One of AS's student loans hit, with $76 going to principal. I also tallied her student loan debt and realized she is only $451 away from getting it under $30,000. Nice! I like symbolic turning points.

$1017 down, $583 to go on June's debt goal. I should wipe that out in the next day or two, since my regular personal loan payment will be nearly all principal thanks to my two snowflake payments this month. But if not, AS has another student loan payment near the end of the month that will tip us over the edge.

...it's hard to fend off! I feel like I'm writing way too many blog posts, but I'm just so full of energy lately. My chronic condition is nearly healed up and hopefully going away for good, and so I just feel more energized than I have since early March!

Anyway, the "bug" that's got into me is the debt payoff bug. I made a very sensible decision, I thought, to stop accelerating debt payments and start saving up money, and with AS's layoff and my and NT's furloughs, and no real job security in the near future, it still is the sensible thing to do.

But but but...if I'm able to transfer $2000 of my higher-interest personal loan balance to a lower-interest student loan debt, which won't come fully due until 2012, I'll be able to bring my personal loan balance to about $7817 by the end of the month.

After that, with regular payments and by adding $200 toward principal each month, I could have that paid off in 10 months. Thus eliminating my highest-interest debt, and thus freeing up $623 per month in the budget.

I was staring at that potential new balance, $7817, when a new thought struck me. I'd just been marveling over my new ability to squirrel money away, here and there, in little bits, for various future (potential and real) needs. I suddenly thought, I wonder how much I've really got, here in the U.S.? Because some I keep in savings, and some I keep in checking, and I think of it as separate little sums, not as a great big lump of money.

So I added it up. Wanna see? In checking, I've got (or will have by Monday, when payday hits):
$784.60 AS medical fund
$390.50 CJ/NT medical fund
$80 for future (Feb.) home insurance bill
$21 for future (Sept.) bus pass
$100 for future (July/Aug.) student loan interest payment
$725 for savings ($100 for EF, rest to vacation)

And in savings, I have:
$1,900.00 for vacation
$112.71 for home improvement
$2,954.39 for emergency/baby fund
$210.41 for NT textbooks
$240.00 for AS retirement (to be rolled into CD eventually.

That's $7518.61! Less than $300 short of what I'd need to pay off the personal loan next month.

If that were paid off, I'd have the $623 that used to go to that bill, plus $852 that goes to savings every month, for a total of $1475 per month. If I put that toward making up all the above totals, it would take me about 5 months.

Of course, then it would be December, and I wouldn't have Xmas gift money saved up because all the savings would be going to make up lost ground. And if another of us lost our job or got more furlough, we wouldn't be able to make it up nearly that fast. We would be left without a safety net for a couple months while we rebuilt savings, medical funds and future bill funds.

So I know it's probably not a good idea to totally drain my savings and start over. But still, would you be tempted to throw caution to the wind once the loan balance got down to that level and it was possible to get rid of it in one fell swoop?

I have to say, it's really exhilerating paying extra on my debt again, even if it is little dribs and drabs! I'm sketching out several ideas for possibly bringing in a little side money and putting that toward the debt as well. I'll elaborate in further posts as I start to figure out what I'm doing.

Anyway, the money from the change jar hit the personal loan today. $74 went to principal (almost all of it, since the last payment paid all the interest that had accumulated). So $941 down, $659 to go on the June debt goal.

So I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 2.5 months. I initially paid $241.63 to get us set up with phones and minutes.

Our cellphone bill, for three phones on a family plan, used to range from $80-$95, depending on texts, calls to 411, etc. Usually it was close to $85. My goal is to get my average cost below that, preferably to $50 per month.

NT's phone is with Net10, and he started with 60 days of service. So we had to buy more minutes for him in late May, at $32.65 for 300 minutes and another 60 days of service. (He hadn't used up his previous 300, but they roll over as long as you re-up in time.)

So our total cost so far is $274.28. AS will probably need more minutes soon; a few calls with her incessantly talky mom has drained her 1000 minutes much faster than we planned. I'm trying to get her to use Skype, a computer-based calling function that costs next to nothing to use. But it's malfunctioned once or twice, and then her mom flips out when she talks about using it, like trying to cut back on phone costs means we're in the poorhouse or something. (Her mom is one of those chaotic financial people, so we don't worry about her opinion, but she can be very forceful about her flipouts, so AS sort of has to manage her.)

So far, if I divide our total cost by 2.5, our new plan has cost us $109.71 per month. However, if AS can rein in her mom, we have a good chance of gradually getting that average down. I've barely used any of my 1000 minutes and I don't need to re-up until March of next year unless I run out of minutes before then.

We'd decided to keep NT's T-Mobile phone when we switched him to Net10; AS and I are both on T-Mobile prepaid, and I worried about a phone breaking (since we can't just trade it in and get a free one in exchange for signing another multiyear contract, which is what we'd do in the past). Really glad I did that, because AS's phone stopped working the other day, and she was able to transfer her SIM card into NT's old T-Mobile phone and keep going. Now, of course, we have to worry about what happens if that one, or my phone, breaks, but hopefully we've bought ourselves some time.

Hmmm...I should look into selling AS's broken phone. I could probably get a buck or two.

I sent the money that was set aside for NT's bus pass to the personal loan, because his student loan will cover the bus pass. $20 went to principal,making it $867 down, $733 to go on the June debt goal.

I've decided to shift my strategy slightly again, putting extra income toward this loan instead of the EF or the vacation fund. I may have an opportunity to use student loan money to pay it down about $2000, and that has helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have an informal goal to pay the loan off by the end of the year, which I don't think will happen, but it doesn't hurt to strive for it.

Whenever I do pay it off, it will be an extremely exciting addition to the Old Debt Graveyard!

We got together as a family last night and decided where we were going to cut money to make up for my five days of furlough. It was nice to share the responsibility rather than just say "OK, now you can't have this or this for a while." We decided to cut $100 from the monthly grocery budget for five months, and to shave $100 off the Wisconsin vacation budget, and I'm just scraping the other $42 off future emergency fund savings.

I still wanted to make my savings goal symbolically, so I'm taking $100 of what I would be saving in June for the vacation and putting it in the EF, and reducing future EF contributions by an extra $100, so it comes out the same. Just a way of tweaking it in my mind so I don't miss my June savings goal.

We also counted the spare-change jar and found it had over $70 in it! We decided to throw that at the 8.99% personal loan, because once we get rid of that we'll free up over $600 per month. It might happen sooner than I thought, because it looks like NT got $2000 too much financial aid this school year, and if that's the case I'll put that money toward the personal loan rather than paying down his lower-interest student loan.

While I was on the subject of trying to get rid of that loan, I brought up that I want to put $200 less toward savings each month and put it toward extra principal payments on that loan instead, and they agreed. I don't know if we can knock this loan out before the end of the year, but if I put all extra windfalls toward it, it's a remote possibility!

It's very very hard, with planning for a child and all these attritions to our income, to decide whether to put extra money toward debt or savings. I'll probably waffle back and forth every few months as different priorities weigh on my mind in different ways.

Now my job's getting in on the action...I've dodged three rounds of layoffs in the past two years, but there's no dodging companywide furloughs. We each must take 5 days of unpaid leave.

As with NT's job, my company is spreading it out to try and cause as little pain as possible. We're losing July 2, Sept. 4, Oct. 9, Nov. 25 and Dec. 23. They're all near holidays, so they'll result in four-day weekends in most cases, which is the nicest possible way to get furloughed, I must say!

I estimate that my weekly take-home is about $642, so that's how much we must weed out of our budget. We can do it gradually over the course of the year, so assuming this is the last of it, it's not that bad.

Two of the dates listed are ones that NT must take furlough on, so that increases days off together. Well, one of them I was going to take off, but now I can't take PTO for it, so that does give me one more day of PTO that I can take somewhere else.

Also, progress on my creative goal: I made a bit of "crop art" yesterday! I wanted a simple but interesting design, so I picked the logo that President Obama used during his campaign. I think it turned out OK, but there were spaces between the little grains in some places that were hard to fill in. I'll have to look around online and see how most people handle it. I tried putting tiny drops of glue and tiny bits of grain in, but sometimes the glue drops were too big for the tiny spaces and overwhelmed them. Anyway, I owe photos of dinner for like a month, so at some point hopefully I'll also post pics of my "art."

Oh and anyone who likes my dinner pics, I have been taking photos faithfully, but as I get further and further behind on posting them, I put it off more and more. LOL. But I feel I'll get a burst of energy one of these days and do it.

I put $75 into savings for our vacation, so that makes $715 saved, $725 to go for my June goals.

We've been looking over our options for the Wisconsin vacay, and NT is pretty confident we'll come in way under $3000 for our total spending. I'll still hold that money and if we don't use in in WI, we can put it somewhere else. Debt repayment, future vacations (NT does want to get back to England maye next year), summer fun (state fair or RenFest)...we won't have to decide until September, when the vacation's over and we see how much (if any) is left over.

The U.S. mortgage hit, as well as my credit card payment. (Whoa! I almost wrote "one of my credit cards" and then realized I only have a balance on one card and have done for a very long time. Crazy flashback!)

Mortgage: $278 to principal
Credit card: $209 to principal
Total: $487

That makes $847 down, $753 to go on the June goal. Unfortunately, that's all the progress we'll be making until the next paycheck period (the 15th). On debt, at least. I hope to make progress on the other goals before then!

Ahh, the first of the month. This is when most of the action on my budget happens these days.

So NT's three mortgage payments hit: $252, $52 and $56 to principal. $360 down, $1240 to go on my June debt-repayment goal.

Since those are his only bills taken out of the UK account, I transferred the remaining money from his checking into his savings, to be held for the baby/emergency fund. I transferred 260 pounds, or US$520 in my calculations.

And I transferred $120 from my checking to my savings for AS's retirement. I'm putting aside a little each month, and when her CD comes up, we'll roll that as well as what I've saved into another CD or a Roth IRA.

So that's $640 down, $800 to go for my June savings goal.

Time to do my June goals. I feel kind of like I'm improvising, because I've thought a little about them but nothing very organized. OK, here goes.

1. Debt: Pay off at least $1600 of debt. Glancing at my minimum payments this month, this seems like where I will get. If I use the bus-pass money I set aside, I may be able to exceed, but not by much (it's only $84).

2. Savings: Save at least $1440. I'm going to be able to put $520 to the emergency fund (via NT's UK account), $120 aside for AS's retirement, and $800 to the Wisconsin vacation (thus fully funding it to $3000).

3. Fitness: Try out my new personal-trainer Wii game. I didn't accomplish this last month, and my health issues continue, but I'm trying to have a more upbeat attitude and not let it get me down, so hopefully I can achieve this.

4. Environmentalism: free month. We're continuing our current green activities and haven't fallen down on any of them, and I don't have any new initiatives in mind, so there's no specific green goal this month.

5. Creative/crafts: Start that crop art experiment! I almost started this weekend, but I just ran out of time. I think I'll be able to do it this month.

6. Philanthropy: Hold a vegan bake sale and raise money for a charity. This one's a big maybe; I'll need help to pull it off. But my favorite cookbook author, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, is encouraging fans to hold vegan bake sales sometime in the week of June 20-28, to both raise awareness of the possibilities of delicious vegan cooking and raise money for a favorite cause. If I pull this off, the cause I raise money for may depend on what establishment lets me set up a table on their sidewalk; I've got several in mind, from the anarchist/punk/activist bookstore Arise! to the Twin Cities Green environmental boutique to Urbanimal (a pet supply store) and so on. I think I have favorite causes in common with these and other businesses, so we'll see what I can come up with.

Wow, May flew by! Progress on my goals was a mixed bag. Things that were already pretty much automatic, like paying debt, adding to savings and donating to charity, went off without a hitch. But where I needed more focus and effort, I fell down in some other areas.

I did have a last-minute burst of creative energy this weekend and put together two necklaces! I took some photos but didn't bring them with me to work; perhaps I'll add a pic when I get home tonight.

Anyway, below is a review of my goals and whether or not I succeeded:

1. Debt: Pay off at least $1400 of debt.
Progress: DONE! $1438 down
Balance as of 5/29: $397,383
Goal balance: $397,421

2. Savings: Save at least $1700 ($120 for AS's retirement, $1500 for the Wisconsin vacation, and $80 for the baby/emergency fund).
Progress: DONE! $1740 saved

3. Fitness: Try out (and hopefully continue to use) my new personal-trainer Wii game. Progress: none.

4. Environmentalism: Replace leaky shower head and faucet with low-flow system. (Possibly attend condo board meeting for eventual suggesting of composting.) Progress: NT installed shower head; still need to address leaking.

5. Creative/crafts: Make necklaces with the beads and supplies I bought last month. Do some practice crop art!
Progress: Bead necklaces done.

6. Philanthropy: Donate money to hospital charity.
Progress: DONE! $25 donated to cancer research.

AS's other student loan hit, with $53 going to principal. That makes $1438, just exceeding my goal of $1400.

Last night I was talking to my family about how lots of people on these blogs are having spending urges at the same time, and I admitted I'm having them too. Maybe because I'm on the cleansing diet, maybe it's the warm weather, but I've been having cravings to just throw in the kitchen towel and have a week of going out to happy hour and dinner every day. I won't, but I want to sometimes.

I was saying that maybe the next infusion of cash could just go to us, for spending, even though I'd been planning that if we got more money from somewhere, it'd go to debt or savings.

AS basically said, "I like spending as much as the next guy, but I really wouldn't mind if the money went to debt--we do want to get rid of that loan that costs us $600 a month as soon as possible." Aww, I was so proud! She actually listens, and reads the blog, and processes the information! I always assume that they leave all this to me and don't really care, so I'm always excited when I get some feedback like that.

Just had to share. Now on to the pile of work that was waiting for me this morning.

One of AS's student loans hit, with $118 going to principal. $1385 down, just $15 to go. So close! Another AS student loan should hit by Friday and bring us over the top.

I'm on the second day of my mini-cleanse; I'm trying to follow a high-fiber, low-spice, no-processed-foods, no citrus or tomato (yikes!), no-caffeine diet for a week and a half, hoping this will help expedite healing of my chronic condition. Yesterday I had a headache that I attributed to caffeine withdrawal. Last night and today I have more of an all-over body ache (including my head). Is this caffeine withdrawal or something else? I guess I'll know tomorrow depending on whether it goes away or gets worse. I feel rather depressed too, but I'm hoping that's just a result of feeling so weak and achy all over.

Anyway, having friends over tonight, so hopefully that will cheer me up!

I almost didn't post this, but people have been posting about finding pennies, so I feel it's OK to after all!

NT's quarterly student loan payment hit. We have to pay interest on all his loans (I guess because he's a mature student? Not sure) even though he's still in school.

Anyway, I guess they overshot the interest due, because about 50 cents went toward principal. That brought the loan to where I would round down instead of up to the next dollar, so in my official calculations $1 went toward principal. LOL.

$1267 down, $133 to go on the May debt goal.

Today I was able to put $1000 into the vacation fund, so that means I've saved $1740, surpassing my goal of $1700 for this month! As long as we don't have any more bad job news for the next month, I should fully fund the vacation in June. I'm aiming for $3000, but if we do have to scale back, I know we'll still have a good time.

If anyone's been wondering what happened to 365 Days of Dinner, don't worry--I've been taking pictures every night, but I haven't felt like getting them all uploaded here and writing about them, and the more that build up the more I avoid it. LOL! But I have a surprise vacation day tomorrow (yay!), so I'll probably get them all uploaded (or at least get a start and upload a week or so).

I'm considering going on a cleansing diet for a week or two, if my chronic ailment doesn't go away this weekend--it felt like it was getting better for a few days but then it felt a little worse today. I'm thinking going extra-healthy on my food couldn't be a bad thing, so I may try that in addition to my current treatments if it doesn't get better soon. I don't want to drag AS and NT into what will be a pretty boring diet, so we may end up having TWO photos for each night of dinner. Even more incentive to get caught up before then, so I don't get buried in photos!

Another goal was met, though I deserve no credit for it; we bought a variable-speed shower head and NT installed it. It works great and I highly recommend it; it just lets you lower the water pressure while you're lathering up, and then you turn it back to full strength to rinse. We still need to fix the leaky faucet and the thing that turns it on, but that may take more know-how than NT has, so we'll see. These aren't really money-saving for me as our utilities are part of the condo association dues, but our main goal is being more environmentally friendly.

NT's work won't meet the necessary profit margin in May, so there will definitely be 10 days of furlough. (If I understand the e-mail he sent me, higher-up employees just have to take temporary pay cuts, so they don't get the days off to go with the lost wages. I count NT lucky then!)

Two weeks' lost wages is about equal to $1232 net. (It will probably be a slightly smaller loss than that, net, because they'll withhold slightly less taxes.) So we're cutting $400 of discretionary spending and the remaining $832 or so I'll siphon from what we would be saving for the EF.

No word on furloughs or layoffs at my job so far; fingers crossed.

I've actually been pondering what to do with some PTO days I have that I won't need for our summer vacation; now I've decided to take them on some of NT's furlough days. His company is having everyone take off Thursday July 2 and every Friday from July 10 to Sept. 4. It's actually the most pleasant way to do furloughs, if you have to have them! So I'll give myself several three-day weekends this summer, and get to spend them with NT and hopefully AS.

AS has decided to start applying for jobs again, while still trying to build her sewing business. She thinks in this crunch time, if she could find a job, we'd be a lot better off. The sewing business could be viable, we all believe, but it will build slowly as clientele and word-of-mouth do, and as she starts to develop a product line for an online store. So she's going to keep regular employment an option by applying for jobs in the meantime.

If she does get a job, she'll still be able to work on sewing, just not as much, so in that case she would focus more on the designing and production of original clothing rather than the piecework that's currently her main source of income (besides unemployment compensation).

It's a confusing time, and a confusing situation to be in, so I won't be surprised if there's some going back and forth and changes of heart along the way, but some great-sounding job opportunities opened up recently and I think that's what swayed her toward applying again (and I think my frustration at paying the minimum on debt is rubbing off as well, though I didn't want it to).

I'm still marveling at how much money we spent this weekend--but it was all planned and budgeted for, so I don't feel bad about any of it.

First we rented a car--$100 (we budget for 1 car rental per month). Then we went to a bunch of yard sales--about $60 of our personal spending money (though some was materials for AS's sewing business, so that will get deducted from that account). After that we ran around to a few stores--$320 for groceries (we took advantage of the car and really stocked up)--we used up most of our household budget for May, but we won't need very much for the next couple weeks, and in June our CSA starts delivering fresh produce, so our grocery bills will get much smaller for the rest of the summer and fall. Then to a sushi restaurant--$100 of our spending money. Sunday we went to a few stores and bought about $200 of home improvement things, which we still had money set aside for--we got paint, storage containers, a stepstool and a low-flow shower head among other things. All told, we spend almost $800 in two days--wow!

What's just as remarkable as our spending that much is the fact that we had the money in the bank and in hand. There were many times in my life when a weekend like this would have been a guilty splurge, with me taking a deep breath and blindly waving a credit card everywhere we went.

The next few weeks should be cheap but equally fun. We don't have any more big spending planned for a while.

One of AS's student loans, with $79 to principal. $1266 down, $134 to go on my May goal.

Ugh, paying the minimums on everything is so depressing. I found out today that NT's bus pass for summer semester may be covered by surplus student loan money in his account. If so, I'm going to put that $84 I saved up into an extra payment on my personal loan.

I may also pay extra on the personal loan in June or July, if my savings goals look on track. When that loan is gone, it will free up over $600 per month. Unfortunately I still owe more than $10K on it, so it's not going away anytime soon. I was going to just pay the minimum on it, but it's driving me crazy, so I may rework my budget to try and find some extra money to throw at it.

OK, must stop rambling obsessively and get back to work! (I actually have work to do today, which is encouraging!)

My personal loan payment hit--$544 went to principal. That's $1187 down, $213 to go on my May goal.

Google must have heard me complimenting it in my last few blog entries, because it won't come up (first time in memory) and I can't access my beloved spreadsheets to update them with this info. Grr...

I've been doing terribly on my goals this month, other than the easy, automatic ones. I've had a chronic, not dangerous but really distracting and demoralizing condition since early March, and recently I've just sort of hit a wall where I don't feel like doing anything above the minimum required of me (go to work, cook dinner, etc.) until I get better. Consequently I haven't felt like being outgoing (going to board meeting), or energetic (trying out my workout game), or creative (doing my art projects). Month is only half over, so if I have a stunning recovery, we'll see.

We've been renting a car once a month (starting last month), and it's been really fun! We run errands, go places we normally couldn't, visit friends with a 15-minute drive vs. hourlong bus ride. This weekend we're renting one and plan to go yardsaling and running errands Saturday, then to a party on Sunday.

It's been dead slow for me at work for about two weeks. This past Tuesday I had 0 billable time. I'm trying not to worry, but I just overheard the woman in the office across from me talking on the phone about rumblings of something coming down the pipeline, perhaps furloughs? If I get furloughs and NT gets furloughs, I wonder if we're going to have to cut more spending than previously thought. Well, better than layoffs! I hope it's just furloughs, if it's anything more than baseless gossip...

I put $500 into vacation savings, and (unexpectedly) NT sold a textbook for $30 and I put that in the textbook savings fund. (We're trying to break even on textbooks from now on and not spend any new money, just the money we make from reselling.)

$740 down, $960 to go on my savings goal!

Actually, this tool's name is now a misnomer, I realize. It's just a savings worksheet.

I keep all my savings in one account and use this worksheet to remember what amounts are earmarked for which purposes. If I have a goal date, I note that on the spreadsheet.



I opened a savings account that's linked to my checking account; it has no minimum balance and makes it easy to transfer funds in and out of my checking account. Initially this was going to be for saving up money for various wants. Now that I've started an emergency fund, and started saving for AS's retirement since she has no job-sponsored plan, the account serves many purposes.

We also started having a surplus in the UK account this month, so I'm going to track that savings account and add it to the emergency-fund amount. It is accessible if an emergency does come up; it will just take a bit more effort to get to it.

That's the last of the personal finance tools I use all the time and consider essential. I've started spreadsheets to plan and track saving and spending for a specific vacation or project, and I have a spreadsheet where I'm going to track our individual net worth. Basically, any part of your financial life that you want more control over, an Excel spreadsheet can help you do that.

And I highly recommend putting them all in Google docs, because you can access them from anywhere, you don't have to worry about your hard drive breaking and losing everything, and it's a completely free method, unlike some budgeting software. Sure, you have to enter all the info yourself, but I feel like that makes me more involved in the day-to-day activity of my money, so I think it's a good thing.

My Bills and Budget spreadsheet is the master budget--what my budget is going to look like each month.



Every month or so, when I've deleted a bunch of things from my Number Crunch worksheet and it's only looking about two months into the future, I copy and paste the items from this spreadsheet into the bottom of the Number Crunch and adjust the dates to match when they'll actually hit for that next month.

(That does bring up an interesting point--I don't track spending each month the way a lot of people here do--I don't keep track of what's spent and look back over past months. When something occurs in my checking account, I delete it from the Number Crunch. It's worked out really well for me, so I can't see adding more work just to satisfy my curiosity as to how much I actually spend versus what I think I'm going to--the adjustments I make to the budget are very slight anyway, usually just increasing my savings when we get more income than expected.)

As with other spreadsheets, I've tinkered around with Bills and Budget and added a few things. Initially, it just looked like this:



Then I got interested in how my budget broke out percentagewise for general spending areas, so I came up with this gadget:



I also have a separate calculation of what the take-home pay amount is, to make sure that the above widget is up-to-date (since I have to change the formulas anytime I add or subtract a line item). I also made a note to myself of what NT's weekly take-home averages out to. That's just so I can quickly refer to it if he gets furloughed and I need to make cutbacks to discretionary spending.

This spreadsheet is a big obsession with me. When I've paid a big chunk of debt I gaze with pleasure at the diminished numbers (and number of debts) on it; some days when I feel like we're not making enough progress, I stare at the numbers despairingly as if willing them to shrink under my gaze. (Hasn't worked yet, unfortunately.) It's a snapshot of our current debt. First I'll show you the whole craziness, and then I'll break it out into closeups of the various components. (I tinker around a lot with this one, as you'll see.)



The most important part, which was the only info originally intended, is the debt amount, broken out by category and by lender:



Then I have all these other bits of information I've wanted to know over the years and have added on: the minimum payment I need to make on each one, the minimum amount of principal that gets paid off each month, years and months it will take me to pay each off (plus how long it would take to pay off the total, at the current minimum pace plus if I paid $1000 extra or $2000 extra per month--wishful thinking right now), interest rates, and what month and year it would be paid off under various scenarios.



Then I added this widget a few months ago, which uses the total minimum payment and the total minimum principal to do a little calculation of what percentage of the money goes to interest and fees instead of principal:



I feel a little weird posting this because probably not even my family knows just how much I tinker with our finances. When I have slow days at work and not much actual stuff happening with the finances, these are the kinds of things I end up doing sometimes.

I know I've posted shots of my budgeting spreadsheets before, but it's been awhile, and plus I occasionally add new little widgets to calculate the minutiae of various aspects of my personal finances. I thought it might be somewhat interesting and perhaps even helpful to repost all of my most-used spreadsheets and talk about them a little bit.

This is my most crucial budgeting tool, my Number Crunch worksheet. It's a real-time snapshot of where my checking account is, and where it will be as each expense comes through.





I start with the current balance, then add in the pending authorizations and show the available balance. The first few items (the ones without dates) are sort of like envelopes--expenses that are coming up but I'm not sure when; deposits I need to put in for spending-money purchases one of us made with the debit card; budget categories like groceries or healthcare that I subtract from as purchases are made.

After that are upcoming income and expenses and the dates I expect them to come through. The far-right column shows what the checking account balance will look like if/when these expenses and income hit the account.

I project out for 2-3 months, and adjust things when unexpected income or expenses come up. If more income comes in (like OT), I drop that into one of the savings items, which is why they vary.

I always try to get the budget to balance to $20 at the end. I used to do $0.00, but that was stressful. $20 makes me feel like we're not dependent on everything working out to the penny. It's strictly a psychological thing, since there is a lot of flexibiliy (i.e., "wants" that can be eliminated, savings that can be reduced, budget surpluses in some categories such as healthcare).

If only every day were like today, in terms of progress. We'd be debt-free philanthropic millionaires in no time!

OK, all four mortgage payments hit:
US: $278 to principal
UK #1: $255 to principal
UK #2: $54 to principal
UK #3: $56 to principal
In total, I paid off $643 of debt. Just $757 to go to meet our May goal.

I transferred $120 into our savings account for AS's retirement (it won't earn much there, but I'm saving up to open a Roth for her.) Also, I transferred the remaining UK checking account balance to UK savings (that account is going to hold some of the money for the baby/emergency fund). 45 pounds, which translates in my accounting method to $90 (bringing our EF to $3044.07). So I saved $210 today, and I still need to save $1490 to reach my May savings goal.

Also, the $25 check to the cancer research charity hit my checking account, so I have met my (admittedly unambitious) philanthropy goal.

I asked AS to pick up some supplies for my crop art when she's at the fabric store today, so hopefully I'll be able to get started on that this weekend. (Plus I already have everything I need to make the necklaces.)

Tomorrow we're going to a green-living expo, where we can hopefully research low-flow shower options, and we're also going to a crafts show, where maybe I can get some ideas for my June craft goal.

OK, my goals for May:

1. Debt: Pay off at least $1400 of debt.

2. Savings: Save at least $1700 ($120 for AS's retirement, $1500 for the Wisconsin vacation, and $80 for the baby/emergency fund).

3. Fitness: Try out (and hopefully continue to use) my new personal-trainer Wii game.

4. Environmentalism: Replace leaky shower head and faucet with low-flow system. (Possibly attend condo board meeting for eventual suggesting of composting.)

5. Creative/crafts: Make necklaces with the beads and supplies I bought last month. Do some practice crop art! (I got the idea from a crafts book AS had hanging around. If I get the hang of it, AS wants me to enter the State Fair, because she and our friend want to enter some food or crafts this year.)

6. Philanthropy: Donate money to hospital charity. (OK, this is kind of a cheat, because I already sent the donation off but it hasn't hit my bank account yet. But I haven't felt very creative in this area recently.)

Whew! My credit card payment made it in under the wire, with $210 going to principal. Soo, I paid $1859 this month, surpassing my goal of $1665!

Of course, that means next month's goal will be paltry by comparison, since I don't usually pay my CC this early and so I won't likely pay it at all in May.

Whatevs, I'm just so happy I didn't miss a debt goal yet!

I already summed up my goal progress a couple posts ago, so I don't really need to do it again. Briefly:
1. Debt: Success.
2. Savings: Success.
3. Fitness: Partial success.
4. Environmentalism: Unsuccessful.
5. Creative/crafts: Success.
6. Philanthropy: Partial success.

NT has a very good job, at a company that until recently has seemed recession-proof. (I don't think any industry is recession-proof now, except fast food, chocolate and movies.)

Then they had a small round of layoffs early in the year, and they've been warning about possible furloughs (mandatory unpaid leave) if they don't reach certain projections. They should know sometime in May just how severe it will be.

Right now it appears likely that each employee will be required to take two weeks' furlough. It isn't clear how this will be applied, but there may be some flexibility about taking it all at once or in dribs and drabs.

Just to be somewhat prepared, even though we can't plan for anything specific, I calculated how it would affect our income and budget if NT had to take one week or two weeks of furlough in a given month.

Since he gets paid twice a month, I multiplied the net pay by 24 and then divided by 52 to determine his weekly net pay: $620. If he is able to space out the furlough and just take one week per month, the budgetary choices seem easy to me: cut out two of our discretionary spending categories, rental car and misc. entertainment, which are $100 each, and cut our saving in half (we currently put $860 per month into short-term savings).

If he is forced to take two weeks in a month, losing $1240, the cuts get a bit more painful; we'd have to cut the two discretionary categories, plus all our saving, and we'd need to cut $180 of our spending money for that month, or $60 per person. We'd feel it, sure, but it wouldn't be the end of the world; we wouldn't have to cut the medical or grocery/household budgets, or stop retirement contributions, or anything very harmful.

So overall, I don't think our lives will change very much if NT's company decides on furloughs. That's assuming nothing bad happens to my job, of course. But until I get direct signs my job is in danger, I'm not going to worry--although I am prepared! I keep our emergency budget up-to-date and know what measures we'd need to take if all three of us became unemployed, and how long we could last that way under various scenarios.

Far from making me despair, these preparations keep me calm and feeling in control in this volatile world.

Another of AS's student loan payments hit, with $57 going to principal. $1649 down, just $16 to go to reach my April debt-repay goal!

I noticed the variable interest on this student loan went down from 3.5% to 3.0%. It's such a small principal balance that it only reduced our payment by 51 cents per month, but it's still nice! It's our second-lowest rate after the unreal 1.49% that NT's mortgages are at.