Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

My goal for March is to pay off $3400 of debt by March 31. I picked this number because, while it's aggressive, I have over a month and a half in which to accomplish it. Also, I'll be 34 in March, so it seems poetic.

As I updated my sidebar to reflect my progress and my new goal, I realized that my goal balance is $436,436. So that seems kind of cute too.

I'm so glad I don't have to explain to you guys how making a game of my finances helps me stay excited about getting out of debt. :-)

My big UK payment posted, to the tune of $1556 in principal! So what does that mean? Well...

$3,559 paid for February, so I exceeded my goal of $2,900!

$1,701 to go on my Overall Ad Hoc Goal!

$65,233 to go in my Big-Picture Goal!! This one's especially exciting to me because it means I've paid off more than $5K in credit card debt since Jan. 1. Though my overall balance, $439,836, is very pleasing too, because it means that if I weren't counting an estimated $40K for NT's future education, our debt would now be under $400K.

OK, time to figure out my March goal!

Every few months it seems like a few money matters start piling up, and this is one of those times. Mostly precipitated by tax season, of course.

1. Tax strategy. I did a rough draft of taxes this weekend, and it looks like AS will be getting about $1900 back while NT and I will owe about $1600. I'm glad it worked out but kind of annoyed that using the suggested married withholdings got us so far in the hole--especially since NT withheld like a single person, which I thought would even us out. So this gives me a number of tasks:
A. Turn in AS's taxes ASAP. We'll wait until we get her refunds before submitting mine and NT's. That way we don't feel the pain of owing the taxes.
B. Figure out our withholdings. AS's refund should go down to about nothing since she won't be paying any tuition this year. I'm not sure if NT's tuition payments in the fall will help us since our combined wages are kind of a lot (I think). That means I need to have more withheld this year to make sure we don't owe too much. But I don't want to go overboard and withhold too much. This will take some reading and calculating to get just right.
C. Figure out how much my resulting smaller paycheck will set back our planned savings for our UK trip, and find the necessary money elsewhere in the budget.
D. File mine and NT's return once we get AS's refunds.

2. Net worth. I'm sure millions of readers breathlessly awaiting my net worth update noticed it didn't come out late last month as usual. This is because I don't have access to NT's 401(k) info until he gets me a PIN so I can log in. I lost the piece of paper that contained the PIN, and he is just not as interested in this stuff as I am, so he's taking forever getting me another. Anyway, it's probably for the best, as it sounds like most people's January net worth took a hit from the stock market. I'm sure our 401(k)s fared no better. Luckily our aggressive debt repayment pushes our net worth upward no matter what. I'll know more when I check in late February--hopefully I'll be able to by then!

3. AS contacts. She will be ordering once we have enough surplus money in play, and will get it reimbursed less than a month later. She already knows what day we'll have enough money; I just need to remember to add to the budget so I'm not surprised when it happens.

4. NT college admission. We need to have this figured out before we take our England vacation, I think. We've been putting off thinking about his applying to college because it seems so complicated: He's a continuing-ed student since he's in his 30s and it's been awhile since high school, but also technically a transfer because he did complete a year in England, though we need to figure out how his UK credits translate into the U.S. education system, and whether he needs any kind of standardized tests. He's a conditional permanent U.S. resident but still a UK citizen, so we need to find out what types of student loans he's eligible for. He's lived in MN for over a year so hopefully in-state tuition applies, but we'll need to verify that as well. Oh, AND he wants to take regular undergrad classes but still work full-time, so we need to figure out whether he can handle a full course load or if he needs to go part-time. Whew...am I forgetting anything? So...yeah, that's going to be a full-time job just figuring out where to start, and making sure we ask all the right questions of all the right people at the university.

OK, now I can't remember if there was more on this list. Good thing I can edit this entry if I remember, because I want to keep all this in one place so I don't forget anything.

U.S. mortgage: $291 to principal
UK #1: $116
UK #2: $24
UK #3: $26
Total: $457 of principal

Which means $2,003 down, $897 to go on my February goal...

$3,257 to go on my Overall Ad Hoc Goal...

No progress on my Big-Picture goal, as it only concerns credit card and personal debt.

I just posted a GBP740 (about $1,480) payment to one of our UK credit cards, so as soon as it hits we'll breeze past our February goal and take a big chunk out of the other two. That will happen tomorrow or Wednesday!

$287 to principal.

$1,546 down, $1,354 to go on my February goal

$3,714 to go on my Overall Ad Hoc Goal

$66,789 to go on my Big Picture Goal

I will transfer a bunch of money to our UK account today or Monday, and once it goes through, I should be able to put enough toward a credit card to reach our February goal! Looks like I underestimated our February debt-paying potential, because of unexpectedly not owing the taxes we thought we would. Well, that just means I'll set a higher goal for March, since I'll be starting that challenge so early in February.

I have my budget projected through May 15, which is unusual for me because usually I only have it laid out for the next month and a half. But we're saving all our surplus money for our trip to England in May, and I wanted to keep an eye on that to make sure we'd be able to save up enough.

For the past few weeks, we've been about $150-$160 short on the bottom line of my budget. That didn't really bother me because I knew we could scrape that much together by May 15. We've got things to sell on eBay, and NT works overtime fairly frequently, and our change jar at home has at least $50 in it.

This week, even with two unexpected expenses (a healthcare bill for me and license renewal for AS), we are finally showing a positive on the bottom line. Granted it's a positive of $6.80, but still, woo hoo! AS's paycheck was $7 more than expected, NT had $100 worth of overtime, and I had a benefits correction that will equal $9 more per paycheck. When I added all of that to the budget, we came out on top for May 15!

Granted, there are a couple variables we don't have funds socked away for (that's an eventual goal but not an urgent one) such as health and education incidentals. But we also have positive variables like the change jar, the eBay items and NT's tendency to work overtime. So I think it will balance out and we'll be fine for England. And just think, if I hadn't checked my first 2008 paycheck carefully, I might not have noticed that $9 mistake and we'd still be behind on our budget as I write this!

$58--all to principal, as this card is 0% till May.

$1,259 down, $1,641 to go on my February goal.

$4,001 to go on my Overall Ad Hoc Goal.

$67,076 to go for my Big-Picture Goal.

Yee-haw!

Almost forgot about this one! It takes so long for payments to post on their crappy low-tech Web site that it's hard to remember to go back and check.

$53 paid to principal

$1201 down, $1699 to go in my February goal

$4059 to go on my Overall Ad Hoc Goal

No progress on my Big-Picture Goal

Awhile ago I mentioned NT getting a tax bill from the UK that came out to close to US$1150. NT thought it was a mistake, so he wrote a letter and sent documentation explaining it. Meanwhile I saved up the money and, because the bill would be due Jan. 31, transferred it along with my regular bill-covering transfer in early January.

NT used MLK Day, since it's not a UK holiday, to call the tax office in England. I was pleasantly surprised to hear they'd accepted his explanation, no money was due, and a letter was on its way across the pond confirming that!

Since the money was already in the account, I hastened to pay off one credit card we'd nearly gotten rid of and make a large payment to the next-highest-interest UK card. (I was tempted to pay off a really small-balance card, but its interest rate is way better so I did the sensible thing.)

All told, I knocked out US$1,148 of principal! And I get to add to my Old Debt Graveyard page.

February goal: $1,148 down, $1,752 to go.
Overall Ad Hoc Goal: $4,112 to go.
Big-Picture Goal: $67,134 to go.

OK, I'm setting my February goal high, but we've all seen small increases in our paychecks so I think we can make it. I want to pay off $2,900 in principal by the end of February. I just realized it's a leap year and February is 29 days long, so it seems an even more fitting goal. I'm starting now, so it's not really $100 per day, but I like the way that sounds. :-)

Ugh, I've been sick and haven't felt like posting, but I finally feel a little better. Checked my personal loan account and my payment posted. $403 went to principal, which means I met my January goal!

Goal: $1575
Results: $1592

$5,260 to go on my overal Ad Hoc Goal

$68,282 on my Big-Picture Goal

I have a full day of work ahead of me but I wanted to post because my UK credit card payment posted! The nice exchange rate allowed me to put GBP 500, or US$1,000, toward principal! So that's $1189 down, $386 to go on my January goal.

$5,663 go to in my overall Ad Hoc Goal.

$68,685 to go in my Big-Picture Goal.

Hooray!

I hate how finances sometimes feel like gambling. We have an ARM that will increase in November. Right now it's at 5.00%. AS just let me know that rates for a 30-year fixed just dipped below 6%. Should I refi right now? It'll slow down my other debt repayment and I'll take on a bit more debt, because I don't have anything saved for fees.

Will the fees go even lower or start to climb back up? Would it be better to wait, even if it costs me, so I'm better prepared for the added expense? I wish I had a crystal ball...

I'm in a really good mood today. First off, I got a new cubicle at work. I had my eye on one that had been empty for over a year, and I finally thought to ask my boss if I could move into it. She set it up right away. Now I have a bigger space, two real walls (it's in a corner), and a desk that faces the doorway, so people don't come up behind me anymore (I hate that feeling).

Also, I did a big international wire transfer: I had to put money into the UK account to cover this tax payment we might have to make, plus I'd saved up two of my regular monthly deposits so I'd only have to pay one fee, plus I wanted to deposit some extra to put toward credit card principal. I confirmed this morning what I was surprised to see last night online: The dollar is doing much better against the pound! I deposited $3200 and actually got GBP 1580! I was expecting more like GBP 1490, so I'm really happy. That extra 90 pounds is going straight to credit card principal. I'll have almost paid off one of the cards, and next month it's a goner--along with another that has a really small balance. Next month I'll get to add to my Old Debt Graveyard--woo hoo!

I need something I can access both at work and at home because I do my budget updates and adjustments whenever I can fit them in. I've been using saved draft emails in my Yahoo account. It was free, and I could access it anywhere there was Internet access. The drawbacks were that I had to do all my calculations myself, creating more room for error, and that Yahoo occasionally freaked out when I tried to save things. The last time it messed up one of my documents, I got fed up. AS told me about my new favorite online tool...

Google documents! It's great--you log in from the Google home page and you can upload or create Word docs or Excel spreadsheets. I opted to change all my draft-email documents into spreadsheets so the program would do my math for me from now on. It didn't take long to figure out how to do that. Everything's so much easier to read, too, since I can use different cells, boldface, colors and text alignment to enhance readability. I'm sure I'll have to iron out some kinks someday, but the first day on it has been wonderful.

I recommend it if someone's just trying to track simple things, like budgeting a month out--that's the main thing I track: income in and expenses out for about a month and a half in advance. I also have separate spreadsheets for tracking total household debt broken out by individual debt, short-term (fun money) savings, and a generic monthly budget that lists paychecks, bills and allotted money and shows what should be left over in a perfect world.

A whopping $8 in principal! :-)

$189 down, $1386 to go in my January goal.

$6,663 to go in my overall Ad Hoc Goal.

$69,685 to go in my Big-Picture Goal.

$286 to principal. I've finally made up for the dent my dishwasher caused, and so it's $181 down, $1394 to go in my January goal.

And $69,693 left in credit card/personal loan debt.

If anyone in Minneapolis or St. Paul is reading this, you should join this community fitness program. It runs January through May and is basically a place to track your exercise online and try to get healthier.

The perks aren't huge, but right now registration is free, and they will send you a coupon book for healthy activities, invitations to a couple events, I think chances to win prizes, and e-mails with health ideas.

Last year I headed a six-person team, but that got tiresome trying to herd my friends into giving me their stats each week. So this year it's just a three-person team of me, AS and NT.

UK credit card: $272 in principal
US mortgage: $289
UK mortgage1: $110
UK mortgage2: $24
UK mortgage2: $24
Total: $719

$1680 to go in my January goal.

I should probably add something to my control bar about my goal to pay off all personal/credit card debt in 2 years. I'll go do that now!

I never really took New Year's resolutions too seriously; I knew I was the type of person who has really good, exciting, creative ideas that I never followed through on. But since NT has joined the household, AS and I find that his organization has spilled over into our lives as well. Instead of putting things off, we face them head-on.

So now I see the New Year not as a time to make lame resolutions I won't keep, but an opportunity to clarify and define some goals that I've been thinking about for some time. And this blog will help me return to them from time to time and assess my progress.

My progress in '07 has been amazing to me. I finally stopped leaving leaks and loopholes for my money to escape through, and took control of it all. Beginning in March I weaned my household off credit. The only purchases not made with cash were completely planned, with plans on how to pay them off. Since July, when I started tracking this, our total debt has gone down more than $14,000.

A final note before I stop stalling and make with the goals: Some of these are going to be two-year or lifetime goals. Most of the things I've been thinking about lately are long-term goals, things that used to frighten and intimidate me, but now I see as very do-able in the long run.

1. Become personal-debt-free within two years. That's right, by Dec. 31, 2009, I want to see my nearly $70,000 of credit card and personal debt go pffft! Not sure how I'm going to do this just yet, so I'm going to start by paying the crap out of things, snowballing debt, and seeing where that gets me.

2. Look seriously at what it takes, character-wise and money-wise, to become a mom. I am 33 and almost (not quite) to a place where I want to have kids more than anything. This is a very new feeling for me, so I want to go slow, do lots of research, talk to some moms, talk to my doctor, and by, say, mid-2009, know whether this is the way I for sure want to go, and (if so) when.

Wow, putting that onscreen was rather intense! :-) Now for some "easy" ones:

3. Continue to work out almost 5 times a week. Been doing pretty well since September, taking a break for the holidays, want to come back strong Jan. 2 and continue, hopefully for the rest of my life. :-)

4. Grow my second balcony garden, and try for bell peppers this time!

5. Complete my debt-repayment "Ad Hoc goal" by 3/31/08 (see sidebar for info).

This is everything I've been planning anyway, but it feels good to write them all down.

$58 to a credit card.

$2399 to go for January!

Student loan: $55 to principal
UK CC: $13 to principal

Need to pay $2457 more to reach my Jan. goal.

As predicted, the dishwasher I felt was the best value overall came to $950 with installation, haul-away, 5-year warranty etc. Soo, that's on a Sears card with no interest or payments for awhile. I'll leave it there and concentrate on other debts, then pay that one off before it starts costing me interest.

That means I'm $950 behind on my January goal, as expected. So to pay off $1575 of debt by Jan. 31, I actually need to pay off $2525 in principal. Should be manageable since that's what I generally do each month.

On the upside, spanking new dishwasher, and no worries about repairs or replacement for five years! They'll even come and give it a free cleaning and general tune-up once a year.

Also, it's ENERGY STAR-certified. Is there a tax break for that? I'll have to look into it.

NT's pensions: 7,250 pounds ($14,500)
10,725 pounds ($21,450)
NT's 401(k): $359
AS's 403(b): $2,395
CJ's 401(k): $25,591
NT's flat: 130,000 pounds ($260,000)
CJ & AS's condo: $185,000
Total Assets: $509,295

Total Debt: $444,987

Current Estimated Net Worth: $64,308

11/19 estimate: $60,936
Change in net worth: +$3,372

Note: House value estimates are conservative, and retirement totals don't include amounts currently unvested.

1. Don't be in such a hurry.

When my girlfriend's education financing fell through due to various issues, I stumbled bravely into the fray wielding my meager credit history and no idea about finances. I took out unsecured personal loans and borrowed money against my credit cards. I was so afraid that if she couldn't go back to school in the fall, she'd never be able to. In retrospect, I should have asked her to take a job and save money for a year while we looked at our options. Those well-intentioned debts were the first few shovelfuls of the huge hole we dug ourselves into. When you're 24 and in love, take a few deep breaths before getting into something you don't understand, moneywise anyway.

2. Be moderate and reasonable, and do what you can.

This goes in two directions: Of course one was buying things I couldn't really afford, but in the other direction, I would get into really stingy periods where I tried desperately to get out of debt by cutting out all pleasures and even some basic necessities. This would lead to getting fed up from no fun and not enough progress, and making some wild splurges that would erase my progress so that I felt I had to go into extreme privation again. I think it was similar to the battle some face with food and their weight, only mine was with money. Had I tried going steadily, only paying off a little debt or even just aiming to break even at times, I think I would have gone into less debt overall.

3. Savers aren't all Scrooges, and a frugal life doesn't have to be miserable.

The two main people who talked about money were co-workers of mine. One was dead-set on getting debt-free, the other was debt-free and dead-set on saving money. Unfortunately, they were both grim girls who constantly (and vocally) resented that they didn't make more money. They were ungenerous of spirit as well as money, so I came to think the two went hand in hand. They made being frugal seem to me like a grim death-march, so it seemed a worse fate than being in debt. Had I known that frugal people could be upbeat and even fun, I might have tried harder. In other words, one of the main things I wish I'd known when I was in my twenties was the community of savingadvice.com (or MisersMisersMisers.com, as my girlfriend affectionately calls it)!

OK, I've decided to make my goal this month $950 less than usual, since that's how much my dishwasher might be [gulp!] with installation, tax and 5-year warranty. If I decide I can afford the one I really want.

So my January 2008 goal is to pay off $1575 in principal. BUT, to make sure I don't go off track for my overall goal, I'll be increasing my February and March goals. I would need to pay in a minimum of $2700 in each month to reach my goal by 3/31. I may make it a bit more aggressive than that if it looks like I can handle more. I'll cross that bridge when it's closer to February and I know more about our '08 net pay.

A UK credit card payment posted--$194 went to principal, which means I reached my December goal!

Goal: $2525
Results: $2571!

I will wait a bit before posting my January goal--have to figure out how much this dishwasher's going to set me back!

PS: I just realized this marks the sixth month that I have set an aggressive debt-repayment goal and met it!

Personal loan payment hit: $432 toward principal. So that's $2377 down, $148 to go to reach my December payoff goal.

I'm pretty sure some other automatic payments have posted by now, so I may have hit my goal. I'm about to go through the UK accounts and see.

Since I'll probably buy a new dishwasher on credit next month, my January goal may have to be more conservative than usual--even though I have a plan to pay off the dishwasher, I do have to add it to my total debt until I do so. Probably what I'll do is figure out what extra I need to pay on the other months to make sure I reach my overall ad hoc goal of paying off $19,520 by the end of March. Better to make extra payments on those interest-charging debts while the dishwasher is sitting on a no-interest card!

...in a recent post when I said I'd never buy anything on credit again. Well, I didn't lie but I was wrong.

Our dishwasher is seriously on its last legs; it barely even pretends to wash the dishes anymore. I figured out I'd be able to afford a really nice one by July. Then I went to sears.com and saw that I could get one now, with free shipping and some other perks, if I used a Sears card--and that there would be no payments or interest for a year.

That seems good--we could have it now and pay it off before it starts gathering interest. I went back and forth mentally--am I ready to do this sort of thing, when I'm a recovering credit addict? I decided it's safe because it will really bug me till it's paid off--I won't let it slow me down. And we do need a good dishwasher--we all work full-time, cook nearly every meal at home, entertain at home a lot to save money, so the time and manpower savings of a dishwasher are such a help.

I've also decided to go ahead and shoot for getting rid of all consumer debt in two years--Dec. 31, 2009, to be exact. I haven't worked out the specifics, so for the time being I'm just going to keep at my current pace, but starting in January I'm going to throw money at it as fast as I can!

Things have been going so well recently debtwise that I'm really itching to start investing and saving. I know I will probably have some expensive life changes in the next 10 years (possibly moving to England, possibly trying to have kids), and currently I have nothing in savings. My only "investments" are our two homes (neither of which are near paid for) and our various retirement funds.

I honestly never thought about saving for the long-term because I couldn't even imagine how I was going to get past all my debt. But now there's a greater income flow and my new disciplined approach to budgeting--the future is getting slightly brighter.

When I look at my debt, while I want to eventually get rid of the mortgages and student loans, what really bugs me is the consumer and personal debt. To date, that totals about $63K. Plus $7K that I still owe my dad for the down payment on my condo. (I think I'm going to move that to the "personal" category instead of the "home" category, because I want it to bug me more so I'll pay it off.)

If I keep to my current repayment plan, I should be able to pay all that off in a little less than three years. But part of me wants to push myself even more. We're expecting some pay increases; credit card monthly bills will go down gradually; expenses shouldn't increase much at all the next couple years. I'm wondering if I can make a goal to get rid of all consumer and personal debt in two years instead of three.

That would mean coming up with, on average, $900 more per month to put toward principal. Clearly I won't have that much even with pay raises, but I wonder if, by snowballing payments, I could actually do it.

I don't want to commit myself to the goal if I'm bound to fail, but I suppose even if I got closer as a result of trying it would be an accomplishment.

Still waffling...