest off of it for 14 months before paying the bill in full. BUT we didn’t have the cash except for in our emergency fund, so we’ve been putting $350 a month aside while paying $50 a month to the bill. The bill is due in August and the money is ready to go for July, but it’s been slightly nerve-wracking knowing I owe big money for something I’ve been sleeping on for more than a year.
I knew we would never have to pay any interest since our emergency fund would have had us covered, but I still feel a bit sheepish about the whole thing. If I had lost my job or if hubby had become disabled, we would have been in trouble. We wouldn’t have needed to do anything drastic, but it would have been severely uncomfortable.
The upside to this confession is that I can now tell you that as of next month, that $350 a month is open to play with. Our tax account for the year is also polished off since I highly overestimated our property taxes last year, so that’s an extra $400 a month till the end of the year as well. Hubby’s final $2000 grad school payment is also ready to go, so we no longer need to funnel that $625 a month into a grad school account.
In short, an extra $1375 a month has opened itself up from now until December, so it looks like our $9500 car loan will definitely be paid off by the end of this year. We will also be able to open a second 2010 Roth IRA, but it will be funded from November 2010 to March 2011. After that, we are discussing what to do with the extra. We will continue to fund a second Roth IRA, but that will still leave us about $1000 extra a month to put towards the house or the emergency fund or whatever.
Let’s just say that I’m pretty happy and you may want to be in the room towards the end of November when we make that final Prius payment. 
What do you think? Were we nuts for taking on such a huge payment plan for bedroom furniture and a mattress? Should we be doing something different with the excess cash we have now?
May 23, 2010, at 6:00 am
BFS is a member of the Yakezie Alexa Ranking Challenge! My ranking last week was 245,385. Now it is 206,145! We are so close!
The ultimate goal is to be in the top 200,000 by July 4, 2010. I’m giving weekly rank updates in order to track our progress. Not too shabby for a blog that started at 8,531,858 when it joined the challenge in March 2010!
I would like to sincerely thank all of my readers and the members of the Yakezie Challenge. Obviously, this would be impossible without all of you.
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you are a Yakezie member and don’t see yourself on my member list, please send me an email or leave a comment here to be added, thanks!
May 22, 2010, at 6:00 am
My Weekly Favorites
Guest Posts on BFS
Guest posts introduce different points of view, bring in additonal readers, and allow me to take a day off. Thank you!
If you would like to submit a guest post to BFS, please shoot me an idea or the actual post. I’d also appreciate a one or two sentence introduction for the piece. I’ll get back to you quickly and will give you as much advance notice as possible on its posting date.
Blog Carnivals that Featured BFS
Carnival hosts, thank you so much for the time you took to host! Being chosen feels great!
If BFS is in a blog carnival that you are running, please email me the link so it can be added to this weekly list. Thanks!
Other Info
Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my lurkers too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as I am!
May 21, 2010, at 6:00 am
Okay, I’ll admit it right now, I have a black thumb. I am a plant killer. Yet, even I have been drawn in by the lure of color.
Gardening may or may not be your cup of tea, but the results are usually worth it. When we bought our home, it had grass in the front yard and a grass/weed mixture in the back. I thought this would be fine to me since I don’t spend much time outside of my own home, but two years ago, HGTV did me in.
The Gardening Bug Hit Me
Just a few episodes of Designed to Sell convinced me that I needed some color and I needed it NOW! In my tv show fervor, I seemed to forget that September in Houston is usually the end of planting season and that I can’t keep plants alive even if my life (or wallet) depended on it. That started the saga of digging up areas for flower beds and hunting down plants that could survive an owner like me.
After several failed attempts that month, I was finally able to get a surviving group of plants out front. One Double Knock-Out rose bush got an area to itself. Miniature Monkey Grass and Sun Proof Lily-Turf shared the walkway bed with two Caladiums. A green shrub of some sort finally got the area next to the garage to itself since no other plants seemed to be able to survive. I also bought a Red Dynamite Crepe Myrtle for the center of the yard to add the biggest splash of red possible.
Gardening – 2 Years Later
The joke was on me. That Crepe Myrtle hasn’t bloomed since it was planted 2 years ago. It gets taller and it gets greener, but I swear it’s laughing at me. So is the green anonymous shrub…it is almost exactly the same size as 2 years ago – it looks healthy but it refuses to grow. (Update 03/28/11 – the anonymous green shrub has bloomed this week with holly berries…it’s a Holly bush, lol) The Monkey Grass and Sun Proof Lily-Turf also look exactly the same but have killed one of the Caladiums, so the walkway no longer seems symmetrical to me.
In fact, only my rose bush seems to love me…she’s the prettiest rose bush ever and blooms 9-10 months of the year. She grew triple her starting size in one year alone. I think all the other darn plants know that she’s my favorite and are sticking it to me…
Anyway, as you can tell from the before and after pics below, my front yard is at least more interesting than before. All the plants I have now seem healthy, and I refuse to replace anything that survives through a year with me (just ask my hubby, lol).
Do you have a garden? If so, are you more into flowers or vegetables or herbs? Do any of your plants hate you too?
TODAY
MY PLANTS
Anonymous Shrub and Accidentally Planted Mother’s Day Roses
Monkey Grass and Sun Proof Lily-Turf with Remaining Caladium
Rosie the Rose Bush in Bloom Last Year
(She Was Just Pruned in the Overall Pic Above)
May 20, 2010, at 6:00 am
The following guest post was written by Alban, who is a regular writer at Credit Card Finder.
Oftentimes the best credit card hacks are hidden to us because we didn’t even know they existed. While some of these perks are clearly stated in the small print of your credit card agreement, a lot of these are only available to those who dare to ask.
1. Can’t pay your bill this month? Delay it:
If you have a good existing credit rating with your lender and suddenly find yourself in a situation that won’t allow you to pay off your credit card this month, call your lender at once and explain the situation. Then ask for an extension of another 30 days to pay the bill. Chances are that if you have a good standing with your lender, they will agree and give you some slack.
2. Need more credit? Increase your limit:
If you have an upcoming holiday where money and plenty of funds are essential, then why not ask for a credit limit increase. A great sneaky tactic to get your increase approved fast is if you plan on making a larger purchase like buying a TV or renovating your home.
3. Bargain for a lower interest rate:
The easiest way to do this is by telling your lender you’re considering a better offer from the competition. Be friendly and not accusing while bargaining. It will get you much further.
4. Paid late? Waive the fee:
Sometimes circumstances are out of your hands. You might lose Internet connection while paying your bill online and suddenly find yourself in a situation where you get charged a late fee because the bill wasn’t paid on time. In those moments, you might be able to request a fee being removed from your account because it wasn’t your fault.
5. Merchant surcharges removal:
This is more interesting for US consumers as some states prohibit the addition of credit card surcharges. In Australia, this is perfectly legal if the merchant is within reason, e.g. to cover excess costs.
6. Warranty matters:
When you pay for large purchases with your credit card, the lender might match your warranty. This saves you from having to pay for extended warranty periods. Check with your lender to be sure.
7. Consider renting a car?
You might be eligible for free rental car insurance: It is worth checking this with your card provider because you can easily save a few hundred dollars in the process of hiring a car for a longer holiday.
8. Are you missing out on freebies?
You might qualify for free hotel accommodation, free upgrades and the likes with your credit card’s rewards program. It pays to check because some of these freebies are worth hundreds of dollars. Join Perkler to search for your loyalty program and find out all the perks and discounts you are eligible for.
Crystal’s Note: I like the fact that my Discover has the optional perk of paying $69.95 for any road side assistance. I haven’t used it, but I like to know I have a backup option.
Do you know of any other credit card hacks?
May 19, 2010, at 6:00 am
I covered the main ways of diagnosing your financial health in this past post. I’ve been using Wednesdays to go further in depth on each point since I truly believe that financial health leads to less stress and happier lives.
I have already covered the first five points - Spend Less Than You Earn, start an Emergency Fund, review Retirement Savings, evaluate Debt, and Diversify your investments. The sixth point is to make sure you are insured correctly. This means having the right amount of health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and homeowner’s insurance.
Health Insurance
Health insurance is vital for good financial health since health problems can cost so much. I’d suggest having a policy that at least covers the basic doctor visits and emergency situations. I’d also pick a deductible that wouldn’t eat my whole emergency fund.
I have the standard plan offered by my company for free. My copay is $25 a visit. I pay $10 for generic prescriptions and $30 for preferred medicines. If I need more than 3 months, I have to order it from Medco in 3 month supplies for 2 1/2 times the regular charge. Wellness visits like annual women’s exams are 100% covered. My annual deductible is $600 in-network and $1500 out-of-network. I haven’t needed major medical attention yet, so all I’ve dealt with is doctor’s visits and Medco.
I also get free vision and dental insurance. My annual eye doctor visits cost $20, I can get basic new lenses for free every year, and I get $150 or less frames for free every 2 years. That’s all I’ve taken advantage of. Contacts would be covered too, but I can’t imagine putting those in every day.
My bi-annual preventative dental visits are free. If I need any work, I pay 20% for basics and 50% for any major work. So far, I’ve only used the free preventative visits although I keep getting “suggestions” to get braces. Yes, I have a little front-teeth overlap. No, it’s not medically relevant. I don’t look freakish, so I don’t care. Braces hurt. I’m a weenie. No braces for me. Can’t he just be happy that I don’t have cavities and move on?
Car Insurance
Please don’t make me explain the importance of car insurance. In Texas, it’s illegal to drive without it. Collision and comprehensive coverage is optional if you own your car outright and will cover your car in accidents. Liability covers the people and cars you hurt. If you don’t have any sort of car insurance, please get some.
My husband and I have a joint policy with Geico and pay $110 a month for full coverage on his Prius and liability only for my Aveo. We have a $500 deductible. I chose to stop paying for comprehensive and collision coverage for my car since it’s only worth about $4000. If it’s wrecked, I’ll buy another car using our emergency fund.
That $110 a month amount includes free towing to the closest manufacturer’s dealer, which did come in handy for me. One tow made up for years of the $7 I was paying every 6 months. It also kept me from stressing out when my car overheated, so I’m a happy customer.
Life Insurance
Life insurance covers your family in situations I rather not think about. I’ve heard recommendations ranging from none at all to a few million. It’s a personal choice. I personally recommend having enough to leave your family with emotional trauma only. If you have a giant emergency fund, you might not need as much insurance. If you have a giant mortgage or kids, I’d suggest taking that into account.
We don’t have kids and can live on one of our salaries if necessary, so we only have $100,000 life insurance policies right now. My company gives me a free $37,000 policy and I pay $1.11 every 2 weeks for an additional $60,000 of coverage.
That $100,000 would cover the rest of the mortgage (about $70,000), the car (about $9,000), the cremation and viewing expenses (about $6,000 in our area), and leave $15,000 (6 months of living expenses without a mortgage) to be combined with our emergency fund for whatever time off we’d need to take.
Disability Insurance
Disability insurance covers a part of your salary if you are unable to work. Mine covers 65% of my salary, but it would be tax free since I pay for it with after-tax money. Short-term disability will usually cover you in circumstances that last 2 weeks to 6 months. Long-term disability covers from 6 months until the policy says it ends. Mine says it will cover me until my “normal retirement age”. I pay about $10.00 every two weeks for both types.
I’d highly suggest disability insurance since I can’t think of a worse situation that being disabled and not able to contribute to our joint dreams anymore. Honestly, if I die, I’ll be dead and hope my husband will be okay. If I’m disabled, I’d wallow and that would only get worse if I was unemployed and broke.
Homeowner’s Insurance
Unless you own your home outright, homeowner’s insurance is required. Even when we pay off our home, I’d continue our policy since it helps when really awful things happen to your house. The trick to picking out the right homeowner’s policy seems to be to go with as high of a deductible as you are willing to stomach and enough coverage for major problems.
Our policy is $765 a year in Spring, TX and covers our house up to it’s “rebuild” price of $165,000. We chose a 1% deductible for everything but tropical storm damage, which is at 2%. It also includes $80,000 of coverage for the items in our home, which is more than enough for us. We spend another $320 a year on flood insurance from the state since policies in our area never include flood insurance already.
Do you agree with my take above? Did I leave something out?
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DISCLAIMER I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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