Sallie's Niece

I'm Still Here!

2011-12-06T10:59:00.003-05:00

So it's been far too long since I've posted an update. I got stuck in a tree! No, not really. I have lots to say and lots and lots of emails and blog posts to catch up on. Sorry about the hiatus. I just wanted to let you know to look out for new posts from me coming soon!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2011-06-30T12:29:00.002-04:00

Hello all! Work has finally quieted down and I'm on my way to a week long vacation tomorrow to celebrate a wedding and the anniversary of my own wedding. Can you believe it's been a year already? I can't!

But first, time to update the student loan numbers! I am getting excited to see the numbers slide down closer to the five figure mark. I predict I will owe under $100k in student loans by February 2014. Yay! Maybe I'll do something crazy to celebrate at that point like go back to school (boo!) or have a baby (yikes!).

As of today, I owe $118,180 for my fabulous education, over $800 less than last month.

Here are the details:

Hope you all have a fabulous 4th of July Weekend celebrating America: where anyone can get a higher education. :-)

I'm Never Leaving My Job!

2011-06-15T12:21:00.003-04:00

Mark my words Internet, I am here to stay. Today I got my annual pension statement and it's just awesome.

I've been a public employee for almost five years but I didn't officially join the retirement system until April, 2007. I am currently in the process of buying back the service credit from the period in which I wasn't a member. I will be done paying that off in a couple of months. This means in April of next year I will be vested in my pension since it will have been five years since I joined but I will have 5.6 years of service credit.

Vesting in HUGE since, in the five short years since I've been a public employee, the state has created one new tier and is about to create another one with a lot less benefits than the tier I am eligible to vest in. Two major things the new tiers won't have that I currently have are the ability to retire at 55 without penalty and the fact that after ten years I will no longer have to make any contributions to my pension.

Thus, I get out so much more than I put in. Here are some numbers:

As of April 1 of this year my pension contributions total $5,999.95. Assuming I make the same salary for the next six years I will have contributed about $14,000 to my pension. Then I stop contributing but keep working for at least ten more years. How much do I get?

Using a final average salary of $49,312, when I am 57 years old I will have 30 years of service credit. I will thus be eligible for a Single Life Allowance of $29,587 a year. That's 60% of my final average salary. All for contributing just $14,000! This is totally morbid but even if I only collect for one year I am getting 2x my money back! Note that I'll probably elect one of the Joint Allowances because I'm married and then it's a little less ($24,900).

Will I make it to thirty years of service? I don't know. I hope so. We're still child free so I assume I will work until my hypothetical kid is in college. Being that they're not born yet that's another 24 years or thereabout. Even if I only worked twenty years I am still eligible for a sizeable pension as well (just not sure how sizeable).

So....twenty six more years to go!

Net Worth May 2011

2011-06-01T11:16:00.004-04:00

The market was really crappy this month. My 457 actually decreased $30 despite my contributions. I think that's the first time that's ever happened to me. Oh well. I guess I have more shares or something.

But at least my student loans also continue to decrease. And my DH's new job definitely increased our prospective networth so all in all it was an okay month.

My new net worth is -$103,579! Have I mentioned I CAN'T WAIT until I'm not in the negative six figures anymore? It's so close I can taste it! I'm not even the poorest person on Networth IQ in my age bracket anymore. There are 17 people poorer than me! NB: Most of them are also lawyers.

Here are the stats:

Cash: Not tracking as all our cash is joint right now.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $9,861. I have approximately $5859 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have approximately $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. but the statement only comes quarterly so who knows if that's gone up. This makes for a grand total of $16,720 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $119,009!

Credit Card: All of our debts are joint debts now so this number is misleading but they will all be paid off within 4-5 months now that we are working together.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2011-05-31T10:15:00.002-04:00

Another month, another reduction in student loan debt.

I want to start throwing more money at the Perkins loan but we're still adjusting to our new budget and paying off some other debt so we're currently just paying $200 a month. I still think I can knock it out in 2011 somehow. It will feel awesome to only have two payments to make each month instead of three.

My husband is enjoying his new job. His travel schedule is a little crazy right now so we're adjusting to that as well. Just got back from an excellent Memorial Day weekend camping.

Here are the stats for this month:

Net Worth April 2011

2011-05-02T12:52:00.002-04:00

My net worth is rising slowly but surely month to month. As of today, I am worth negative $104,529! This means I will hit negative five figures in 2011 if all goes well. :-)

Now that I've combined accounts with DH I could technically count all of his assets and liabilities too but for now I'm going to just track mine. It wouldn't put me in the black to do so, however, as his networth is around negative $15,000 (still much better than mine!).

Here are the details:

Cash: This category is pretty useless now that my cash is combined with DH's. If I ever acquire some of my "own" cash from saving my fun money, here is where I will track it I guess.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $9,892. I have approximately $5659 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have contributed $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. and for some reason that makes sense when my financial advisor explains it, it's only in a Money Market account now. This makes for a grand total of $16,551 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $119,790!

Credit Card: All of our debts are joint debts now so this number is misleading but they will all be paid off within 4-5 months now that we are working together and DH got a new job!

DH Got a New Job!

2011-04-29T13:19:00.003-04:00

I'm so proud of my own prince today. After months of waiting today I am happy to announce DH accepted an offer for a new and exciting job!

His salary will increase by over 20%! And they're giving him $8,000 in company stock, three weeks of vacation a year and a guaranteed annual bonus worth 12% of his salary. They also match 7.5% of his 401k contributions. It's almost too good to be true!

He starts in two weeks!!

Also I'll just throw this in here as well. We recently combined finances. It was long overdue to be honest and it makes things a lot simpler. Hopefully I can post our new budget soon. I'm going to have to get used to budgeting monthly. Luckily just as we started doing this our budget suddenly got bigger thanks to the new job. We're motivated to working together as a couple to pay off debt and save for our future.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2011-04-29T13:06:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone and a Happy Royal Wedding day to you! Even though I live across the pond I still woke up at 5 a.m. to watch the festivities live (two hours earlier than I woke up on my own wedding day haha).

Since tomorrow is a Saturday and I will be celebrating some big news with my own handsome husband I decided to do my student loan debt roundup a day early. I'm happy to report that I am finally in the $110's!

Here are the numbers:

And stay tuned for some exciting news in the S.N. family!

Net Worth March 2011

2011-04-04T10:13:00.003-04:00

March is gone and I'm $1100 richer (less poor?). My current networth is -$106,073.

Here's the breakdown:

Cash: I'm keeping this the same because all of the cash I have right now is earmarked for debt payoff.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $9,551. I have approximately $5459 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have contributed $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. and for some reason that makes sense when my financial advisor explains it, it's only in a Money Market account now. This makes for a grand total of $16,010 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $120,793!

Credit Card: Not much progress yet as we're scrambling to pay off joint debts first.

My husband and I talked about our debt payoff progress some this week and we've decided to join accounts. I know this is definitely the right move but I'm still a little nervous to see how it's going to work out. We're a team now so we should act as one financially. I will probably continue to post "my" networth on the blog though just because I like to track it.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2011-03-31T13:00:00.003-04:00

I'm on the countdown to being in the $110's instead of the $120's in student loan debt. Oh for the day that it will be under six figures. I hope I'll still have some readers out there to celebrate with me when it hits a big fat zero. :-)

Unfortunately, a $200 payment I made a few days ago to my Perkins loan hasn't shown up yet so it looks the balance has increased instead of decreased. :-(

The good news, as always, is that the overall balance has gone down and I now owe $120,793.25 in student loans!

Here are the details:

12 Charities in 2011 - March

2011-03-30T10:58:00.005-04:00

So far this month I've donated to two charities - my alma mater (undergrad) because they were running a matching program where every donation made would be matched by some richer alums. Also we were competing for the most donations against a rival school. Note for charities - make donating fun. So far I think we're winning but the contest ends tomorrow. I gave them $25.

I also gave $25 to the American Cancer Society because someone near and dear to me is running in a Relay For Life. I think they're a very worthy organization, and as my family has been touched by cancer, I support their efforts to research and possibly find a cure one day.

And giving back feels good. :-)

I hope everyone else participating in the challenge found a great charity to support this month.

Where it Went 3/02 - 3/15

2011-03-16T10:21:00.003-04:00

I narrowly avoided my old nemesis, the Evil Overdraft Monster this pay period. All because I forgot I had to go to the eye doctor. Oh and I bought concert tickets, but since the latter was put on a credit card I just now paid them off (will be accounted for in the next budget).

In short, I blew my budget, but I needed an eye exam because of all the problems I've been having and while my insurance pays for all the opthamologists I've been visiting, opthamologists know nothing about contacts and can't give me a prescription for them. And, as I've explained before, while contact prescriptions are only valid for one year, most insurance companies (including mine) only pay for a complete eye exam every two years.

Today, I get to spend even more money ordering new contacts online. I opted not to order them from Walmart where I had my exam because I found the same brand for much cheaper at lens.com.

Anyway, long explanation over. Here are the dirty details.

Budgeted/Actual

Joint account - 400/400
Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260
Credit Card - 200/100
Groceries - 75/82
Health - 60/50
Gym - 33/33
Charity - 20/25
Misc. - 185/170

Concert Tickets - 0/200

Eye Doctor - 0/92

Which means I need to account for $117 in the next pay period so everything resets itself perfectly. Boo.

I am, however, very excited to be able to see again...especially with all the concerts and fun stuff we have planned for the warmer months.

Budget 3/2 - 3/15

2011-03-02T15:08:00.006-05:00

The extra paycheck plan is in effect. Since the month of March will have three paychecks, there's a little breathing room in this one....which has to go to my joint account for our joint debt and fun stuff pay off account....including the upcoming Mexico trip.

There's a lot happening that I haven't been able to write about yet. One of us may be getting a new job. We owe taxes. We have a list of wants a mile long and are trying to learn about patience and compromise. Sometimes we're really freaked out or frustrated about money. Welcome to married life, I guess. I will hopefully have some news really soon.

In the meantime, I figured I'd make myself accountable and do a budget post while I dream of Mexico, a trip that's still months away but already being paid for thankfully and not so thankfully.

Starting Balance = $1233*

Joint account - 400
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Credit Card - 200
Groceries - 75
Health - 60
Gym - 33
Charity - 20
Misc. - 185

*Includes $45 being taken out after taxes (boo!) for my pension buy back.

Miscellaneous seems really high right now but I'm hoping to make an even bigger credit card payment. Just don't want to set myself up for failure.

It snowed today so I have warm happy Mexican vacation thoughts on my mind.

Net Worth February 2011

2011-03-01T09:42:00.002-05:00

I can't believe it's finally March! And I'm $1200 richer than I was in February. That feels good. My net worth is -$107,237.

Cash: This has stayed the same. I have more cash waiting to clear my account but then I'm sending it on to our joint account to pay off debt.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $9,213. I have approximately $5258 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have contributed $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. and for some reason that makes sense when my financial advisor explains it, it's only in a Money Market account now. This makes for a grand total of $15,471 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $121,418.

Credit Card: Not much progress yet as we're scrambling to pay off joint debts first.

12 Charities in 2011 - February

2011-02-28T15:49:00.003-05:00

I almost forgot to post my February charitable donation. I donated $25 to my local public radio consortium.

In case you haven't heard, public radio stations are in danger of losing their federal funding - television's P.B.S. is at risk too. I can't imagine a world without P.B.S. but figured my donation would have a greater impact at the local level.

I rely on public radio to give me some of the more nuanced local news that the newspaper can't deliver on such a timely basis. They're also always hosting community events and bringing the arts to the people, so I felt it was time for me to give a little back for all that I receive.

You can give to National Public Radio or your local public radio too if you want to preserve this important public resource.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2011-02-28T14:44:00.002-05:00

I took a mini break from blogging as I've been so busy with work and some side hustles as my friend J. Money over at Budgets Are Sexy calls them. Hopefully a few will pay off. I'll keep you posted. :-)

Also there's some family financial news in the works (no we're not having a baby!) that I will share when it becomes official. Cross your fingers for us.

But I couldn't not do my monthly student loan debt roundup as I so look forward to seeing the numbers go down every month. Right now my current student loan balance is $121,418.12 - the lowest it's ever been!

I'm also happy to report that Defaulted Student Loan's balance is now at less than what I borrowed - woot woot! That makes three loans out of six that I've actually beaten back the capitalized interest they don't seem to tell you too much about when you take out the loans. Hopefully the Private Undergrad Loan will hit this milestone this year as well.

Getting married meant I lost most of my interest deduction on our taxes (boo) so out of the thousands of bucks in interest I paid last year, I think I got to deduct $400.

Where it Went 1/19 - 2/01

2011-02-02T14:43:00.003-05:00

I'm Sallie's Niece and I like clothes. This is actually a new thing. An inspiration to lose weight. Turning 31. The doldrums of winter. Anyway, I hate most of my wardrobe and have been working to systematically replace all of it. If only the budget were limitless.

So with that small caveat in mind, here's how I did with my money compared to the budget I set:

Budgeted/Actual

Perkins Loan - 200/200

Mexico Trip - 630/630

Credit Card - 200/300*

Health - 85/46

Groceries - 0/22

Misc. - 153/168

This spending includes $58 in half.com payments from my decluttering project.

*So yes I sent $300 to the credit card but that was basically the amount I charged on it. :-(

I had this business idea to bring in more money so I spent $35 on exploratory costs for that. It's on hold now as I'm too busy and broke to devote to it what it needs.

I also spent $90 on my new niece, $30 of which I will be paid back for. Damn cute baby clothes.

The rest was spent on clothes for me, which sounds like a lot but since I was at the outlets I got some great deals. And it's all clothes for work pretty much so I can get a lot of use out of them.

Anyway, since the credit card balance didn't go down I sent another $300 to it today, which will be detailed in my upcoming budget post.

Net Worth January 2011

2011-02-01T15:49:00.002-05:00

January was a pretty good month. I increased my net worth by over a grand, woo hoo. My current net worth is -$$108,441.

Cash: This has stayed the same. I do have some cash sitting in my bank account I need to send to the credit card but I'm waiting until payday.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $8,920. I have approximately $5147 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have contributed $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. and I am waiting to see my first statement. This makes for a grand total of $15,067 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $122,218.97.
Credit Card: The extra paycheck pay off plan will soon be in effect.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2011-01-31T19:12:00.003-05:00

Wow, January flew by. Snow, work, snow, fun, life, snow.

All the while, reducing my student loan balance. As of today, I owe $122,218.97!

Here's hoping 2011 means the end of the Perkins loan! It's getting smaller and smaller!

Budget 1/19 - 2/01

2011-01-19T11:34:00.002-05:00

Woo hoo, my paycheck is $16 higher than the even higher paycheck I got last time. Still not sure why they decided to reduce Social Security contributions when they probably need them most, but that's not for me to decide.

And....we booked a trip to Mexico! Mexico here I come, baby! We have a family member's destination wedding to attend, and I'm excited because I've never been South of the Border. To go, however, we need diligent budgeting. Luckily, with this paycheck I should be able to pay the balance of our must-pre-pay room for four nights. We got a suite for a great price! It even has a jacuzzi and was only $20 more a night than a smaller room.

So far we can only afford to go for four days but the airfare may make more sense for us to go for a whole week. Still, we have a few months to figure that all out. Here's my budget with Mexico on my mind:

Starting Balance = $1268

Perkins Loan - 200

Mexico - 630

Credit Card - 200

Health - 85

Misc. - 153

I've already paid $500 towards Mexico today, plus the credit card and the Perkins Loan. The challenge is to not exceed $153 in two weeks of miscellaneous spending. I think I can do it! It will be worth it when I'm on the beach. Also I have $25 in my wallet from last paycheck (hee hee).

Where it Went 1/05 - 1/18

2011-01-19T09:38:00.003-05:00

I am happy to report that in addition to joining a new gym, I joined Weight Watchers a little over a week ago and am already seeing positive results.

The ongoing process of getting rid of clutter in my apartment yielded an additional $80 this pay period, which helped subsidize the membership fee (I paid for three months in advance I think). It didn't help all the overspending as I really wanted some household stuff too. The challenge of living in a small space is sometimes you have no place to stash stuff but I hung up some shelves and bought those special space saving hangars (they work!).

In addition to my January charitable donation, I also made a political contribution of $28. Speaking of giving, Nicole over at The Budgeting Babe has also pledged to give to 12 charities in 2011! I've been a fan of her blog for years so I'm excited my post caught her interest.

So that's how the cookie crumbles. Here's how I did compared to the budget I set out two weeks ago:

Budgeted/Actual

Sallie Mae - 407/407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260

Sprint - 74/74

Credit Card - 200/100

Health - 85/65

Charity - 50/78

Gym - 33/33

Weight Watchers - 0/65

Misc. - 148/227

I plan to post a little more on my weight loss journey and hopefully share some tips that have helped for me. Right now all I can say is track everything you eat and get to the gym as much as possible and you will see results.

January Charity: The Smile Train

2011-01-05T15:05:00.002-05:00

I just made a $50 donation to The Smile Train, which will be enough to cover the medication for one cleft palette surgery. In case you've never heard of The Smile Train, here's a statement from their web site:

Unlike many charities that do many different things, The Smile Train mission is
focused on solving a single problem: cleft lip and palate.
Clefts are a major problem in developing countries where there are millions of children who are suffering with unrepaired clefts. Most cannot eat or speak properly. Aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job. And face very difficult lives filled
with shame and isolation, pain and heartache.
The good news is every single child with a cleft can be helped with surgery that costs as little as $250 and takes as little as 45 minutes.
This is our mission:
-To provide free cleft surgery for millions of poor children in developing countries.
-To provide free cleft-related training for doctors and medical professionals.
Until there are no more children who need help and we have completely eradicated the problem of clefts.

I admit that I first heard of this charity years ago and felt very moved by what they do. Trying to choose which devastating problem of the world to send your money to is intimidating. I like how they isolated one very fixable problem and really make a profound impact in these children's lives.

Here are pictures of a girl named Angelica from the Phillipines, before and after she received her surgery at two years old. Thanks to donations from people like me, she is able to eat normally and is starting to talk. And what a nice smile she has!

Although I was only able to give a small donation, I still feel like I am helping kids like Angelica out there get the care they need.

And just because you always have to be dilligent when picking a charity, I was pleased to discover that The Smile Train only spends 18% of their budget on fundraising, 1.3% on management and 80.7% on program services.

Click here to like them on Facebook and spread the word about The Smile Train!

Budget 1/05 - 1/18

2011-01-05T13:50:00.004-05:00

A new year means a fresh budgeting slate. You may have noticed I took a little hiatus from regular budgeting towards the end of the year. But as the saying goes, "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail." So here's me getting back on track,

Starting Balance - $1252 - even though I opened a Flex Spending Account and my federal taxes went up, my paycheck is only $5 less because the feds (for some illogical reason) decided to take less money out for Social Security.

Sallie Mae - 407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Sprint - 74
Credit Card - 200
Health - 85
Charity* - 50
Gym** - 33
Misc. - 148

*My first charity of 2011 will be announced soon!

**I'm rejoining the gym. Call me a Resolution Maker. Just don't call me unmotivated to get fit!

2010 Financial Goals Review

2011-01-04T14:26:00.002-05:00

2010 was a year of saving and planning, all resulting in a beautiful (and paid for) wedding. But I managed to accomplish some other goals last year too. Here is my review of the goals I established for myself:

1. Get married without going into debt. Pass (sort of). Okay so we made it to the big day with everything paid off - rings, dress, photographer, flowers, music, transportation and accomodations. This was no small feat and really was a lesson in savings for us both. And then that lesson was briefly ignored on our fabulously unfrugal Hawaiian honeymoon.

2. Increase 457 Fund contributions. - Fail. I did increase my contributions for a while until I decided to focus on the Roth instead and lowered them. Overall, I contributed about 5% of my salary this year to the 457.

3. Max out Roth IRA. In progress but likely fail. I didn't start this goal until October since I was preoccupied with wedding stuff and have only contributed $1000 so far. I still have until April to make 2010 contributions and hope to double that number.

4. Buy back pension credits. Pass! Well I got the ball rolling and in 15 more pay periods I will have paid off my old time - just in time for vesting.

5. Eliminate law school loan. Pass! Finally done after being on my to-do list for two consecutive years.

Challenge: Twelve Charities in 2011

2011-01-04T13:16:00.002-05:00

I don't give to charity nearly as much as I could, or as some would say, should. Although the "rule" of giving ten percent of my net income ($5k, yikes!) or 1% of my networth ($0, yay!) sort of gives me an out because I'm in debt, right? Nah, I'm pretty sure the rule is whichever is higher.

In 2010 I think I gave about $200 to charity - and $100 of that wasn't really "charity" so much as it was a donation to my alma mater. This year, I want to give more. Not neccesarily $5k (sorry!) but more, know what I mean? And I want to use the blog to raise awareness of charitable giving.

So I will be picking one charity each month this year and give what I can and encourage others to do so too if they are so inclined. I'll announce the first charity soon, but in the meantime here's a bunch of info on charitable giving from mint.com

budget planner – Mint.com

Net Worth December 2010

2010-12-30T11:43:00.003-05:00

Another month, another Networth I.Q. statement. As of this month, I am worth approximately:

-$109,493

This represents an increase of $1,761 from last month, which is pretty awesome considering that's way more than half of my net monthly salary. I like seeing it go up, even if I'm still in the negative six figures.

Cash: This has stayed the same. My husband is the one who manages the cash savings so this category won't be going anywhere for a while.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $8,770.42. I have approximately $5037 in my pension (refundable until vested), including about $90 that I paid towards buying back old time. And finally I have contributed $1000 in my Roth I.R.A. and I am waiting to see my first statement. This makes for a grand total of $14,807 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $123,010.35.

Credit Card: December brought some unexpected expenses so this hasn't gone anywhere unfortunately.

I haven't been tracking my net worth all year so I can't really do a year end report but I'm satisfied with the way I'm ending this year and looking forward to a great 2011.

Monthly (and Annual) Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-12-30T11:30:00.003-05:00

Posting this a day early as New Year's revelry plans are taking us out of town to visit friends in a few hours. The numbers are a little skewed on the Perkins loan because I paid them $225 and they must not have calculated this month's interest yet because it is showing a reduction of $220. Wouldn't that be nice?

This time last year I owed $132,872.72. As of today, my current debt stands at $123,010.35 - a reduction of nearly $10k! At my current rate of payment I will have all of my student loans paid off in a little over 11 years....but I hope to have them paid off in 8 years.

In October of this year I paid off my Law School loan, a loan given to me straight from the school at a killer interest rate of 8%. Now that it's gone I am attacking my Perkins loan, which is my highest interest and lowest balance loan standing at a rate of 5% and less than $7k remaining. I hope to somehow figure out a way to kill this loan too in 2011.

Here are the totals:

I hope everyone has a great New Year's!

Where it Went 11/24 - 12/07

2010-12-08T19:11:00.002-05:00

Sorry this post is so late in the day. Got stuck in mandatory training all day. Have some money news and general life musings to write about, but not enough time to write them.

In the meantime, here's where my money went the past two weeks compared to the budget I established:

Budgeted/Actual
Roth I.R.A. - 500/500

Perkins Loan - 200/200

Credit Card - 200/200

Groceries - 75/0

Health - 45/130

Gift - 100/160

Misc. - 151/140
Clothes - 0/110

This budget reflects $14 in additional income earned.

I managed to get some great gifts for my husband and brother (who is deployed for Christmas). And I got some new work clothes since it is freeeeezing out.

Health costs should be abating soon I hope. Can't wait for my FSA to kick in!

Net Worth November 2010

2010-12-01T10:43:00.003-05:00

Now that November has come to an end, I am happy to announce I am worth $1228 more this month according to Networth IQ. That's pretty excellent, even though it only represents an increase of 1.09% from my October 2010 report.

My net worth is -$111,254!

Here's the breakdown details:

Cash: This has stayed the same. My husband is the one who manages the cash savings so this category won't be going anywhere for a while.

Retirement: My 457 account balance stands at $8164, which is lower than last month oddly enough, though the account isn't showing any losses for this period. Strange. Maybe I wrote down the wrong number last month. I have approximately $4835 in my pension (refundable until vested). And finally I have $1000 in my Roth I.R.A., or at least I hope I do since I sent in $500 more last month but I am waiting to see my first statement. This makes for a grand total of $13,899 saved for retirement.

Student Loans: These are at the LOWEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN at a whopping $123,863.

Credit Card: Still waiting to pay this off. It will happen soon.

So bring on December!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-11-30T13:47:00.003-05:00

Where did November go so fast?! DH and I had a great Thanksgiving with our families. We had a great system this year where we were able to spend time with everyone we wanted to see and not feel rushed or spend half the vacation in traffic. We even baked our first cheesecake together. It's nice to be able to start new traditions now that we're officially a married couple. We're putting up our Christmas tree soon - I can't wait!

But now onto the juicy stuff.

My student loan debt is.....$123,863.06 - the lowest it's ever been since graduation! (That's my new saying - it's positive, right?)

I had gotten used to seeing a four figure reduction in recent months when I was attacking the Law School Loan so this roundup seems lame in comparison, however I am working with a reduced snowball now that I am trying to max out my Roth I.R.A. Unfortunately I can't do everything at the same time.

At least the numbers are still going down. :-)

Another Pension Update

2010-11-29T10:30:00.002-05:00

I have some good news about my progress on obtaining credit for the time I worked before joining the pension system.

Luckily it didn't take the pension people five months to figure out what my buyback costs would be as they predicted it may.

Not so luckily is that I forgot I would have to pay interest on the amount owed. That, plus finding out there's an outstanding balance of $67 that my employer was supposed to pay on my behalf but didn't brings my new total owed to $824 (not $660 like I predicted). I guess that's only fair considering that money had I paid it initially would be sitting in the state's pension fund gaining interest this whole time. I'm just glad I got off my butt and started this process now, not ten years from now when the interest would have been astronomical. $800 now means 8 less months of working before I can retire!

It turns out I was right that I could pay this money with pretax dollars (yay!). So I signed up to begin payroll deductions of $45 which will pay the balance off in 17 pay periods, just in time for my new vesting date of September 14, 2011 - only 290 days to go!

Budget 11/24 - 12/07

2010-11-24T16:05:00.004-05:00

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving! I have a lot to be thankful for this year. First and foremost, my job. I was just thinking back over the past two plus years since I started this blog and all the things that have happened.

Right around this time two years ago I was losing my job. And remember that time I wrote about my "rich" parents' Thanksgiving traditions and everyone yelled at me? (Good times)

But then I got a new job with a better salary, soon to be followed by a cost of living increase.

In the midst of all this, I got engaged, moved six months later, and married my excellent husband. We also saved a bunch of money for said wedding and honeymoon.

I paid off an old collections account that had haunted me for years....and I paid off one of my student loans!

Just two weeks ago my sister had a baby, the grandchild for my parents, and I became a proud aunt.

I have a lot to be thankful for, including this paycheck I will now spend:

Starting Balance - $1271

Roth I.R.A. - 500

Perkins Loan - 200

Credit Card - 200

Groceries - 75

Health - 45*

Gift - 100**

Misc. - 151

*This may be higher. I really won't know for a few more days but luckily there's my good old friend the miscellaneous category.

**We have a gift account with enough to buy presents for family but this money is allocated to buy my sweet hubby a present.

Hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday!

Where it Went 11/10 - 11/23

2010-11-24T13:41:00.004-05:00

Here I am, still haven't left town yet to get on the road to see family for Thanksgiving. In fact, we probably won't get on the road until sometime tonight. I greatly dislike the highways in general, but especially at night before a huge holiday.

But at least it gives me some time to write up a budget review. So here's where my money went the last two weeks compared to the budget I set for it:

Projected/Actual

Sallie Mae - 407/407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260
Sprint - 74/74
Groceries - 150/97
Professional Fee - 155/155
Health - 45/160
Misc. - 180/183
Gifts - 0/50
Clothes - 0/120

Overbudget in a few categories and the health costs will continue to be higher than normal for at least a short time. It's not something I regret, as it costs money to make myself better (and yes I'm being purposely vague for the time being).

I did manage to bring in $47 in additional income the past two weeks which makes up for some of the unbudgeted expenses.

And I held off for the longest time on buying clothes but faced with the upcoming holidays and the Moth Massacre of my sweaters I gave in and bought some new stuff.

That's how the pumpkin pie crumbles. Stay tuned for a new budget post.

Budget 11/10 - 11/23

2010-11-10T15:55:00.003-05:00

It's a girl!!!!!!!!!!! Sallie's Niece is now an aunt. This morning my niece arrived safely into the world, a few days late but healthy as can be. I get to meet her in a couple of days - the beginning of three weekends in a row away from home, but I won't focus on that just yet.

So here's the budget for the next two weeks. I will finally make it to the grocery store, even though DH will be out of town next week, so we'll barely be home together for the next couple of weeks. I still need to eat and we're running out of things I can make dinner out of!

Starting Balance = $1271*

Sallie Mae - 407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260

Sprint - 74

Groceries - 150

Professional Fee** - 155

Health - 45

Misc. - 180

*I upped my 457 contribution again. I'm a little schizophrenic about that sometimes, but I know I won't miss the $14 every two weeks and my retirement savings could definitely use a boost. I also started a FSA finally, but that won't kick in until the beginning of next year.

**As much as I would love to go out and buy Christmas presents or get my hair highlighted, I am spending some money to increase my professional certifications. I am hoping I eventually see some outside income which makes this expense worthwhile. And if not, it can't hurt on a resume.

And since I've mentioned Christmas....DH and I decided we're not going to spend a lot of money on gifts this year. We have savings that he's been putting aside all year for presents and we have a couple of things picked out for people...and that's it. No more overspending on the holidays! (Except maybe adorable baby things for my new niece.)

Where it Went 10/27 - 11/09

2010-11-10T10:10:00.005-05:00

Brrr. It's cold out. And we've already had our first snow. It seems like we are entering winter. Our first married winter. Awww. Sometimes when I get impatient and it seems our goals are so far away, I remember we have each other and that's important. :-)

Speaking of freezing, I've been on a mission to eat our freezer and pantry, which explains the no groceries purchased over the past two weeks. Truthfully a few things were picked up at the corner store but no big grocery runs were made. Among the yummy comfort food I've made is this awesome slow cooker BBQ chicken. Try it out. It's amazing and so easy to make!

But now, the budget report. Nothing too crazy here. I got some photos framed as part of my decorating phase I'm going through. And despite prior claims, I did manage to spend more money on Halloween preparations. So here's where my money went the past two weeks as compared to the budget I set out:

Budgeted/Actual

Roth I.R.A. - 500/500

Perkins Loan - 200/200

Credit Card - 200/220

Groceries - 150/0

Health - 45/65*

Misc. - 190/195**

Charity - 0/100

Household - 0/54

Halloween - 0/50

*DH paid my $20 copay when I didn't have any cash on me but I'm including it in my budget nonetheless.

**Since I had zero checks left, I ordered 2 boxes from Checks Unlimited for only $15 after googling a coupon code. I also got free return address labels. This was way cheaper than the $35 per box my bank was going to charge me.

I've been selling some old books on Half.com so this budget also reflects about $25 in sales in case you were wondering why things aren't adding up exactly.

Net Worth October 2010

2010-11-03T14:16:00.006-04:00

I haven't tracked my net worth on the blog in forever but last month I was inspired to log into Networth IQ and plug some numbers in. I thought there was still a little widget in my sidebar to show you my networth but it turns out there isn't. I will look into that, but in the meantime....

My net worth is -$112,482!

Which, okay, may sound pretty crappy (in fact I appear to have the second lowest networth in all of Networth IQ for my salary range), but it just so happens to be $22,673 more than it was when I made my first real accounting in May 2008.

I decided instead of just focusing on the negative with my student loan roundups, I should show my whole networth each month on the blog just like my richer contemporaries do.

Here it is, in detail:

Cash: I probably shouldn't enter a number in this category but I just seem to use the amount I have sitting around in my bank account, so ignore this. My cash savings is in our joint bank accounts so it's not included.

Retirement: Some of this calculation involved guesswork as my pension system doesn't seem to want to allow me to log into their website but taking 3% of my salary over the past 3.5 years, I have approximately $4725 in my pension (refundable until vested at 5 years). I also have $8,233 in my 457 retirement account and a whopping $500 in my newly opened Roth I.R.A. This makes for a grand total of $13, 458. Hopefully I will be able to buy back my $600 in pension time sometime this millenia, setting my five year vesting date at September 2011.

Student Loans: These are at THE LOWEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN (I'm gonna have to start using that) at $124,650.

Credit Card: Boo. I am waiting to knock out some of my recent overspending with my extra paycheck coming up soon.

There it is. I look forward to seeing it go up next month.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-10-29T15:34:00.004-04:00

I realize it's not officially the end of the month, but I assume you the reader want to read a blog post on Halloween as much as I want to write one. And I was excited to write this roundup as it's the first ever with a zero in a "amount owed" column due to the glorious fact that I paid off one of my student loans earlier this month.

And I wanted to share something I probably should have looked into earlier as it has previously taken me about 30 minutes of research to determine how much of my federal loans were applied to each year of study. Well, apparently if you go to the National Student Loan Database you can find all this info in a nifty little chart like this one that shows how much you borrowed each year:

It's small but organized and you can get your very own at the Department of Education website (minus the ghost). Anyway, it reminds me that nearly two years after writing the post about still paying off my freshman year of college that I am still, in fact, underwater on my federal student loans. I am going to calculate how long it will be before I am above water but I've already done a lot of math today. It's not like I'm snowballing the loans by year of study since I am paying the highest interest rate first, but still I want to know these milestones.

So here are this month's totals, knocking out over $1200 in debt:

Happy Halloween everyone!

P.S. if you are looking really closely, yes I made a math error in last month's post, which frustrated me all day long as things weren't adding up. I'm working on fixing it now. :-)

Trading Vacation Days for Cash

2010-10-29T13:59:00.003-04:00

First: a warning. I know I'm going to sound like a whining whiner who whines, but I realize this and write anyway.

One of the great perks about my job is the generous amount of paid time off I get. And a lot of this time can be carried from year to year and used for a dream vacation, a maternity leave, or cashing out at retirement. I currently have 16 vacation days saved and that's after taking nearly three weeks off for my wedding and honeymoon in July. I accrue a new vacation day every two and a half weeks (or 4 weeks a year to be exact). On top of that I get a week of Personal time come January 1 of the new year. And I have 28 sick days accrued. There's more (overtime) but I'll stop bragging.

Anyway, I've always really appreciate this about my job and the fact that we aren't discouraged from actually using our time like so many Americans apparently are is something I don't take for granted. Sure, time off has to be approved but I've found as long as it's not during our crazy busy time of the year it is usually approved.

So when I got a notice saying that I could exchange 3 vacation days for $500 towards my my share of the health insurance premiums, I had to think about it.

First, I did the math. I make $1861 a pay period pretax. Out of that amount, $110 is taken out pretax towards my health insurance premiums for DH and I. $1861/10 = $186 a day x3 = $558.

Then, I thought, it's not like I'm actually earning more money if I'm working three more days a year for it. In fact, after taxes this will only net me like $10 a year if I consider the extra time worked. And isn't a vacation worth more to me than $10 a year?

I told all this to DH. He said I was using fuzzy math and I should take the money. When I pointed out that I could save up a lot of time for a potential two week African Safari in 2012, he told me there was no safari in our immediate future. :-(

Bubble bursted, I submitted the form to H.R. today.

I still want to go on that safari though, but DH is right that we have other financial goals we need to focus on instead.

Sorry lions.

Budget 10/27 - 11/09

2010-10-27T18:43:00.004-04:00

Sometime in the next two weeks my sister will be giving birth and I will become an aunt! Yay! I mean, it's projected to happen soon, but who knows. This is the first sibling of mine to have a child so it's all pretty exciting. This has nothing to do with money really since I've already given plenty of loot to my unborn niece and nephew but I thought I'd mention it. :-)

Although I guess once it happens I may have to hop on a bus if DH can't come with me to visit my family. I'll think about that more in the days to come.

Exciting news - I opened up a new Roth I.R.A. last week. I know as part of my 2010 financial goals I listed maxing out my Roth, but I neglected to mention that I no longer had an active Roth account. Like the impulsive idiot that I was back then, I had opened up an account 5 years ago or so and started putting $50 a month into it. When times got tough, however, I drained all the money. :-(

The good thing about my new Roth account is that I opened it with the same firm my financial adviser works with so I have to actually mail him a check in order to make deposits, thus making it a whole lot harder to withdraw the money in a moment of weakness.

Anyway, with that explanation in mind, here is my projected budget for the next two weeks time:

Starting Balance = $1285

Roth I.R.A. - 500
Perkins Loan - 200
Credit Card - 200
Groceries - 150
Health - 45
Misc. - 190

I doubled my usual payment on the Perkins loan now that the Law School loan is gone.

I'm leaving some flex room in the budget in case I have to pay another doctor's co-pay or buy a bus ticket to see my sister.

Luckily (and not so luckily) Halloween is already taken care of courtesy of the spending spree.

It's pretty doubtful I will be able to come up with the entire $5000 by April 15th to max out my Roth...but I am now 1/10th of the way there so I consider that some progress. :-)

Here's hoping I can pull in some additional income in the next few weeks - more on that later.

Where it Went 10/13 - 10/26

2010-10-27T17:22:00.003-04:00

Boo for this budget report. Not fun "boo" as in ghosts and Halloween but boo as in "boo hoo, I''m broke" or "my boo boo costs what?!"

After declaring I was gonna go out and spend some money, well, spend money I did. Then...I had a bit of a health scare, resulting in the following charges:

Urgent Care Center co-pay - $20
E.R. visit co-pay - $70
Prescriptions (including those not related to the health scare) - $20.
Grand Total = $110, which puts my total health care expenses at $180 in the PAST TWO WEEKS if you count the random $30 I owed my OBGYN.

Seriously boo to all of that. The Emergency Room is definitely a spooky place to spend your Saturday. And I don't even know if I will be charged a co-pay for my followup appointment today. Plus I went out and got some OTC things to help with my condition after the appointment. (Note that expenses today don't count towards the budget report, it's just aggravating.)

Anyway, the good news is I'm okay. And really considering opening up a Flex Spending Account since open enrollment season is coming up.

So here's where it went:

Projected/Actual

Sallie Mae - 407/407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260
Sprint - 74/74
Health - 60/180
Event Tickets - 60/60
Charity - 30/50
Groceries - 100/100
Clothes - 150/0
Misc. - 144/289

Booooo! Totaling everything up is scary. A lot of the miscellaneous is household stuff as I went on a kick of sprucing up our condo. But reality has set in and I'm done with shopping sprees for now. And I didn't even get any clothes!!!

I was able to earn $50 for consenting to take on another court assignment. I'm excited that these are coming in more frequently now as I definitely enjoyed spending the last $500 I earned. There may be more news in the area of additional income soonish so stay posted.

State of State Pensions Funds and an Update on Mine

2010-10-20T11:51:00.003-04:00

I'm playing catch up on my 2010 goals and finally submitted the paperwork to buy back my pension credits. It wasn't so bad, I had to log into the site, print out the relevant form and mail it (yes snail mail) it back to the state.

The form required me to know my exact starting date at the job at which joining the pension system was optional (which is kinda b.s. because I know for a fact our H.R. director can pull up this info on me in the state's database already). So I called my former employer and got the exact dates.

And I happen to remember my exact salary even though they didn't ask for it. I did the math and 3% of 8 months should cost about $660 (go ahead and do the math backwards and find out my crappy old salary!).

Two weeks later I received a letter in the mail from the retirement system. I'm excited because I think it is going to give me instructions on how to buy the credits (the jury is still out on whether I can pay with pre-tax money). Nope. The letter acknowledged the receipt of my application and stated that they would begin an investigation into my prior service and determine the cost of buying it back. It estimated that this investigation would take five months.

Five months?!! What the heck?! Call up my former employer and ask if I worked there, for how long and how much did I make? Crappy salary/12 = Y x 8 = (Yx8) x 0.03 = $660. I barely survived high school math class and I was still able to figure this out in less than five minutes.

So it looks like this goal may not be achieved within 2010. Oh well, I guess I tried. I usually defend the state when people complain about bureacracy having seen the other side but I cannot even fathom why this inquiry should take so long.

At least New York's pension fund is currently in good shape unlike 11 states whose funds are in danger of running out. I *think* New York's will be okay since they recently enacted some reforms requiring newer (before me!) members to continue their contributions for the entire length of their employment (I only have to contribute for ten years).

But since I'm neither a mind reader nor an economist I am not putting all my retirement eggs in one basket. See more on that (as well as more on my 2010 goals progress) sometime later this week.

I Paid Off My Law School Loan!

2010-10-19T15:08:00.005-04:00

Only one of them. Don't anybody get too excited! I still have five left to pay off.

I've been waiting to post this for days! As you could tell from my last "where it went" I made an extra big payment to my Law School Loan courtesy of the extra money I was able to earn doing some outside work. After I made the payment I logged into my account for the next couple of days to see when the account would say zero. Instead, I owed $3.11 in accrued interest. And so I paid that and then waited some more. Finally, I am able to share this exciting image:

And as luck would have it, the smallest of my student loans also had the highest interest rate. 8% is wack. I'm SO glad it's gone. This means in addition to paying off the closed credit card account back in April I have lowered my monthly debt obligations by $165 in 2010! Plus I'm about to start saving $35 a month in health care costs, which effectively means I have $200 more a month to work with.

Getting rid of this loan was on both my 2009 AND 2010 resolutions so I'm glad to meet this goal at last. Freedom!

I started paying this loan in November of 2008 and had 60 months to pay it off. By knocking it out in 23 months I saved $286 in interest. That doesn't seem like much but I'll take any victory I can get at this point.

Now time to snowball my Perkins Loan!

Budget 10/13 - 10/26

2010-10-13T15:50:00.002-04:00

I've decided to call this budget the "okay fine, I'll admit to buying stuff" version. Instead of trying to spend almost every cent of my paycheck paying off debt and bills, I'm going to let myself plan for some purchases. Hopefully this will actually help the recent credit card problem because I have to use cash to get the things I want and need. Also I'm feeling a little burnt out.

I need new sweaters since, as I mentioned, moths have attacked mine. I need moth balls or moth hangars. I need flat shoes since mine are literally falling apart. I need a new coat. I want better bathroom storage. I could use a Halloween costume.

I'm not going to run out and buy all of those things in the next two weeks but I may buy a few and I"m not going to beat myself up about it. So there.

Here's my very lenient budget for the next two weeks. Most of the money going towards bills of course, but then some for me as well:

Starting Balance = $1285

Sallie Mae - 407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Sprint - 74
Health - 60*
Event Tickets - 60
Charity - 30
Groceries - 100
Clothes - 150
Misc. - 144

*I got a bill from my OB's office stating that I owed them $30 from November of last year. What the heck? This stuff always seems to happen with my doctors - I don't know why they don't bill me during the visit.

Where it Went 9/29 - 10/12

2010-10-13T10:54:00.003-04:00

The great news about this budget report is that I was able to bring in $500 in additional income from a court assignment I received. The good news is that I paid off A LOT of debt.

The not so good news is that I also spent more money than I had planned, partly due to the windfall. And the bad news is that I still have a big credit card balance mocking me. I'm just gonna put this out there as I've sort of been evasive about the amount in the past month as I've been trying to attack it: I have $2700 in credit card debt. There I said it. It was actually quite a bit more a month ago. It's "only" at 8.9% interest rate but it's pissing me off and I want it gone as soon as possible.

So without further ado, I will show you how I spent my paycheck plus my windfall the past two weeks:

Budgeted/Actual

Credit Card - 700/700

Law School Loan - 200/434

Perkins Loan - 94/94

Health - 65/100

Gift - 60/60

Misc. - 167/180

Beauty - 0/59

Clothes - 0/198

Yeah yeah, I know. It's pretty bad. If I hadn't overpaid the law school loan so much I would have had money for the clothes. AND if I didn't have such a high credit card balance to work off I would have had money for both the loan AND the clothes. I just really wanted to use the windfall towards erasing debt and it did to a certain extent. Look for a big student loan announcement later this week.

Also I showed up at a doctor's appointment to find out that my health insurance decided not to cover my flu vaccination. What the heck? Luckily I think I am going to be able to reduce my prescription co-pays going forward so that will help a bit. It's also open enrollment time for Flex Spending Accounts so I am looking into that as well.

If all goes according to plan, I can have the credit card paid off by the end of the year. Wish me luck!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-09-30T11:44:00.004-04:00

I can't believe September has come and gone so quickly. It seems like just yesterday I was posting August's student loan debt roundup. Yet happily I was able to decrease the balance by over $1000 this month. Sometimes I make charts and spreadsheets and see how fast I could get rid of all my student loan debt and I get encouraged...until I realize that would mean ignoring all of our other financial goals. It's frustrating.

The good news, however, is that I am achingly close to paying off my first student loan! Because of my increased snowball, the balance stands at a measly $434.41. I hope knocking it out will give me the momentum I need to push harder at attacking the rest of the balances. (I also would like a raise but that's a whole other story.)

Anyway so here's my updated chart:

Thanks for reading and I hope we can celebrate the payoff of loan #1 soon!

Budget 9/29 - 10/12

2010-09-29T15:33:00.004-04:00

I know people say "never again" a lot, but I'm saying this right now. Never again will I get sidetracked from my financial goals. I will keep this post as a reminder. Paying for meals you ate and whatever it is you did several months later stinks.

Wanna know why? Let me show you my new budget:

Starting Balance = $1285

Credit Card - 700 :-(
Law School Loan - 200
Perkins Loan - 94
Health - 65
Gift - 60
Misc. - 167

Why yes, most of my paycheck will be going towards my stupid credit card.

How much is $700? I mean other than some numbers on a page, what does it mean to me?

With $700 I could pay off the entire law school loan balance!

With $700 I could buy an I-pad with 3G wireless!

With $700 I could spend a three day weekend with my husband in Niagara Falls!

Oh well. At this rate the debt should be gone by mid-November. I doubt I'll be getting an i-pad any time soon - though I would love to travel to Niagara Falls. Check out this deal - if you have money that is!

Where it Went 915 - 9/28

2010-09-29T09:48:00.004-04:00

Good morning! Isn't pay day great? :-)

Time to see how I spent my last paycheck before I go on a flurry of bill paying and budgeting. So here is where my money went compared to the budget I set:

Budgeted/Actual

Sallie Mae - 407/407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260

Credit Card - 200/200

Sprint - 74/74

Gift - 40/40

Health - 25/25

Clothes - 100/50

Charity - 20/20

Groceries - 0/30

Misc. - 152/155

Still working dilligently to get rid of our new and unwelcome consumer debt. I'm gonna pay off a bulk of it in a few minutes - that's gonna feel good - and next week I have a legal one time gig that is going to bring in some money too.

I didn't do a big clothes shopping excursion yet - just picked up a few things from Walmart which were suprisingly not cheap but I still need to soon as the weather gets warmer. Moths ate FOUR of my sweaters. I've never had moths before and I don't like them one bit.

Stay tuned for a new budget post!

2010 Financial Goals Checkup

2010-09-27T11:32:00.003-04:00

Happy Fall everyone! The weather is getting cooler and things are finally slowing down for the newlyweds - at least for now. We spent three out of four weekends in September at home - which is sort of a record for us the past five months. At work I'm experiencing the "calm before the storm" and expect things to pick up significantly in the next couple of weeks.

And in a few days a six week period of family birthdays start up, including most likely the birth of my parent's first grandchild (I'm gonna be an aunt!), Thanksgiving and then the winter holidays.

But for now, I have a moment to reflect on the financial goals I set for 2010. Here's how I'm doing:

1. Get married without going into debt. Pass. We achieved this goal - however we did not save up enough money for the honeymoon and pretty much depleted our financial reserves which we're working now to build up.

2. Increase 457 contribution. Pass and Fail. I did increase my contribution for most of the year but lowered it when we decided it was more important to max out Roth IRAs.

3. Max out Roth IRAs. Fail. We're pretty focused on debt repayment right now but I'm still optimistic we can do this by April.

4. Buy Back Pension Credits. In progress. I just submitted the paperwork to do this last week.

5. Eliminate Law School Loan. In progress. The balance stands at $634 and hopefully will be down to zero by the end of the year.

So that's how I'm doing so far. I also changed my beneficiary to DH on several of my accounts.

Budget 9/15 - 9/28

2010-09-16T15:11:00.003-04:00

After a long hiatus I've decided the honeymoon is over and I should put up a budget post. Note, however, that this budget only reflects my income and the bills I'm responsible for. The DH and I haven't changed the way we manage our money now that we're married though as always we talk about our money and mutual goals. I still transfer money to our joint savings account that we were using for the wedding, except now it's being used to pay off debt.

And about that....yeah, we managed to rack up some consumer debt. It's not terrible and we have a plan to eliminate it, but it puts some other goals on the back burner.

Anyway, here it is:

Starting Balance = $1277

Sallie Mae - 407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Credit Card - 200
Sprint - 74
Gift - 40
Health - 25
Clothes - 100
Charity - 20
Misc. - 152

I need some new clothes for the upcoming busy season at work and we have two weddings to attend in October.

My paycheck is a little less than normal because I'm now paying for health insurance for two. The good news is the amount I'm paying now doesn't increase if we add dependents in case we ever decide to make any little humans.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-09-01T11:11:00.004-04:00

Hello out there in blog land. I'm back and married and anxious to tell about my wedding, my fabulous honeymoon, my fine new husband and our married financial adventures. First, however, I bring you a monthly student loan debt roundup - only a day late after skipping the month of July.

Lest you think I ran off and changed my identity to avoid paying student loans forever, I am happy to report that in the past two months I have cleared over $1500 in debt. Here are the stats:

As you can see, since I started this spreadsheet on July 1, 2009 the total amount of student loan debt I've eliminated is $10,845.32!

Stay tuned for more in the chronicles of Sallie's Niece, the married version.

Budget 7/07 - 7/20

2010-07-07T15:32:00.003-04:00

Since I need this paycheck to last me until the second day of my honeymoon I figured it was wise to write up a budget so I don't forget anything in the midst of wedding planning.

BTW I should have realized what I was going to get when I googled "two brides" but this image refers to a semi-financial quandry I am in. :-)

My friend is also getting married and her shower and bachellorette party are this weekend. I have already RSVPd yes to both events, but due to a death in a third friend's family I no longer have a way to get to them - five hours away. So...I'm trying to figure out what to do...and how much it will cost. So here's my worst case scenario budget:

Starting Balance = $1337

Sallie Mae - 406

Defaulted Student Loan - 260

Credit Card - 100

Sprint - 74

Health - 45

Shower gift - 60

Transportation and party misc. - 180

Wedding week & misc. - 212

Okay, so that's not too awful. Of course it doesn't take into account the vast amount of money we will spend during the week of the wedding but that is coming out of the separate wedding budget I've worked so hard on for the past year. Time to enjoy it!

Where it Went 6/23 - 7/06

2010-07-07T14:25:00.002-04:00

Oh man, I NEED to write a budget post. With the wedding right around the corner I have to make sure everything is on track as today is my last payday of my single life.

Luckily just sorting through the last pay period's expenses it seems I didn't get too far off track - save for maybe giving my little sister a $200 graduation present (cash) but I'd have given her $2000 if I had it so there's no trying to talk sense into me after the fact.

So here's where my money went for the past two weeks, just for accountability purposes since I didn't bother to post a budget in the first place. :-(

Starting Balance = $1416

Wedding Savings - 500
Gift - 200
Credit Card - 150
Perkins Loan -93
Law School Loan - 80
Clothes - 60
Health - 40
Wedding Spending - 32
Misc. - 120

I got some clothes to wear on the honeymoon at Old Navy - yay for $5 t-shirts!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-06-30T10:48:00.002-04:00

Wow, how is it the end of June already? Do you know what this means? This is my last monthly student loan debt roundup as a single gal! Yay!

There probably won't be a July roundup as I will be sitting on a beach in Hawaii next to my new husband, but in the meantime here's the current numbers:

Where it Went 5/26 - 6/08

2010-06-09T13:25:00.004-04:00

Wedding. Money. Life. Stress.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. How is everyone else doing?

I'm pretty good, especially knowing that even with the daily stressors of planning a wedding, that I will be married to the man I love soon....and then boarding a plane to Hawaii. Can't wait!

So here's where my money went for the past two weeks compared to the budget I set:

Budgeted/Actual

Credit Card - 150/200
Wedding Savings - 700/700
Wedding Makeup Deposit - 50/50
Perkins Loan - 93/93
Law School Loan - 80/80
Groceries - 75/0
Healthcare - 40/40
Misc. - 149/160
Clothes - 0/40

I got a dress I may wear to my rehearsal and one I will definitely wear on the honeymoon. Found a really great discount shop a few towns over. Resisted urge to spend more than the $40 in my wallet.

This weekend I have what I hope will be my last dress fitting and then my hair and makeup trial. It's really getting close!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-05-28T16:21:00.002-04:00

Technically Monday is the end of the month, but I'll be enjoying a relaxing day off from work, so I figured I would do my monthly student loan roundup a few days early. It may skew the numbers a bit on the loans where they update the interest daily...but you get to see the basic picture..the balances are going down down down! My law school loan now stands at less than $1000. I can't wait to kiss that sucker goodbye!

Here are this month's numbers:

Have a Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

Budget 5/26 - 6/8

2010-05-27T14:26:00.003-04:00

I can't believe it's almost June! Which means, among other things, it's almost time for me to get married. Wow! But that's not until July so I'm gonna take things one month at a time.

I need to be on top of my budget as the wedding nears so we can pay off all of our vendors and have money to spend on our honeymoon. I can't wait for Hawaii, I need a vacation.

Luckily, Memorial Day weekend is just around the corner so we do get a three day weekend. We're going camping with some friends.

So here is my budget for the next two weeks.

Starting Balance = $1337*

Credit Card - 150

Wedding Savings - 700

Wedding Makeup Deposit - 50

Perkins Loan - 93

Law School Loan - 80

Groceries - 75

Healthcare - 40

Misc. - 149

*Look at all that money. Did I get a raise, you ask? No. After speaking with our financial advisor, I decided to reduce my 457 contributions so that I can contribute more to a Roth I.R.A. first. I am still saving 2% pre-tax and will post more about the Roth later on.

Where it Went 05/12 - 05/25

2010-05-27T14:21:00.003-04:00

I've been a bad blogger and an even worse budgeter! Work, life, wedding planning, etc. etc., but instead of making excuses, I will just give the quick and dirty details of how my last paycheck was spent:

Credit Card - 150
Sallie Mae - 406
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Sprint - 74
Healthcare - 40
Personal Training - 60
Misc. - 240

I wish I could remember what I did with the $240, which is a little higher than I usually manage to spend in a two week period, but I can't seem to recall right now. Bad bad budgeting. Getting back on the wagon right now!

Wedding Wednesday

2010-05-12T15:37:00.003-04:00

Ann over at Affecting Change in Me posted a Wedding Wednesday post today and it was interesting for me to read and I figured maybe some of my readers (who aren't yet as sick as I am of wedding talk) would like to read it as well.

I don't have a nice organized list like she does, but here is a random stream of consciousness on all things wedding related today...

I had my shower two weeks ago and I only have a few more Thank You cards to send out. I know as a guest I hate getting late thank yous so this will be finished this week. The shower was a blast and we got some really nice stuff. (Now where to put it?)

My bachelorette party is this weekend!!! A few friends and I are meeting in the city and going to a bar and then a show. I'm very excited!

We are sending out invitations ASAP. Hopefully they will be in the mail by Monday, which will be exactly two months before the wedding. We already sent Save the Dates a year back so most everyone knows when the wedding is, but we still have to do this, ugh.

I have my first dress fitting next weekend. I am excited and nervous at the same time. I have not seen the dress since November!

Next week my fiance and I are meeting with our photographer to do an Engagement Shoot. This should be a good time to get to know him better and be more comfortable posing for pictures on the wedding day - plus it's included in our package. I don't know what to wear!

That's about it for now. Well, not actually. I don't now if my future groom and I have a place to stay the night of the wedding, I haven't even looked at veils, figured out our centerpieces, our menu or our cake...but those are blog posts for another day!

Happy Wedding Wednesday to other brides out there in cyber land!

Where it Went 4/28 - 05/11

2010-05-12T11:49:00.004-04:00

Is this thing on? After many requests and convincing my FH to agree, I posted his budget last week and no one said a thing. Is anyone still out there?

I am pretty stressed right now to be honest. Not money-related exactly but I feel with the wedding coming up there are so many demands on my time. Easter, Mother's Day, dress fittings, showers, parties, etc. have kept me traveling for the past five weekends. And there is no end in sight. In fact, between now and the wedding I will only spend about three Saturday nights in my own bed. (Hahaha I'm sleeping around...but really!) And on top of all these obligations, there's the nine zillion wedding details to work out.

Spending has been a little high too. I think I'm going to stop seeing a personal t rainer. On top of being expensive, I really don't have the time anymore. So here's my latest budget breakdown:

Budgeted/Actual
Credit Card - 100/0
Wedding Savings - 500/500
Perkins Loan - 93/93
Law School Loan - 80/80
Groceries - 100/60
Health - 90/105
Personal Training - 140/140
Misc. - 157/180
Clothes & Gifts - 0/100

I got my state tax refund finally - for some reason they only decided to give me $88, about $100 less than Tax Act said I was supposed to get. They sent me a letter but it didn't really explain it in a way I could understand. It made up for the two sets of Mother's Day cards I bought - left one at work (doh!). Guess I'm all set for next year.

Going private?

2010-05-10T21:42:00.002-04:00

So I'm posting this in the hopes that one of my favorite Personal Finance bloggers sees it. She has commented a few times on my blog so I hope she subscribes. I've been reading her blog for years and it looks like she went to invitation only recently.

Anyway, if you think you are this person, please (pretty please!) send me an invite to your blog at salliesniece (at) gmail (dot) com.

And if you're not sure if you're that person or just a person who wants me to read your blog - feel free to send me an invite as well.

Our Money: The Other Side of the Coin

2010-05-03T12:00:00.002-04:00

At long last, I am able to share with you the rest of our household finances, i.e. where the heck my fiance's money goes. I would have done this sooner since I know a bunch of people are curious how things will work after we're married but my fiance's way of maintaining his finances and mine are pretty different.

As you know, every two weeks on payday I map out the bills I need to pay and how I plan to spend the rest of my available cash. I guess you could say I am still living paycheck to paycheck in this respect.

My fiance, on the other hand, has a complicated (to me anyway) system he tracks using Quicken where he transfers money in and out of multiple accounts. He also pays for and gets reimbursed for a lot of business expenses. Every time I tried to look at his spreadsheets with all the colors and mathematical symbols I would get frustrated and just give up. But alas he has provided me with a simple spreadsheet, which I further simplified, that gives a better look at a typical month's expenses. Here it is:

So there you have it. His biggest priority is paying off some credit card debt that we (admitedly) both acquired during vacations over the past year. The total is about $6,000 and most of it will be paid off by the wedding.

As you can see this budget is far more detailed than my "pay student loans and then maybe some other stuff" budget but I hope it gives you more insight into our household finances.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-04-30T10:53:00.005-04:00

It's everybody's favorite time of the month! Time to do my monthly student loan debt roundup!

I'm happy to say that I am in the $120s! Seeing one digit go down is encouraging - makes me think my desire to not have six figure student loan debt isn't so impossible.

And I'm happy to say that at least two (I think only two) of my loans are now at values of less than what I borrowed! Woo hoo!

Both the Perkins Loan (originally $8800) and the Law School loan (originally $2000) I took out my third year of law school when my scholarship money ran out and I had a tuition deficit to meet. I'm grateful for the loans since they helped me avoid taking out private loans - only needed one of those evil evil private loans in law school, but I want them and their high interest rates to be banished.

So here are this month's numbers:

Budget 4/28 - 5/11

2010-04-28T14:24:00.004-04:00

I am crossing my fingers that my wedding dress arrives in the next two weeks (oh please go back to that post and read some excellent troll comments!).

Ticker update alert - with today's contribution I believe we have just over $5000 left in the Wedding Savings account. We're just about on target with our wedding savings with under three months to go.

Personal training has been going well too, though I'll have to scale back my sessions to once a week instead of twice of week due to money and time constraints. A month of intense training gave me the foundation I needed to work out on my home and was, in my opinion, money well spent. It's tough to stay motivated every.single.day but with a lot of hard work, I have seen some results.

I am also anxiously awaiting the busy time at work to be finished - we all are - but right now it seems everything is in such a state of flux that there's no telling what will happen. My workload has doubled and while I am getting tons of hands-on experience, it's hard to juggle three projects at once. Last night I had a dream about my boss! (Not that kind of dream I swear, but he bought me mozzarella sticks....weird, right?)

Anyway, enough non sequitor, let's get to the budget!

Starting Balance = $1261

100 - Credit Card
500 - Wedding Savings
93 - Perkins Loan
80 - Law School Loan
100 - Groceries
90 - Health*
140 - Personal Training
157 - Misc

*I'm pretty frustrated with my insurance company. They never tell me I owe them anything at the appointment and then I get a phantom bill in the mail several weeks later (still directed to my old address even though I moved six months ago and have told them that). Anyway, today I sent a check for my $25 annual dental deductible and have another $20 to pay for labwork. I finally found my checkbook!

Where it Went 4/13 - 4/27

2010-04-28T13:55:00.002-04:00

I was really bad and didn't even get around to posting a budget on the 13th for the past two weeks. But even still, I want to document how my money was spent just to stay accountable.

It's been pretty busy both at work and in wedding planning. My fiance and I got to take a quick trip out of town two weekends ago, which will probably be our last weekend truly alone before the wedding. It was fun. This past weekend I had my shower (yay for presents!) and the following weekends are chock full of many obligations to friends and family. The fun has just begun!

So here's a quick accounting of how I spent my last paycheck ($1261):

Credit Card - 160
Sallie Mae - 406
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Sprint - 74
Healthcare - 85
Office Work Party tickets - 60
Misc. - 160

Stay tuned for more budgeting!

I Paid Off Nice Collection Agency!!

2010-04-28T11:09:00.005-04:00

Back in May 2008, shortly after creating this blog (woah reading those old entries is a bit painful) I posted about reaching a payment agreement with a creditor I termed "Nice Collection Agency." Every month for 21 months they have been deducting $125.81 from my bank account and I knew that, someday, this old credit card would be paid off.

Last month they only deducted $75 and I thought that was curious but since I haven't really been keeping track of the amount I still owed, I waited one more month to see what would happen. And this month it seems the debt has finally been paid off!

So yes, 21 months after entering into the agreement, and a full decade after racking up the charges, I am DONE with Nice Collection Agency. I feel very relieved to have that monkey off my back.

Next up is getting a copy of my credit report to make sure the account shows up as paid in full...and figuring out what to do with an extra $125.81 a month (I'll give you a hint....saving it!).

Today when I was digging through my old blog posts I remembered how frustrated and helpless I felt back in 2008, when I couldn't control how I was spending my money and future stability seemed so out of reach. I realize I still have a ways to go..but it's nice to know I have made some progress.

Where it Went 3/31 - 4/13

2010-04-14T09:21:00.002-04:00

Personal Training is going great! I have lost ten pounds in three weeks!* And inches too. I'm feeling pretty good even though it's really hard work and the diet is kicking my butt.

*Note that it's only healthy to lose about 2 pounds per week and my trainer wasn't expecting that much to happen so quickly so I have to be careful I'm getting enough calories and don't hurt myself, etc.

Expect a longer post today about the final stages of wedding (budget) planning but for now here's an accounting of my budget for the previous pay period:

Budgeted/Actual

Personal Training - 280/220
Perkins Loan - 93/93
Law School Loan - 80/80
Credit Card - 0/200
Groceries - 75/0
Health - 45/40
Wedding Savings - 580/580
Misc. - 163/140

In other news, I learned an expensive internet lesson: just because something looks awesome on a web site doesn't mean it will look awesome in person. Sigh, have to return a too expensive dress I bought to wear to my shower but at least I'll get my money back!

And since I was having too much fun with my April Fool's Day post, I neglected to mention that it's been a year since I've been at my "new" job. Woohoo! Hopefully this means I will be seeing a pay bump soon.

I Won the Megamillions!

2010-04-01T10:59:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I'm writing this. I haven't even told any of my family members or friends this life changing news but it's been eating me up inside and I figure since this is an anonymous blog about my money I just couldn't hold this secret in any longer.

Let me say that I usually abhor gambling, but last month while accompanying my fiance to a business trip in California I urgently needed to use a restroom after drinking three Ginger Ales on the plane. We stopped at a convenience store and I had to make a purchase to get the restroom key. Since I clearly didn't need anything to drink and I already had gum I thought the next cheapest thing was a throwaway lottery ticket. It was a few weeks later that I finally discovered the piece of paper floating around my pocketbook was worth $133 Million!

I'm so excited! But cautious at the same time. I don't want to let the secret out and have people try to influence my financial decisions. I have hired an estate lawyer who specializes in lottery winnings. After paying taxes up front - and of course paying off my student loans - I should net about $70 million. My lawyer has reccomended buying an annuity with most of the funds which will pay out about $200,000 a month for the rest of my life!

We are buying a boat and sailing the world. Stay tuned for blog posts from paradise! Early retirement here we come!

Budget 3/31 - 4/13

2010-03-31T14:56:00.005-04:00

Sadly, it looks like I will fall short of my March Savings Madness goal of saving $2000 this month for the wedding. With an addition of $580 this pay period I will have transferred $1710 in the month of march. What's breaking the budget is buying a month of personal training for $280. But there's no use getting down about it now, I made the decision to really focus on my fitness goals, so focus I will.

I hope to post some pros/cons of working with a personal trainer after I have a few more sessions. One obvious con is the cost involved but the pros so far have been knowing there's someone who believes I can meet my goals and really pushes me to get there. I hope in the end, my improved health and self-esteem will be worth the money. And seriously folks, I'd appreciate it if you kept your snarky comments to yourself today...I've grappled with this decision for some time and I have made up my mind to spend the money.

Also my $184 state tax refund never showed up, despite the fact that I filed in early February. As of today when I checked the status online, it's scheduled to arrive on April 13th but it says that the amount has been adjusted. I wonder what happened? Did I screw up my taxes? Stay tuned.

So here's my new budget for the next two weeks...

Starting Balance = $1286*

Personal Training - 280
Perkins Loan - 93
Law School Loan - 80
Groceries - 75
Health - 45
Wedding Savings - 580
Misc. - 163**

*Paycheck is slightly bigger because I received a meal reimbursement, which is all well and fine, except that I was taxed on it....even after being taxed on the meals it covers. Where's the fairness in that?

**Includes $10 towards Administrative Professionals Day and maybe a new outfit for Easter.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2010-03-31T13:45:00.003-04:00

It's the end of March so you know what that means.....time for my monthly student loan debt roundup!

The only thing to note this month is apparently two of my loans (with the same lender) went up instead of down since I just paid them today and it takes the system six days for the payment to kick in. Boo, I don't like to see numbers going the wrong way...especially since I paid double the minimum payment on one of those loans!!!

Oh well, here are the numbers. Almost below $130k, woo hoo! I really want to celebrate when I hit the below six figure mark but maybe I should celebrate smaller goals along the way too. The $120s aren't far away!

Where it Went 3/17 - 3/30

2010-03-31T12:45:00.003-04:00

Rain rain go away! I can't wait until tomorrow when April officially begins because I'm sick of the weather in the Northeast. Cold and rainy day after day.

Good things happened in March though! I am hoping to meet my March Savings Madness challenge later on this afternoon. And this was made possible by the three paycheck month and my bringing in $500 of additional income!

And I've been busy as a bee, working, planning for the wedding, and I started seeing a personal trainer to help motivate my workout goals. I was on the fence about actually paying for this service, but after a couple of session I am really hooked. I have been doing a lot of things half-heartedly and meeting with the trainer is setting me up to be much more accountable to myself.

But more on that later. For now, here is how I did on my budget compared to my projections the past two weeks. Nothing too exciting happened. Our grocery bill has slowly creeped up now that we're making an effort to eat healthier, but we're actively looking for ways to cut costs in that department.

Budgeted/Actual

Credit Card - 165/165

Sprint - 76/76

Healthcare - 105/100*

Groceries - 75/100

Gift - 40/0

Wedding Savings - 1170/1130

Misc. - 130/180

*Includes $60 towards personal training.

So I have to save an additional $870 to meet my $2000 savings goals. I don't know if I can do it. I need to flex the numbers a bit but stay tuned for my new budget coming up soon.

Budget 3/17 - 3/30

2010-03-17T13:34:00.002-04:00

In the next two weeks I will be hoping to find my Pot of Gold! And I will...in that March is a 3 Paycheck Month and I should be coming into at least $500 in additional cash from an outside job that I am doing next week. Maybe even my state tax return will show up!

So here's my budget for the next two weeks. My paycheck has been "reduced" by $14 since I upped my 457 contribution to 8%. I'm sure I'll be thanking myself for that in 30 years.

I spent some time online getting my cell phone bill reduced since there was a random charge on it that I did not authorize. Success! Got my money back!

Interesting tidbit about today - it is the one year anniversary of my interview for my current job. Amazing how time flies! And there is exactly 4 months until our wedding!

Starting Balance = $1261

Credit Card - 165

Sprint - 76

Healthcare - 105

Groceries - 75

Gift - 40

Wedding Savings - 1170*

Misc. - 130

*Includes $500 in expected additional money.

Have to go out of town (again) next weekend for a family event. Here's hoping I can keep my costs down this time!

Where it Went 3/03 - 3/16

2010-03-17T12:09:00.002-04:00

Hello there and a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's hoping my Irish blood will bring me some luck soon as I'm currently behind on my March Savings Madness by $32 and with New York State (and several others apparently) holding on to their refunds I may even get further behind before this month is out.

It has been a good couple of weeks in terms of personal development. I started working out more and eating healthier. This new development came with a higher grocery bill but I've been researching ways to eat healthy for less and hopefully will have some new tips to share soon. And the new Spring weather headed my way meant adding some new clothes in my still pretty basic wardrobe. So all in all, I'm slightly over budget.

Here are the numbers compared to the budget I set two weeks ago:

Budgeted/Actual
Credit Card - 120/120
Wedding Savings - 100/68
Groceries - 75/120
Sallie Mae - 407/407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260
Nice Collection Agency - 125/76*
Healthcare - 70/40**
Misc. - 118/195

*I don't know why this payment was lower. Maybe as I get closer to paying off that account (yay!) the payments get lower. I need to look into that because I would really like to free up that monthly line.

**I still didn't send in my annual dental deductible. I hate mailing bills and I am completely out of checks.

Miscellaneous spending includes a bus, train and subway tickets since I went into NYC for a while before visiting my fiance's family. There was some wedding spending but that came out of the Wedding Savings. I hope after this month we will be well on our way to paying for our wedding in cash!

Since today is Extra Paycheck Day (March is a 3 paycheck month) I'm hoping to catch up a little bit.

Financial Goals for 2010

2010-03-08T15:32:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about planning our lives after the wedding and wanted to make a "Bucket List" of sorts. I've been adding to it in my head for days now...and it was getting a little intimidating. So, first, I thought I would list my immediate financial goals for 2010 - better late than never, right?

1. Get married without going into debt. There is a finite deadline on this goal - a hopefully beautiful Saturday in July and we're pretty confident we can pull it off with our combined savings.

2. Increase 457 Fund contributions. Check! After reading again and again that you should have one year's salary in your retirement funds by age 30 and feeling woefully inadequate at 30 years, 3 months and only around $10,000 saved, I bit the bullet and upped my contributions from 7 to 8%. It only means a $9 biweekly paycheck impact which I can handle.

3. Max out Roth IRA. After the wedding I will start funneling $400 a month towards this goal plus occasional snowflakes so that I can accomplish this goal by April 2011.

4. Buy back pension credits. As I've mentioned before, I have to buy eight months of credits into the pension system because I joined late. It's only going to be a couple hundred dollars and I will start this process right after the wedding as well. This way, I will be set to vest in my pension in August 2011.

5. Eliminate law school loan. This was one of my 2009 resolutions and I'm sad to say it hasn't happened yet, but now I've added the progress bar to the blog and have a plan to knock out the loan by November using some of the money currently going towards Wedding Savings (the rest is going to the Roth IRA).

In short, the rest of 2010 is going to be a great financial year for me. I'm going to marry a great guy, beef up my retirement savings, and start snowballing my student loan debt. Wish me luck!

Budget 3/03 - 3/16

2010-03-03T19:48:00.003-05:00

This budget is sort of annoying. I am anxious to put my March Savings Madness into effect, but I have to be patient because I have a lot of bills to take care of first.

Well technically, my monthly payment to Sallie Mae won't be debited until the 17th - my next payday, but I can't risk moving the money to the wedding savings before that happens. Oh well, the money is "saved" in my head.

Here's my budget for the next two weeks, before the March Savings Madness truly begins:

Starting Balance = $1275

Credit Card - 120
Wedding Savings - 100
Groceries - 75
Sallie Mae - 407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260

Nice Collection Agency - 125

Healthcare - 70*
Misc. - 118

*This amount reflects the $25 deductible I apparently owe to my dental insurance, which is lame since I ask every time at the dentist if I owe anything and haven't been there this calendar year. Oh well.

Oh and if you click through, please note that I have started updating my sidebars after several requests. I added my next debt I'm focusing on (my smallest and highest interest student loan). I am going to add savings goals next, stay tuned!

Where it Went 2/17 - 3/02

2010-03-03T05:37:00.002-05:00

I am happy to report that this past budgeting period was very successful. $100 in wedding spending on our Pre-Cana course and $500 in wedding savings, all the while being on target in every other category. As I've learned, if you transfer the savings out of your account immediately, you're pretty much forced to be on budget...because you have nothing left. Genius!

The Pre-Cana (marriage preparation) course went really well. It gave us a lot of food for thought in terms of planning our future together. Most of it was stuff we had already talked about but it was a good refresher nonetheless.

So here's how I did on the budget I set out two weeks ago:

Budgeted/Actual
Pre-Cana - 100/100

Groceries - 75/100

Wedding Savings - 500/500
Credit Card - 150/150

Sprint - 84/84

Law School Loan - 80/80

Perkins Loan - 93/93

Health - 65/40

Misc. - 163/160

We booked our flights to Hawaii for our honeymoon! Well, part of our flights at least. Now we have to make some decisions, save up some cash, and plan out the trip. I'm excited.

Stay tuned for my next budget - when I'm actually more awake and dressed. Right now I've been up for hours because I couldn't sleep.

March Savings Madness

2010-03-02T11:26:00.002-05:00

Wow, it's March! Which means the wedding is only a little over 4 months away. Yowser! My fiance and I sat down and wrote out the remains of what we need to pay for and how we're doing in our current wedding savings and it's time to step it up.

Which brings me to the March Savings Madness.

In the month of March, I, Sallie's Niece, will save $2000 for the wedding.

You may be saying "but Sallie, you only get net $2400 a month and have $925 in monthly debt obligations, however will you accomplish this goal?"

Well, a few ways:

I still haven't gotten my state tax refund, which brings me to a tax related conspiracy theory but I'll save that for another day. Assuming it comes this month that's $184 towards my goal.
It's a three paycheck month! So I can divert almost $1000 of the "extra" paycheck towards the wedding savings.
I got some extra work! Almost a year ago, I wrote about a court case I was assigned to, which sadly only netted me $50 at the time. Well it's finally ready to go to court so I get the remaining $500 of my statutory fee!

Plus my regular savings and a bit of belt tightening, I am confident I can reach this goal. Wish me luck everyone!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup!

2010-02-28T19:25:00.002-05:00

Here it is, that time again to do a monthly roundup of my student loan debt.

February has flown by between Valentine's Day, work craziness, a weekend trip, and wedding planning. We are now just four and a half months away from saying "I do" which means lots of planning, decision-making and saving. I'll post more about our plans soon.

But in the meantime, here are the numbers. Freed myself of $741 student loan debt in this short month.

Budget 2/17 - 3/03

2010-02-17T12:07:00.003-05:00

This weekend my fiance and I have pre-cana, or marriage preparation with the church. It's an all day course where we will discuss a lot of the tough issues married couples face, including finance. I'm pretty excited! But also, do you think the diocese will accept cash because I just realized I am completely out of checks?!

So here's my budget for the next two weeks, including the $100 course:

Starting Balance = $1310

Pre-Cana - 100
Groceries - 75

Wedding Savings - 500
Credit Card - 150

Sprint - 84

Law School Loan - 80*

Perkins Loan - 93

Health - 65

Misc. - 163

*I paid double the minimum payment this month because I loathe that student loan the most and want to evict it from my life ASAP.

Today also begins Lent and I have decided to abstain from beer and liquor, which maybe will help me spend less money as well. Guess I'll find out.

Where it Went 2/03 - 2/16

2010-02-17T11:48:00.003-05:00

Payday! My two (and sometimes three!) favorite days of the month.

I may have some exciting news soon -or rather I do have news but I don't know how exciting it is yet - about bringing in some extra money next month. Stay tuned!

And now, where my money has gone for the past two weeks. A bit of a mea culpa here is that not buying groceries during this entire budgeting period - working late, snow, etc., has left both my fiance and I spending too much money on lunch at work.

Bad bad! I thought I had learned my lesson to brown bag it. Must try harder.

So here's how I did:

Budgeted/Actual

Wedding Savings - 500/500

Credit Card - 125/125

Sallie Mae - 407/407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260

Nice Collection Agency - 125/125

Groceries - 75/0

Sprint - 78/0*

Health - 60/40

Misc. - 110/220

*I just paid this today so I will include this amount in the next budgeting period.

So yes my spending wasn't awesome but because of my federal tax refund I was able to give a nice boost to the wedding savings account. Just as a preview, my fiance and I have decided that after the wedding I will continue to save money in this account as general savings for us - to help grow our emergency fund, save for our next car, house, etc.

Saving For the Honeymoon

2010-02-08T13:22:00.003-05:00

What's the one thing people wish they had more of, even moreso than money? Time. While I can't make more time (drats!) my fiance and I have been saving our vacation time for our honeymoon.

Last I wrote about it, we were still on the fence about possible destinations. As the wedding approaches, we are more convinced that Hawaii is the place to go! There are some great hotels we can stay at using rewards points and it's someplace I've always wanted to travel to. (My fiance has been to the Big Island while on an extended layover trip but he was all by himself.)

Airline miles are getting harder to come by (and save up) as my fiance hasn't had to travel for work in a while - a good thing - but we have enough to cover one roundtrip ticket.

And the most important thing, after paying for the trip, is how are we going to be able to get away from work for an extended period? That's where vacation time comes in.

With my fiance's recent promotion he gained an additional week's vacation! Which means he now has three weeks a year. We will need to use a day or two before the wedding to travel and get ready, save a couple of days for two weddings of our friends in the fall, as well as the Christmas holidays. That leaves about two weeks for the honeymoon!

As for me, since I've been with my employer for over three years (though in different offices) I just received an increase in my vacation accrual! As of January, I accrue 5.5 vacation hours every two weeks. Right now I have:

Vacation - 57.75 hours

Personal - 35 hours

Comp - 15.75 hours

Since it's the busy time of the year I can expect to accrue at least 20 more comp hours in the weeks to come. By July it looks like I will have over three weeks vacation saved up, not including personal or comp time.

Hawaii here we come!

Budget 2/03 - 2/16

2010-02-03T15:42:00.003-05:00

I'm having one of those "why doesn't it grow on tree" days in regards to money.

Logged into my credit card account and realized I have been spending too much on new clothes lately, which is discouraging considering I don't consider myself even close to having a decent professional wardrobe. I need to lose twenty pounds or just wear a sack every day. Or both.

I'm just going to lay off the clothes shopping for a while and try to step it up at the gym.

And despite the feeling that all I have been doing for the past 5 months is pay bills and save for the wedding we are slightly behind in our savings.

So here is my budget for the next two weeks, taking into account the $495 federal tax refund I received:

Starting Balance = $1740

Wedding Savings - 500

Credit Card - 125

Sallie Mae - 407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260

Nice Collection Agency - 125

Groceries - 75

Sprint - 78*

Health Co-pays - 60

Misc. - 110

*Sprint is approximate since the bill isn't showing up yet but I took into account the $73 I usually pay plus a $5 donation to Haiti I made.

Our of miscellaneous I also want to buy a Valentine's Day gift for my fiance.

Where it Went 1/20 - 2/02

2010-02-03T14:15:00.003-05:00

I got my federal tax refund yesterday, yay! $495 to add to the wedding account. Did I mention I was looking forward to the wedding..... being over with?

And in the meantime, here is how I did on my budget for the past two weeks:

Projected/Actual
Wedding Savings - 400/400
Attorney Registration - 350/350
Credit Card - 174/174
Perkins Loan - 95/95
Law School Loan - 55/55
Groceries - 100/90
Valentine's Day - 50/50
Health Co-pays - 40/40
Misc. - 111/150

Included in the miscellaneous spending is $50 in birthday money my parents sent me.

Paying for the bar registration dues is annoying. I guess I'll have to remember them two years ago so I can better prepare.

Luckily most of Valentine's Day has already been paid for thanks to me finding a good deal.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup!

2010-01-30T11:23:00.002-05:00

I can't believe it's already the end of January (or just about) and a whole year since I got engaged.

After lots of waiting and saving, the wedding is less than six months away!!!!

And little by little I've still been chipping away at my student loan debt.

So here is my monthly report card:

That's all for now, stay warm!

Budget 1/20 - 2/2

2010-01-25T10:13:00.002-05:00

I am ridiculously late posting this budget.

Luckily I saved some money from my last paycheck to help towards the $350 attorney registration fee I have to pay.

And saving for the wedding, something that doesn't seem to ever be done with, sigh. It's less than six months away now so I'm getting excited. Still lots of money to be saved (and then spent).

So here's where my money will be going this pay period:

Starting Balance = $1375

400 - Wedding Savings
350 - Attorney registration
174 - Credit card
95 - Perkins loan
55 - Law school loan
100 - Groceries
50 - Valentine's Day*
40 - Health co-pays
111 - Misc.

*I found a cool place to go for Valentine's Day with my fiance and prepaid my half of the cost.

I also filed my taxes last night! I should be getting a refund of about $600, but all of that will be going into the wedding savings.

Where it Went 1/06 - 1/19

2010-01-20T15:54:00.002-05:00

I'm 30!!!!!!!!! I celebrated my birthday last weekend with my fiance and some friends. It was a nice, low key evening and luckily all my fears of "getting old" quickly faded into the background. I don't know why I was so focused on a number.

Anyway, I'm in the midst of my busy season at work, getting a little bit behind on wedding planning, trying to get in better shape and dealing with some health and family issues. Such is life at 30 I guess!

But here's where my money went for the past two weeks compared to the budget I set:

Budgeted/Actual

Credit Card - 100/150

Groceries - 75/90

Sallie Mae - 407/407

Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260

Nice Collection Agency - 125/125

Sprint - 73/73

Misc. - 236/214

And I finished the pay period with about $102 to roll over, which is good because my birthday commands a hefty $350 payment to the state court administration (boo!) in order to remain a licensed attorney.

Of miscellaneous, at least $60 was spent on health care co-pays (boo) making me kick myself for not starting a Health Savings Account during the open enrollment period. Oh well.

In other news, my fiance got a promotion!!! Yay, I'm so proud of him. And it came with an extra week's vacation as well as a $5000 raise! He's the youngest one in his company to have made it this far. I guess success is one of the perks of getting older, though his 30th isn't for a few more months (yes, I'm a cougar).

Budget 1/06 - 1/19

2010-01-06T22:21:00.003-05:00

My birthday is coming up! Good golly I'm turning 30. And somehow my paycheck today managed to be $5 less than it usually is. But no more! I am adjusting my withholding in anticipation of my 2010 marriage. This has got to be the trickiest thing we have ever tried to figure out but I think (crosses fingers) that my paycheck will get bigger!

So very briefly, here's a rough budget for the next two weeks. I have a couple of annoying expenses that are coming up (professional fee!) and holiday spending that I will have to account for.

Starting Balance = $1275

Credit Card - 100
Groceries - 75
Sallie Mae - 407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Nice Collection Agency - 125
Sprint - 73
Misc. - 236*

*Some of this I hope to roll over to the next pay period to help pay for a professional fee.

Where it Went 12/23 - 1/05

2010-01-06T18:01:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year!

Between the holidays and my busy time at work starting up I am crazy busy. Or just crazy. :-)

I do have a lot to say so real quickly:

My fiance got a $2000 bonus at work!
We refinanced the condo mortgage today!
I had a work vent but I think everything is okay.
I spent way too much money over the holidays and I'm just trying to make up for it now.

So...in the meantime here's where my "cash" went over the past two weeks and in a few hours I will deal with everything else.

Projected/Actual

Credit Card - 250/250
Charity - 50/50
Wedding Savings - 500/500

Groceries - 75/0
Christmas - 75/180*
Law School Loan - 54/54
Perkins Loan - 93/93
Misc. - 183/60*

*There's some overlap in these two categories.

My siblings never reimbursed me for a gift I bought for my parents. Who knows if I will see that $100 any time soon.

That's all for now.

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2009-12-31T09:40:00.002-05:00

My last monthly student loan debt roundup of 2009 is upon me and I'm happy to say I cleared over $700 in debt this month. Still seemingly a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of six figure debt but I'm satisfied for now with the progress.

One thing I'm not too thrilled to admit is that I failed to meet one of my 2009 Resolutions of paying off my smallest loan, titled "law school loan." In January when I declared that I would pay it off this year the balance stood at $1932 and today it stands at $1269 despite the fact that I paid more than the amount due and threw a couple of extra payments at it throughout the year. The 8% interest is killer.

Anyway, more beating myself up about failing my resolutions will come later. For now, here are the cold hard facts:

Not a bad month. Here's hoping 2010 brings a lot more progress.

My Annual Exam Cost $254!

2009-12-28T18:04:00.002-05:00

This post is about women's health so if that doesn't interest you feel free to stop reading...

Recently I had my annual exam and pap smear. This was actually the first time I've ever gone to a private OBGYN practice to have this performed as previously I went to my regular family doctor, the college health center and most recently my local Planned Parenthood. I liked the Planned Parenthood, especially when I didn't have "real" health insurance during law school and it is in walking distance from where I've lived the past 6 years. But I figured it was about time I established a relationship with a local practice because one day I may need care that's more than "preventative" if you catch my drift.

The appointment was fine (as fine as any half hour of your life in which you are prodded in such a personal way) and I paid a $20 co-pay when I left. Today I received a bill in the mail for an additional $10 for charges not covered by my insurance. The statement itself was enlightening.

My doctor's office attempted to bill $210 for the visit alone, of which I paid $20 and the insurance company "adjusted" payment was $56.

The pap smear is billed at $35, of which my insurance paid $27 and I am liable for $8.

The lab work is billed at $9, of which my insurance paid $7 and I am liable for $2.

Total charges = $254
Total paid by insurance = $90
Total paid by me = $30

Damn. Last year at Planned Parenthood, $35 got me my annual and six months of birth control pills. No wonder insurance companies are looking to do away with the annual exam.

Budget 12/23 - 01/05

2009-12-23T18:08:00.002-05:00

So I'm kind of stumped making up this budget. There's a few things I need to figure out in the next couple of days/weeks that could alter things but I have to give it my best shot for now.

Still have to get one (or maybe two) small presents before Christmas and want to make a charitable donation before the end of the year.

But here's my budget for the next two weeks and into the new years:

Starting Balance = $1280

Credit Card - 250
Charity - 50
Wedding Savings - 500

Groceries - 75
Christmas - 75
Law School Loan - 54
Perkins Loan - 93
Misc. - 183

Here's hoping the rest of the year goes smoothly!

Where it Went 12/09 - 12/22

2009-12-23T17:07:00.003-05:00

Oh my. Two days until Christmas and I am SO busy. I wish I could say it was all holiday fun keeping me occupied lately but mostly it is work. Since I only started this job in April I had no idea how busy things get around this time. Yikes!

So just want to pop in and check on my budget. Something is off since I had $50 extra in my account today even though it looks like I went over budget...but that's okay because I have to turn around and pay my credit card today so that money will soon be out the window.

Anyway, here's where my money went for the past two weeks compared to the budget I set:

Budgeted/Actual
Groceries - 100/100
Sallie Mae - 407/407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260/260
Nice Collection Agency - 125/125
Sprint - 74/74
Holiday Shopping & Parties - 200/150+
Misc. - 101/240

A lot of the miscellaneous spending is holiday related but I just lumped it all together for convenience.

And since I got paid today now I get to figure out how the rest of my financial year will go.

I want to post a year end wrap up but that will probably have to wait until after Christmas.

Snag with the mortgage refinance

2009-12-15T19:33:00.003-05:00

I posted a few weeks ago about how my fiance and I were looking to refinance the condo.

Well we finally got out appraisal back and the news isn't so hot. Instead of the $155k we were hoping to get, our appraiser valued the condo at $150k. Boo. And so off in my humble opinion. Based on comps and improvements we've made I think our value should be at least $160k.

But the appraiser 1) used comps from older buildings; 2) used comps from our building for units that have not done any remodeling. We have a brand new kitchen and hardwood floors whereas the other units have old kitchens and carpets!

We are in the process of challenging the appraisal but if worst comes to worst we have to come up with close to $5k to cover the closing costs ourselves.

It totally sucks but I know in the long run getting a mortgage rate 2 points less than our current mortgage rate will save us a lot of money.

Updates to come!

Budget 12/09 - 12/22

2009-12-09T19:36:00.003-05:00

And finally I have a free moment on this cold snowy day to post my new budget. We finally got some groceries!

I'm happy to report that most of our Christmas shopping has been completed. We managed to snag one present while at the supermarket and my fiance used his Christmas savings to buy most of the rest, minus a present I got for my parents.

Still have a little more to do...plus an office grab bag ($20), supplies for the office holiday party, a bottle of wine for a group holiday party, and materials for a Cookie Swap. Don't you just love the holidays?

Anyway, so here's where my money will be going over the next two weeks.

Starting Balance = $1267
Groceries! - 100
Sallie Mae - 407
Defaulted Student Loan - 260
Nice Collection Agency - 125
Sprint - 74
Holiday Shopping & Parties - 200
Misc. - 101

We got some less than good news about our refinance, but I'm waiting on more details before I post about that.

Wedding savings is on hold most likely until the new year due to yet another recent development but some wedding spending will be going on very soon too (time to pay those installment payments!).

For those of you in cold regions of the world, stay warm, and for those of you in the warmer areas, count your blessings!

Where it Went 11/25-12/08

2009-12-09T10:09:00.002-05:00

It's snowing! Lots and lots of snow is blanketing my fine city and as someone with a five minute walking commute I can enjoy the good things about snow; i.e. it's pretty, and better than rain. Also it's a Ghost Town at work since everyone with kids or a long commute called out.

I've been slowly getting into the Holiday Spirit, first with Thanksgiving and then last weekend we had another family get together with merriment and hot apple cider. Alas, there are some stressors in my life right now that are interfering with fully embracing the holiday, but today's snow fall has me in a good mood so that's a start.

Budgeted/Actual

Credit Card - 200/200
Wedding Savings - 500/500

Wedding Spending - 0/600
Groceries - 75/0
Christmas - 150/156*
Law School Loan - 136/136
Perkins Loan - 93/93
Misc. - 126/280

*Technically I only spent half this amount but one of my siblings owes me the other half.

Once again we failed to do any grocery shopping so both my fiance and I spent money on dining out. This is something we have to work on, even if it's cold out and there's snow on the road.

I bought my wedding dress with money I have been saving for this very purchase. I will pay the remaining balance of $754 in about four months when the dress comes in.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program Not For Me

2009-12-02T11:00:00.002-05:00

Back in June I posted that several of my coworkers were looking into applying for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. I didn't think that it was the right thing for me to do but it was too complicated for me to figure out at the time so I promised an update at a later time.

After hearing about the program again, I decided to finally make a decision before too much time has passed.

I knew from hearing a coworker's experience in applying that my job counts as "public service" so that question was resolved.

My next question was "how do I know the loans will really be forgiven after ten years?" Will there be an income cut-off or does my current income qualify me as just broke enough to have the loans forgiven no matter what (after I get married I will have to use our joint income of course). I still can't find an answer to this question, but here's one example I did find:

Example: Jane Justice started out owing $100,000 in qualifying debt at 6.8%
interest and took a full-time public service job with a starting salary of
$40,000 with annual increases of 5%. Jane stayed in public service and paid
$49,132 over 10 years under the IBR plan. The federal government cancels
$118,868, the principal and interest remaining.

From here.

Sounds good, right? Wrong. I pretty much AM Jane Justice...except I make slightly more money, have slightly less "qualifying" debt at a lower interest rate than 6.8%, and anticipate greater salary increases than 5%.

But to qualify for the program you have to pay your loans in one of three ways:

Income Based Repayment (IBR) Plan
Income Contingent Repayment Plan
Standard Repayment Plan with a 10-year repayment period
Any other Direct Loan Program repayment plan, but only payments that are at least equal to the monthly payment amount that would have been required under the Standard Repayment Plan with a 10-year repayment period may be counted toward the required 120 payments.

From here. I'll let you navigate that mumbo jumbo before I attempt to explain it.

I figured out right away that I didn't qualify for the Income Based Repayment Plan because I made too much money (ha!).

The Income Contingent Repayment Plan was less appealing since it only allows discharge after 25 years and you end up owing taxes on the amount discharged.

I thought maybe the Standard Repayment Plan would work but I still wasn't sure. I tried a few online calculators but it was all confusing and I wanted to hear the news straight from the horse's mouth.

So I called up good old Aunt Sallie Mae and got the skinny:

Yadda yadda you have to apply, yadda yadda we can add your Perkins loan to your payment, yadda yadda.....your payment will increase to $795.30 a month.

Excuse me? I am only paying $406 a month on my federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans. Throw in the $93 a month I am paying towards the Perkins loan (which will be gone SO much faster than 10 years from now) that amount only totals $499.

"Let me get this straight," I said, "you want me to give you $300 more a month so in ten years if maybe I have stayed a humble public servant the federal government may possibly forgive the rest of my loan?"

Click. Goodbye. At least now I know I made the right decision.

The explanation, apparently, is because I am on the level 30 year payment plan (where I pay the same $406 every month for the next 28.5 years) my payment is lower than it would be if I started paying based on the 25 year plan. But paying $300 more a month sounds like a crap gift to me, right?

And yes, I do realize that technically it would have possibly maybe saved me some money in the end but I plan to be rid of these loans in ten years without Uncle Sam's help thank you very much.

Refinancing the Mortgage....maybe

2009-12-01T13:25:00.003-05:00

Remember when my fiance bought our condo? What a scary yet exciting time that was. I didn't think we would have to even think about another closing for several years to come.

With rates at such low levels, however, we are trying to refinance already.

From my post when we first bought the place:

Estimated Monthly Payments
Mortgage = $937.68
Taxes = $175.00
PMI = $61.38

The reality:

Currently Monthly Payments
Mortgage Principal = $146
Extra Payment to Principal* = $102
Mortgage Interest = $828
Escrow** = $256

*My fiance has been sending an additional payment of $102 a month so we can get rid of PMI sooner. Smart guy!

**Escrow includes PMI and taxes.

So...it seems we are paying $53 more a month than what we had originally estimated (before our extra payment to the principal). I'm not sure why that is but I suspect our taxes went up. I tried to look up our taxes online but the city's website isn't showing anything under fiance's name or our street address. I'm sure my fiance knows more but he's a busy guy today.

I do know this....our current mortgage rate of 6.75% bugs the hell out of us. With rates being offered under 5% to new buyers and buyers who are at risk of default, it seems like we are missing out. At one point, my fiance thinks that since we have so little equity in the condo and since we have an FHA mortgage already backed by Fannie Mae, that maybe we did qualify for the Making Home Affordable Program.

But like all other real estate questions I've seen, this one is complicated even for my legal trained mind. First, we called our bank and they said not only could we refinance at a lower rate, that there would be no closing costs or an appraisal!

Then, they called back and said there would be closing costs. The next call was to say they no longer offered refinancing on condos (ugh!).

Frustrated but not defeated we shopped around until we found a loan company that would refinance our loan at a better rate....with closing costs and fees of course. And we needed an appraisal.

So the appraisal was today! We cleaned, painted the kitchen (finally!), organized and staged. I hope it went well. It's a little frustrating because someone in our building is trying to sell off his multiple units and has priced them below market. And according to my research, a condo appraisal must use comps from the same building.

The loan company told us the appraised value must be about $1500 more than the purchase price of $152,659 in order to tack on the closing costs to the loan. Otherwise we would have to pay them out of pocket or they might not even give us the refinance.

We will hear back in a few days and then we can figure out what to do next, including plugging in the costs/benefits into this nifty "should I refinance?" calculator I found.

Bought my Wedding Dress!

2009-11-30T16:03:00.003-05:00

After countless hours searching online, five trips to various bridal salons, two minor meltdowns, and dozens of dresses tried on, I have found THE DRESS.

A lot of brides start thinking about their wedding dress as soon as they get engaged (or even before!) but I was not one of them. This process was long, hard and frustrating. In the end I think I found a beautiful dress I am excited to wear on one of the happiest days of my life to come.

Note: it is not the dress I have included in this post as I don't even have a picture of it yet and I wouldn't want my fiance to see it even if I did. But trust me, it's gorgeous!

So how much did it cost? Under (amended) budget!

When I first was detailing our wedding budget I optimistically (and unrealisticly) estimated I would only need to spend about $500 on my dress (haha, falls down laughing on the floor). Sample sales, David's Bridal's $99 dress sales, used dresses, etc. were on my mind. However, as I learned, finding a dress in my size that wasn't poorly made or wouldn't require costly alterations was going to cost quite a bit more. Therefore, my fiance and I decided to up the budget to $1600.

The base price of my dress is $1100, plus planned alterations of $150 and taxes of $104, the total comes out to be $1354. This does not include other alterations, which have been capped at $300. Hopefully my alterations will not cost the full $300 but even if they did I would end up only slightly over budget. It does make me a little dizzy thinking I have to work a full two weeks just to pay for a dress that I will wear for one day, especially since my second choice dress only cost $550, but I decided it was worth it to have the dress that I loved.

I paid $600 down as a deposit so the store can order the dress, which I will have in (crosses fingers) four months. I can't wait to wear it!

Monthly Student Loan Debt Roundup

2009-11-30T14:11:00.003-05:00

I can't believe November is already over and soon 2009 will also be ending. It's been a long, crazy, but wonderful year. (More on that later of course.)

Right now I bring you my monthly student loan debt roundup.

On my way home from visiting family over Thanksgiving, I passed by many cars jammed with college students (and their stuff) heading back to campus and thought to myself "enjoy it now!" when contemplating the fact that I am still paying for the education I recieved as a freshman. And with only a few more weeks until my 30th birthday, my goal of paying off freshman year before I turn 30 is about $5,000 off (or about 3 years away at the current rate of payment).

But in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I remain thankful for my education, as well as my family, my fiance, our home, my career, and of course my furry friend.

Here are the numbers:

Private Undergrad Loan I must have messed up the totals last month when I reported them late so it shows no change.

And even though I managed to accidentally pay too much to Law School Loan, it and my Perkins loan do not reflect the amount of interest that has accrued this month as the website wasn't finished computing their totals. Hopefully that's an accident that can happen again as it will help me knock out my highest interest robbed-on-the-side-of-the-road loan at 8% so graciously given to me by my law school.

Budget 11/25 - 12/08

2009-11-25T14:47:00.003-05:00

Three more paychecks until the holiday that shall not be named. I'm not so worried though. No one in our families expects us to give expensive gifts this year as we are saving for the wedding. And...my smart fiance has amassed himself a Christmas fund by saving a little every month all year long like I told myself I would do almost a year ago.

The next money failure I'm about to report is actually a happy accident.

Since I paid off my laptop I decided I wanted to start snowballing the $43 payments I was making towards my highest interest student loan. So today I logged into my account to do just that, except when I computed the total I confused the amount I usually pay ($54; the minimum is $40) with the amount I usually pay to my Perkins loan ($93), since they are serviced by the same lender. As I result, I ended up sending $136 to the loan ($93 + $43). Yes I didn't do it deliberately but I'm still glad I did. This is also my smallest loan (~$1400) and I really hope I can knock it all out soon.

So here's my budget for the next two weeks, in which we actually purchase and use groceries, and I just may buy a present or two.

Starting Balance = $1280

Credit Card - 200

Wedding Savings - 500*

Groceries - 75

Christmas - 150

Law School Loan - 136

Perkins Loan - 93

Misc. - 126

*I already made this transfer so I will not fall short of my wedding savings goal once again!

They Increased My Credit Limit!!!

2009-11-25T12:53:00.002-05:00

As I've mentioned before, I have been charging small amounts on my credit card and paying the balance in full each month in an effort to try and get the card company to raise my limit, thus improving my credit score. It's been a little over six months since I finally paid off the whole balance for the first time, a balance that I at one point had let climb up to $650 including late charges and fees on a card with a $500 credit limit. This was during my ostrich phase before I started the blog.

I log in to make my monthly payment today and voila, I see that I now have a credit limit of $5,500!!!

I have mixed feelings about this new development. I am very excited that in all this time of thinking about my money and trying to make up for past mistakes while being treated like a deadbeat by my own bank, debt collectors, student loan servicers, etc. that someone on the outside, i.e. "the man" has taken notice and had a little faith in me.

On the other hand...I know this wasn't an altruistic move on the part of the credit card company. They assume that since I have been charging a few things and then paying for them that given more credit I will charge more things. And frankly, I'm a little nervous about that too. Sure, I have been an authorized user on my fiance's Emergency Credit Card for months now with a similar balance and never ran amok, but it feels a little different when it's just "my card," you know? I am being completely honest here so take it easy on me.

Anyway, I am excited about this news and dedicated to not let it tempt me to spend. Wish me luck!