I'm slowing my extra debt repayment for the rest of the year so that once I get household debt under $300K, I can focus on the EF instead. I most likely won't get to $20K and meet my 2012 goal, but I'll get as close as I can so I can finish that goal by early next year, hopefully.
To that end, I reckoned I only need to pay $900 extra to the student loan debt this month, so I had $389.14 I could put into savings for the EF. That brings our EF to $16,914.76, $3085.24 short of our goal.
Next month I'll be able to put at least $1062 into the EF that would normally go to extra debt repayment, and hopefully another $600 from flat rental profits if no repairs or other expenses crop up. That might be it, leaving us about $1400 short of the annual goal. Still, considering the hit our EF took right at the beginning of the year, not bad!
In other good news, I weighed in last night at less than 127! I was a hair over 129 last Sunday which had me worried, and we had Chinese takeout on Friday plus went to a party Saturday this week (and hadn't worked out beyond my usual walking), so I wasn't sure how it would net out. But I lost about 3 lbs.!
I have the day off today, and it's cold and snowy outside. So I'm going to do a bit of cooking, a bit of cleaning, and some nerding out over finances and news. Other than that I'm just going to relax!
EF progress, weight holding steady
November 12th, 2012 at 03:53 pm
November 12th, 2012 at 05:08 pm 1352740084
November 13th, 2012 at 05:16 am 1352783798
This might be a good time to review long term plans for changes in the new year.
November 13th, 2012 at 06:11 am 1352787082
I chose $20K because of the rule of thumb that you should have 3 to 6 months of expenses in your emergency fund. I figured out an emergency budget (it includes purchasing private health insurance, on the assumption we wouldn't have jobs providing it) of just over $4000. $20K would put us nearly at 5 months, or comfortably within the 3-6 range. Also it's a nice round number.
About 75% of the EF is in UK savings; the management company who rents NT's flat deposits the rental profit into a linked checking account, minus their fees. Whatever we have left over, I transfer into the related savings account. These accounts were set up before NT left England, and because it's hard to transact business there from America, I've just left things as they are. It earns barely any interest (a few pence a month).
The rest of the EF is in a US savings account linked to our checking account. It doesn't earn much interest either, but since so much of the EF would be hard to access, I like having a portion of it at my fingertips.
Although it will probably come in handy if/when we move to the UK, my hope is to save up separate funds for the move, and not touch the EF at all. That way we wouldn't have to build it up again.