Where it Went 05/12 - 05/25

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

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

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 trainer. 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?

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

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

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

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

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!!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!